A key area of activity of the National Institute for Museums is education. There are two aspects to this.
As education is one of the principal remits of museums, the Institute provides support in this area through the publication of relevant reports, handbooks and theoretical studies, among them the Report on the State of Museum Education in Poland, prepared by the Museum Educators Forum in 2011. The Institute also organises and co-organises training courses and conferences for the staff of museum education departments.
The second education-related aspect of the Institute’s activities is to help museum staff upgrade their professional qualifications. Support is offered not only through the publication of manuals and brochures on museum issues, but also through the creation of programmes and organisation of training courses for museum staff about all aspects of museum operations. The wide, and ever increasing, range of subjects covered includes a variety of topics which come under the general headings listed below:
• legal and organisational aspects of museum management,
• digitisation in museums,
• basic rules of organising museum exhibitions,
• basic rules of museum PR,
• education in museums
• collection management
• conservation
• problems associated with securing and protecting cultural heritage.
The Institute also works with academic and research institutions involved in the wide-ranging discipline of museum studies and its teaching.