Museums as Spaces for Health and Wellbeing

Getting out in the fresh air in green spaces provides many benefits for mental health. Museums, especially rural ones, are uniquely placed to offer green spaces for improving mental health and wellbeing. In advance of World Mental Health Day on 10 October 2026, this session explored how museums could help support mental health. There was the chance to hear from the Ulster Folk Museum who offer a range of volunteering opportunities associated with gardening in partnership with The Conservation Volunteers (TCV) and Holywood Co Farm. The programme aims to teach gardening skills, grow produce, help people engage with their community and improve mental health and wellbeing for all those involved. Participants also found out about The Museum of English Rural Life’s collaborative health and wellbeing programmes, including “Wednesday Weeders” and community growing spaces. The session was chaired by Madeleine Ding, Collections Officer for both The Museum of English Rural Life and Reading Museum. Presenters: Helen Connolly is Volunteering and Participation Manager at National Museums Northern Ireland, where she leads the development of volunteering strategy, with a particular focus on how museum volunteering can contribute to wellbeing and diversify audiences and stakeholders. Helen has over 16 years’ experience in volunteering development and before Museums and heritage, worked predominantly across voluntary and community sector organisations including Barnardo’s, Volunteer Now and RNID, where she successfully led the organisation through the Investing in Volunteers standard. At National Museums NI, Helen has led innovative work to re-purpose museum green spaces for volunteering initiatives that support health and wellbeing. This has been achieved through partnership working and by aligning programmes with wider organisational strategic outcomes, helping to drive culture change and position volunteering as a key contributor to wellbeing and community connection. Phillippa Heath has volunteered and worked in museum learning and engagement for over 20 years. In her current role as Learning and Engagement Manager at the Museum of English Rural Life (The MERL) in Reading she oversees the museum’s formal learning, youth and community engagement programmes. Since the pandemic, this has included increased programmes which support health and wellbeing and, more recently, establishing The MERL as a Museum of Sanctuary and fostering collaborations with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. Madeleine Ding works as the Collections Officer for both The Museum of English Rural Life and Reading Museum. Her role involves hands on work with the collections, accessioning objects, facilitating research access, creating temporary exhibitions and responding to queries.