At Home with Collaboration: Building and Sustaining a Successful University–Museum Partnership

Abstract

There are many similarities between museums and universities. Both are places where knowledge is made and disseminated; both employ creative people who are allowed considerable freedom to generate new ideas and pursue their own projects; at the same time, both are increasingly responsive to wider public agendas and commercial imperatives which require them to think strategically about how they are distinctive and to prove their worth in the context of shifting political priorities and economic pressures. This chapter is about a partnership between a university (Queen Mary University of London) and a museum (The Geffrye Museum of the Home), located just two miles apart from one another in East London.