21 To reach out to local people is also the of the pandemic underlinedthe urgency of strategy of both the Institut du Monde listening rather than hearing,” suggests Arabe and the Louvre-Lens. “We Daniel Azzopardi. “We were certainly undertook a whole series of events in the hearing the public, but were we really local commercial centres because that was paying attention? Were we reflecting on all where people were out and about, as well as the diversity and feelings of the population across the whole region, using the ’Egypto- in our projects?” We mustalways keep bus’,”describes Marie Lavandier. This going back to the drawing board: meant a big investment in terms of the public participation is in a state of museum’s manpower: “To move from the continuous reinvention, with every classic system of dissemination to projects new generation of cultural officialdom, based on relational artworks requires a with every new institution or whole new way of working, especially in recreation of an old one, and with every terms of extensive coordination between new initiative. Why? Because each departments,” notes Fériel Bakouri. “It’s time, the same, unerring ambition is a learning curve. Once the teams areupand born or reborn —to forge that unique running, they love it. ” It’s a question of and precious encounter between arts creating an appetite for this way of and audiences. thinking at every level. The benefits of art often go a lot further than we expect, including the therapeutic benefits —the importance of this was reinforced by the COVID-19 health crisis. Bondil comments: “When I was director of the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, we began a scheme of ’museum medical prescriptions’, which consisted of doctors prescribing patients with a museum visit. This helped show that encountering artworks was good for your health, even healing.” Museums have set themselves a new mission: to rebuild connections and put human relations back at the heart of things. The lengthof the health crisis showed not only the advantages of the shift to digital but also its limitations, since it too has resulted in people who were excluded, and has failed to reach all ages and social groups. “The two years