Conference Schedule

The Indigenous Museum Cousins (IMC) is a growing collective of Indigenous museum professionals from across BC working within the GLAM sector. We came together primarily to support one another, creating a dedicated space to connect, share experiences, and navigate a sector that continues to be challenging for Indigenous professionals.

Formed in response to ongoing experiences of isolation, racism, and structural barriers, the IMC centres relationships, accountability, and lived experience. This session shares the development of the IMC as an Indigenous-led network grounded in care, laughter, strength, and mutual support. Drawing from decades of combined experience in repatriation, museum leadership, and community-based work, the presenters will speak to the realities Indigenous professionals face within institutions, including navigating systemic inequities, carrying heavy cultural responsibilities, and holding space for change.
The IMC is not a group created to do the decolonizing and reconciliation work for museums. Rather, it exists to uphold and strengthen Indigenous professionals within the sector. Our focus is on building collective strength, sharing strategies, and ensuring Indigenous voices and leadership are supported, visible, and sustained.

Participants will gain insight into how Indigenous-led networks can strengthen both individuals and institutions by creating safe and relational professional spaces, identifying gaps in institutional supports, and fostering collective voice. Participants will be invited into facilitated discussion to consider how they can better support Indigenous colleagues and contribute to meaningful change within their own organizations.

By the end of the session, participants will have a clearer understanding of the role Indigenous-led networks play in strengthening the GLAM sector, along with practical ways to support Indigenous staff, build respectful relationships, and move from intention to action.

You’re involved with a small museum, that has a minuscule staff – only one or two people – including a CEO who has been there for years, knows everything about the organization, can handle any task that comes along, and somehow miraculously achieves the great and wonderful things that have made your museum the success it is. She’s the lifeblood of your museum – and now she’s announced that she’s leaving. You’re being asked to figure out how to deal with that, and it’s the most terrifying thing you’ve ever had to do.

The Creston Museum has had to deal twice with the sudden and unexpected (although temporary) absence of its own beloved long-term CEO, and has learned a lot about what to do – and what not to do – to make that transition as smooth as possible. Now that their CEO is nearing retirement, they’re working to apply those lessons for a permanent hand-over. This session will walk you through the practical, day-to-day strategies the Creston Museum is implementing to manage their upcoming succession.

If you’re facing a similar situation, don’t panic. You got this. You can pass that torch – without burning anything down.

Philanthropy is about more than asking people for money. It is about building meaningful relationships with people who care about your museum, your community, and the stories and places you preserve.

The Power of Place: Turning Heritage into Philanthropy will explore practical and creative ways small museums and heritage organizations can engage supporters and build a sustainable culture of philanthropy. Even with limited budgets, small staff teams and volunteer capacity, organizations can develop meaningful connections and make the most of the resources they already have.

This session will cover the key elements of a successful fundraising program, including:

· Monthly giving

· Annual giving

· Special events

· Legacy giving

· Major gifts

· Donor engagement and stewardship

Together, we will explore how staff, volunteers, board members, and community supporters can harness their existing relationships, networks, stories, and local connections to strengthen philanthropy.

Participants will leave with practical ideas and inspiration to begin—or grow—a fundraising program that is authentic to their organization, their community, and their unique sense of place.

This walking session explores the layered histories of Nanaimo’s historic Chinatown through place-based storytelling, archival interpretation, and public art. Led by Dr. Imogene Lim and Dr. Melissa Karmen Lee, the tour invites participants to experience how museums and scholars can activate historic sites outside traditional gallery spaces.

Once home to one of British Columbia’s most vibrant Chinese communities, Nanaimo’s Chinatown was central to the economic and social life of Chinese migrants who worked in coal mining, commerce, and service industries in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today, only fragments of this once-thriving neighbourhood remain visible in the urban landscape. Through a guided walking tour, participants will explore how archival research, archaeological scholarship, and community memory can be mobilized to interpret places where physical traces have largely disappeared.

