Connecting Museums [1 ed.] 1138490024, 9781138490024

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Connecting Museums

Connecting Museums explores the boundaries of museums and how external relationships are affected by internal commitments, structures and traditions. Focussing on museums’ relationship with heath, inclusion, and community, the book provides a detailed assessment of the alliances between museums and other stakeholders in recent years. With contributions from practitioners and established and early-career academics, this volume explores the ideas and practices through which museums are seeking to move beyond what might be called one-off contributions to society, to reach places where the museum is dynamic and facilitates self-generation and renewal, where it can become not just a provider of a cultural service, but an active participant in the rehabilitation of social trust and democratic participation. The contributors to this volume provide conceptual critiques and clarification of a number of key ideas which form the basis of the ethics of museum legitimacy, as well as a number of reports from the front line about the experience of trying to renew museums as more valuable and more relevant institutions. Providing internal and external perspectives, Connecting Museums presents a mix of applied and theoretical understandings of the changing roles of museums today. As such, the book should be of interest to academics, researchers and students working in the broad fields of museum and heritage studies, material culture, and arts and museum management. Mark O’Neill is the former Head of Glasgow Museums. He is now an independent researcher and consultant, an Associate Professor, College of Arts, Glasgow University and Chair of the Jury of the European Museum of the Year Award. Glenn Hooper is a Researcher in Heritage and Tourism at Glasgow Caledonian University and Editor of Heritage and Tourism in Britain and Ireland (2016), and Heritage at the Interface (2018).

Routledge Research in Museum Studies

Titles include: Public Art and Museums in Cultural Districts J. Pedro Lorente An Ethnography of New Zealand’s National Museum Grappling with Biculturalism at Te Papa Tanja Schubert-McArthur Museums and Photography Displaying Death Elena Stylianou, Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert Museums and the Ancient Middle East Edited by Geoff Emberling and Lucas P. Petit Collecting Computer-based Technology Curational Expertise at the Smithsonian Museums Petrina Foti Museums as Cultures of Copies Edited by Brenna Brita Museums, Emotion, and Memory Culture The Politics of the Past in Turkey Gönül Bozoğlu Connecting Museums Edited by Mark O’Neill and Glenn Hooper https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Research-in-Museum-Studies/ book-series/RRIMS

Connecting Museums

Edited by Mark O’Neill and Glenn Hooper

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Mark O’Neill and Glenn Hooper; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Mark O’Neill and Glenn Hooper to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: O’Neill, Mark, 1956– editor. | Hooper, Glenn, 1963– editor. Title: Connecting museums / [edited by] Mark O’Neill and Glenn Hooper. Description: London ; New York, NY : Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, [2020] | Series: Routledge research in museum studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019029075 (print) | LCCN 2019029076 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138490024 (hardback) | ISBN 9781351036184 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Museums and community. | Museums—Social aspects. | Museums—Management. Classification: LCC AM7 .C597 2020 (print) | LCC AM7 (ebook) | DDC 069—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029075 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029076 ISBN: 978-1-138-49002-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-03618-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of contributors

vii

Introduction 1 M A R K O’N EILL

1 A social museum by design 17 M I K E B E N S O N A N D K AT H Y C R E M I N

2 Notes from the frontline: partnerships in museums 33 B E R N A D E T T E LY N C H

3 The social role of museums: from social inclusion to health and wellbeing 48 N UA L A M O R S E

4 Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales and the journey towards cultural democracy 66 JA N ICE LA N E A N D N I A W ILLI A MS

5 Breaking out of the museum core: conservation as participatory ontology and systemic action inquiry 80 HELEN GRAHAM

6 Thinking through health and museums in Glasgow 95 M A R K O’N EI LL , PET E SEA M A N A N D DU NCA N DOR NA N

7 Partnership for health: the role of cultural and natural assets in public health 112 H E L E N C H AT T E RJ E E

vi Contents 8 Transforming health, museums and the civic imagination 125 E S M E WA R D

9 ‘Who me?’: the individual experience in participative and collaborative projects 138 M I K E T O O BY

10 Coalville Heroes 152 G R A H A M B L AC K A N D S T UA RT WA R B U RT O N

11 On a hungry hill: museology and community on the Beara Peninsula 170 GLEN N HOOPER

12 ‘Only connect’: the heritage and emotional politics of show-casing the suffering migrant 186 C H R ISTOPH ER W H I T E H E A D A N D F R A NCE SCA L A NZ

13 The changing shape of museums in an increasingly digital world 203 O O N AG H M U R P H Y

14 Material presence and virtual representation: the place of the museum in a globalised world 216 PAT C O O K E

15 Curating democratic and civic engagement 233 A N WA R T L I L I

Selected Bibliography Index

251 267

Contributors

Mike Benson was a volunteer at Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum before being appointed Director of the Ryedale Folk Museum in November 2004. During his time at Ryedale the museum would be seen by peers as sector-leading in engagement, income, funding and volunteer support. Mike has completed a Clore Fellowship, was the first winner of the Ellie Maxwell bursary, advised on Arts Council national strategy written by Estelle Morris, and was a regular speaker at museum and heritage-­ related conferences. In 2012 he left to take up the position of Director at Bede’s World, where he would oversee three years of record visitors and investment. In 2013 Mike was part of an AHRC team looking at democratising decision-making in heritage. He was Director of The National Coal Mining Museum from 2015 to 2017, when he was appointed Director of the Scottish Crannog Centre. Graham Black is Professor of Museum Management and Interpretation at Nottingham Trent University. He describes himself as both an academic and a practitioner and believes this crossover enriches his work in both fields. He has worked in, and with, museums and heritage sites for over 30 years. In that time exhibitions on which he has acted as interpretation consultant have, between them, won every UK museum award, including the prestigious £100,000 Art Prize (on two occasions), as well as the Tourist Attractions of the Year Award. His debut book, The Engaging Museum (2005), is now in its 11th reprint in English. His follow-up, Transforming Museums in the Twenty-First Century (2012), is catching up fast. Helen Chatterjee is a Professor of Biology in UCL Biosciences and Head of Research and Teaching in UCL Culture. Her research interests include the value of cultural encounters in health and wellbeing, and the role of touch and object handling in health, wellbeing and education. Helen co-founded the National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing and has numerous collaborations with a range of museums, cultural, third sector, health and social care organisations. She has produced three books: Touch in Museums: Policy and Practice in Object

viii Contributors Handling (Berg, 2008), Museums, Health and Well-being (Routledge, 2013) and Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Learning in Higher Education (Routledge; 2015), and published over 40 articles. In 2015, Helen was awarded an MBE for services to Higher Education and Culture. Pat Cooke worked for Ireland’s state heritage service, the Office of Public Works, for over 20 years. In that role, he was director of Kilmainham Gaol, one of the country’s top heritage attractions, and the Pearse Museum. He was project manager for two major exhibitions on the history and literature of the Great Blasket Island (1994) and the history of Irish nationalism at Kilmainham Gaol (1996). He pioneered the engagement of artists and artistic productions (in the visual arts, opera and theatre) as integral to the interpretative strategy for Irish heritage sites. From 2002 to 2006 he was Chairman of the Irish Museums Association. In 2006 he moved to UCD to become Director of the MA in Cultural Policy and Arts Management. He has been a member on the boards of both the National Print Museum, Dublin and of the Hunt Museum, Limerick. Dr Kathy Cremin left her role as lecturer in cultural studies at York University in 2002. She then took up a position with Opera North and Bradford Libraries before moving in 2007 to the Museums Libraries and Archives. In 2011 Kathy began working alongside Mike Benson at Ryedale Folk Museum, leading on the Paul Hamlyn Our Museums program. Kathy left Ryedale in 2012, won a NESTA/CLORE research bursary on art and digital technology, was a lead coach for the Paul Hamlyn Our Museums program, and in 2012 became joint-Director at Bede’s World, leading on the community radio program. In 2015 Kathy left Bede’s World to lead the Berwickshire Association for Voluntary Services. Duncan Dornan  was appointed Head of Museums and Collections at Glasgow Life in 2013. After graduating from Edinburgh University, he worked in education for 16 years and was a Head of Department at Aberdeen College. He joined the National Museums of Scotland as Museum Manager, working on the delivery of the National Museum of Rural Life, a joint partnership between the National Museums and NTS, and moved to Glasgow Museums in early 2013 as Senior Manager (Public Programming and Customer Service). Glasgow Museums runs Glasgow Life’s nine civic museums, which welcomed nearly 4,000,000 visits in 2016–7, making it the biggest museum service outside London. Current major projects include the £65 million refurbishment of the Burrell Collection. Helen Graham teaches museum and heritage studies at the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, and at the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage, University of Leeds. Before joining the University of Leeds Helen worked at the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, Newcastle University on ‘Art on Tyneside’, an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded research

Contributors  ix project which worked with people from across the North East to develop media exploring place, art and identity for a new permanent display, ‘Northern Spirit: 300 Years of Art at the North East’ (Laing Art Gallery 2010-ongoing). Helen recently held a Museum Practice Fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution (2010–201), where she used participatory research methods to explore intellectual access to museums, and she continues to use action and participatory research methods to explore questions at the intersections of heritage and democracy. Glenn Hooper is a Researcher in Tourism and Heritage at Glasgow Caledonian University. Editor of Heritage and Tourism in Britain and Ireland, he has published in a variety of journals, including West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture, the Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, the Journal of Design History, Literature & History and others. Current interests include rural regeneration, cultural heritage in Ireland and dark tourism. Previous posts include Research Fellow at the Institute for Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen, and Lecturer in English at St. Mary’s University College Belfast. Janice Lane  joined Amgueddfa Cymru in 2012 as Director of Learning, Exhibitions and Digital Media. She took on her current role as Director of Gallery Development and Visitor Experience in 2016. Her responsibilities include exhibitions and programming, gallery development and master-planning, digital media, visitor research and visitor experience across Amgueddfa Cymru’s seven museums, and for major projects, such as the £25 million redevelopment of St Fagans National Museum of History. She works strategically with national bodies, including the Welsh Government and major funders. Janice is a member of a European expert panel for audience development established by NEMO (Network of European Museum Organisations), and a member of the ICOM UK committee. Prior to this she was Senior Museums Manager at Glasgow Museums/Glasgow Life with a portfolio incorporating learning, social inclusion, access, public programming, digital media, interpretation, outreach and volunteer development. Francesca Lanz is Lecturer in Interior Architecture and Exhibition Design at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of Politecnico di Milano. Since 2006 she has been teaming up with different POLIMI departments, collaborating with several national and international research projects, and investigating the role and evolution of interior ­architecture in the context of current socio-cultural trends and evolving behaviours. Most recently, her research activities have focussed on museum and heritage studies, with a focus on museography and exhibition design theory, criticism and practice. In particular, she has contributed to the EU funded research projects MeLa - European Museums in an age of migrations (2011–2015) and TRACES – Transmitting contentious cultural heritages with the arts (2016–2019).

x Contributors Bernadette Lynch is currently an Honorary Research Associate at University College London. Her lecturing and research relates to power, democracy, dialogue, debate, engaging with conflict, contested collections and organisational change in the museum. Her advisory/consultancy work is international in focus, and she specialises in public engagement and participation with diverse communities, and in leading museum transformation and change, publishing widely on all aspects of participatory democracy in museums. Her recent work has been very influential in raising debate on the impact of public engagement in museums. She has worked as Head of Education and Interpretation at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, and been Head of Public Programmes and Academic Development at the Manchester Museum, University of Manchester. She has contributed to several edited volumes, and her work has also appeared in THEMA, Museum Management and Curatorship, among others. Nuala Morse is a social geographer working across the fields of heritage and museum studies, with interests in community engagement, participation and care. Nuala’s broad research interest lies in the distinctive nature of the ‘social work’ of creative and culture professionals, which has been explored through research projects in UK and Australian museums, and in the field of Outdoor Arts. A more recent focus is on how the social role of museums is currently being mobilised in response to the healthcare agenda; the health and wellbeing impact of taking part in museum-based activities; and museum professionals’ practices of care. Nuala was the Research Associate based at The Whitworth, University of Manchester and University College London, for Not So Grim Up North, an Arts Council funded research project (2015–2018) investigating the health and wellbeing impacts of museum activities for a range of audiences, including mental health service users; people in addiction recovery; older adults living with dementia; and stroke rehabilitation patients. Oonagh Murphy is a Lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of ­London, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Alongside writing for The Guardian, Arts Professional and Culture Sync she has presented at key international conferences, including Museums and The Web (Portland, OR), and Museum Next (Amsterdam), and is a Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellow. In 2014 she was awarded a PhD from the ­University of Ulster for her research on the impact of digital technologies on the cultural sector; since completion of her doctoral work she has worked in both academia and industry, serving as Associate Professor of Visual Arts Management and Curating at Richmond, the American International University, from 2015–2017, alongside developing an international consultancy portfolio with clients including The Frieze Art Fair, Blick studios, British Council, University of Ulster, Queen’s University,

Contributors  xi Museums Computer Group, Culture Night, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Audiences NI, Irish Museums Association, CultureTech, Arts & Business NI and Young at Art. Mark O’Neill is former Head of Glasgow Museums, now an independent researcher and consultant, Associate Professor, College of Arts, Glasgow University; Research Fellow, Museums Studies, Leicester University; Adviser, Event Communication, London. Mark was Director of Policy & Research for Glasgow Life, the charity which delivers arts, museums, libraries and sports services for the City of Glasgow from 2009–2016. As Head of Glasgow Museums from 1998–2009 he led the teams which established the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, refurbished Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, and created the Riverside Museum. He is interested in the social purposes of museums and in the health benefits of cultural participation. Pete Seaman is the current Acting Associate Director at the Centre, fulfilling a range of corporate duties across the Glasgow Centre for Population Health, and also contributing to the Centre’s Assets and Resilience theme. Current and previous research interests include: understanding processes that promote individual and collective resilience, the role of alcohol across the life-course, the cultural dimensions of Glasgow’s excess mortality, and the use and access to greenspace. Current work includes supporting Glasgow City Council in the development and delivery of the City Resilience Strategy, and the role of Co-Investigator on the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded ‘Representing Communities’ project. The Representing Communities project explores the use of arts-based methods in understanding the relationships between community narratives and health. Anwar Tlili  is a Senior Lecturer in Cultural Sociology in the School of Communication, Education and Society at King’s College London. After completing his PhD in Cultural Studies and Sociology at the University of Birmingham, he developed research interests in the areas of sociology of education and culture, focussing specifically on informal education, public engagement and equality/diversity through museums, and how the nature of museums as workplaces and organisations mediate their work. He has carried out research and written on the themes of social justice in/through museums and formal and informal education; professionalism and professional knowledge in museum work; cultural policies and cultural organisations; science in society; and science and democracy. He also has a broad interest in social and cultural theory. Mike Tooby is an independent curator and writer based in Cardiff, and a Professor at Bath School of Art and Design, Bath Spa University. Mike studied in Cambridge (1975–8), been a curator at Kettle’s Yard (–1980), Third Eye Centre Glasgow (1980–4), Mappin Art Gallery Sheffield (1984–92), and was founding curator of Tate St Ives (1992–9). He was

xii Contributors a Director of Amgueddfa Cymru: National Museums Wales ­(2000–11), with responsibility for Learning, Programs and Development. He is a past chair of Engage (1999–2004) and continues to work with Engage. He led a participative curating project Journeys with ‘The Waste Land’ for Turner Contemporary, Margate in 2018. Mike was Senior Research Fellow at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds from 2014 to 2015. He is external advisor to Warwick University’s collection of art and public art, and to the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. Mike is a Trustee of the Artes Mundi International Art Prize. Stuart Warburton is a retired Museum Curator. Since qualifying in M ­ useum Studies at University of Leicester in 1982 he has worked in a variety of industrial museums. In 1987 he was the first curator at Snibston Discovery Park, where he was responsible for the curatorial and interpretational development of the new museum building and historic colliery site. After the reorganisation of Leicestershire Museums in 1997 he left Snibston to take up the post of Managing Curator at Riverside Museums with Leicester City Council, which included developing the Abbey Pumping Station (Leicester Museum of Technology) in tandem with the adjacent National Space Centre. After retiring as head of Heritage Development at Essex County Council he returned to Coalville in Leicestershire where he become involved with the campaign to save Snibston Discovery Museum, working as a committee member with various local heritage organisations and trusts, and promoting the heritage to a wider community. Esme Ward is Head of Learning and Engagement at Manchester Museum and the Whitworth, and also the Strategic Lead for Culture for Greater Manchester Ageing Hub, working across regional cultural organisations and public health to develop work by, with and for older people. She undertook a 6-month secondment as part of public service reform, to embed arts and culture within priorities and plans, and create the conditions for collaboration and distributed leadership. She leads arts and health work across Greater Manchester, including Arts and Health as a Social Movement and she is co-director of the Arts and Health Programme at the forthcoming World Health Congress Europe, in Manchester 2019–20. She was one of the expert authors on the Prime Minister’s Champion Group on the Arts Guide to Dementia Friendly Culture, advises internationally on age-friendly culture, and sits on several national and regional social care, health and culture boards, and networks. She has taught widely, is a Fellow of the RSA, and in 2016–7 was awarded a Clore Cultural Leadership Fellowship. Christopher Whitehead is Professor of Museology at Newcastle University and Professor II at the University of Oslo. He trained and worked as an art historian and art curator, but his research activities today are

Contributors  xiii much broader. They encompass museums of different types (especially history museums) and heritage, with particular emphases on the cultural politics of memory, display, knowledge construction and interpretation. His books include The National Art Museum in 19th-Century Britain (2005), Museums and the Construction of Disciplines (2009), Interpreting Art in Museums and Galleries (2011), Placing Migration in European Museums (2012) and Museums, Migration and Identity in Europe (2015). He was an investigator on the European Commission-funded MeLa project (European Museums in and Age of Migrations) and the co-ordinator of CoHERE: Critical Heritages, Performing and Representing Identities in Europe (also funded by the EC). Nia Williams  is Director of Learning and Engagement at Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales. She is responsible for leading the following areas of work: public programs to support education, skills and wellbeing; the Fusion program; events; translation and the Welsh language; interpretation and publications. She is also responsible for Amgueddfa Cymru’s compliance with the Welsh Language Standards and the Wellbeing and Future Generations Act. She has recently been responsible for developing three new strategies for Amgueddfa Cymru: the Learning and Participation Strategy (2015); the Community Engagement Strategy (2015); and the Interpretation Strategy (2016). In addition, Nia has, over the past five years, worked on developing a new strategic vision for St Fagans National History Museum. She sits on a number of Welsh Government committees, and was a member of the Government’s advisory group, which contributed to the wider review of the National Curriculum in Wales.

