Creative Space will draw together academics and museum and gallery professionals to ask questions about architecture, space, exhibitions, professional practice and visitor use. By drawing together exhibition designers, curators, museum managers, artists, architects and educators with academics from architecture, museum studies, art history and other museum-related disciplines, Creative Space aims to provide a forum for exploring gallery space as a creative medium, the development of creative professional practice and the production of effective gallery spaces. Proposals are welcomed and may include the following questions/themes:

How can we understand the inside spaces of museums and galleries?

What types of museum and gallery space are required at the beginning of the 21st century?

How can we describe or visualise creative, inclusive and effective gallery space?

What do we understand about the needs and experiences of a diverse audience and how can this knowledge and understanding be harnessed in the making of exhibitions?

How can museum and gallery professionals create spaces where physical, intellectual and cultural barriers can be overcome?

How do the histories, traditions and conventions surrounding areas of museum work such as design and exhibition planning, impact on the production of museum and gallery spaces?

What role does creativity have to play in the making of museum and gallery spaces? Please send proposals to Suzanne MacLeod, Department of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, 103 - 105 Princess Road East, Leicester, LE1 7LG. Deadline for proposals: 15th November 2002. Proposals to be of no more than 250 words and to include name of speaker(s).