The tour will visit two key historic locations associated with Nanaimo’s former Chinatown, using photographs, maps, and stories to reconstruct the neighborhood’s social life, businesses, and institutions. Participants will also encounter a contemporary public artwork by artist Jackie Wong that reflects on the histories and afterlives of Chinese Canadian communities in the region. This stop will serve as a point of discussion about how contemporary artists interpret diasporic histories and how public art can function as a form of community storytelling.

The session will also touch on the literary representation of Nanaimo’s Chinatown in Denise Chong’s landmark memoir The Concubine’s Children, which vividly recounts the experiences of Chinese migrant families and highlights Nanaimo as an important setting within Chinese Canadian history. By connecting literary narrative with physical landscape, the session demonstrates how historical memory circulates across multiple forms—archives, literature, archaeology, and community knowledge.

Rather than presenting Chinatown solely as a vanished past, the walking tour foregrounds ongoing questions of heritage, erasure, and belonging. Participants will consider how museums and cultural institutions can engage with dispersed histories in ways that are collaborative, accessible, and grounded in place. The session will also address practical approaches to designing walking tours as interpretive tools that extend museum practice beyond the walls of institutions.

Through this immersive experience, the session encourages museum professionals to think creatively about how public history can be activated in urban landscapes where communities have been displaced, rebuilt, or forgotten. By walking the former streets of Nanaimo’s Chinatown together, participants will gain insight into how storytelling, scholarship, and public art can bring hidden histories back into public view.

Travelling exhibitions offer powerful opportunities to share national stories across multiple communities. Yet the most effective touring projects are not simply replicated from venue to venue—they evolve. Local museums reinterpret and contextualize exhibitions through the lens of their own regional histories, audiences, and collections.
This panel brings together museum professionals from Nanaimo Museum, BC Forest Discovery Centre, and Victoria Chinatown Museum Society to explore how the travelling exhibition A Seat at the Table has been adapted in different communities across Vancouver Island.

Originally developed by the Chinese Canadian Museum, MOV, and UBC INSTRCC, A Seat at the Table uses food and restaurants as an entry point into exploring the history of Chinese Canadians to present times, including entrepreneurship, cultural exchange, and belonging. As the exhibition travels, host institutions have expanded its themes by incorporating local stories that reflect the specific histories of Chinese communities in their regions.

At the BC Forest Discovery Centre in the Cowichan Valley, the exhibition intersects with the region’s logging history, exploring the role Chinese workers and families played in forestry communities while also establishing restaurants and local businesses.

At the Nanaimo Museum, the exhibition is contextualized through the history of Nanaimo’s once-thriving Chinatown and the legacy of Chinese restaurants that served as community gathering places. The session will examine how museums interpret histories tied to neighbourhoods that have largely disappeared but remain deeply embedded in local memory.

Meanwhile, the Victoria Chinatown Museum Society adapted the exhibition to highlight a Victoria’s historic Chinese bakery—an important yet often overlooked part of Chinatown’s food culture and economic life.
Together, the panel will explore how travelling exhibitions can become platforms for local storytelling, allowing regional museums to integrate community memory, labour histories, and foodways into broader national narratives about Chinese Canadian life.

Moderated by the Chinese Canadian Museum

The Port Hardy Museum and Archives is situated on Northern Vancouver Island on Kwakiutl territory. Defined by both resource extraction industries and Kwakwaka’wakw histories, Port Hardy is the home of diverse narratives with local and global impacts. Through a three-panel discussion with PHM staff, we will address our museum’s approach to care, community, and our role as GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archives, and Museum) workers in tackling the legacies of colonial histories and harms.

Rural and remote small community museums play a unique role in our communities. We act as essential hubs for arts, culture and heritage, often with small budgets and limited staffing. The PHM has seen a shift in our demand that we can’t ignore: because many cultural spaces are centrally located and serve as community third spaces, GLAM workers are finding themselves in roles that differ from what the sector has traditionally looked like. In addition to our archival, programming and curatorial work, we are now responding to a community in crisis. 911 phone calls and community support have become a part of our everyday lives.

In grappling with these legacies, there comes a mental and physical toll. The panelists will discuss the importance of a disability justice-centred framework and care for museum staff, encouraging wellness, rest, and health. We reflect on the ways this work has transformed and become intertwined with our museum practices in our programming, exhibits, and approach to consultation, the webs of relation and care embedded throughout our work; the personal is political.

