A Manifesto for Museum Learning What are museums for? That’s the question we set out to answer in 2003 with a team of independent minds from DEMOS, the BBC, COMEDIA, the Fabian Society, and 15 others. The Manifesto Group, as we called them, wanted to know things like: What is the question to which museums are the answer? Where are they going? What’s so special about museums? They helped us pause for breath and think about where the cultural sector is really going. What came out of all the debate was a new way of thinking about museums’ role in society – their influence on learning, on mental health, on democracy, on culture itself - not from an instrumental point of view (that would mean hitching museums to every policy bandwagon with money on it), but from the point of view of the vital things in life they can do better than anyone else or that only museums can do. A Manifesto for Museum Learning is what the Manifesto Group think about the future of museums. You can see if you agree by downloading a copy here.