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We know how important the Museum Accreditation Scheme is. For over 35 years, Accreditation has been an accolade to be proudly displayed; an endorsement of your institution as a responsible custodian of culture, heritage and creativity and the bedrock of the museum sector.  

That importance is exactly why we must ensure the Accreditation Scheme is reviewed, evaluated and improved. Times change and so must a scheme that endorses what a well-run museum has in place, whether they are brand new or two hundred years old - all are responding to the challenges and innovations of our time. 

As we outlined at the start of the year in our blog ‘Reshaping Accreditation: what’s in scope for 2025’, the Museum Accreditation Scheme has been undergoing a review and redesign throughout 2025, while retaining its regular day-to-day functioning. We have been working with you, the users of the Scheme, to review Accreditation as it currently operates and understand how it could work better in the future. 

Due to a brief pause over the summer, it’s been some time since we provided an update on our progress with the Redesign. It’s important that we work openly with you and so we wanted to take this opportunity to share an update.  

Discovery: listening to our Accreditation users 

A key part of our activity has been the ‘Discovery Phase’, an eleven week period of engagement with the Accreditation Scheme’s users.  

For such a complex scheme, it’s been important to capture all of the moving parts involved: what are all the stages that a new applicant must go through; how is this different for participants when their museums are being re-Accredited?  Who is involved at each stage?   

Alongside this mapping, we have been speaking to users of the Accreditation Scheme. Through a set of interviews and focus groups, you have given us really important ‘on the ground’ insights about what you value about Accreditation, what works well, where the ‘pain points’ are, and how experiences differ for museums of different sizes and governance types. There was a lot of consensus which has given us a strong basis from which to move forward. 

From this, we distilled a set of ‘needs’ for the Accreditation Scheme:  

As a museum, I need…​   

• A Scheme that is modern, responsive and relevant​ 
• Transparency about the end-to-end process​ 
• A simple and equitable process that is proportional to the needs of museums​ 
• Clarity on the language and questions that are being asked ​ 
• Accessible and practical guidance and support ​ 
• Efficient and accessible systems  

While we are continuing to engage with Accreditation’s users (more on how you can get involved shortly), we are already putting these learnings into effect. We are starting to redesign the processes for applicants to make them more straightforward. 

The Accreditation Standard 

The Accreditation Standard is core to the scheme. It’s the handbook covering the main components of a well-run museum. The range of requirements relate to governance and management, planning and finances, collections management and the visitor experience. It is currently in its fifth iteration and was last updated in 2018.  

Since then, there have been major changes, challenges and innovations. The Accreditation Standard needs to continue to evolve to help people navigate how to run a museum well when continual change has become the norm. Accreditation has to be impactful, not just as an award of achievement, but also as a process of reflection, review and planning. 

So what have we been doing on this front? 

Having synthesised the feedback from the Discovery Phase, we are now fine tuning a set of principles outlining both the objectives and the purpose of the Accreditation Scheme. These will keep the Redesign focussed on what users need the Accreditation Scheme to do.  

As the central component, we are drafting an update of the Accreditation Standard. This will be an evolution of the 2018 standard. It will continue to support the core elements of running museums – good governance, collections management and audience development, but with an increased emphasis on risk management and business continuity, to reflect the priorities and concerns of museum practitioners in the mid-2020s. 

What’s next? 

We will spend the first half of 2026 working with different user groups to test a revised Accreditation Standard with the aim to share a draft more widely in the summer of 2026. 

Alongside this, we will be: 

• Finalising the Scheme’s purpose and outcomes across the UK Partnership
• Working alongside the Accreditation Committee on the draft Standard
• Establishing a museum group to test a draft Standard
• Engaging wider stakeholders to bring in particular expertise and wider viewpoints, for example collections, finance and audience development specialists
• Sharing regular updates, including sessions at conferences and further blogs 

As mentioned above, museums across the UK, we want to hear from you! 

If you are interested in being one of our volunteer testers, then get involved by signing up on our Expression of Interest form, this will be live until 25 January 2026. You can find the link under the ‘How can I take part in the Redesign’ question in our FAQs.  

We’ll be asking you to do a range of activities, from testing content from the updated Accreditation Standard to trialling brand new processes. Your feedback is crucial to ensuring the next iteration of the Accreditation Scheme works for all of our users. 

If you have any questions about the Museum Accreditation Scheme Redesign, then get in touch with us at Accreditation@artscouncil.org.uk. Or take a look at the current Redesign FAQS. 

We’d like to sign off the Redesign in 2025 by thanking everyone who has engaged in the process to date and look forward to working with you all in 2026.