La formación de los profesionales, clave para la evolución hacia un museo social y transformador

Can a museum aspire to be an accessible, inclusive, and relevant space for the communities of the society in which it is inserted if it does not train its staff in the necessary strategies to achieve it? Can it be social if it does not consider part of its workers as part of its staff? What steps can administrations, museums, and professionals take to build a social, participatory and transformative museum while caring for workers and users? In this article, we analyze the incoherence between the ideal of a museum as set out in the new ICOM definition and the problems that affect museum professionals in charge of achieving this goal. We reflect on the need for specialized, updated and regulated training for all museum professionals and on the problems affecting those who usually carry out the bulk of these tasks: the Education and Public Programs teams. Faced with the weaknesses and threats suffered by museum professionals, particularly outsourced personnel and heritage educators -widely reported in the publications of state assocations-, in this text we highlight the strengths and explore the opportunities that we envision to improve their situation.