Introduction Mark O’Neill

Making progress Despite being used as a media cliché to represent the dull and the defunct, museums are amongst the most dynamic and resilient institutions in ­society. Thus a ‘special report’ in The Economist in 2013 began: ‘Museums used to stand for something old, dusty, boring and barely relevant to real life. Those kinds of places still exist, but there are far fewer of them, and the more successful ones have changed out of all recognition’. Not only have museums changed, but their range has also broadened and now goes considerably beyond traditional subjects, such as art and artefacts, science and history. Even if not every director or curator is enamoured of such changes, the revitalisation of the industry continues: ‘the statistics suggest that these new-look museums are doing something right. Globally, numbers have burgeoned from around 23,000 two decades ago to at least 55,000 now’. The Economist’s reporter explains the ‘surprising’ success of museums in terms of the multiple purposes which they now serve, particularly in ‘developed countries’ where they are being championed by a wide variety of interest groups: city fathers who see iconic buildings and great collections as a tourist draw; urban planners who regard museums as a magic wand to bring blighted city areas back to life; media that like to hype blockbuster exhibitions; and rich people who want to put their wealth to work in the service of philanthropy (‘a way for the rich to launder their souls’, as one director put it). But it is not just in the rich world where this flourishing is taking place, but also in ‘the more affluent parts of the developing world’. Here it is being driven ‘mainly by governments that want their countries to be regarded as culturally sophisticated (though wealthy private individuals are also playing a part)’. They see museums as symbols of confidence, sources of public education and places in which a young country can present a national narrative.1 As might be expected from institutions which have become ubiquitous and have such multifarious purposes, museums are also sites where some of the key social, political and ethical issues of our time play out. Of the more tangible we might point to the nature and importance of community at a

2  Mark O’Neill time of unprecedented mobility, the transformations wrought by technological innovation (what Appadurai has called ‘mediascapes’)2 and the new wave of global health issues which relate less to infectious diseases (which have become more controlled) than to those that reflect social meaning in a market society: depression, anxiety, substance abuse, obesity, self-harm and suicide.3 When 30 years ago Peter Vergo suggested that ‘the more recent sense of an obligation that museums should not merely display their treasures to the curious and make their collections accessible to those desirous of knowledge, but also actively engage in education’, he could hardly have guessed at the demands and upgrades yet to come. But the authors of The New Museology knew that change was not only imminent but necessary, a change which Vergo summarised as a shift from a focus on methods to a greater consideration of the purposes of museums.4 This book is about those purposes. At a time when political and ideological debates about the character of human nature have raged, when the dynamics of individualism as well as the nature and efficacy of democracy have been questioned, perhaps change was inevitable – and inevitably contested. The spread of neoliberal ideas since the 1980s had led to the end of the Keynesian consensus not only in relation to the management of the economy, but about the value of ­publicly-funded culture, which Keynes had himself epitomised as first chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain.5 No longer guaranteed a safe and hospitable haven, museums have had to demonstrate their value, and been subject, like all government institutions, to the ‘tyranny of metrics’.6 Increasingly open to the pressures of commercialism, expected to attract ever higher visitor numbers and be less dependent upon state investment, museums have had to justify their existence and relevance to contemporary society. These issues play out in a context where the narrative of the neoliberal version of capitalism and government austerity in responses to the global financial crisis of 2008 remain dominant, but are being questioned, and not only by those who believe that there are alternatives, but by many mainstream economists.7 The debates within museums and museology about the purposes of museums have focussed on this question of value – what kind of value, and value to whom – and have often been framed in terms of dichotomies – intrinsic versus instrumental value, traditional versus progressive, neutral versus activist,8 entertainment versus education and so on.9 However, these debates were often a proxy for a struggle between elite and democratic access, and reflected the ideological and political conflicts of the culture wars of the late 1980s and 1990s. A key strategy for those defending a traditional/elitist/excellence model was to argue that their position was apolitical and neutral, while at the same time representing Western values of rationality, truth and beauty.10 Meanwhile the competing discourse emphasised human outcomes, such as personal development, social cohesion and community empowerment. Within museums this drew on the

Introduction  3 perspectives of social history, or ‘history from below’ (see Hooper in this volume) and anthropology, the approaches of community arts, educational psychology and community development, as well as on wider commitments to the democratisation of culture.11

All change The Economist statement that the majority of museums have ‘changed beyond recognition’, sheds an interesting light on decades of dichotomous debate. While there are occasional laments amongst the most prestigious museums about commercialisation and the vulgarity of the blockbuster,12 few decry the increased attendance numbers, the great improvements in visitor amenities (cafes, shops and improved access), the provision of educational activities and events for both children and adults, enhanced communication through exhibitions, reinterpreted long-term displays, websites, public relations and marketing. This book focuses on changes which have been less easily absorbed – those which seek to democratise museums and connect them more deeply with the society in which they are embedded, which provides their funding, and which validates their authority. Whether change in museums in this direction is driven by internal leaders, or by external requirements in the form of policy, it invariably involves a complex internal process of negotiation, and often falters in the face of powerful institutional traditions.13 Indeed, discussions of change in museums often treats them as a special case, although recent research viewing them as bureaucracies suggests that they share many characteristics of such organisations. Based on ‘legal rational’ rather than traditional or charismatic forms of authority, museums are staffed by specialists, operating in a system based on instrumentally-­ rational formal rules that are managed through hierarchical patterns of control; there are formal records kept of operational rules and decisions; there is also a formal career structure in place based on competence and/or seniority; staff members do not control resources or the job as personal possessions; the job is their sole or major occupation, and they are free to leave it at any time.14 While in theory such organisations can be changed through the ‘legal rational’ instruments of government policy, they develop strong internal dynamics along with institutional and professional group cultures15 with conflicting views about change,16 and thus translate, modify or reject changes – from whatever source, including those arising from staff within the organisation.17 Moreover, museums have been subject to society-wide processes to address the perceived issues with bureaucracies – provider capture, lack of accountability – through what has been called the New Public Management, which has a strong focus on metrics of performance.

4  Mark O’Neill Early attempts to provide a rationale and evidence base for these democratising approaches include those espoused by Comedia, an organisation pioneering social value research in the mid-1990s and the early years of the New Labour government and which favoured participatory and joint-­ evaluation models.18 Comedia’s approach was criticised for a lack of rigour19 and under pressure from government targets and centralised data management systems, the focus moved to a search for standard measures of social impacts. Despite a vast effort, argues Belfiore, museums have failed to come up with meaningful metrics. 20 Perhaps one lesson from The Economist report which, surprisingly for a market-oriented newspaper shows no interest in such metrics, is that if the overall narrative is convincing, these are not relevant. For The Economist, modernised museums are a sign of economic growth and increased education; in a word, of progress. The museum case studies in this book explore attempts to bring deep change to these bureaucracies, with their hierarchical culture, expert status and rational procedures. One feature of a bureaucracy is its clear boundaries, set by the rules and hierarchies inherent in its structure. Even when people working within these boundaries wish to change, the inertia of the system is considerable. Changes which are compatible with the core values of the bureaucratic tradition are more easily absorbed than those which imply modifications of the structure. Thus, many of the shifts implied by The Economist’s ‘transformed beyond recognition’ analysis leave deep internal hierarchies unchanged. Indeed, the promotional and visitor amenities, and the increased visitor numbers, can convey an aura of success and enhance prestige by adding functions to the ‘core’ without any fundamental change whatsoever. The year before The Economist article, the AHRC funded Geoffrey Crossick and Patrycja Kaszynska to create a framework for cultural value which would try to draw together and move beyond two decades of studies, much of it driven by the demands for justification and the requirements of advocacy, of the role of culture in society. Their conclusion was that the arts and culture have the ability to ‘help shape reflective individuals [original emphasis], facilitating greater understanding of themselves and their lives, increasing empathy with respect to others, and an appreciation of the diversity of human experience and cultures’ and to ‘produce engaged citizens, [original emphasis] promoting not only civic behaviours such as voting and volunteering, but also helping articulate alternatives to current assumptions and fuel a broader political imagination’. 21 They argued strongly for a mixed methods approach in which qualitative research, centred on the individual experience of cultural engagement, was valued. However, basic metrics of engagement reveal deep and persistent inequalities in participation in publicly funded cultural experiences. For example, the 2015 Warwick Commission found that those who were most likely to avail themselves of these experiences were the better off and most educated 8% of the population. In terms of museums it reported that ‘analysis of annual performance indicators of DCMS-funded museums reveals that visits  by

Introduction  5 UK residents fell by 3% over the period 2008/09–2011/12’ while visits from UK residents from lower social groups fell even more, by 12%. The higher social groups accounted for 87% of all museums visits, the lower social groups for only 13%. 22 It would seem that, rather than functioning as institutions of mass public education, fostering individual growth and active citizenship, most museums serve those who are already educated. The authors in this book explore the issues, tensions and contradictions faced by those museums which seek to address this reality.

Health and communities One change not registered by The Economist was the emergence of health and wellbeing as a prominent feature of museum debates and practice. This is a very recent development, and, within the traditional dichotomies, is another fashionable instrumentalisation of museums. The change in part represents a shift in public health and primary health care. The chapters by Chatterjee and by O’Neill, Seaman and Dornan summarise, from different perspectives, the changes in Public Health thinking and the growing understanding that prevention and treatment of many illnesses can only be achieved by enriching people’s lives, through social activities, including cultural participation. After decades of the search for evidence of museum impacts, it is perhaps ironic that, just at a time when museum funding in the UK is under unprecedented threat, robust evidence for the contribution of museums to wellbeing is reaching a critical mass. O’Neill, Seaman and Dornan explore how Glasgow’s civic museum service has responded to this evidence and a growing understanding of the serious health problems facing the city. Working with a public health partner, Glasgow Museums are working through how to deploy their resources as strategically and effectively as possible to benefit those people whose health is at risk. Esme Ward’s chapter describes Manchester’s ambitious citywide program which aims to enhance the contribution its museum and heritage sectors also make to public health. This is part of a wider strategy to empower citizens, forge collaborations between public and private spheres, and focus on a person and community-centred approach to wellbeing. From the very outset such initiatives have placed arts and culture at the forefront, with museums given a particular role in galvanising local and community interest. Similarly, Helen Chatterjee focusses on a research project in London on the impact of social prescribing (a term used to describe the process whereby healthcare professionals refer patients to non-clinical forms of support, including green gyms, time banks and museums). With the research providing a strong evidence base for their efficacy, Chatterjee argues that, as core civic assets, museums are particularly well-placed to contribute to public health initiatives that are community-led and person-centred. More widely, the emergence of museums as sites of health improvement can be seen as part of a wider attempt to redefine progress. While the neoliberal

6  Mark O’Neill economic narrative has been globally dominant since the late 1980s, proposing the market as the key driver of progress, along with a scaled down state, privatisation and deregulation, there has been some questioning of its argument that ‘there is no alternative’. Part of the neoliberal position was to define freedom in terms of the economic freedom of the individual, and progress in terms of economic growth.23 Moves to counter this approach began with the creation of the Human Development Index in 1990, which sought to add people-centred policies, such as education, to the metrics. In the domain of human rights, the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum shifted the focus from legalities to the actual capacity of people to exercise their rights based on their human characteristics.24 The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – an intergovernmental economic think tank with 36 member states – has made a similar shift from the purely economic to a more holistic concept of progress. In 2018, it published Beyond GDP: Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Performance,25 and Culture and Local Development: Maximising the Impact, A Guide for Local Governments, Communities and Museums.26 It recognised the potential of museums to contribute not only to urban regeneration, economic development and innovation, but also to community and cultural development, education and creativity, to inclusion, health and wellbeing. A pervasive issue in our time is how societies based on liberal principles of the free individual can nonetheless form bonds which are essential for the health of those individuals – and their societies. Stark neoliberal statements like Margaret Thatcher’s that ‘there is no such thing as society’ are now rarely explicitly supported. 27 Indeed David Cameron’s short-lived ‘Big Society’ initiative seemed to be a reversal of her view, though its implication was that it was big government which was eroding social bonds by creating cultures of dependency. Nonetheless, social bonds continue to be eroded by the requirements of the economy, notably geographical mobility, the gentrification of places which were formerly the location of long-standing communities, or the dereliction of such communities by business closures and redundancies, the reduction in social organisations and – a phenomenon unique in human history – the high and increasing percentage of people living alone. The importance of social bonds is now recognised across many disciplines: in urban planning ‘place making’ has become shorthand for an urbanism which links residents (whatever their origins) with where they live and work. 28 Philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, who has revised Aristotle’s definition of humans from ‘rational animal’ to ‘dependent rational animal’, 29 recognise that individualism always takes place in a context of social bonds. Despite the dominance of the neoliberal belief that markets provide the best solution to all problems, global economic institutions like the World Bank recognise that capitalism depends for its functioning on many non-market values. This is why it has taken a lead in developing the concept of Social Capital, based on

Introduction  7 the understanding that the functioning of all aspects of society, including local communities, governments and markets, is dependent on the level of trust, shared attitudes and social networks, between individuals and groups. 30 Many of this book’s authors try to clarify complex and loaded terms which pervade the museum literature (both professional and academic). Raymond Williams, who is quoted by Lane and Williams, famously wrote that ‘culture’ was one of the two or three most complex words in E ­ nglish – his Key Words also includes entries on ‘democracy’ and ‘community’, which are perhaps no less complex and contested.31 And in Black and Warburton’s chapter we find that the term ‘community’ is employed more than 30 times, leaving the definition to emerge from the text. Clearly place-based, it refers mainly to people whose antecedents have lived in the same area for generations, but it is not exclusivist or fixed, but rather a form of heritage which can be a resource for building a future. In Hooper’s chapter community is also an important part of his discussion of the role of the Copper Mining Museum in the small West Cork village of Allihies. Initially fearful that their history of mining would be lost to future generations, the local parish community secured the support, then the funding, to convert a small Methodist chapel into a museum which today functions as much like a community centre and cultural hub as it does a museum or heritage centre. Community engagement is now widely accepted as an essential feature of museum practice, a way of realising some of the unfulfilled potential of museums.32 Black and Warburton provide testimony of how one geographical community attempted to recover their heritage in the face of the closure of their historic industries – and local museum – due to globalisation and government austerity budgets. Other authors argue for moving beyond a didactic or service approach to the ‘hard to reach’ to, in the words of Tooby, a place where ‘the curator’s task becomes how to be an active part of a community’. Such sharing of curatorial authority has been addressed by Golding and Modest, who argue that such departures must involve ‘radical turns’, something more than ‘mere consultation and inclusion of diverse perspectives’. There should be genuine collaboration, in other words, rather than tokenistic gestures, and an honest re-appreciation of curatorial authority.33 For Benson and Cremin, this is centrally an issue of accountability, and they argue that ‘when it comes to museum claims for making a difference in people’s lives and the transformative role of museums’ such institutions need to be social spaces, ‘sites of a stronger and more collective intelligence’. They advocate collections that demonstrably connect with heritage: A museum that is part of heritage ecology can sustain the places and spaces through which its work flows, and its work at every level is shaped by that ecosystem of horizontal, vertical and diagonal relationships that exist between individuals, organisations and place.

