Anti-Racism at MGS: Our Journey So Far
Over the past few years, Museums Galleries Scotland has been working to become an actively anti-racist organisation and to support Scotland’s museum sector to take forward anti-racism in meaningful, practical ways. This update shares the progress we’ve made so far and highlight changes made across our organisation that reflect on how continuous learning and staff training are helping us build long term, sustainable change.
Our Anti-Racism Action Plan
In 2022, Museums Galleries Scotland made a public commitment to take anti-racist action in our work. Since then, we’ve been on a journey of learning, reflection, and action. Our new Anti-Racism Action Plan sets out four key outcome areas that guide our work:
- Organisational Leadership and Culture
- Capacity and Sustainability
- Sector-wide Influence and Legacy
- Evaluation, Accountability and Measurement.
We’ve implemented a practical approach using short, specified cycles of planning and action delivery with built-in review points. This means the plan is always evolving and responsive to the challenges and opportunities we encounter.
Our work sits within our broader commitment as a Delivering Change Museum Transformer to become an anti-oppression organisation that is shifting the power dynamic from ‘power over’ to ‘power with’. It’s about unlearning harmful ideas and working together to challenge these oppressive systems.
Progress We've Made
Since 2022, we’ve made tangible changes across our organisation and the way we work:
- Embedding anti-racism into processes: anti-racism is now a part of essential processes, such as procurement, performance development, recruitment, job descriptions, and objective setting.
- Building inclusive workplace culture: We’ve had several internal staff groups who have influenced our approach to anti-racism, including a new anti-oppression implementation working group who help embed this work in all areas of MGS.
- Aligning our work with anti-racism values: We’re ensuring anti-racism values are visible in our work both internally and externally.
- Supporting sector development: The recommendations from the Empire, Slavery, & Scotland’s Museums project have fed into our work. Notably through the Delivering Change programme, which is an anti-oppression programme which supports museums and galleries across Scotland to make changes to help all people to access culture.
- Opening conversations about challenging issues: We’ve opened up conversations with other organisations about anti-racism work and continue to seek collaborations with other organisations working in this area.
Building Knowledge Through Training
A crucial part of our journey has been investing in staff training and development. Since 2022, we’ve undertaken an extensive programme of learning opportunities to build our capacity as an anti-racist organisation.
We began with foundational training including Children’s Rights and Participation Training through Children in Scotland and a Human Rights Based Approach training with the Scottish Human Rights Commission. We’ve also taken less conventional training routes, such as the Decolonisation lecture series created and delivered by Professor Tommy J. Curry. Throughout 2024 and 2025, we’ve continued to expand our learning with voluntary anti-oppression discussion sessions, LGBTQIA+ training for all staff, and EDI training for our HR team covering LGBT, disability, race, and gender issues.
The cornerstone of our recent work was comprehensive anti-racism training for our staff and board members as part of the Delivering Change programme. This was followed by a dedicated Senior Management Team session in August 2025 where we worked with anti-racism training facilitators to develop our anti-racism action plan. We then held an all-staff day where everyone had the opportunity to help shape the plan.
We’ve been working to ensure that our anti-racism work is intersectional with other areas of oppression. Most recently, our Delivering Change team and Senior Management Team participated in Conflict Transformation training, and we’ve completed LGBT Youth Scotland’s online training module as part of our work towards Charter accreditation. Currently we have begun anti-ableism training from January 2026 and are running additional anti-racism training for new and future staff who weren’t able to participate in the 2025 programme.
What Comes Next
We’re continuing to push ourselves and the sector forward. We’re working to embed anti-racism into everything we do – from our funding programmes and accreditation processes, to our advice resources and partnership working. We recognise there is more work to do and are continuing to work on the goals and actions set out in our Anti-Racist Action Plan.
We’re committed to transparent communication about our progress, including publishing this update and future reflections on what we’re learning. We’ll be updating a series of case studies we created early on in our anti-racism journey. These stories looked at changes we were making to different areas of MGS, and we’ll be holding conversations with the authors about the impact these changes have had.
We know that becoming an anti-racist organisation is not a destination but an ongoing journey that requires critical reflection, sustained effort, and willingness to change. As we support Scotland’s museums and galleries sector, we’re committed to leading by example and holding ourselves accountable to the communities most impacted by racism.