Custom-made reflective practice: can museums realise their capabilities in helping others realise theirs?

For many museums, the reality of their public engagement work frequently fails to match the rhetoric, even when the work is inspired by a genuinely democratic impulse. Museum professionals express the feeling of being ‘stuck’, while their community partners convey frustration and dissatisfaction. Based on the author's 2010 Paul Hamlyn Foundation-sponsored study of public engagement in 12 museums across the UK, the results demonstrate that the only way engagement can both be embedded and effective in museums is through a constant cycle of reflective practice. With the museum as ‘participatory sphere institution’ at the heart of civil society, community partners are no longer seen as passive ‘beneficiaries’ and the museum becomes a vibrant public sphere of contestation. Thus, in line with Amartya Sen's call to address ‘capability failure’, museums, while realising their institutional capabilities, may actively support others realising theirs.