8  Mark O’Neill Of course, such a connection requires different institutional structures and alternative processes of organisational development, which may be why many staff from large and prestigious museums, despite being drawn to Benson’s and Cremin’s model, find it impossible to accommodate. It may also be why the authors find themselves placed under ‘a burden of proof and scrutiny’ from peers that other museums would not experience – the demand for evidence providing an alibi for those wishing to change but lacking the will or the courage.

Tradition and modernity Many of the chapters in this collection refer to the history of museums, and several contributors, including Ward, Murphy, O’Neill, Seaman and Dornan, refer explicitly to historical examples as precedents for contemporary progressive reform. Despite the fact that the philanthropic and municipal traditions they draw on were paternalistic in their aims of ‘civilising’ the masses and the ‘reform of manners’, museums were part of a wide agenda of reform which included sanitation, free state-funded education, as well as public amenities such as parks and libraries, all of which provided a range of social benefits: In the latter half of the nineteenth century, as industrialization progressed, populations moved to the cities, and science and industry reshaped life, governments also increasingly took responsibility for social services and education. Museums were viewed as one type of institution among several that could provide education for the masses […] Museums were included among the agencies available to help people better themselves and to appreciate the value of modern life.34 The British tradition of reform has rarely been revolutionary, and demands for the right to participate in society, whether through education or voting, have been managed by a mixture of resistance, coercion and concession, co-opting the newly enfranchised into the task of preserving the ‘reformed’ society. While modern progressive museum practice would reject the paternalism of this tradition, it would also be fully aware of the inherent tensions of inclusion/co-option. The Victorian idea that museums were at the forefront of reform, and could be radically inclusive institutions where women, men and children of all classes had a right to attend, long before state-funded universal primary education was implemented, remains an inspiration. Such evidence as exists (mostly in the form of complaints from staff about the behaviour of working-class visitors), suggests that there was significant interest in museum visiting across all social classes, including the ‘lower orders’. In many museums, even where the ideal of creating a single community of visitors was part of its founding ideal, staff edited out those whom they deemed unsuitable

Introduction  9 by making it clear that they were not welcome through a whole range of implicit messages, from the way they were treated by staff, to the architecture and the displays. 35 Despite such limitations, the reformist tradition is a nevertheless important one for many museum staff, as it represents an alternative to those who resist reform in the present, clinging to the ‘traditional’, ‘platonic’ ideal of the museum.36 The late Giles Waterfield’s masterly study of The People’s Galleries: Art Museums and Exhibitions in Britain, 1800–191437 provides a wide-ranging and detailed history of this lineage, revealing that the idea of the ‘traditional’ museum is largely ahistorical, being based on a later period when museums settled into the introverted state which gave rise to the dusty stereotype used by The Economist. However, for reformers there still remains an ethical dilemma. What kind of reformist museum practice is required so that the changes being implemented make a real difference and are not being used to provide cover for institutional preservation? Tooby’s chapter is an auto-ethnographic record of how his personal and professional identity as a curator changes as he explores the boundaries of the museum as it seeks to connect with a range of communities – and how he strives to avoid co-option and collusion. The online world enables ‘imagined communities’38 to be constructed across the world – what Appadurai has called ‘ethnoscapes’ – that cut across borders and enable diasporic communities to sustain their links, 39 as well as communities of interest. In their discussion of empathy Whitehead and Lanz explore digital utopianism, in the form of the belief that immersive experiences which put visitors in the place of others are a solution both to display and social problems. Cooke takes a similarly critical view of digital developments which seem to usurp the realities of place and collections and, sometimes, even of local people as interpreters of their own heritage. He argues, contrary to Walter Benjamin, that the aura of the original object is enhanced rather than diminished by ‘mechanical reproduction’, and collections remain central to museums’ identity and ethical purpose. Museums, in Cooke’s view, can quite simply enable people to connect to real things in actual places. For Oona Murphy the many changes driven by technological development may seem ‘rapid and revolutionary’, but she argues that this is only a problem if one adheres to the myth of the unchanging, platonic ideal of the museum.40 Drawing on John Cotton Dana, the inspirational director of the Brooklyn Museum, Murphy sees the museum as a ‘robust, reflective, adaptive and ever-changing institution that evolves in parallel to the society in which it stands’. However, making these changes successfully is not a technical (or in Morse’s terms ‘contingent’) issue, but one of values. They require ‘a confident institution, comfortable with its values, and secure in itself’ to connect with ‘communities that no longer exist in a finite program or workshop, but instead through digital culture are becoming active communities of creators, co-creators and cultural advocates’.

10  Mark O’Neill

Visitors and citizens Whitehead and Lanz question the value of visitors’ emotional responses to exhibitions which explicitly set out to evoke empathy to humanise the stereotyped other – a key factor according to Crossick and Kaszynska in shaping reflective individuals, and long recognised in the Western humanist tradition, from Aristotle’s theory of tragedy to Adam Smith’s famous opening sentence in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.41 The utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer, in his book on the implications of socio-biology for, and the place of reason in, ethics, takes its epigraph from the Victorian W.E. H Lecky: The more unity to be expected in different ages is not a unity of standard or of acts, but a unity of tendency […] At one time the benevolent affections embrace merely the family, soon the circle expanding includes first a class, then a nation, then a coalition of nations, then all humanity, and finally, its influence is felt in the dealings of man with the animal world.42 Two world wars led to a faltering of the belief in progress and in the steady expansion of ‘benevolent affections’, so that what Gustave Gilbert had learned in his role as a psychologist assessing the defendants during the Nuremberg trials’, had been summarised as ‘evil is the absence of empathy’.43 Interestingly, in the past few decades empathy has been the subject of renewed interest, in part because it has been scientifically proven to exist44 and can therefore be accommodated within the view of humans as rational animals, though recent psychological research has also demonstrated that without functioning emotions, people can’t make rational decisions, to the extent that doctors are now being trained in empathy, because without it they are unable to glean the information they need for diagnosis.45 Such a renewed interest is also due to the fact that we live in a global society where mass migrations and saturation from digital media mean that encounters with people perceived as ‘other’ are more pervasive than ever before in human history. Within museums, there are now explicit intentions to engage museum visitors’ ‘benevolent affections’. The intellectual rationale for these intentions is derived from social history, with its focus on the lives of ordinary people,46 constructivist educational theory,47 and the pervasive belief that storytelling is a key feature of human nature and therefore critical for communication in all domains, from therapy to politics.48 All of these have resulted in a shift in museums from ‘knowledge to narrative’,49 and attempts to inspire engagement and empathy with the stories of individuals.50 The critical literature on museums has chiefly focussed on the narrative meanings of the institution, largely unconscious, implicit and related to power structures.51 These relate to the work of philosophers like Mary Midgely, in her Myths We Live By, and George Lakoff’s Metaphors We Live By. ­Museums

Introduction  11 have become much better at the first type of story, that of individuals and groups, but find revealing the narratives of power more difficult. Given this limitation, Whitehead and Lanz question whether empathy is enough, unless it is linked to understanding the underlying inequalities that create injustice and drive the processes of othering. Part of the difficulty is technical, in telling stories which can be abstract, while another is the willingness of museum staff to engage in self-reflection and cognitive analysis of the myths built into museums’ institutional cultures. Without these processes, however, Whitehead and Lanz argue that empathy can become a form of collusion with the very causes which generate inequalities in the first place. One of the ways of characterising many of the changes in museums – whether driven by pressures to be more responsive to people as consumers or as citizens – is as a process of democratisation, a process which, according to Sandahl, is a concept of hope, of aspiration, of striving, which ‘is always to be seen as a work in progress’.52 In Anwar Tlilli’s chapter he takes a sceptical look at some of the shibboleths of museum access and participation, as well as the easy accusations of elitism and didacticism. He argues that the renegotiation of the barriers to access by socially responsive museums is admirable, but hardly a contribution to the development of a more democratic society. While recognising that museums also need to be pragmatic and function in ‘the real world of instrumentalism and cultural economics’, access initiatives can be tokenistic or driven by a didacticism that works against ‘the critical intent to redistribute the power balance between the museum and its participants’. Quoting the Chomskyian analysis of the Cultural Policy Collective to the effect that ‘social inclusion’s efforts to manufacture a false consensus can only bolster the strength of anti-­democratic forces’, Tlilli argues for a conception of culture that is not reified, and a form of democratisation that involves ‘an affirmative and creative form of politics that has nothing to do with the expression of preformed aggregate and established identities’. He believes that museums can serve as a ‘unique public space that confronts and facilitates an encounter with complex issues, hardened dogmas (of right and left), probe issues and conundrums, challenge the imagination and understanding’. However, to do this, museums must reject a simplistic politics of recognition, and enact a ‘democratic process of becoming’. Morse also takes on the task of trying to dissect the potential meanings of democratisation in an attempt to sharpen the focus for museums, in the face of the term’s virtually limitless encompassing of people in the present and the future. Her aim is to place key terms like access, participation, representation, conservation and relevance within their wider contexts. How can museums think about the vast potential audiences, current and future, that are implied by a commitment to democratisation? If having an impact on people is a key feature, how much impact is required to legitimate the museum? And how is the museum to reconcile the idea of a right to access for people with the ideal of changing those people? Drawing on the theoretical insights of Saward, Morse sees participation as a means of reconciling the professional

12  Mark O’Neill and societal (inherently political) purposes of museums and proposes that museums transcend the distinction between core and periphery by seeing themselves as an ‘important experiment, a great participatory inquiry into what it means to be alive, a distillation of engagement and connection’. For Lynch the process of democratisation is always agonistic, because, as Sandahl points out, democracy would not be needed if there were no differences or conflicts.53 This poses particular difficulties for the museum as the official biographer of host communities and authorised dispenser of expert services, both of which tend to emphasise consensus views, a force, in Crossick’s words, for ‘cohesion, inclusion and stability’. Without this acceptance of conflicting perspectives, museums’ attempts at co-curation and co-production will result in ‘empowerment lite’ – and disappointment and pain for the staff involved. Such sentiments echo the most recent work on addressing difficult histories in museum displays and education programs, which suggest that museums need to overcome the desire for consensus and resolution and learn to contain (in the psychoanalytic sense) unresolved conflicts and conflicting perspectives.54 In view of this, Lynch argues for a ‘rights-based approach to partnership-working’ which aims at ‘empowering people to know, claim and activate their rights, increasing the ability and accountability of individuals and institutions who are responsible for respecting, protecting and fulfilling rights’. Exploring three areas of democratisation in terms of franchise, scope and authenticity, Lynch’s analysis complements Morse’s and Tlilli’s in advocating ‘conscious, informed and negotiated democratic collaborations’ in which participants are heard – and do not need to reach consensus. Collaboration and partnerships are terms also found in the Lane and Williams chapter, which provides a case study of a large museum service which is explicitly activist in its pursuit of cultural democracy.55 For the National Museum of Wales this means not just improving access, or increasing participation in the services it provides. Rather, it involves going beyond accommodating these activities as additional functions to a whole system change. In their promotion of cultural democracy and systemic change, the NMW does not experience Welsh government policy (in relation to wellbeing) as an imposition, but as a responsibility, which provides a useful ethical and practical framework for their work: long-term thinking, the prevention of future problems, the integration of their work with that of others, collaboration and the involvement of people. This is followed by a valuable genealogy of UK government policy in Helen Graham’s chapter, in which we are invited to contemplate the challenges of conducting participatory work in the museum or heritage site. In Graham’s opinion inequalities can be best addressed if everyday museum practice and everyday participatory practice are in unison, so that the museum moves from being associated with entertainment or education, to being increasingly linked to issues concerning social justice, human rights, democracy and wellbeing. Peter Wright, in his chapter in The New Museology, saw the ‘downgrading’ of the curator as necessary to overcome ‘inertia and indifference’

Introduction  13 in relation to the needs of the public, and the role of the expert as impresario has recently re-emerged in the museum literature, with an increased number of ethnographic studies of museum work. 56 Tooby argues that this view of the role misrepresents the reality of curatorship which, in most museums, is inherently collaborative, as well as ignoring the decisive power of museum directors, who may be former curators, but have a different set of interests and professional identity. Nonetheless, this approach ‘may lead to wonderful exhibitions and develop collections with excellent content’, which may feel like enough for many museum governors, staff and visitors. The authors in this book, however, believe that enticing exhibitions and collections are not enough. Working in museums means also working with, rather than avoiding, paradox and contradiction.57 These chapters represent those engaging with such paradoxes as a source of social creativity and innovation, reflecting a culture of discontent, a discontent with the rhetoric of mission statements and claims of impact, which are frequently followed through neither intellectually nor in practice. The chapters of this book explore the boundaries of the museum and the attempts to renegotiate the various structures and limitations therein. They explore the ideas and practices through which museums are seeking to move beyond what might be called one-off contributions to society, to reach places where the museum is dynamic and facilitates self-generation and renewal, where it can become not just a provider of a cultural service, but an active participant in the rehabilitation of social trust and democratic participation. The contributors to this volume provide conceptual critiques and clarification of a number of key ideas which form the basis of the ethics of museum legitimacy, as well as a number of reports from the front line about the experience of trying to renew museums as more valuable and more relevant institutions. In order to do this, they are learning to ‘contain and encourage diverse interpretations, halting voices, doubt, unsolved dilemmas, and disagreements among people – including those within the professional communities’.58 In Crossick’s terms, this book focuses on museums which are trying to become reflective organisations, and perhaps in the process create engaged institutional citizens.

Notes 1 ‘Museums; Temples of Delight’, in The Economist, 21 December, 2013. www. economist.com/special-report/2013/12/21/temples-of-delight. 2 A. Appadurai, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 33. 3 P. Hanlon, and S. Carlisle, ‘Do We Face a Third Revolution In Human History? If So, How Will Public Health Respond?’, in Journal of Public Health, 30, no. 4, pp. 355–361, 2008. 4 P. Vergo, The New Museology (London: Reaktion Books, 1989). 5 A. Upchurch, ‘John Maynard Keynes, The Bloomsbury Group and the Origins of the Arts Council Movement’, in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 10, no. 2, pp. 203–217, 2004.