In the face of funding cuts for arts and culture and a general lack of awareness or caring from the general public, museums have had to spend a lot of time thinking about resiliency and survival. This is especially true for small community or municipal museums, some of whom are just barely keeping their heads above water.

Enter: the community partnership. One of the best ways for a museum to practice resiliency is to make themselves more relevant within their community. Partnering and collaborating with other community organizations is mutually beneficial. It opens up the museum and the other organizations to new audiences, it encourages creative thinking, and it encourages the public to think about their own history in a new, intersectional way. Most importantly, it creates allies within the community, who are more likely to support the museum when it comes to advocating for themselves. It’s also a free or low-cost (though not necessarily low-effort) way to encourage the public to care about and engage with their local museum.

Abby Lizee of Maple Ridge Museum and Leanne Koehn of Ridge Meadows Recycling Society have collaborated to speak about the strengths and benefits of community partnerships, particularly the ones you wouldn’t expect. These two organizations have collaborated several times, including Earth Day celebrations, Repair Cafes, social media campaigns, and museum exhibits (they also started the AGM Social Club in order to encourage quorum at local non-profit AGMs). The presentation will talk about establishing their own partnership, how it has spread to other community organizations, and how this has led to a network of local cultural organizations coming together to collaborate and support each other. Speaking from experience, they will discuss how their partnership network has led to higher engagement at events and on social media, and has led to increased foot traffic to the museum.

Volunteers are powerful partners who bring our stories to life. Join Charlene Dishaw for an interactive workshop focused on fresh ideas for retaining volunteers and strengthening existing retention strategies. Together, we’ll explore practical opportunities to elevate the volunteer experience and stand out as the volunteer opportunity of choice in your community. This is an active, participatory session—come ready to connect with colleagues, share ideas, and imagine new, creative ways to build lasting volunteer engagement.

This panel will cover the content, evolution, and impact of the Métis Culture Talks (MCT) program, a virtual workshop and learning series hosted by the Amelia Douglas Institute (ADI) in partnership with Métis Nation British Columbia (MNBC).

The program offers interactive sessions online that explore Métis culture, history, and contemporary and heritage artistic practices. Sessions are facilitated by a Métis artist, Elder, Knowledge Carrier, scholar, or cultural practitioners, and may include hands-on kit-based activities, presentations, storytelling, demonstrations, and group discussion. Topics range from beadwork, music, dance, and material culture to genealogy, language, and Métis history. The program is designed to be accessible, engaging, and welcoming for Métis people across British Columbia, including those who may be connecting with their culture for the first time. Sessions are open to MNBC Citizens and self-identified Métis people in BC.

The Amelia Douglas Institute’s Program Assistant (Laura Carpentier) will facilitate the panel with other ADI staff, including the ADI Manager (Thomas Long) and Cultural Coordinator (Hannah Denton), to highlight different aspects and staff perspectives of the program, from creation, to funding, to execution.

This presentation and panel will discuss how Métis Culture Talks fosters meaningful virtual community-building and cultural connection opportunities for Métis people spread across BC. Gathering online supports connection between participants, but also with Métis artists, Elders, and Knowledge Carriers, creating welcoming space for learning and relationship-building. This session will also reflect on participant feedback and experiences, including how paid opportunities for facilitation uplift Métis artists and cultural practitioners. We will discuss the successes and ongoing challenges of honouring Métis cultural protocols and practices in digital spaces and offer insight into what it means to gather for culture with care and intention in an online environment. Community-driven arts and heritage programming that combine traditional knowledge with contemporary approaches can inspire pride, strengthen identity, and create meaningful connections across generations.

Details coming soon.

What does it mean to build queer belonging in a place where queerness has not been made visible in the ways we typically see it depicted? Not in Vancouver, not in a major urban centre, but in a small coastal town, on the prairies, in the communities that rarely appear in the sector’s conversations about 2S /LGBTQIA+ inclusion.

This panel brings together five practitioners who are doing exactly that: from different angles, with different tools, and with the shared conviction that queer communities in regional and rural BC and Alberta deserve more than a rainbow flag in June.

