Friday 13 June

Session 1: The importance of representation

Representatives from the Swedish-based online project ‘Unstraight Museum’ will discuss and analyse the situation in Swedish institutions famed for their liberality and social justice.

Session 2: Your Stories

An hour-long practical workshop devised by Sweden’s ‘Unstraight Museum’ creating a digital and physical exhibition with every delegate to explore representation and the ways in which broader representation might increase visitors and funding.

Session 3: ‘From the margins to the mainstream’
National Museums Liverpool and Homotopia discuss their partnership work that has resulted in the Heritage Lottery Funded April Ashley exhibition as well as two major art exhibitions at the Walker Art Gallery (‘David Hockney: early reflections’ and ‘The Living and the Dead: Paintings and sculpture by John Kirby’) and annual ‘queering’ events at the galleries.

Sessions 4 & 5:
Break out presentations
• Artist and sculptor Andrew Logan, who runs his own museum of sculpture in Wales, will discuss his career and relationship with curators and galleries
• Finnish sociologist Kati Mustola ‘How lesbian, gay and trans history has found its way to museums, archives, and galleries across Nordic nations’
• Val Stevenson from Liverpool John Moores University Special Collections and Archives will discuss ‘queering’ a collection for Homotopia’s festival in 2013
• Durk Dehner from the Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles, will talk about the Foundation’s work to preserve and internationally exhibit the artwork of the influential Touko Laaksonen (Tom of Finland).

Session 6: Evening networking event with live entertainment

Saturday 14 June

Session 1: Diversifying Audiences

Zorian Clayton, assistant curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and Marcus Dickey Horley, Curator of Access and Special Projects at Tate Modern and Tate Britain, discuss the ways in which their institutions have tried to diversify their audiences and their collections.

Session 2: Exhibiting Difference

Hunter O'Hanian, from the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York, and Michael Furst, from the Schwules Museum in Berlin, discuss how their museums, dedicated to celebrating LGBT lives and work, were established.

Session 3: April Ashley, MBE

April Ashley is the subject of a current year-long exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool. The outrageous and outspoken April Ashley will talk about her life, and the experience of being elevated to museum status, in the city of her birth!

Sessions 4 & 5:
Break out presentations
• Artist and sculptor Andrew Logan, who runs his own museum of sculpture in Wales, will discuss his career and relationship with curators
• Finnish sociologist Kati Mustola ‘How lesbian, gay and trans history has found its way to museums, archives, and galleries across Nordic nations’
• Val Stevenson from Liverpool John Moores University Special Collections and Archives will discuss ‘queering’ collections for Homotopia’s festival in 2013
• Durk Dehner from the Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles, will talk about the Foundation’s work to preserve and internationally exhibit the artwork of the influential Touko Laaksonen (Tom of Finland).