14  Mark O’Neill 6 J. Z. Muller, The Tyranny of Metrics (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018). 7 For example, The Economist now accepts that the increase in inequality in the past 30 years has had negative impacts on society. In its review of R. Wilkinson, and K. Pickett’s The Inner Level (London: Allen Lane, 2018) they disagreed that inequality was the sole cause of a range of social ills, but accepted that it was a significant factor. www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/06/14/ does-inequality-cause-suicide-drug-abuse-and-mental-illness. 8 R. R. Janes, and R. Sandell, eds., Museum Activism (London: Routledge, 2018). K. Message, Museums and Social Activism: Engaged Protest (London: Routledge, 2014). 9 See, for example, American Association of Museums, Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums (Washington, DC, 1992); D. Casey, ‘Museums as Agents for Social and Political Change’, in Curator, 44, no. 3, pp. 230–236, 2002; J. Cuno, ed., Whose Muse? Art Museums and the Public Trust (Princeton and London: Princeton University Press, 2004); C. Gray, ‘Commodification and Instrumentality in Cultural Policy’, in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 13, no. 2, pp. 203–215, 2007; K. Message, Museums and Social Activism: Engaged Protest (London: Routledge, 2014); R. Sandell, Museums, Moralities and Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2016); L. Silverman, The Social Work of Museums (London: Routledge, 2010); C. West, and C. H. F. Smith, ‘“We Are Not a Government Poodle” Museums and Social Inclusion Under New Labour’, in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 11, no. 3, pp. 275–288, 2005. For a historical perspective on these issues see O. Bennett, and E. Belfiore, The Social Impact of the Arts; An Intellectual History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008). 10 J. Cuno, Whose Muse? Op. cit.; J. Cuno, Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); T. Jenkins, Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended Up in Museums – And Why They Should Stay There (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 11 D. Fleming, ‘Positioning the Museum for Social Inclusion’, in R. Sandell, ed., Museums, Society, Inequality (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 203–212. 12 See for example P. de Montebello, ‘Art Museums, Inspiring Public Trust’, in J. Cuno, Whose Muse?, op. cit. 13 See J. Morgan, ‘Assembling the New: Studying Change Through the “Mundane” in the Museum as Organization’, in Museum & Society, 16, no. 2, pp. 157–170, 2018. 14 C. Gray, and V. McCall, ‘Analysing the Adjectival Museum: Exploring the Bureaucratic Nature of Museums and the Implications for Researchers and the Research Process’, in Museum & Society, 16, no. 2, p. 127, 2018. 15 M. O’Neill, ‘Museum Visiting in Edinburgh and Glasgow – 150 Years of Change and Continuity’, in Cultural Trends, 2019, online edition Doi: 10.1080/09548963.2019.1559464. 16 S. M. Davies, R. Paton, and T. J. O’Sullivan, ‘The Museum Values Framework: A Framework for Understanding Organisational Culture In Museums’, in Museum Management and Curatorship, 28, no. 4, pp. 345–361, 2013. 17 J. Morgan, op. cit. 18 F. Matarasso, Use or Ornament? The Social Impact of Participation in the Arts (London: Comedia, 1997). 19 See P. Merli, ‘Evaluating the Social Impact of Participation in Arts Activities: A Critical Review of Francois Matarasso’s Use or Ornament’, in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 8, no. 1, pp. 107–118, 2002. For Matarasso’s reply, see his ‘Smoke and Mirrors: A Response to Paola Merli’s “Evaluating the Social

Introduction  15

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Impact of Participation In Arts Activities”, in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 9, no. 3, pp. 337–346, 2002. E. Belfiore, ‘Auditing Culture’, in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 10, no. 2, pp. 183–202, 2004. G. Crossick, and P. Kaszynska, Understanding the Value of Arts & Culture (Swindon: Arts and Humanities Research Council, 2016), p. 7. Warwick Commission, Enriching Britain: Culture, Creativity and Growth (Warwick: University of Warwick, 2015), p. 34. P. Ther, Europe Since 1989: A History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), pp. 16–20. See for example M. Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). J. Stiglitz, J. Fitoussi, and M. Durand, Beyond GDP: Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Performance (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2018). https://icom.museum/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/OECD-ICOM-GUIDEMUSEUMS-AND-CITIES.pdf. Interview, Woman’s Own Magazine, 23 September 1987. J. Coafee, ‘Towards Next-Generation Urban Resilience in Planning Practice: From Securitization to Integrated Place Making’, in Planning Practice & Research, 28, no. 3, pp. 323–339, 2013. A. MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). P. Dasgupta, and I. Serageldin, Social Capital; a Multifaceted Perspective (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2000). R. Williams, Keywords (London: Fontana Press, [1976] 1988). The key text is Nina Simon’s 2010 book The Participatory Museum and her website www.participatorymuseum.org/. For a recent summary of the literature, definition of terms and practical guidance see M. Kadoyama, Museums Involving Communities, Authentic Connections (London: Routledge 2018). V. Golding, and W. Modest, Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections and Collaboration (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 1. G. E. Hein, Learning in the Museum (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 4. M. O’Neill, ‘Museum Visiting in Edinburgh and Glasgow’, Op. cit. J. Abt, ‘The Origin of the Public Museum’, in S. MacDonald, ed., The Companion to Museum Studies (London, Blackwell), pp. 115–134, 2006. G. Waterfield, The People’s Galleries: Art Museums and Exhibitions in Britain, 1800–1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso Books, 1991). Op cit. pp. 48–65. J. Abt, ‘The Origin of the Public Museum’. Op cit. ‘How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it’. A. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (New York: Dover, 2006), p. 3. Smith was, however, aware of the limits of empathy: The emotions of the spectator will still be very apt to fall short of the v­ iolence of what is felt by the sufferer. Mankind, though naturally sympathetic, never conceive, for what has befallen another, that degree of passion which naturally animates the person principally concerned.

Ibid, p. 22. 42 P. Singer, The Expanding Circle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, [1981] 2011), p. ii.

16  Mark O’Neill 43 M. Towsey, ‘The Biopsychology of Cooperation’, in Understanding Prout – ­Essays in Sustainability and Transformation, Volume 1 (Australia: Proutist Universal Publications, 2010). 4 4 G. Rizzolatti, and C. Sinigaglia, Mirrors in the Brain. How We Share our ­Actions and Emotions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 45 See for example L. Jamison, The Empathy Exams (London: Granta, 2015). 46 See for example, www.shcg.org.uk/journal. 47 G. E. Hein, Learning in the Museum (London: Routledge, 1998). 48 See for example J. Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (New York: Mariner Books, 2013). 49 L. Roberts, From Knowledge to Narrative: Educators and the Changing ­M useum (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 1997). 50 L. Bedford, The Art of Museum Exhibitions: How Story and Imagination ­C reate Aesthetic Experiences (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. 2014). 51 See for example T. Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995); M. Bal, ‘Exposing the Public’, in MacDonald, op. cit., pp. 525–542; C. Duncan, Civilizing Rituals, Inside Public Art Museums (London: Routledge, [1995] 2007). 52 J. Sandahl, ‘Disagreement Makes Us Strong?’, in Curator: The Museum Journal, 55, no. 4, p. 470, 2012. 53 Op. Cit, p. 471. 54 J. Rose, Interpreting Difficult History at Museums and Historic Sites (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). See also: J. Sandahl, ‘Disagreement Makes Us Strong?’, in Curator: the Museum Journal, 55, no. 4, pp. 467–478, 2012. 55 S. Hughes, and E. Philips, ‘From Vison to Action; The Journey Towards Activism at St Fagans National Museum of History’, in R. Janes and R. Sandell, Museum Activism (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 245–255. 56 One of the first studies was S. MacDonald, Behind the Scenes at the Science Museum (Oxford: Berg, 2002). For a more recent example see J. Morgan ‘Assembling the New: Studying Change Through the ‘Mundane’ in the Museum as Organisation’, in Museum & Society, 16, no. 2, pp. 157–170. For a defence of the curator, see P. Ughetto, ‘Scholars and Poor Communicators? Old Master Exhibitions as a Scientific Practice and Communication Activity for Art ­Museum Curators’, in Current Sociology, 75, no. 3, pp. 376–394, 2017. 57 M. O’Neill, ‘Museums and Their Paradoxes’, in V. Harrison, G. Kemp, and A Bergqvist, eds., Philosophy and Museums: Ethics, Aesthetics and Ontology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 58 Sandahl, op.cit., p. 467.

1 A social museum by design Mike Benson and Kathy Cremin

Why do so many of us feel a sense of belonging in a museum, a sense of promise about the ways our voices and heritage are connected to museum objects? American arts teacher and cultural leader, Eric Booth, suggests that ‘Heritage reminds us that we belong; “voice” offers the promise of what we can become […] an individual life that exhibits a balance between heritage and voice can be thought of as rich and empowered’.1 Whilst many people may feel a sense of belonging in a museum, this is not a universal experience; we argue that it should be. Of course different museums offer different experiences and we recognise the value of the spectacular and the draw of nostalgia; not to mention the value of academic criticism and research. However, when it comes to museum claims for making a difference in people’s lives and the transformative role of museums, we argue for museums as social spaces, as sites of a stronger and more collective intelligence; for different organisational structures and the development this requires. In this chapter, based on ten years of working together at the Ryedale Folk Museum (RFM) and Bede’s World Museum (BWM), as well as being part of the MLA Strategic Programmes, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation (PHF) Our Museum Programme and the Clore Fellowship Programme, we outline how we work with others, particularly in terms of testing, learning and various accountabilities. We set out from the beginning a way of working that seemed obvious to us: putting challenge, reflection and permission to act at the heart of the museum. In taking this approach, we have been unwitting activists in museums for a way of working that enables people to speak and think freely and to act independently. At face value, our work aligns closely with the past 25 years or so of public policy and rhetoric surrounding museums, yet our learning is that the culture and values of museums and museum funders too often default to hierarchical, linear and expert-led forms of work, with a narrow range of knowledge seen as expert. Why do museums remain resistant to the kind of change we have ­demonstrated is possible and that many of them claim to want? We cannot answer this, except to say that by working differently our supporters and members of the public demand more accountability for the actions and

18  Mike Benson and Kathy Cremin values, as well as the communities of thought engaged within museums and collections. It does not matter why museums resist such work; perhaps what is more important is that they become subject to greater levels of accountability. Alongside exploring the principles and effects of our approach, we will map our learning from – and openness to – feedback and the results of our sector-level dialogue. At the earliest stages of our conversations, including colleagues from both inside and outside the sector, we recognised two things: first, how the degree of difference (and for some, deviance) in our approach placed on us a burden of proof and scrutiny from peers that other museums would not experience. Second, that we were somehow edge-­walkers in museums, treading the boundary between one world and another. While the values and principles underpinning our systemic approach have remained relatively constant, the languages, theories and allegiances with which we have tried to make the case for working differently have shifted over time and encompassed learning from colleagues in public/ community radio, community development, pedagogy, the co-operative movement, organic farming, regenerative and circular economies, as well as indigenous movements for preservation and renewal. If we think of heritage as a river that flows every day, then one choice for managing heritage resources is to contain the river and constrain its possibilities, to focus on harnessing and controlling its power, perhaps for rational, well-intentioned reasons. However, for us a different, less explored approach is necessary, one that cultivates the wider ecologies upon which the river depends; the sort of tributaries, big and small, which feed into the main body and therefore play an active part in making the river flow. True, heritage can exist without museums, or collections, but collections lose their power without connectivity to heritage. A museum that is part of heritage ecology can sustain the places and spaces through which its work flows, and its work at every level is shaped by that ecosystem of horizontal, vertical and diagonal relationships that exist between individuals, organisations and place. For museum professionals, situating ourselves as part of a system of wider heritage processes means re-­engineering and constructing museums as social spaces designed to connect with, as well as incorporate, the ebbs and flows of human connectivity, activism and place. 2 To put it another way, we believe that a profusion of heritage is on the outside of museums and if museums want to be as meaningful and effective as they can be, they need to connect to that. Whilst museum buildings, and the people who manage them, are sometimes stretched by whatever participatory thinking is on the go, they seem to us always to shrink back to some previous construct, to revert to type; in other words, for all the initiatives and policy documents museums remain hierarchical organisations with linear mechanisms for decision-making. Sure, many diverse aspects

A social museum by design  19 of cultural heritage may at some point have a moment in the spotlight of museums – family, local or social history, histories of big employers or artisan producers, music, gaming, associations from bowls to the Women’s Institute – yet museums sit somehow apart, separate from everyday social processes, sometimes remote from the simple and intangible heritage of families, groups and clubs. Our way of work is really simple: we strive to connect people to collections through abundance, recognising and inviting different ways of knowing and opening up collections to shared decision-making that is driven by mission and values, freedom of self, equity and diversity, thereby maximising public benefit and enabling a social space and heritage activism. We try to map this in the discussion below, which is divided into two parts, the first highlighting principles that support a connective, inclusive and social museum, the second reflecting our learning about sector responses to this model.

Part one Abundance is on the outside. The abundance of skill, passion and expertise around heritage is on the outside of museums. Examples are too numerous to mention – at one end of the scale families passing on stories, metal detectorists, Live Action Role Play participants, lovers of vintage, crafters and horticulturalists, as well as academics, curators and collectors. By connecting differently to that abundance, and maximising the opportunities for people or institutions to use that abundance in museums, we start to have different conversations around heritage. If there is a belief that engaging with museums in a meaningful way brings public benefit – and, with public money supporting museums, it should – then we argue that it makes sense to maximise this benefit. One might argue that museums’ staff cannot talk with the abundance on the outside because so many resources would be required. However what we can do is create an environment, a social space where communities and individuals are connected and may talk to each other; the role of museum staff, in other words, becoming one of facilitation, of setting the tone for conversations to happen and, moreover, supporting such a dialogue to take place from the very outset. Such a process is about enabling a sense of ‘inreach’, since ‘outreach’ can only get us so far, is too one-way and unidirectional. Inreach – or abundance – cannot be delivered by a project focus, engaging target groups or applying the brakes at a given distance in the process; rather it is a process of establishing and sharing an ongoing direction and a continuum of relationship-building. An example of engaging with abundance differently might include RFM’s learning programme, which was already well recognised for impacts since it became the only non-national to host heritage apprentices in 2009. 3

20  Mike Benson and Kathy Cremin Engaging apprentices, connecting staff and volunteers to very different aspects of local planning, regeneration and business, has shaped understandings of the museum as being in the service of society. The apprentices became a valuable part of the workforce, delivering learning and expanding the museum offer, shifting standards within the museum itself about what constituted knowledge, disturbing hierarchies, expertise and the ways in which the museum would work to meet external needs in the locality. Rather than an approach of deficit – the limits of what we in museums can do with our resources – the workforce and leadership shifted to focus on what the museum could and should do in collaboration with the wider community. Significantly, those volunteers and staff who had been resistant, or doubtful about the museum’s capacity, were enlivened by their own learning from this experience, and began to have a less fixed and more open approach to what was possible within the museum as a diverse social environment. In short, they began to demand more of themselves, each other and the museum staff. In Bede’s World, this inclusive approach was planned as a structural change from the start. In partnership with the local authority Head of Children’s Services, care-leavers were recruited as our first apprentices. Applying the learning from RFM, their induction included a programme of workshops from bank staff, financial inclusion workers, literacy support and health workers, as well as putting in place arrangements for supported housing. This approach led to significant, sustainable partnerships that improved learning across the organisation (staff went out on placements to democratic services, early years centres, etc.) and improved our approach to rights: four years in, the museum has two permanent classrooms, one hosting daily adult learning supported by Social Work, and the other housing the borough’s special needs 6th form, with weekly volunteer placements embedded in the museum for every student. This was scalable, mainstreamed work; within three years Bede’s World had 12 apprentices completing years 1–3 of advanced apprenticeships, an arrangement with three other cultural venues in the local authority to enable apprentices to rotate in 12-week learning placements. This way of work helped shape and met long-term goals around impact, income and the mission of being a social space inspired by learning. It changed staff complacency about being experts and it shifted standards about being a learning organisation away from our learning offer towards a demanding culture of active reflective practice about how (and why) we were working. Choosing to have a diverse workforce brought in their families, neighbours and friends, as well as the local decision-makers, all of whom helped to influence core activities. This more diverse workforce and volunteer body created a flow of ideas and insight that drove our programming and helped shape exhibitions and artistic and performance activity; in time the museum hosted contemporary dance, regular salons, monthly music nights, a weekly food market and much more.