Together, panellists will examine what brave, accountable action looks like when resources are limited, audiences are small, stakes are high for individuals, and institutions are just beginning to understand their role. The conversation will move across community coalition-building, Indigiqueer cultural sovereignty, digital community infrastructure, and place-based arts programming to ask: What are our responsibilities as cultural change workers?What do we actually owe one another? How do we build care? And how do we do that, here, now, with what we have?

Museums and cultural organizations increasingly recognize the need to move beyond statements toward brave action, particularly in areas of climate change, biodiversity conservation, and community relevance. One powerful way to do this work is through co created learning experiences that focus on relationships, amplify diverse expertise, and connect museum collections to contemporary issues.

This interactive workshop shares lessons from a collaborative project to co develop a new undergraduate biology course rooted in natural history collections, real world issues, and anti colonial science. Developed through partnerships between museum professionals, faculty, students, and Indigenous curators and scholars, the project demonstrates how collaboration and shared purpose can transform both learning experiences and institutional practice.

Participants will explore how co creation can shift work from transactional projects to long lasting connections that deepen impact over time. The session examines how anti colonial approaches to science were woven throughout course design, prompting reflection on positionality, communication, community accountability, and the social and historical context of science and museum collections. The result was a learning experience that strengthened students’ understanding of biodiversity science and increased appreciation for natural history collections as living, socially embedded resources.

Drawing on evaluation findings from student reflections and course feedback, this workshop highlights the impact of co created, purpose driven learning on learners, collaborators, and institutions. Participants will reflect on challenges encountered in this type of work, such as navigating discomfort, differing perspectives, and institutional constraints, and how these tensions became productive spaces for growth and innovation.

Grounded in museum practice, this session invites attendees to consider how their own collections, spaces, and partnerships can become sites of brave action. Through facilitated discussion and reflection, participants will explore how to adapt co creation principles within their own contexts, moving beyond “kind words” toward learning experiences that strengthen relationships, foster accountability, and make museums meaningful gathering places for communities grappling with complex issues.

Small and semi-rural museums often undertake significant relationship-based work while navigating limited staff, funding, capacity, and time. Though they can be overlooked as places of innovation and change, these institutions make up much of British Columbia’s museum sector and are deeply connected to the communities they serve.

This facilitated group conversation will use the experiences of the Sooke Region Museum (SRM) as a starting point for an open discussion about collections, collaboration, and relationships with local Indigenous communities.

SRM is a semi-rural community museum serving communities from East Sooke to Port Renfrew. Over the past two years, the Museum has collaborated with T’SOU-KE Elders and Dr. Andrea Walsh’s Ethnographic Novels class at the University of Victoria. Through belongings held by the Museum, including a dugout canoe and Second World War medals belonging to Elders’ fathers, students have learned directly from Elders using drawing, annotation, listening, and conversation as forms of research.

SRM staff will briefly share how this collaboration developed, including successes, challenges, and lessons still being learned. The majority of the session will be dedicated to facilitated peer conversation.

Participants will be invited to openly share their own experiences with collections, reconciliation, relationship-building, and community engagement in smaller museums. Successes, challenges, stalled projects, uncertainties, and unfinished work are all welcome. The goal is not to present a model to replicate, but to create space for smaller museums to learn from one another.

In 2024, the Tsleil-Waututh Nation and the Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology (MAE) undertook a joint project. With funding from Heritage Canada, two Tsleil-Waututh high school students were offered a paid internship that would help them develop real-world skills and capabilities in museum and archaeology contexts.

The Museum director became a professional mentor to the two students. One day each week, the students travelled to MAE and worked alongside the Museum team. The students learned to catalogue, create mounts, perform light conservation work, and research their cultural heritage in museum records.

One student did not return for a second summer. The other did, and it was decided that he would curate an exhibit to conclude his placement. The student used cultural belongings from his community in the Museum’s care to create a fully-decolonised artistic creation rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing. The exhibit unsettles institutional conventions and is a beautiful disruption to established (colonial) processes and procedures.

