“Life is messy, controversial, fluid, contentious - lots of things a museum has difficulty with.”

“We’ve got these buildings – physical and conceptual - designed around the spectatorship experience that goes back to the late 19th century, and we haven’t been able to shake it off. It’s so rigid. The genuine intention to be socially participatory is continually undermined. Museum professionals are entrapped with a way of working in which only certain channels of communication are allowed – but of course people use museums in their own social ways that is rarely acknowledged. We are still working inside the bubble of a fixed construct.”  

Alistair Hudson

The current growth model is based on building expansions, expensive exhibitions, growing collections and increased operating costs – coupled with the relentless imperative of visitor consumption in order to augment the earned revenues that are required to support the increased costs. This vicious cycle is unsustainable.

Public consultation is not about making improvements in a commodity model of consumer consultation as part of a market-survey of museum products and services.

Museum as marketplace

Myths About Race

Map charting the spread of elected xenophobic parties in Europe as of 2013. When viewed on a map, the growth of the far-right is striking. Green refers to countries were a xenophobic party is in government, while grey means none is in power. Copyright James Mayfield/GeoCurrents.

The environment…

“It’s not seen as controversial in the way that other political and social issues are. In most cases it doesn’t have to be a case of taking one side or another – it’s more about starting the discussion.”

Maurice Davies,

British Museums Association

“There are almost no organisations that go far enough in the face of the most catastrophic mass extinction in the earth’s history. Neutrality implies an absence of ethos and passion. I’d rather see museums act fully as guardians of commons, as models of stewardship of human and biological diversity. They need to be spaces to allow people to voice their feelings about the future. These feelings will intensify as conditions worsen.” 

Bridget McKenzie

Are Museums Racist? debate, Manchester Museum, 2007

“I’m not an academic, but sometimes my problem is with academia.... It’s like people who don’t talk about racism but the symptoms of racism.” [what we might term - the high concept of RACISM]. He continued, “Racism is about human beings - it’s not about analysing it in an exhibition. It’s the feelings we have inside, the hatred, the palpable feelings – that’s the racism I’m interested in.”

Zahid Hussain, Manchester Museum Community Advisory Panel

Manchester Museum

August 2007

“to move beyond the specifics of exhibition controversies and theoretical rhetoric to examine the relevance, plausibility and practical operation of a range of museums as civic centres and for the engagement of topics of contemporary relevance and importance.”

The project research asked…

• ‘Are museums information sources and safe places to explore these topics by presenting a range of viewpoints?’, or ‘Should museums take a more active role, as transformative spaces to challenge and change views?’

• ‘Should museums act as provocateurs and take a leading role as social and political activists to bring about change, and to assist in the resolution of issues on a personal or political level?’

• ‘ Alternatively, is the primary role of museums to offer non-challenging social experiences? And can museums be all of these things at once?’

• Other questions related to museums, social responsibilities and civic roles, as information sources including authority, expertise and censorship, the impact of controversies on institutional functioning, successful programming and funding arrangements.

‘are museums ready and willing to provide?’

“Whatever the recent successes of civil society organisations in helping to address [current] challenges, it seems that current responses are incommensurate with the scale of the problems we confront. It is increasingly evident that resistance to action on these challenges will only be overcome through engagement with the cultural values that underpin this resistance.”

T. Crompton

Common Cause: The Case for Working with our Cultural Values

2010

“The fundamental question is – what social institutions exist to address these challenges, recognizing the growing ineffectiveness of government bureaucracies and the wreckage of the corporate profit agenda? Even universities are becoming the handmaidens of corporatists, with science in the interests of consumerism driving many university research budgets. Museums, it is argued, are one of the few social institutions with vast potential for proactive and effective community engagement.”

Robert R. Janes, (2010) Museums in a Troubled World:

Renewal, Irrelevance or Collapse?

FIHRMFederation of Human Rights Museums

Fighting for equality: social change through human rights activism

museums “modelling inclusion” and dwelling “on the boundary between advocacy and scholarship.”

Katherine Ott, 2010

Empowerment-lite

“Whose cake is it anyway?”A collaborative investigation into engagement and participation in twelve museums and galleries in the UK

 

Dr. Bernadette Lynch

Available on the Paul Hamlyn Foundation website : phf.org.uk

Curious project in Glasgow aimed to create intercultural dialogue and ‘a legacy of increased understanding of each other, our city and our collections’.

Gained training in facilitation skills and trained volunteers

“Successful disagreement”

Facilitation

Facilitator in action, ‘The Thing is…” , UCL Museums

Skills to help participants share their diverse views …

“If we are unable or unprepared to have dialogue and risk conflict, what do we learn?...

Victoria Hollows,

GoMA, Glasgow

“We’re here to challenge, and I fear that others may not challenge us back. It’s not for you to just listen to us being angry and just listen. The point is the dialogue. The point is that we could be totally wrong. I don’t personally believe I’m wrong – but I am willing to listen to somebody who totally disagrees with me.”

“If we in museums don’t do it, who will?”

James Clifford, 2013

“Agitate, because we will need all your enthusiasm.Get organized, because we'll need all your strength.

Study, because we will need all your intelligence.”

Antonio Gramsci, ’The New Order’, 1919

by Nathan Coley at Tate Liverpool 2006

Mange tak!