A social museum by design  21

Shared decision-making, vision, mission and values It is important to note that unless there is a genuine flow, with decision-­ making happening at different levels, this way of working can simply fall apart. Empowering good decision-making requires a programme of clear values, an identifiable mission, as well as people having sufficient information so as to enable their decision-making; the last element – information – also requires people to be interested and curious. However, if all three tenets are in place then they can allow the abundance of external diversity to enter the museum, to become a space, or site, of activism and action. Our experience of professional responses in dozens of workshops, seminars and conferences, is that the inability to embrace dispersed decision-making is a huge barrier to change in museums. From an organisational point of view, dispersed decision-making is a demanding process; the vision, mission and values of the museum must be vigorously established and there must be clear parameters about intent; these tools create the boundaries for collective agreement about behaviours that manifest those values. This model of dispersed decision-making works outside and cannot be delivered in traditional museum hierarchies. Indeed, it can be driven as successfully from the outside as inside the museum, assuming a close mesh of values is established in the first instance. Indeed, we would go so far as to say that dispersed decision-making has no place, and no purchase, in the established model of museum operations. Questions from our peers have focussed on the risks of chaos, lack of professionalism or intellectual rigour. Faced with the evidence of the unleashed capacity of a museum where leadership and decision-making can move across the museum, museum professionals quickly raise their concerns about uncontrolled activity spinning off in unauthorised ways or ­over-zealous external influences. At times we have found museum professionalism to be a barrier to connecting people to collections – it calls to mind the professional foul, in football terms more often than not a cynical scything down of a player about to score a goal or do something beautiful, a mechanism to time-wasting. Normalising dispersed decision-making in museums is at root about who has the power and permission to make decisions. It is commonly recognised that the ability to exercise influence or control through decision-making is a key indicator of social equity, inequality and inclusion. Glasgow Centre for Population Health distinguishes between ‘power over’ (where people are able to influence or coerce others), ‘power to’ (where people are able to organise or change existing hierarchies or structures) and ‘power with’ (the collective power of communities or organisations).4 In how many museums are people able to change the hierarches or structures of the institution? And in how many are people able to experience a collective sense of ‘power with’ through the organisation? For us, the crux of ‘power with’ is enabling decision-making. For decades leaders for social change have understood that creating environments where participants can

22  Mike Benson and Kathy Cremin become active decision-makers involves significant changes in power – in the way information is shared, different knowledge and expertise is recognised. Myles Horton, civil rights activist and founder of the Highlander Research and Education Centre, observes that it is the act of consciously and regularly making decisions that creates shifts in empowerment: Any decision that has social ramifications, however segmented and small, can be an important decision in which value and judgement play a role. What we need to do as educators is to make people aware of the fact that those decisions are important and that they should know how to get the information necessary to make those decisions. What is essential is that people get the practice of making decisions and that they come to know that they should consciously make them at every point.5 Horton is fully aware that ‘most of us can’t make decisions about big things in society’ but argues that ‘education should try to help people make conscious decisions at every point: long and short range decisions, small decisions, decisions that affect only a few people and those that affect many, all of them are important’.6 Horton makes a good point and although we do not consider ourselves educators but facilitators and coaches, our experience is that if museums want to engineer more purposeful social environments with our public it is essential that individuals are allowed to make ‘conscious decisions at every point’. Dispersed decision-making only works if people have access to information, can be themselves and if the expectation is that new activity will happen, led by different people at different levels, as a result of those decisions. Nowadays dispersed decision-making is the mainstream in businesses, manufacturing and the army and many sectors recognise that less hierarchical operations create better outcomes because individuals can actively contribute to the common purpose, and accountability and cultures of learning are high in such organisations. We wonder why museums have largely remained so out of step with such developments.

Equity, diversity and freedom of self Working to support equity, diversity and freedom of self should be the basis of a resilient and sustainable museum and, more importantly, should underpin the role of the museum in our maintenance of a resilient heritage. To re-engineer the traditional construct of the museum equity, diversity and freedom of self are essential; such values mean different people being able to come as they are (diversity), start where they’re at (social equity) and be entirely themselves (freedom of self). This way of working is the opposite of targeting a beneficiary group according to a government policy area or segmenting people in order to target but, rather, about fostering a collective

A social museum by design  23 intelligence around how the museum in its given context should make a difference. If we are serious about engaging different people with our collections in different ways, it seems to us that there is more risk inherent in the established hierarchies and norms of how things have been done in museums than there is in our way of work: If the group lacks diversity or lacks information then it will in all likelihood not display signs of collective intelligence but rather will tend to either conflict or group think. Diverse groups which are able to meet the conditions for collective intelligence will be able to make decisions in complex social systems that may well appear messy or illogical in the short term, but will ultimately result in systems that are more resilient and hence sustainable.7 What makes any system resilient is measured in a straightforward way: ecological resilience is (i) the ‘number and quality of interconnected relationships or segments’, and (ii) ‘resilience is the capacity of a material, system or person to experience shocks while retaining essentially the same function, structure, feedbacks, and therefore identity’.8 This is a useful way of thinking about and measuring the multiplicity of relationships and connections that, we argue, make a museum stronger. Heritage is everywhere, so the logical approach for a museum that wants to maximise its diversity, representation, partnerships and visitors is to enable whatever there is as heritage, wherever they are, to flow through and connect within their collections, guided by deeper values around humanity and spirit of heritage. This approach to designing museum practice is what an ecologist would describe as ‘everything gardens’: bedrock, weeds, worms, birds, all of it within a system, and all of it with a sense of purpose and function. So taking a holistic approach to heritage, the logic: is the more we can get something into the system the better our system will be. Sarah Parkin, sustainability campaigner, put it like this: Relationship resilience is about masses of relationships. It is about strength gained from many interdependencies and of course happiness. There are legions of studies that show successful intimate relationships and close friends to be the most important source of happiness and other positive emotions like good self-esteem and contentment…. We know how the absence of satisfactory friendships makes us less resilient when other things go wrong [original emphasis].9 For us then equity, diversity and freedom of self are key to a social museum in two ways. First, a connected community and social participation are essential to creating a more empowered heritage and voice.10 Second, these three values in action create a more resilient organisation.

24  Mike Benson and Kathy Cremin

Accepting feedback and reflection We know that the absence of good friends makes us less resilient when things go wrong. At RFM the museum had those friends, a group we called the ‘thinking team’ of internal and external researchers looking at work practices and supporting a culture of self-reflection, feeding back to trustees, staff and volunteers to help change and develop practice. We created this high-level ‘thinking team’ of experts from outside the museums and culture sector to help us develop methods that would account for our evolving approach and impacts.11 In part, this structure also ensured that nothing would be assumed about the values of, and value to, the evolving community of RFM stakeholders. This team of five brought high-level insights and academic rigour, holding us as practitioners to account for the way we managed that community of thinking and work. The thinking team were unequivocally supportive of the project to re-engineer the museum as a social space; they tested our work against both mission and values, and conducted external research into our organisational processes. Unlike trustees, this group was free from a focus on financial and other operations, and unlike an advisory board, it was not helping us to design projects. The thinking team was there to consider our development and to help us test ideas with robust and rigorous reflection: two of the group (Belinda Noda and Dr. Christine Mortimer) used the museum as part of their own research. In 2009 Dr. Bernadette Lynch also visited RFM as part of a PHF research programme and spoke with over 40 staff, volunteers and partners about the way of work, culture and impacts of the museum. She later wrote: The feeling of shared rights and responsibilities is overwhelming in the extraordinary ‘social experiment’ that is Ryedale Folk Museum. It is impossible not to be profoundly moved by the energy, commitment and enthusiasm of all involved at Ryedale (apart from the fact that they travel distances, take time out of their lives, queue up to tell you about it!). Many talked about it as a ‘family’, but it comes across as a ‘movement’ – of active involvement in a community, having placed the museum at its heart.12 Although this was at the time understandably affirming, it quickly became incapacitating: nothing creates quarantine around an organisation and its team as effectively as being perceived as some sort of eccentric anomaly. The museum was not a cult-like space of charismatic leadership, ungoverned or undirected; the museum was a place of reflective practice, inspired by a history of co-operation and Quakerism in the Ryedale area. Although the founders of the museum were not Quakers, many of the volunteers were and there had always been a strong Quaker presence in the museum; Quakers had donated the original land for the museum and the Quaker values of equality, justice, truth and integrity were part of a strong non-conformist

A social museum by design  25 tradition in Ryedale that went back to the eighteenth century. Inspired by the radical founders of the museum at RFM, in 2009 we had already begun to look towards the co-operative movement to develop our understanding of enterprise driven by values. We came to understand from these conversations with co-operators nationally that while in the world of museums RFM looked like ‘radical social change’, in the wider world of social justice and transformation what we were achieving was limited by the lack of a shared agenda around empowerment in the museum community. RFM worked as a place where people inside and outside the museum came together to create more opportunities for access and inclusion in a remote rural community; to demand a decent environment. This was, in part, its founding DNA and at a leadership level this was driven by our values about people and heritage as a hook rather than the desire to be a champion of social change in museums. We were not part of a social movement for change in museums – as early reactions to the PHF research would show, there was (and still is) little demand within the museums sector for the kinds of change we were demonstrating. It matters that as organisations we actively decided how to connect with wider structural social change. Myles Horton offers a precise insight into how organisations connect to social movements when he states: We cannot create movements, so if you want to be part of a movement when it comes, we have to get ourselves into a position – by working with organisations to deal with structural change – to be on the inside of that movement when it comes instead of on the outside trying to get accepted [. . .] One of the dynamic aspects of a social movement as opposed to an organisation is that quite often in the latter, you’ll bargain down to make concessions in order to survive […] In a social movement, the demands escalate, because your success encourages and emboldens you to demand more.13 As practitioners we know the social space is working when the demands of participants within that space escalate and our successes generate aspirations for something more – the aforementioned work with young people, shifting to apprentices, before morphing to broader formal learning of a resident 6th form and adult learning provision are one example; new exhibition and gallery spaces in both RFM and Bede’s World would be another. However, in truth the most meaningful examples are the seemingly small and day-to-day, those actions, demands and conversations that signify a sense of ownership and rights in action. An example of all of the above principles in action took place in 2013 when Bede’s World hosted a Spotlight tour from the British Museum (BM) Australia Show, the core themes of that show being community and place. The BM asked Bede’s World to be the only UK venue for the exhibition because the museum was leading best practice nationally in community and

26  Mike Benson and Kathy Cremin place. As with every Bede’s World show, the exhibition had significant and diverse community input, and the loans would be shown alongside the work of local artists. After mounting the show a woman appeared with a picture painted for her by an indigenous Australian whom her sister had nursed in a remote hospital during the 1960s.14 The front of house staff told her the picture would make a good addition and called the curator, who asked if she could get a photo of her sister, which was duly found and mounted that same afternoon on a foam interpretation panel. Small decisions, leadership running right through, abundance on the outside, and a meshing of understanding about the ways different kinds of heritage can flow and connect were all reflected in this incident. At the launch, colleagues from a large neighbouring museum service were appalled at the seeming lack of quality control within this exchange, one senior manager saying, ‘We’d not be allowed to do that’. Such a response epitomises the difference between the social museum and a museum operating a more controlled hierarchical and linear structure where the boundaries between one kind of work and another are rigid, where decision-making has to go up and down the hierarchy before anything can happen, and where often what could happen is closed down by internalised constructs that too often go unexamined and remain in place as norms for practice. Interestingly, the curator from the BM was delighted to see the picture included, and spoke about how it referenced the work of Albert Namatjira, a pioneer of contemporary indigenous Australian art. When opening the exhibition, the BM curator referenced the addition as an example of why they chose to work with us: the Australia exhibition at the British Museum was all about community, place, people and activism and nationally Bede’s World was the best fit.

Part two We want to reflect briefly on our learning from sector responses to our approach. In preparing for this chapter we re-read many documents from our past work. It is easy to remember that in 2009 RFM was intently focussed on the governance, collections and funding work required to accession a major new collection. Easy too, to remember that around that time, separately, we both had opportunities to visit indigenous communities choosing heritage as an anchor for regenerating their social fabric, economies and environment, transformative moments in our learning. We remember clearly that in 2009 the RFM approach to leadership, relationship-building and adding value was already becoming reasonably well articulated. Less easy to remember, however, were the ways we tried to differentiate the specific processes we saw as essential to improving engagement with collections. It has been useful for us to see some of the nitty-gritty that ourselves and others highlighted at that time as being necessary to this holistic way of values-based work. In 2008 it was commonplace to attend museum policy briefings or regional workshops where heritage professionals talked about ‘target groups’,

A social museum by design  27 ‘hard-to-reach audiences’ or ‘reaching the Ds to Es’. At that time, RFM was distinguishing itself by eschewing this segmented approach – in the range and breadth of its work, in the organisation of staff and volunteers, and in the nature and conduct of partnership. Re-reading some of our case studies from that time, a lecture by John Tusa usefully picks out the leadership approach of mentoring and coaching and places an emphasis on behaviour and shows that ours was not an unstructured approach but, rather, a differently structured approach: Using his experience from the troubled days of British Steel, Mike applied two principles to the way the museum was to behave, and he means ‘behave’. Work in teams where responsibility and decisions are shared and individual talent is unleashed. [. . . ] Mike shifted leadership from the top down to the staff with his role confined to acting like more of a coach less and less like a leader.15 This was demanding work, creating a culture of shared values. RFM achieved this feat neither by accident nor by luck, but by choice and design. True, as we remarked above, the museum was in a special place: a remote community with deep non-conformist and rights-respecting values. Equally, RFM was in a rural Conservative-led council, surrounded by establishment landowners and holiday homers. In 2010, Ryedale District Council’s Arts Officer audited RFM’s impact and noted some baselines from the council’s previous reports: in 2004 RFM had a turnover of less than £150K and ‘falling visitor numbers, little local/community involvement, inadequate financial structures (leading to late returns and insufficient budgeting control) and low staff morale with high turnover’. More importantly, the report states: Overwhelmingly visitors were non-local, older and fairly affluent and school visits were declining as a response to a stale offer. This decline in visitors, income and support meant that, in time, the museum would prove to be unsustainable requiring either a significant increased investment from RDC or its closure. This situation was despite the genuine assets that the museum possessed: a collection housed in over 20 buildings on a 3.4 acre site; a broad-ranging collection covering archaeology, domestic and personal social history objects, farming and commercial life, ranging in size from a flint to a manor house and a group of longterm, highly committed volunteers. All of the objects, including the historic buildings, have been donated by local people in response to a fear that they were in danger of losing their own heritage and identity.16 This last point is a critical one: local volunteers ‘in danger of losing their heritage and identity’ had built RFM. Reconnecting to this DNA of activism and diverse leadership was the means by which the Director revived the museum’s fortunes between 2004 and 2009.

28  Mike Benson and Kathy Cremin Bernadette Lynch’s research for PHF, produced in 2009, was a significant event for the museum and its stakeholders. Involvement with PHF would prove to be profoundly destabilising for that organisation, in that following Lynch’s report the funder, instead of building on the abundance, started to look for deficits to fix. Despite being at the vanguard for museum co-production, the funder could not comprehend the lack of straight lines in RFM’s leadership, nor the permissions around dispersed leadership. Every self-reflective organisation knows its shortcomings, making choices about how to manage those and at RFM there was a strong sense of where the museum practice was and what would help it to achieve deeper and more sustainable working. One of RFM’s thinking team, Professor Paul Stanton, articulated this clearly as part of the bid to the PHF Our Museum Programme: RFM’s founders created a museum to celebrate the lives and lifestyles of ordinary people. The core purpose of those who founded the museum in 1964 still nurtures and sustains the museum, with many of those original volunteer founders still involved in protecting the legacy and transmitting the heritage (as trustees and volunteers). Whilst the museum remains rooted in its locality, and responsive to local contexts, it is also part of wider networks and conversations formed by a ‘community of ideas in practice’.17 What strikes us now about the conversations we were having then was the discomfort in the museum-funder conversation around how to manage ‘disciplinary boundaries’ and the vexation caused by a self-managing networked model. This typified for us mainstream museum thinking, where the expediency of fixed boundaries will inevitably feed up and down linear hierarchical systems that privilege certain expertise and necessitate a culture of conforming to the norms of how things have always been done. For the first time, we understood there were deep-seated resistances to a way of work that was quite evidently not only possible, but for supporters and the public, impactful and worthwhile. It was debilitating for us to realise that in the end, influential sector leaders could only see what wasn’t there – those convenient boundaries – and not what was there, the purposeful removal of boundaries. To address these funder issues about our specific approach, RFM. Her report invited an independent researcher with a background in corporate business, Dr. Christine Mortimer from York Saint John Business School, to review the organisational structures at RFM; her report highlighted: The stories told by all those within the organization are the external manifestation of the internal alignment between organizational objects and mission statement, which has been developed from a shared vision and how the organization achieves those objectives. The language used within the stories, that of respect, work, learning, creativity, trust,

