Inclusive Transformation at the National Portrait Gallery

Since February 2023, the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) and RCMG have been working together to take forward the Gallery’s ambition to place equity and inclusion at the very heart of everything it does. The aim is to deliver a more inclusive and accessible experience for visitors, staff, volunteers and the people NPG works with.

Over two phases the collaboration has:

Phase 1 (Feb 2023 – June 2024)

• Established a Core Project Group, made up of RCMG researcher and a cross-cohort of NPG staff, to co-design a programme of activities;

• Responded to a variety of pre-opening needs in 2023, especially related to interpretation and comms;

• Designed and delivered a three-part development programme for over 60 NPG changemakers and ambassadors, drawing on RCMG research and external expert insight to build confidence and capability across NPG staff;

• Designed and delivered bespoke development sessions for Learning, Visitor Experience and Comms teams;

• Co-designed with Visitor Experience teams – and wider input from across NPG – a tool to build capacity and confidence to convene ‘Inclusive Conversations’;

• Contributed digital resources to a shared space to support the embedding of learning across NPG teams.

Phase 2: Action Research (Sept 2024 – November 2026)

• Embedded the Inclusive Conversations Tool developed in Phase 1 to grow confidence in applying it across all areas of activity;

• Built NPG capacity and confidence around leading-edge approaches to inclusion, ethics and co-production;

• Drawing on leading-edge scholarship from across the fields of psychology, education, sociology, political science and culture, explored the ways in which NPG can hold, negotiate and bridge inclusive conversations;

• Engaged with 5 external peer experts – Corinne Fowler, Alex Evans and Claire Brown, Larger Us, Jess Thom, Christopher Samuel, Mark Thomas, and Cheryl Garvey – all with expertise and experience of building inclusive conversations across divisive and different views, through a half-day workshop and a series of in-depth conversations;

• Co-developed the ‘Designing for Inclusive Conversations Framework’, an ethical framework to be used alongside the Inclusive Conversations Tool, to support staff as they host conversations with and between publics;

• Worked collaboratively with NPG staff to support new interpretations, curation and the design and delivery of the new Carte-de-Visite collection display – 55 small, collectable photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, alongside new approaches to digital, comms and marketing, social media, and schools and public programming;

• Co-produced a series of filmic installations with filmmakers Soup Collective and engagement from the Gallery’s Young Producers, appearing in Room 22 and the Studio Gallery in late September and October 2026.

You can download the Inclusive Conversations Tool here [PDF 203KB].

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/X004732/1].