Imagining Digital Futures for the Art Museum special course / Youth Advisory Council

Are you an undergraduate student interested in the complexities of museum collections and digital space? Help reimagine Agnes and what the 21st-century museum can be.

Join Agnes’s Youth Advisory Council, build your network, and receive hands-on real-world experience. Have a say in future digital platforms that engage diverse museum audiences and inform innovation in the digital sector!

Go behind the scenes and collaborate with gallery staff and professional colleagues.
Share ideas and help Agnes formulate a proposal for a public-facing, collections-based online initiative.
Gain insights into working in a professional art museum setting.
Learn and apply new skills in critical thinking, digital technologies and curatorial/museological practice alongside their peers.
Engage in hands-on activities and gain professional experience in an innovative institutional environment, leading to active and collaborative learning opportunities across disciplines.

No experience with digital tools is necessary!

THE WORKSHOPS

Engage in six brainstorming and prototyping workshops with peers and Agnes’s team from January to March 2023, with some research taking place outside of the regular meeting times. Participants are expected to participate in all workshops and activities.

12, 26 January, 5:30–8:30 pm
9 February, 5:30–8:30 pm
2, 16 March, 5:30–8:30 pm
25 March, 1–4 pm

Application Details

The program is offered through the Experience Ventures program. Students are eligible to apply if they:

1. Are a Queen’s student enrolled in any full- or part-time program (including certificate students) in years 2–4,
2. Have not participated in a prior Experience Ventures program during the current calendar year.
3. Are legally entitled to work in Canada.
4. Are a Canadian citizen, permanent resident, or person who has refugee status.

Participating students receive 3.0 course credits towards their degree (or a micro-credential if their course load is full). Thanks to the Experience Ventures program, eligible students receive a stipend ($825) upon completion of the program.

Eligible students are encouraged to apply by sending a short letter of interest (200-300 words), a CV, a transcript, and a link to an optional portfolio to gabriel.menotti@queensu.ca by 19 November 2022.

The selection of participants is committed to the principles of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, & Indigeneity, and means to foster equitable participation among BIPOC and other ethnic and gender minorities, as well as under-represented student communities.

Students interested in participating are encouraged to contact gabriel.menotti@queensu.ca.

Museums Without Walls. Photo: Bojana Babic museusemparedes.com

Course Outline

Imagining Digital Futures for the Art Museum is a special course that get the students engaged with Agnes in a pivotal year of change as the new, future-oriented vision for the museum, Agnes Reimagined is mobilized to set a new paradigm for museological practices. The museum of the 21st century can no longer simply be a container of history as if history has no bearing on our changing contemporary world. Agnes Reimagined is a dynamic culture-making hub and an active civic and social force—mobilizing the transformative power of art to create more equitable, inclusive, and sustainable worlds. It asks: what needs to be done now to ensure Canada’s future museums no longer look like those of Canada’s colonial past?

Guided by Agnes Reimagined, participating students explore how a contemporary art institution works from the inside, delving into areas such as curatorial, collections and public programs through a digital lens. They become acquainted with different ways in which museums, galleries and art spaces have been adapting to and expanding their operations within the digital realm in more accessible and inclusive ways. In close dialogue with Agnes’s team, students form multidisciplinary groups to identify areas of development for the digital museum of the 21st-century.

Students research online collections portals as co-creative spaces, reimagining how, what, why and for whom information about the collection is shared and displayed online. They produce research reports, and prototype interfaces and activities for Digital AGNES to inform a new cutting-edge collections portal being implemented by the museum.