A social museum by design  29 growth and love serve as an induction to those new to the organization. This language communicates the ‘what’ of the organization in a way that reinforces an alignment between social values, beliefs and attitudes. This process drives the ‘what’ leaving the ‘how’ in the hands of individual members rather than in individual power and authority developing an environment that is creative and based on learning.18 In 2012 we had the opportunity to test the effectiveness of our approach in a totally contrasting environment, that of Bede’s World, a failing millennium museum in the post-industrial urban locality of South Tyneside. The re-engineering began by setting a different tone: a new board was recruited that would understand the way we wanted to work, and we set about diversifying the workforce so that it would better reflect the communities that the museum was there to serve. Typically we would start by going back to the DNA of the founding moment of the museum, and the purposes of the collection. First, to the founder, archaeologist Rosemary Cramp, who wanted a place people in Jarrow could be proud of, a deeper, longer history of place than that of the twentieth-century stories of struggle and deprivation. Second, to Bede himself, where our mission became to create a social space inspired by Bede and his community, and shaped by the values of learning, discipline, creativity and co-operation. There was a myth that the museum was failing because it was in a supposed ‘cultural blackspot’ surrounded by an audience thought to be hard to reach and yet there was a clamour of cultural heritage activity outside the museum – a local history group with 70 members, poets, writers and communities of makers – to whom the museum had not been listening to. We set about creating a community radio station to do just that, although tried and tested outside the sector as a means of empowering community voice and building social connectivity, the radio would be a new way of working for us. Kathy captured our thoughts at the time in a short Guardian blog: Museums as institutions are not built to listen, and only by listening will we grow in connectivity and community. To create conversations we need to demand more of ourselves through new arrangements with funders, new measures of accountability, and governance that ensures our good engagement practice sets a standard, which then becomes a norm. Community radio is a low-tech tool with a proven track record of enabling ordinary voices to build cultural organisations, by fostering genuine capability for conversation and collaborative development. Our hope is that this conversation will shape the practice and mission of the museum from its core. We have much to learn – the conversation will not be polished, but it will be real, and it might even be beautiful in that ordinary human sort of way. At its very best it will be a din of language and voices that reflect the wideness of the world and the roots of this particular place.19

30  Mike Benson and Kathy Cremin We put an advert in the Shields Gazette inviting people to come into the museum and talk to us about their heritage, why it mattered and how as a museum we could connect our work with collections to their passions. Forty or so people came in over the course of a week, individuals with a family story, and groups of artists, some angry, some excited. The radio inverted the traditional museum dynamic of broadcaster to an audience of receivers, while the people who came inspired a different way of working, and inevitably improved reflective practice among staff and volunteers, as collectively our unknowing assumptions were being constantly challenged. The outcomes of this work were far-reaching and diverse, creating structural and programme change. For example, the artists took residence in a former farm workspace on-site that was redesigned as six studios, leading to new uses of our gallery, commissions for artists in the redesign of the local metro station, and new interpretations and connections with our collection, for example through permanent residencies by international glass artist Ayako Tani. We created a demanding environment where again, collectively people began to exceed their own expectations. 20 This work was demanding, there were failures and there were difficult choices to make. To us, the risk of being a less open, more hierarchical museum was far more likely to damage both the intrinsic purposes of the museum, and our communities of interest and place. One of the important and useful functions a museum can fulfil – and which museums can do uniquely through the power of collections – is to empower more complex, human-sized and historicised views about situated heritage and identity. It is the impact of the work that differentiates a museum’s ecology from an exhibition in any other context. We believe that heritage and voice are deeply connected. Our measures of impact are the social gains in voice, empowerment (decision-making capacity) and connections, and in this way, museums have a real role, places that make the most of their people and history. If a power wants to damage a person or people, that power will denigrate, deny or misuse both heritage and voice. In working to create museums as a more social space, a space for people to connect, for diversity to flourish and for collective development of decision-making and voice, we hoped to be part of a wider movement for social change and fairness. What we’ve tried to capture in this chapter is some insight into a different way of working that has repeatable patterns of success – positive qualitative and quantitative step-changes in governance, collection management, interpretation, engagement, learning, social impact, visitor figures, partnerships and incomes. That said, gaining ongoing support from the Arts Council England (ACE) for this work was not possible; Bede’s World never succeeded in achieving any ACE funding after 2011 and major funders such as Esmée Fairburn decided that it did not meet their funding priorities. At Ryedale HLF decided not to fund the Stage 2 Gallery development and it took several years and a change of leadership for PHF to fund a substantially changed Our Museum application. Had we worked in a more

A social museum by design  31 traditional way we might have been more successful. We know the sector is interested – to a point – in creating changes in participation: both of us were regularly asked to speak nationally about diversity, participation, engagement, workforce reform and so on. Museums peers requested site visits including senior staff from Museums Association, BM, Birmingham, Glasgow, Tyne and Wear, National Museum Wales and National Museums Liverpool. To be sure there are plenty of good people in the sector and we have done some great work with colleagues, but museums are not intrinsically good. In the end, museums choose how we work individually and collectively as a sector, and in many ways our current state of play suggests that many museums choose to have a non-diverse workforce, continue with a linear structure and emphasise certain expertise over others. We might call this poverty of aspiration, or as one expert volunteer put it ‘an enduring ceiling of mediocrity’.

Notes 1 Cited in S. Jones, Expressive Lives (London: Demos, 2009), p. 3. 2 We contributed extensively as research participants to AHRC Connected Communities ‘How should heritage decisions be made’ (2015) http://heritagedecisions. leeds.ac.uk/publications/. The project began with a presentation of our principles of work and a full-day symposium at Bede’s World. 3 S. Tait, ‘Viewpoint: Can Museums Be a Potent Force In Social and Urban Regeneration?’, (September 2008, Joseph Rowntree Foundation). www.jrf.org.uk/ sites/default/files/jrf/migrated/files/2262.pdf. 4 Power as a health and social justice issue was developed through a collaboration with NHS Health Scotland, Glasgow Centre for Population Health www.gcph. co.uk/power. 5 M. Horton, with H. R. Kohl, and J. Kohl, The Long Haul: An Autobiography (New York: Columbia University Teachers Press, 1990). 6 Ibid. 7 A. Kahane, Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2010), p. 92. 8 S. Parkin, The Positive Deviant: Sustainability Leadership in a Perverse World (London: Routledge, 2010), p. 145. 9 Ibid. 10 For evidence of this see Z. Ferguson, The Place of Kindness (London: Carnegie Trust, 2017). www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/publications/the-place-of-kindness/. 11 B. Noda, MA student, York St John University; K. Laverty, PhD researcher, QUB; P. Stanton, Professor, Northumbria University; Dr. S. Watson, formerly Professor, York St. John University; Dr. C. Mortimer, Teaching Fellow, Lancaster University. 12 B. Lynch, ‘Custom-made Reflective Practice: Can Museums Realise Their ­Capabilities In Helping Others Realise Theirs?’, (February 2015). 13 Horton, The Long Haul, 115. Horton is talking about the roots of the civil rights movement and the Montgomery bus boycott. 14 See ‘Aboriginal Art Display Sparks Tales of Australia’, Shields Gazette (21 July 2015). www.shieldsgazette.com/whats-on/arts/aboriginal-art-display-sparks-tales-ofaustralia-1-7368401. 15 J. Tusa, Louis MacNeice Memorial Lecture (QUB 2011).

32  Mike Benson and Kathy Cremin 16 Y. Turnbull (Arts and Heritage Officer, Ryedale District Council), Case Study Ryedale Folk Museum (March 2010). www.ryedale.gov.uk/attachments/article /365/Case_Study-Ryedale_Folk_Museum.pdf. 17 Professor P. Stanton quoted in the RFM submission for the PHF Our Museum funding programme. 18 C. Mortimer, ‘Ryedale Folk Museum Case Study: Leadership and Organizational Structure’. (PhD Draft Research Chapter, 2010). 19 K. Cremin, ‘Why Museums Must Start Listening’, Guardian Culture Professionals, 26 March 2013. www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/ culture-professionals-blog/2013/mar/26/museum-listening-community-radio. 20 Examples include the radio volunteer who took her first post-16 qualification, and a radio production MA sponsored by the museum which won the Charles Parker National Award, www.shieldsgazette.com/news/radiostar-makes-waves-with-miners-feature-1-6571415.

2 Notes from the frontline Partnerships in museums Bernadette Lynch

It is early afternoon in the cool interior of a Georgian mansion next to a major road in London. Beyond the white pillared façade that houses a government agency the London traffic relentlessly roars by. Inside, there is no such noisy confusion. The large, high-ceilinged room hosts a hushed audience – someone at the lectern is speaking, a UK government cultural agency official. It is a celebration (held by this agency) for the completion of a year-long ‘partnership’ project between museum professionals in the UK and their counterparts in museums abroad. The partners had worked together, ‘buddied up’ in teams of two to ‘learn from each other’; a set of equitable peer-learning partnerships between UK museum professionals and their colleagues from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent and Africa. And yet something doesn’t quite add up. The speaker continues to discuss the partnership scheme in terms of helping cultural professionals from the ‘troubled’ and ‘less fortunate’ parts of the world. Meanwhile, the international partners are quietly encouraged by those in attendance to line up, somewhat like children, to receive individual certificates from their erstwhile UK museum partners. Each UK partner is then formally thanked by the overseas partner for the learning opportunity. At no point do any of the UK partners speak of having learnt anything at all from their overseas counterparts. Seabrook notes with irony that ‘humanitarianism is what the West uniquely practices, bringing its kindness and goodwill to dark places of the world, where savagery and barbarism still rule (or have reappeared) at the heart of “primitive” or regressive cultures’.1 Can we transpose such notions of aid-giving from the developing world to museum social relations here in the West? I believe we can, for we can see Gramsci’s notion of ‘hegemonic power’ at play within these relations – between gift-giver and passive receiver – wherever they may occur.2 Eduardo Galeano, the great Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist, memorably wrote: I don’t believe in charity, I believe in solidarity. Charity is vertical, so it’s humiliating. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person and learns from the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.3

34  Bernadette Lynch But this was the sense here in this room in London – the Western museum as saviour, raising the question of what we actually mean in museums when we so lightly use the word ‘partner’. Let us switch locations to a large city in the UK Midlands. Inside another dark and somewhat foreboding Georgian building – a museum this time – the conference room is filled with troubled museum staff. This is the aftermath of a high-profile collaboration between the museum’s staff and well-known local activists invited in as ‘co-curators’ to co-produce an exhibition. The subject? The colonial history of the museum’s collection, its connection to the city’s history and its legacy today. The collaboration was, by all accounts, a painful process, the impact of which has had wider reverberations within the museum world. This is largely due to the co-curators making public the difficulties they had experienced in working with the museum. For instance, one staff member anonymously confided about ‘the paternalist, infantilising treatment by the museum of our collaborators’.4 In this room, however, though all are here to reflect on the collaborative project’s ‘fall-out’, (a term that was frequently used by those present in reference to the partnership project’s aftermath) the co-curators are not present. They refused the invitation to further participate beyond the exhibition’s completion. The intention here of including mention of the post-partnership state of affairs in this museum is not to analyse why this relationship with the co-curators had broken down, but to ask why the museum staff assumed that the partner relationship would or should end in a friendly, collegial way.? In this case, the museum staff members plainly express the feeling that a ‘bond’ has been broken by the co-curators. There is a tangible sense in the room of a lack of gratitude on the part of the co-curators, firstly by being so publicly critical of the process (and by extension, of their museum ‘colleagues’), and secondly for not being, as it were, ‘friends’ at the end of it all. Yet, as the co-curators evidently discovered, despite having the confidence to conduct their own research and speak out, exercising a voice in the museum does not overcome incommensurable knowledge systems and operational traditions. Both of the examples noted above raise a number of additional questions of the museum/cultural institutions: what kind of outcome can we expect of such an impasse within our museum partnerships, and what exactly is it that museums are offering and expecting of these relationships? Fundamentally the social relations within a museum ‘partnership’ constitute a form of exchange. Anthropological studies have long been preoccupied with gift exchange, which has in turn influenced sociologists to develop models of exchange in social life, and social relations. If we apply this useful concept as the museum’s offer, or ‘gift’, to its partners, could it be that there is more than a hint of ‘gratitude expected’ running through such partnership relations that only serves to undermine the relationship? The museum’s ‘gift’ of engagement and participation can thus too easily take

Partnerships in museums  35 the form of what economic anthropologist Raymond Firth astutely called ‘indebtedness engineering’. 5 Firth challenges Marcel Mauss’s idealisation of The Gift (Mauss, 1954, 1969). Mauss had proposed three obligations: to give, to receive, to make a return. Firth believed that if you wanted to explain the need to return a gift you had to look at the sanctions others could apply to a defaulter – loss of status or loss of future gifts. Hence, one can say of the examples above, that the museum partners experienced potential sanctions and, certainly, an expectation of a return on the museum’s ‘gifts’. If we therefore examine the level of frustrated anger evidently expressed after the fact by the so called ‘co-curators’ in the museum noted above, we may wish to borrow from the writer and activist, Arundhati Roy, and say that in this subtly coercive way museums: defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims and blunt political resistance … They have become the arbitrators, the interpreters, the facilitators.6 And once again, if this is the case, can we really call such relations ‘partnerships’?

Partners as ‘friendly enemies’ Do all partners necessarily share the same motivation for agreeing to the partnership? Maori theorist Linda Tuhiwai Smith reminds us that people may have other reasons for partnering or participating with museums that are not those of the institution: ‘Some knowledges are actively in competition with each other […]. the need to tell our stories remains the powerful imperative of a powerful form of resistance’.7 In the case of the Midland’s museum, the co-curators clearly saw the partnership as an opportunity to actively, and visibly, resist the museum’s hegemony, and rather than treating the history of colonialism (as evidenced in the museum’s collections) as something rooted in the past, wished to highlight the ongoing legacy of colonialism right now, in the city, and within the museum’s (as they saw it) intransigent systems and methods of public communication. In such circumstances, the museum institution itself, and its staff representatives, are seen as very much part of the problem, as was evidently the case in the museum cited above. For the partners, the opportunity to co-curate became a form of activist protest, that was, as they saw it, ultimately constrained by the museum. And of course, there is therefore no reason to suppose that the relationship is – or ever was – based upon ‘friendship’. More accurately they may have started out, as political theorist Chantal Mouffe puts it, as ‘friendly enemies’.8 In such circumstances, there should be no surprise that there is a clash of perceptions. Mouffe maintains

36  Bernadette Lynch that the possibility of agonism is a constant and ineradicable feature of all human social life, characterised by conflicts with no resolution.9 She advocates a theory of democratic politics in which contestation is never off limits, and in which political opponents see each other as friendly enemies to be defeated temporarily rather than mortal adversaries to be eliminated permanently. Thus, they understand and accept each other as ‘friendly enemies’ from the outset. Agonism thus turns on conflictual consensus, where participants start their partnership by agreeing to treat each other as ‘friendly-enemies’ rather than as enemy combatants, on the promise that the democratic struggle can be repeated, no matter which side wins or loses. Yet, instead, museums tend to see agonism, as that expressed by the co-curators in the example above, as inherently problematic – considering it a defeat of the museum partnership. The energy of our disagreements with partners are thus seen as threatening to the status quo and are subtly or not-so-subtly dissipated.10 Social anthropologist, Andrea Cornwall, notes that this can ‘result in the silencing of dissenting voices, the legitimisation of pre-set decisions and the reproduction of relations of power, discrimination and marginalisation that exist in society at large’.11 The author has found extensive evidence throughout her work of the containment of conflict as a key element in the breakdown of partnership relations.12 International development theorists Alessia Contu and Emmanuela Girei adopt a similar perspective, maintaining that ‘partnerships on the ground reproduce relations of inequality characterized by subordination and oppression’.13 They recast partnerships ‘not as neutral management tools, but as political processes actualized in a terrain that is contested and uneven’,14 and argue for ‘the potential or actual collective politicization of the partnership discourse’.15 Perhaps this is a way for museums to begin to understand the processes at work, so that they do not leave out an awareness of power relations, or have unrealistic personal expectations of creating friendships? In the case of the museum in the Midlands discussed above, one can say that the co-curators’ agonism and the museum’s hegemony were therefore bound to clash, without a resolution being necessarily possible. And yet there is much to learn from that clash. It is not a reason to stop doing it – it is the reason to do it again. There is an invaluable opportunity for the museum institution to recast its future partnerships as political processes, and thus place even more emphasis on their critical – and it could be argued, central – importance.

