Time to mend: rewilding museums

Abstract

ABSTRACT This is an account of an enquiry by Climate Museum UK (CMUK) into the potential of rewilding museums towards systemic repair. Rewilding is a progressive approach to conservation enabling natural processes to reshape places. To rewild museums bears the implication that museums must rewild themselves if they are to be agents for rewilding of the Earth. This might mean undertaking mission-altering work for community wellbeing, or addressing legacies of biocolonialism. We used this enquiry into rewilding to inform our evolution as a new activist museum, generating a vision to become more distributed. Inspired by the mutual exchanges of mycorrhizal fungi with plants, our members issue spores of regenerative change by carrying out “activations” in their communities across the UK. This piece applies theories about rewilding to museums, illustrating them with some of CMUK’s activations, including The Wild Museum, an experience led by animal curators, and Acts of Tree Kindness.