NMDC Good Practice Guidelines on Opening Museums

Published by the National Museum Directors’ Council (NMDC) with support from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Museums and Galleries Working Group, these guidelines are intended to help employers, employees and the self-employed, and volunteers in the museum sector in England understand how to work safely during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The guidelines should:

• provide a set of practical considerations museums will want to work through before a museum is ready to reopen

• be used in conjunction with COVID-safe guidelines published by HM Government, and is intended to enhance, not supplant existing regulations

• sit alongside and inform existing business practices and standard structures museums already consider when managing risk and conducting business planning activities

The guidelines will periodically be updated when new Government guidance becomes available as the UK moves through different steps of adjustment to lockdown.

To download the guidelines please click here.

NMDC has also produced a timeline of possible stages of reopening, as there will be no single date on which all museums reopen, but rather a range of different approaches depending on the individual museum. The timeline can be found here.