Decent workplaces are fair, stable, and productive workplaces where people feel valued, heard, and supported. In this practical session, Lorraine Bell from the Qualicum Beach Museum will outline steps small non-profit museums can take right now toward better compensation, working conditions, and organizational culture. Participants will explore tools such as the Decent Work Charter and Checklist and are encouraged to share their own experiences and ideas for action on this important issue.

Imagine teaching a class of History 12 students and you are looking to bring them on a field trip. Where would you take them? The Royal BC Museum? The Museum of Vancouver? Maybe you would choose the Vancouver Island Military Museum here in Nanaimo. But what about a botanical garden? It might seem like an odd fit at the beginning, but nature and culture are intertwined, and the story of human history cannot be told with one and not the other.

Nature is what the world has given us, and culture is what people have created from that, with history being the story of that complex relationship. This lightning presentation will illustrate the connection between nature and culture through a few brief examples, ranging from pirates to astronauts, with the goal of inspiring discussion about ways that history, and other “museum” topics, can be taught outside of the traditional classroom. Participants will be encouraged to “think outside the box” and to explore new avenues for education.

A decade after the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (TRC) Calls to Action, heritage organizations continue to work towards changing the structures of our systems to support Indigenous sovereignty. Attempting to navigate her role as an emerging settler archivist, Carolyn completed an extensive review to determine the extent to which Indigenous and non-Indigenous archival organizations at the federal, provincial and community level have responded to the Calls. This presentation draws on the publicly available information from this research and examines the museum-archive relationship. It also addresses the ways organizational structures and cross disciplinary dynamics influence reconciliation efforts. This presentation considers how museums are frequently positioned as visible leaders in reconciliation work, and how their public-facing initiatives shape professional identity, institutional accountability, and the visibility of archival labor within broader cultural heritage institutions, particularly in relation to the TRC’s Calls to Action.

Drawing on the collected data, Carolyn proposes a set of practical, principle based approaches that heritage organizations can adopt to engage meaningfully in reconciliation work. Rather than prescribing a universal model, these approaches emphasize accountability, transparency, and sustained institutional commitment. She will highlight the importance of embedding reconciliation into governance structures, policy development, professional standards, and resourcing decisions. By identifying structural barriers and opportunities for cross institutional collaboration, this research contributes to ongoing discussions about ethical heritage practice and institutional responsibility. Ultimately, it argues for a shift in how museums and archives understand their roles in reconciliation, moving toward long term action that centers Indigenous voices, knowledge systems, and relationships within cultural heritage institutions.
The presentation concludes by drawing on the collected data to propose a set of practical, principle‑based approaches that heritage organizations can adopt to engage meaningfully in reconciliation work. Rather than prescribing a universal model, these approaches emphasize accountability, transparency, and sustained institutional commitment, highlighting the importance of embedding reconciliation into governance structures, policy development, professional standards, and resourcing decisions. By identifying both structural barriers, such as limited visibility of archival work, uneven professional authority, and reliance on museum‑led initiatives, and opportunities for cross‑institutional collaboration, this research contributes to ongoing discussions about ethical heritage practice and institutional responsibility.

Ultimately, it argues for a shift in how museums and archives understand their roles in reconciliation, underscoring the need to move beyond symbolic participation toward long‑term, action‑oriented engagement that centers Indigenous voices, knowledge systems, and relationships within cultural heritage institutions. As fundamental memory holders and spaces of information, museums and archives play a crucial role in not only supporting Indigenous peoples on the path to self-determination and the revitalization of their cultural heritage, but a broader responsibility to Canadian society to educate and promote respect towards Indigenous communities. The presentation calls for a fundamental shift in the mindset of the Canadian heritage community to recognize that our accountability should not waver, that after a decade of work creating resources, it is now time to become active participants and make institutional changes.

This workshop explores how heritage and culture organizations can respond to scarcity with creativity, adaptability, and strategic focus. Across the sector, institutions are often asked to do more with less while navigating limited funding, reduced staffing, constrained physical space, aging infrastructure, and increasing expectations for public relevance and community impact. Scarcity is often framed as a challenge to overcome, but this session invites participants to consider it differently: as a condition that can prompt innovation, sharpen priorities, and encourage more intentional, sustainable ways of working.

