Rachael Coghlan is the CEO of Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre. For nearly 20 years, Rachael Coghlan has worked in leadership positions in national cultural institutions in Australia’s museum sector, shaping the full continuum of visitor engagement from audience development, exhibitions and events, to digital and external communications. Rachael is passionate about how museums can continue to develop and was recently curator and executive producer for an experimental exhibition, Power of 1: Does your voice count? at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House. This project trialled new approaches to audience engagement, applying ideas and practice proposed by Nina Simon’s influential book The Participatory Museum (2010). The Power of 1 exhibition is now the subject of a research case study which examines whether the rhetoric of museum participation is meeting its aims. Interviews with visitors reveal perceptions of the participatory exhibition experience as well as reflections on the state of Australian democracy. This data is complemented by longitudinal visitor research, observations, and interviews with museum professionals. Rachael is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Museum and Heritage Studies at the Australian National University. Her research interests and methodology explore opportunities to democratise the museum experience using an interpretivist research lens which genuinely recognises the agency of the visitor.