Coghlan, Rachael2020-02-101352-7258http://hdl.handle.net/1885/201563Participation – where visitors are invited to leave a comment, co-create, or contribute to exhibitions – has been hailed as an opportunity to democratise the museum experience. New qualitative data from on-site and follow up interviews with museum visitors and practitioners at the experimental exhibition Power of 1 at the Museum of Australian Democracy has been used as a case study to determine if the rhetoric of the highly interactive, audience-centred approach of the participatory museum is meeting its aims. This paper argues that participation has the potential to democratise the museum experience for visitors, particularly when a more expansive definition is applied which acknowledges the benefits of participation beyond simply leaving a comment. Participation can provoke conversations and forge connections with real and imagined communities within the museum and beyond; however this potential is hampered by the often unacknowledged undemocratic practices within institutions by professionals who devalue visitor participation and power-sharing in order to uphold traditional museum practices.application/pdfen-AU© 2017 Rachael Coghlan. Published with licence by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group201710.1080/13527258.2017.13207722019-11-25