Rather than focusing on what organizations lack, the workshop emphasizes what remains possible when institutions identify and activate the strengths they already hold. Participants will examine practical approaches to working effectively within real-world constraints while continuing to deliver meaningful, community-responsive outcomes.

The session will explore how organizations can rethink program design to align effort with impact, build partnerships that extend capacity, mobilize local knowledge and lived experience, and make better use of existing assets such as collections, stories, volunteers, and institutional memory. Participants will be encouraged to reflect on how scarcity can reveal opportunities for collaboration, experimentation, and more focused decision-making. The workshop is particularly relevant for museums, archives, galleries, and community-based heritage organizations seeking practical and sustainable ways to remain responsive, resilient, and relevant in times of constraint.

In a world of shrinking budgets and endless subscription-based digital tools promising to transform your museum’s operations and impact for an ever-increasing monthly fee, there has never been a better time to use your existing tools in new ways. This session will show how the Museum of Vancouver developed a budget tracking and reporting tool and a sponsorship tracking CRM in-house using our existing staff’s knowledge and online tools included in our current subscriptions, to build two essential new tools that respond directly to our staffs’ needs and save the museum $30,000 per year in subscription and licensing costs.

You will leave this session with a better understanding of often over-looked tools in the Microsoft Office Suite, get the chance to brainstorm bespoke solutions to your organization’s digital needs, and be equipped with foundational knowledge that you can harness to work smarter, not harder while saving your organization money.

When the Antler Creek Wildfire surged toward Barkerville in July 2024, we believed we were as prepared as possible to face the threat. What we didn’t anticipate was how profoundly the experience would reshape our work, our priorities, and our understanding of what it truly means to protect a heritage site.

While the crisis validated the importance of emergency planning, the deeper lessons emerged in the aftermath—in the ripple effects that extended far beyond the fire line, and in the way the event tested our values, our relationships, and our purpose.

This session offers a candid case study of how a remote historic site prepared for, responded to, and recovered from a potentially catastrophic wildfire. Because the crisis touched not only the site but the broader community, standard emergency protocols weren’t enough. We had to think beyond our emergency management plans and act in the moment. The experience forced us to confront big questions: What does authenticity mean in a climate‑changed world? What are we willing to sacrifice? What other resources do we have? And what do we owe to the people who consider this place part of their identity?

Ultimately, this wildfire reminded us why heritage sites matter, and how courage, adaptability, and the power of community can transform a crisis into a moment of collective clarity. Barkerville’s experience shows that protecting heritage in a climate‑changed world is not just about safeguarding objects or buildings; it’s about strengthening community, identity, and belonging.

Succession planning is something that administrators put off to the last minute, and then try to cram all our knowledge into the two-weeks notice before we leave a role. How often have we inherited half finished thoughts and barely anything written down about how to do a job, and how often do we not have these conversations before leaving a job because we want coworkers, employees and volunteers to feel secure? How often do we have difficulty putting into words what we do everyday?

Succession planning is something that we should be doing as part of our everyday tasks, but it is something that we rarely do whether it is because it is something that we do not feel like we have time for, it is something we do not want to think about, or it’s something we are unsure how to do. This presentation will discuss the importance of Succession Planning with everything, how it works in everything you do, and a place to start when you leave this conference.

The Memory Map is an online heritage tool that was created under a Digital Access to Heritage grant. The purpose of the Memory Map is to share snapshots of under-told Surrey history through interactive maps and first-hand accounts. It has three main features: Spotlight Map, Add Your Memory, and Community Stories. The Memory Map is an active resource with space to grow and add more communities’ histories.

Check out the Memory Map here.

This presentation will explore the experience of taking the Memory Map project from concept to reality, including the backend development, costs, and successes/challenges along the way. We will do a “tour” of the Memory Map and discuss each element. Though initiated as a grant project, the Memory Map is now part of regular operations. Methods/learnings from ongoing engagement and adding new content will be shared in the presentation.

We will close with a memory sharing activity and questions/discussion.