Our events

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Space Invaders: Women on Boards – online – Monday 5 July – 5.30pm

We need feminist leadership at every level right up to the top. Could you join a board and help bring change in the sector?

Space Invaders Sharon Heal, Mel Strauss, Andrea Cunningham, Sara Wajid and Polly Robinson speak to Nichola Johnson, Virginia Tandy, Sapreena Kumari, Eleanor Porter, and Anjum Mouj to help you find out more.

Join us online to hear these inspirational women on museum boards demystify:

• Different types of Boards: how they work, tactical and strategic routes.
• Starting out on your first Board: the whys and the how tos
• Boards, values and challenges: the good, the bad and the ugly

Decoding Inequality – Glasgow Women’s Library – *Postponed*

Join Space Invaders Scotland and Rachel Thain Gray to find out more about the Decoding Inequality project. And look at how they mined objects from GWL’s collection for stories of women’s historical and contemporary inequality across gender, class, sexuality, disability and race.

We’ll discuss how the project developed new techniques to make sure women were represented across their diversity. And how the resulting exhibition and engagement sessions helped visitors think about why women are unequal in our society.

Check back for a new date soon.

Feminist activism in museums – online – Wednesday 26 May – 12.30pm

Join Space Invaders Scotland and Rachel Thain Gray, Feminist Museum Practitioner and Researcher, to talk about how past feminist activism can shape our work.

In this session we look at the activist techniques used by feminists during 20th and 21st century. How can we as feminists learn from historical action to shift the status quo in the present and for future?

Thank you for coming! We’ll share more about this event soon.

How to unlock your power – National Programmes Conference (online) – Tuesday 11 May

This session was to help people who want to make change and are curious about feminist leadership in museums explore their potential to make a difference.

We heard from women leaders and Museum Space Invaders about feminist leadership, including a keynote from Dhikshana Pering, Head of Engagement and Skills at Somerset House and Museums Association board member.

Digital wellbeing and creating safe spaces -online – Friday 30 April 2021

Tamsin Russell from the Museums Association joined Space Invaders Scotland to talk about digital wellbeing and creating safe digital spaces.

Our lives, professional and personal, have been more lived out in digital spaces than ever before bringing new issues and risks. These risks are amplified where our work begins to challenge existing norms and well-established beliefs about the role of museums and its relation to society.

Space Invaders Manifesto Launch – Online – 20 July 2020

We launched our manifesto live online in July 2020, in the middle of the pandemic year. Watch our video to hear from researchers and activists about why we need intersectional feminism right now.

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Space Invaders – gender equality in museums – Thinktank Birmingham Science Museum – 15 November 2019

Talks on feminist leadership, failings and solutions within the sector with

• Sharon Heal, Director of the Museums Association
• Melissa Strauss, Policy Advisor at the National Lottery Heritage Fund
• Rachel Cockett, Director of Development, Birmingham Museums Trust

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Exploring equality and diversity in museum practice across the UK – British Museum – 4 November 2019

This conference looked at issues of representation, authority and power with particular focus on disability, class, gender, race and sexuality. We presented our manifesto and facilitated a conversation around blockers for women in the workplace.

Read about the British Museum conference

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Space Invaders manifest at the Museum of London – 1 May 2019

An evening of sharing and plotting where we covered:

• Our manifesto for change – workshops
• Practical tools to use in your workplace
• Plotting/ Scheming/ Group offloading

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Women Making History: The Leaders of Today – Women and Power conference – Oxford University – 7 March 2019

Sara joined leaders Hilary Carty, Director, Clore Leadership Programme and Kate Clark, Visiting Professor in Heritage Valuation University of Sussex for a roundtable chaired by Virginia Tandy, Co-Founder, Women Leaders in Museums Network.

Together they explored the presence of women in senior roles in heritage organisations through the lived experience of the first generation of female museum leaders. What difference have these women made to how heritage is managed, preserved, and constructed? What barriers have they encountered? How have these women helped others to succeed?

Read Polly’s reflections on the Women and Power conference

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Museums Association Conference and Exhibition – Belfast – 8-10 November

Mel chaired a session with Nirmal Puwar from the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths and Margaret Ward, an historian from Queen’s University Belfast discussing the Space Invaders Network ambitious programme for change. It drew on what women have said about the Suffrage centenary, alongside the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

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A centenary of Votes for Women – V&A – 25 January 2018

We came together at the V&A to explore what we’re doing as a sector to commemorate the 100th anniversary of (some) women getting the vote.

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Space Invaders: Part III – Tower of London – 26 September 2016

Plotting in the Tower to develop our manifesto.

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Space Invaders: Part II – Museum of Childhood – 22 June 2016

Suffragettes and campaign action. What do we need to make change?

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Space Invaders: Women Museum Leaders’ conference – Imperial War Museum – 18 March 2016

The first of its kind, this conference kickstarted a public debate about the lack of gender equality in museum leadership.

Read journalist Yasmin Khan’s article about our conference on the Guardian News website

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