‘Nothing about us, without us’ – an international rallying cry If we look at the two examples of museum ‘partnerships’ mentioned above, one can certainly note that the participants have been subtly coerced and compromised by the partnership, no matter how ‘honourable’ the museum’s

Partnerships in museums  37 intentions may have been. The ability to exert real influence, an oft-­forgotten but all-important element of these collaborations, is left out – without which the ‘partners’ are left with very little at all. Meanwhile, the museum’s rhetoric of service continues to place the partner in the role of ‘beneficiary’, and the giver (the museum and its staff) in the role of ‘carer’. However, the question remains: how clear is it to the museum staff, or indeed to the ‘beneficiaries’ on the receiving end, that power is at work within such language, and within the roles it gives the institution in relation to its so-called community ‘partners’?16 Museums avoid the discomfort of actual partnership through something else: co-option. It is the very ambiguity of participation, citizenship, empowerment and now partnership that have made them vulnerable to coercion so as to meet with institutional agendas. One can argue, of course, that participation and partnership work in museums and galleries does not always involve agonism, or that ‘coercion’ is too hard a term, as it suggests deliberate manipulation. The point here is that, as has been seen in decades of much museum participatory practice, institutional power works in subtle and unintentional ways, and it impacts upon both institution and participant. It requires a deliberate form of collaborative reflective practice, to ‘unlearn’, as Gayatri Spivak famously put it, habits of mind that influence the most well-intentioned participatory practices in museums, engaging with power relations in order to change them. What has certainly become clear is that expanding democratic engagement in museums calls for more than invitations to participate, as was made evident in the Whose Cake is it Anyway? report.17 In the course of the research for that report, co-creation or co-curation was too often unmasked as a shallow political gesture. What was found instead were too often token consultations without authentic decision-making power and relationships that ultimately disempowered participants. Meanwhile, the rhetoric of ‘service’ continued to place the participant in the role of ‘beneficiary’ and the provider (the museum and its staff) in the role of ‘teacher/ carer’, perpetrating a ‘deficit’ model which assumed that people have ‘gaps’ which need filling or fixing through museum intervention, rather than a theory of change that places people at the centre, as active agents in their own right. The Whose Cake is it Anyway? report therefore found it unsurprising that museums’ partners and participants frequently conveyed frustration and dissatisfaction, finding themselves on the receiving end of museum practices that demonstrate a profoundly disabling view of the individual as existing in an almost permanent state of vulnerability. As the report showed, the overwhelming experience of museum participants and partners (however they were defined) was one of ‘empowerment-lite’.18 The recommendation of the Lynch report was for deeper levels of partnership, based on a notion of citizen rights. The study took up the cardinal rule of self-determination: nothing about us, without us. Ongoing collective

38  Bernadette Lynch reflective practice was additionally recommended as centrally important in order to continuously co-examine the primary and often subtle aspects in the partnership debate – the location of power.19 The author’s subsequent research also concluded that museums can learn a great deal about partnerships and participation from critical development theory. 20 A partnership model informed by critical development theory must inevitably confront the structural, political, economic, social and cultural causes of social injustice, guided by principles of solidarity and challenging unequal power structures. 21 What is not disputed is that this is essentially a difficult iterative process, requiring serious commitment. According to development theorist Jennifer Brinkerhoff, equality of decision-­making and mutual influence are the key characteristics distinguishing partnership from other types of relationship. 22 Yet, in practice, developing a relationship characterised by a free and equal exchange of ideas is challenging because of a number of constraints, including differences in terms of how the relationship/partnership is conceptualised and interpreted. These include a resistance to sharing ownership and responsibility for the partnership: ­‘responsibility which needs to be shared in failure as well as success’. 23 There is a flow of such experience from the global south to the north that is already happening, with some of the most innovative experiments in citizen engagement in the UK being the result of people who have worked in international development bringing home the methods and practices they had been using in Africa, Asia and Latin America – and inviting colleagues from these countries to the UK to share their experiences.24 Are there opportunities being missed by museums and the cultural sector as a whole in looking to the experiences of other sectors in terms of informing partnership working?25 In the past few years, there has been growing talk about a social justice, activist, rights-based approach in museums that has great bearing on partnership relations. 26 If we borrow from reflections on rightsbased practice in an international development context, a rights-based approach to partnerships must be interrogated for the extent to which it enables people to articulate their priorities – and to make change happen.27

Partnerships for change: museums that are challenging and expanding the notion of partnerships How to reverse the failure of an ‘us’ and ‘them’, centre/periphery or hierarchical approach that places people in the position of passive victims and beneficiaries, one that has proven to so substantially undermine the many genuine efforts of collaborating with people that too often characterises current partnership models in museums? How to know the difference between what is participation and what is a genuine partnership? On the basis that the difference between participation and partnership is somewhat fuzzy in museums, the author asked some museum directors, practitioners and theorists to share their views on what for them is the

Partnerships in museums  39 difference between the two practices. Alistair Hudson, Director of Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester Art Gallery, developed a model of the socially-engaged, ‘useful museum’ at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA). Hudson puts it this way, ‘The museum offers itself as a function for people to construct a story to build their lives around’.28 He maintains that there is an underestimation of the useful role institutions like museums could have in a community in this way. Hudson’s vision for MIMA was very much based on establishing strong local partnerships with grassroots organisations, local authorities, development agencies and locally-based industries, situating the museum as a partner in local planning, regeneration, employment (traineeships) and social enterprise based upon full public participation, debate and co-production. He sees the museum as both a catalyst and an agent of social change. He now hopes to do the same on a larger scale in Manchester. The challenge will be in whether partnership projects have an effect on the exhibitions at the Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester Art Gallery and the public engagement in and use of those spaces. Asked his view on partnership, Hudson suggests: In participation, you are still participating in someone else’s agenda. In art this often translates into forms of co-production where people participate in an artist’s project and the prime beneficiary is the cultural capital of artist and artworld. In partnership there is an ‘on the table’ agreement of mutuality, which might have different outcomes for each partner, but in participation self-interest is often disguised. 29 Thus, a rights-based approach to partnership-working might be described as empowering people to know, claim and activate their rights, increasing the ability and accountability of individuals and institutions who are responsible for respecting, protecting and fulfilling rights. It is also about clearly articulating those rights. Some of the courageous and innovative, value-led institutions described here are taking a right-to-know approach. With their partners, they begin by upturning the power relationships, the decision-making authority, the active agency – and they take interdependence as their starting point. For example, curator Jacob Knage Rasmussen from the innovative Danish Welfare Museum30 explains the museum’s mutually respectful partnership work with care-leavers:31 In the beginning of the dialogue, care-leavers are invited to express their wishes and expectations, and the museum informs them of their rights and what we can do for them – and with them. Such rights-based partnership practices – and rights-based museums – are emerging within the museum community internationally, that aim to go further in what might be considered the museum’s moral responsibility

40  Bernadette Lynch to form partnerships with others to develop their own agency in making change happen. These are museums that form partnerships with people in campaigning for change, sometimes with a very specific political focus  – for example, how the UK deals with the dramatic growth in homelessness is the activist focus of the UK’s Museum of Homelessness.32 It can be argued that the very same principles that these museums are using apply to any form of partnership if the end goal is people developing their own capability and active agency. Partnership does not only mean that which is negotiated between organisations – it means the quality of the relationship between people and the joint understanding that forming partnerships is inherently a political act, whether between two people, groups of people or organisations. It means allowing for people to think, wish, do, and most importantly, influence change. Partnership is a collaborative process, requiring ongoing dialogue, trust and co-ownership to operate effectively. Margaret Anderson is the Director of the Old Treasury Building, Melbourne (from 2000–2015 Director of the History Trust of South Australia). On the difference between participation and partnership, she says: I see the difference being essentially about decision-making and negotiation. In other words, it is largely about power and control of the participatory process… I regard a partnership as a more equal relationship, involving shared decision-making, a commitment to negotiating areas of difference and to joint planning and ‘ownership’ of the program or event.33 Sally MacDonald, Director of Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry, sees the difference between participation and partnership in the following way: It’s about ownership and control. Participation is getting involved on someone else’s terms. Partnership – though not always equal – involves having a seat at the table. Timing is important. With a partnership you are likely to be in at the beginning, but with participation you get involved when you are asked for it. With a partnership you put something in and get something out; with participation you give but may not get much back.34 A true partnership – where power, authority, responsibility, risk and reward are equally shared, right from the beginning, can sometimes be seen in the long, hard, painful negotiations between museums and Indigenous peoples. As the writer Robert Janes, formally the Director of Calgary’s Glenbow Museum, puts it in their long-term work with local First Nations groups, ‘the Blackfoot Elders were more or less in charge’. Nina Simon highlights this important long-term partnership project in her book The Relevant Museum, and provides an excellent summary of 12 years of a growing

Partnerships in museums  41 relationship between the Glenbow Museum and the Blackfoot Confederacy.35 Self-determination is a cornerstone of hard-won (and the struggle continues) partnership relations between museums and First Nations, and should arguably become a cornerstone of all partnership relations in museums. As video artist and activist Kuljit (Kooj) Chuhan, who has worked over many years with museums and marginalised communities, puts it: To me the key point [in partnership relations] is that whichever dominant temporary synergy is taking place at any one time it needs to be part of a long-term strategy leading towards community self-­determination, skills and resource development, and progressive pedagogy.36 Such a long-term strategy can surely be found at London’s Hackney ­Museum. This museum has built its reputation over decades based upon ethical partnership working, and has developed this further to embed it in local Council practices. Emma Winch, Heritage Learning Manager, (Hackney Museum & Hackney Archives, Heritage Services, Public Realm, Neighbourhoods & Housing Directorate, Hackney Council), notes for example: We have worked with LGBTQIA communities in Hackney since the museum was established in the 1980s, but since 2015 we have been working across council directorates and collaborating in a more engaged way with a range of LGBTQIA communities on projects and initiatives that have helped us to get a much clearer picture of the history and heritage of a broader demographic of LGBTQIA communities in Hackney.37 This partnership continues to be, as with many of Hackney Museum’s other long-term partnerships, a political act, influencing local authority public policy for change. In other circumstances, this political act can be subtle but no less symbolically influential, and involve the museum actively collaborating in its collecting and interpretation practices, and making way for others in the partnership to take the lead. Manchester’s Alistair Hudson speaks of a current partnership, ‘Excavating the Reno’: A community group in Moss Side, led by [local activist] Linda Brogan, began a project to record the lost history of their lives and culture around the now demolished Reno nightclub in Moss Side, Manchester. Starting with audio histories they soon moved on the idea of an archaeological dig of the site of the club, working with Salford University and the City Council to uncover the lost (and suppressed histories) and these were presented at an event at the Whitworth in November 2017 attended by 1,500 people [to] benefit the Moss Side residents and build new social contracts and cultural/creative resources. This is what I would describe as ‘emancipated usership’, with the creation of a system

42  Bernadette Lynch of inter-use between different groups and individuals for mutual gain and wider civic benefit.38 Wider civic benefit has been a cornerstone of the Danish Welfare Museum also, which has never lost sight of power relations and the politics of partnership.39 The museum collaborates with people who are, or have been, experiencing social vulnerability, exclusion, lack of understanding, personal downturns and stigmatisation. This is a museum that bases its entire practice on clear-sighted collaboration, with society’s most marginalised peoples – often people who have been the victims of institutionalised abuse. In speaking of how they differentiate between participation and partnerships, Sarah Smed, Head of Public Engagement, Exhibitions, Outreach and Communication, gives us examples of partnership-working at every level, with individuals’ transformation and policy change: We have formed partnerships with national networks of adults who have been in care as children and experienced neglect and abuse and are today fighting for a national apology. For example, the Godhavn Boys [Home], with whom the museum for more than a decade have formed a mutually rewarding partnership in both research, exhibitions and public debates.40 Peoples’ open access to research methodologies is precisely what the Danish Welfare Museum is attempting to establish, in a way that is not only liberating, but also actively changing the museum itself. At this remarkable museum, research is a tool, and it becomes action for change. Most importantly, research-as-activism is led by people themselves, using this area of museum practice that the museum has traditionally monopolised. The manager of a local care home for homeless people described to Smed the effect of the partnership programs with the museum and some of their residents in this way: ‘The experience of being heard, seen and taken seriously as a human being can seem trite, but the importance of this for socially vulnerable citizens simply cannot be stressed enough’.41 The museum’s research project ‘Welfare Stories from the Edge of Society’ embodies a desire to establish a new kind of social history with a focus on social justice through a close collaboration with care leavers. The care leavers’ research ‘journeys’ involve accessing, reading, replying and reflecting on their children’s records. As Smed suggest, ‘it seems that starting dialogues in the past creates respectful debates in the present, where difficult personal issues can be shared, discussed and understood’.42 Most importantly, through the assistance of the museum, adult care leavers read their own child records for the first time in the States’ archives, made possible through this partnership with the museum. The understanding of the child records has consequences for the way the history of institutionalised childhood is presented by the museum, and the ways the

Partnerships in museums  43 museum, with other partners, can assist adult care-leavers in their effort to make sense of their past. In such deeper level partnerships – it won’t always work – there will be mistakes made, and lack of trust exacerbated, for it is inevitably a complex process. In other words, it involves full transparency, as well as a commitment to negotiating and re-negotiating. It will also frequently involve conflict, and ‘back-to-the-drawing-board’ revisiting of strategies. But all will learn. Political theorist John Dryzek offers a useful way of conceptualising the shift that the courageous museum collaborations outlined here exemplify. He argues that democratisation is about extensions in three dimensions: • • •

Franchise: the number of people capable of participating effectively in a collective decision. Scope: bringing more issues and areas of life potentially under democratic control. Authenticity of the control: to be real rather than symbolic, involving the effective participation of autonomous and competent actors.43

Dryzek argues that practicing democracy in this way should include being critical of established power, pluralistic and reflexive in questioning established traditions.44 Surely museums, as these examples show, can provide ample opportunity to practice just this with their partners.

Conclusion: Partners are not friends, nor are they beneficiaries – they are partners Sara Wajid, Head of Engagement at the Museum of London and co-founder of the influential museum professionals’ activist group, Museum Detox,45 still reasonably asks: ‘Could we say that it’s impossible to be activists changing museums while partnering with them?’46 Yet, as we have seen, the Danish Welfare Museum sees not only the possibility – and reality – of personal and social change through partnership-working, but institutional change – the museum changing through their partner relations with activists from outside. This kind of respectful, negotiated partnership requires a concerted joint analysis right from the outset, the partners consciously and openly acting as each other’s ‘friendly enemies’, and committing to jointly and critically re-visiting the progress of the partnership throughout its lifespan. As Margaret Anderson argues: ‘The key elements of partnership are power-sharing, negotiation, shared ownership, shared responsibility and (sometimes but not always) shared financial risk’.47 One can therefore say that the negotiated (and re-negotiated) partnership is the first and most important stage of joint activist practice for social change in museums. If we look at the partner relations in the case of the Midland museum in which the relationship with the co-curators broke down, the hope is surely that the ‘combatants’ may eventually be persuaded to re-enter the

44  Bernadette Lynch arena, prepared to work even harder to co-develop a conscious democratic agonism in action. Rather than retreating into their own corners, they will hopefully understand that conflict and, often too, disappointment, is the issue – an inevitable part of democratic dialogue across sometimes vast differences. In other words, the dialogue, the debate, is the point. Museums are spaces that have the potential to deliver all three partnership dimensions that Dryzek suggests (franchise, scope and authenticity), whilst bringing together people who might otherwise have no reason to be together. They could become spaces of inclusive deliberation that hold the potential to change the ways in which citizens engage with government, and for government officials and service providers to respond to those whom they are supposed to serve. Conscious, informed and negotiated democratic collaborations within these open spaces may not last – they may not need to last; they may not reach consensus – they may not need to: but all will have been heard. Most importantly, while they exist they begin to establish the basis of an ethical, democratic practice involving active citizens in the socially useful museum. There is no hiding from the fact that this is – and may need to be – a difficult and iterative ongoing process that will take time and commitment. But it will be worth it. Meanwhile, it is important to acknowledge the foundational work in which many museum professionals today are genuinely engaged, as they work collaboratively to varying degrees, consciously developing their practice – and their institutions. This was the thinking behind the Our ­Museum 48 programme that grew out of the Whose Cake is it Anyway? report (Lynch 2011a), focussed as it was on supporting museum professionals and organisational change through collective critical engagement. In terms of radically addressing change in the culture of museums, the Our Museum programme (supported by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation49), has acted as a large-scale experiment in this regard, working over five years across nine museums in the UK (among them large national museums) and aiming to embed this new focus on partnerships and participation through reflective practice within museums.50 Ultimately, we need to collectively shift our understanding of partnership in museums to see that partnership is not a mechanism to achieve something – it is the something. It is the point.

