The IMD theme is proposed by ICOM’s Advisory Committee and aims to promote museum issues within society.

The museum community decided to celebrate IMD 2013 around the theme:

Museums (Memory + Creativity) = Social Change

The richness of our historical heritage, preserved and displayed by museums, together with the inventiveness and vitality that have characterised the museum sector’s action in recent years, are where the strength of museum institutions lies today. Reconciling their traditional mission of conservation with the creativity necessary for their revival and the development of their audiences – this is the evolution that museums are trying to undertake, with the strong belief that their presence and actions can transform society constructively.

This truly optimistic theme in the form of an equation dynamically gathers several concepts that are essential to defining what a museum is today, highlighting the universal nature of those institutions and their positive influence on society. It summarises the complexity of museum tasks and recalls that they are meant to contribute to community development and gathering together.

To help you organize the event and develop an activity programme linked with the theme, we suggest you five sub-themes:

• Informal education structures. Museums educate in a recreational way; they are places of initiation without obligation that foster knowledge through continually renewed means.

• A social space rooted in its territory. Museums play a role in the identity and dynamism of their territory. Through their action, they contribute to promote the past of their territory and build its future.

• An intergenerational link. Museums keep the relationship between a community and its history alive. They are spaces for dialogue between generations.

• Displaying heritage in a modern way. Museums have quickly been able to seize the communication and mediation opportunities offered by new media and have broken away from the old-fashion image they once had.

• Innovative practices for a better conservation. Conservation devices are improving and the museum is becoming a real laboratory where work techniques continue to evolve.