Notes 1 J. Seabrook, ‘The doctrine of “humanitarianism” is not as benign as you might think’, The Guardian, 8 September 2014. This critique of humanitarian ‘giving’ was echoed by Pheng Cheah in a March 2014 lecture (unpublished) at London’s Birkbeck College, tellingly titled ‘Resisting the Humanitarianization of the World: Towards an Ethics of Giving’. 2 A. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971). Antonio Gramsci suggested that institutional power maintains control not just through violence and political and economic coercion but also ideologically, through a hegemonic culture in which the values of the

Partnerships in museums  45 bourgeoisie became the ‘common sense’ values of all. For Gramsci, hegemonic dominance ultimately relied on coercion and, in a ‘crisis of authority’, the ‘masks of consent slip away, revealing the fist of force’. Ibid, lxxxix. 3 E. Galeano, quoted in D. Barsamian, Louder Than Bombs: Interviews from The Progressive Magazine (Boulder: South End, 2004). 4 Anonymous comment made by staff member in an evaluation session co-­ conducted by the author. 5 R. Firth, ‘Magnitudes and Values in Kula Exchange’, in J. W. Leach and E. Leach, eds., The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 101. See also D. Nayeri, ‘The Ungrateful Refugee: We Have No Debt to Repay’, The Guardian, Tues 4 April 2017. 6 A. Roy, ‘The NGO-ization of resistance’, Massalijn, 2014. http://massalijn.nl/ new/the-ngo-ization-of-resistance/ (accessed 12 July 2018). 7 L. Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonising Methbarodologies (London: Zed, 1999), pp. 45, 36. 8 See the concept outlined in depth in C. Mouffe, Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically (London: Verso, 2013). 9 Agonism (from Greek ἀγών agon, ‘struggle’) is a political theory that emphasises the potentially positive aspects of certain (but not all) forms of political conflict. It accepts a permanent place for such conflict, but seeks to show how people might accept and channel this positively. Chantal Mouffe’s conception of agonism was developed in her works, The Return of the Political (1993), The Democratic Paradox (2000) and On the Political (2005). 10 See B. Lynch, and S. Alberti, ‘Legacies of Prejudice: Racism, Co-production and Radical Trust In the Museum’, in Museum Management and Curatorship, 25, no. 1, 2010, pp. 13–35. 11 A. Cornwall, Democratising Engagement: What the UK Can Learn from International Experience (Demos, 2008), online www.participatorymethods. org/sites/participatorymethods.org/files/Democratising_Engagement-web.pdf. 12 B. Lynch, ‘Disturbing the Peace: Museums, Democracy and Conflict Avoidance’, in D. Walters, D. Leven and P. Davis, eds., Heritage and Peacebuilding (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2017), pp. 109–126. 13 A. Contu and E. Girei, ‘NGOs management and the value of “partnerships”’ for equality in international development: what’s in a name?’, in Human Relations, 67, no. 2, p. 227, 2014. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid., p. 228. 16 B. Lynch, ‘The Gate in the Wall: Beyond Happiness-making in Museums’, in B. Onciul, M. L. Stefano and S. Hawke, Engaging Heritage, Engaging Communities (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2017), pp. 11–29. 17 B. Lynch, Whose Cake Is It Anyway?: A Collaborative Investigation into Engagement and Participation in Twelve Museums and Galleries in the UK (London: The Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2011), www.phf.org.uk/publications/ whose-cake-anyway/. 18 A. Cornwall and V. Schattan Coelho, Spaces for Change? The Politics of Participation in New Democratic Arenas (London: Zed, 2006). 19 B. Lynch, ‘Custom-made reflective practice: can museums realise their capabilities in helping others realise theirs?’, in Museum Management and Curatorship, 26, no. 5, pp. 441–458, 2011. See also B. Lynch, Our Museum: A Five Year Perspective from a Critical Friend (The Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2014), http:// api.ning.com/files/HQSy6kXC6MrE3kr4K5-2cDLUFOI2Dxek8LOcATLX* BgljrdNhnG5MycQ5-SzhvO945Hqgpcgq*bNKQulMi9ki1qiZ0Ah8oUU/ PHFOurMuseumAfiveyearperspective.pdf.

46  Bernadette Lynch 20 B. Lynch, ‘Migrants, Museums and tackling the legacies of prejudice’, in C. Johnson and P. Bevlander, eds., Museums in a time of Migration: Re-thinking museums’ roles, representations, collections, and collaborations (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2017), pp. 225–242. 21 See A. Gunder-Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967); T. Dos Santos, ‘The structure of dependence’, in American Economic Review, 60, no. 2, pp. 231–236, 1970. 22 J. M. Brinkerhoff, Partnership for International Development: Rhetoric or Results? (London: Lynne Rienner, 2002). 23 M. Mason, ‘The philosophy and politics of partnership’, in Norrag News: The New Politics of Partnership: Peril or Promise?, 41, p. 18, 2008. www.norrag. org/issues/41. 24 Ibid. There is a wealth of resources on participatory methodologies and techniques for participatory governance. See, for example, www.pnet.ids.ac.uk/ prc/index.htm, www.peopleandparticipation.net/display/methods and www.­ toolkitparticipation.nl (all accessed 13 August, 2018). There are also dedicated websites for some of the methodologies mentioned here, including www.­ photovoice.com, www.nif.co.uk/planningforreal/, www.participatorybudgeting. org.uk (for UK applications), www.futuresearch.net, www.citizenreportcard. com, www.cardboardcitizens.org.uk/theatre_of_the_oppressed.php and http:// cdd.stanford.edu/polls/docs/summary/.See also I. Newman, Reclaiming Local Democracy (Bristol: Policy Press) 25 In May 2007, 45 ‘champions of participation’ from 15 countries met in the UK to compare notes and strategies, and to share experiences, successes and challenges. See www.ids.ac.uk/project/champions-of-participation. 26 See the Social Justice Alliance for Museums, http://sjam.org/ See also R. Sandel, and E. Nightingale, Museums, Equality and Social Justice (London: Routledge, 2012), and R. Sandell Museums, Moralities and Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2017). 27 C. Nyamu-Musembi and A. Cornwall, ‘What is the Rights-based Approach all about? Perspectives from International Development Agencies’, IDS Working Paper no. 234, Institute for Development Studies, Brighton, 2004. 28 Hudson interview with author, July 2018. 29 Ibid. Hudson also cites a classic of the ‘participation-lite’ genre in the arts: see www.youtube.com/watch?v=DohRXxHLaKE. 3 0 See Danish Welfare Museum: www.visitsvendborg.com/ln-int/svendborgmuseum-welfare-museum-gdk632423. 31 ‘Care leavers’ broadly means an adult who spent time in care as a child, i.e. under the age of 18. Such care could be in foster care, residential care – mainly children’s homes – or other arrangements outside the immediate or extended family. 32 See Museum of Homelessness: http://museumofhomelessness.org/. 33 M. Anderson from interview with author, July 2018. 34 S. MacDonald from interview with author, July 2018. 35 N.Simon,TheArtofRelevance,2016,bookavailableonline:www.artofrelevance.org/ read-online/. See also http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-different-storyof-thanksgiving.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_ campaign=Feed%3A+museumtwo+%28Museum+2.0%29. 36 K. (Kooj) Chuhan, from interview with author, July 2018. 37 E. Winch, from interview with the author, July 2018. 38 A. Hudson, from interview with the author, July 2018. 39 The Danish Welfare Museum: www.svendborgmuseum.dk/danmarksfor sorgsmuseum. 40 S. Smed, from interview with the author, July 2018.

Partnerships in museums  47 41 G. Jacobsen, quoted by S. Smed, in an interview with the author, Denmark, Summer, 2017. 42 S. Smed, in an interview with the author, Denmark, Summer, 2017. 43 J. Dryzek, Democracy in Capitalist Times: Ideals, Limits and Struggles (­Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 5–6. 4 4 Ibid. 45 Museum Detox: http://museumdetox.com/. 46 S. Wajid, comments made in Birmingham museum meeting, July 2016. 47 M. Anderson in interview with the author, July 2018. 48 Our Museum: Communities and museums as active partners: http://ourmuseum. org.uk/. 49 See Paul Hamlyn Foundation: www.phf.org.uk/. 50 The four Our Museum evaluation criteria, final reports and useful resources for participation and partnership work are outlined in detail and are available to download from the Our Museum website: http://ourmuseum.org.uk/.

3 The social role of museums From social inclusion to health and wellbeing Nuala Morse

Policy genealogy of museums Research about the social role of the museum, over and beyond its role as an institution of collection and display, speaks to a sense of the ‘connected museum’ of our time. Recent developments in museum theory and practice have generated an extensive literature that marks out a renewed concern with the ‘socially responsible’,1 ‘socially engaged’, 2 ‘socially purposeful’3 work of the museum. A broad definition of this work includes practice that is aimed at breaking down the barriers of museums for individuals who do not typically visit, and work that is oriented towards social impact and more participatory and democratic approaches within cultural institutions. The socially engaged work of the museum emerges out of longer trajectories of practice, since the 1960s at least, in the coming together of critical scholarship, political and activist movements. It is also articulated through cultural policy and museum practice linked to diversifying audiences and breaking down the perception of museums as elite institutions. This chapter examines the development of this practice (in its broadest sense) in a UK context, tracing its recent policy genealogy and its impact on shaping practice. In the UK, the notion of the socially responsible museum was concretised through the New Labour (1997–2010) cultural policy focus on ­engaging ‘socially excluded’ groups with arts and culture, and an investment in museums and art galleries.4 This period was followed by Conservative coalition and majority governments which have been marked by a long period of austerity politics and reduction in public expenditure in response to the economic crash of 2008. In this period there has been a step back from New Labour’s direct involvement in culture, and significant cuts to museums’ funding in real terms. There has also been a growing profile and developing practice of ‘museums in health’, 5 aligned to the arts in health movement, focussed on demonstrating the health and wellbeing impacts of museum participation, and developing partnerships with health and social care services and their clients. This chapter considers this timeframe and its broader effects on defining the social role of

The social role of museums  49 the museum in the UK. To explore this shift, the chapter develops a policy genealogy as a lens for understanding recent formulations of the social role of the museum. Trevor Gale describes policy genealogy as a critical (Foucauldian) approach to policy research, focussed on ‘social actors’ engagement with policy’, the ‘particulars of temporary policy settlements’ and the wider ‘modalities of power’ across these settlements.6 The purpose of a policy genealogy is not simply to trace continuous developments, but also to seek out discontinuities and analyse how temporary settlements are formed. The aim of the chapter is to present a longer view than has previously been studied in a UK policy context and to reflect on some of the wider implications for understanding the dynamics of sector change in museums, adding to previous work in this area.7 To narrate this policy genealogy, the chapter examines the recent campaigns of the Museums Association (MA, the UK sector body for museums) and a case study of Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM), a large local authority museum service in the North East of England. The case study is compiled from data derived from a larger ethnographic research project examining community engagement practices at TWAM conducted during 2011–3, which included document analysis (annual reports, team plans, funding bids, etc.) and interviews with 45 members of staff. The two levels of analysis enable a reflection on the wider sector discourse over this timeframe and an in-depth study of how one ­institution has responded to these changes. The argument put forward in this chapter follows recent work to suggest that museum workers actively interpret policy directives and their working environments (including funding requirements and local politics). New Labour cultural policy is well described in the literature and studies broadly conclude that some combination of external forces – funding, policy directives, a new strategic body and a growing body of research – and internal forces – organisational objectives and professional values of a committed workforce – led to a shift in museum practice along more socially responsible lines for many museums.8 This also led to substantial debates around the role of culture and culture’s relationship with public policy.9 The starting point of this chapter is the more recent discussion in this area, which has moved on from top-down explanatory narratives where policy is something that happens to museum professionals, to a more nuanced discussion that recognises the active roles of professionals in managing policy for their own ends and that of their institutions.10 The second period under Conservative governments has so far not been fully addressed. The questions this chapter considers are: how do these new conditions, in particular austerity, affect the work that is done within and beyond the museum? Without government policy infrastructures and funding, do these socially engaged practices erode and fall away? How do these changing situations impact museum professionals’ perceptions and articulations of this practice?

50  Nuala Morse The chapter outlines a shifting focus of the social role of museum. The review of the MA rhetoric suggests this work has roots in discussions of museum engagement for young people and of ‘sustainability’ in the sector, and that the cuts have precipitated a focus on articulating the social role of museums as a means to secure their contemporary relevance and continuity. Despite significant cuts to the museum sector, some museum workers are reconfiguring their social impact more explicitly. For some museums, like TWAM, there have been opportunities within the Conservative policy period to reconfigure social practice along new terms – that of health and wellbeing. However, an uneven picture and tensions emerge as the analysis also suggests that much of the capacity to deliver this type of work was severely affected by the cuts, but this work was protected to an extent in those institutions where this ethos was already established prior to this period of investment, such as TWAM. The chapter shows how by taking a longer policy view it is possible to discern some of the shifting language and form of the social role of the museum. Some wider implications are discussed in the conclusion.

Social inclusion in the ‘golden age’, 1997–2010 The New Labour years in the UK (1997–2010) were characterised by regular statements linked to a multi-agency approach to social policy that explicitly recast the role of the museum and gallery sector towards tackling social exclusion. These statements included a series of directives from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), most notably Centres for Social Change: Museums, Galleries and Archives for All (2000). The DCMS directives, albeit at an arm’s length and via the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), placed expectations on museums to work in partnership with third sector and local organisations to contribute to work around employment, crime reduction, urban regeneration and neighbourhood renewal, rehabilitation, health care and health promotion.11 DCMS also set out categories of ‘socially excluded’ groups as a target for museum projects, such as disability, Black Minority Ethnic (BME) and lower socio-­ economic groups, with associated metrics for museums to report. At the same time, ‘cultural diversity’ was identified as the other significant area within policy debates and DCMS efforts at widening cultural participation, signalled in the 1999 document Museums for the Many. On a macro-level, the government’s interest in the diversity and access work of museums was itself linked to pursuing social cohesion policies and the wider aims of tackling social exclusion.12 The discourse of inclusion and diversity was quickly adopted by many sections of the museum sector and led to the development of a range of education and outreach programs.13 The New Labour period also marked a time of steady increase in ­funding for museums, often referred to as the ‘golden age’.14 In 2002, the government-­funded initiative Renaissance in the Regions, co-ordinated by

The social role of museums  51 the MLA, was launched with an investment of almost £150 million aimed at supporting major regional museums in England, including the implementation of the government’s inclusion and access agendas.15 By 2011, close to £300 million was invested, adding overall around 13% to revenue budgets for those museums in the program.16 In the case of TWAM, which was part of Renaissance and one of the few regional museums in direct receipt of DCMS funding (usually reserved for national museums), a review of annual reports shows revenue funding from both central and local government rose from c. £5 million in 1997–98 to c. £12 million in 2009–10. By 2009 the museum’s overall budget was around £16 million. Over the same period, the number of employees rose from 200 to 330. Overall, the impact of this period on the UK museum sector was somewhat mixed. A review of Renaissance showed increase visitor numbers for priority groups across the Renaissance funded museums (up 32% between 2002 and 2008)17 and it is clear that this period stimulated the development of outreach practice across the country – as the example of TWAM below will also demonstrate. However, as several studies have shown, the adoption of social inclusion directives was not straightforward, due in part to confusion over the terminology and implementation guidelines.18 There was also some resistance by museums (including some Nationals) that sought instead to focus on advocating the economic contribution of museums and their intrinsic value as a way of framing the contemporary relevance of museums19 (Tate and the Victoria &Albert Museum are important exceptions in relation to their diversity work 20). The review of the Renaissance program found that the overall focus on projects hampered its ambitions in terms of enabling long-term transformation of the sector in relation to its social impact. Within early DCMS statements, the role of museums in contributing to health care and health promotion is mentioned briefly but with less substantive recommendations for taking forward this work. A very small number of examples of museums working on public health issues through their collections (sexual health awareness and mental health) can be found in Centres for Social Change and the accompanying sector report. 21 In 2005, MLA published a number of research reports outlining the impact that museums, libraries and archives can have in these areas of social policy, which make reference to health promotion and working with local mental health support organisations as part of the wider social inclusion agenda, and concludes that the extent of activity in the sector at that time was very modest and the evidence base for this work did not exist.22

Health and wellbeing in austerity In May 2010, the Labour government was replaced by a Conservative/ Liberal-­Democrat coalition, and later in 2015 a Conservative majority was elected. While New Labour policies were marked by a broadly coherent set

52  Nuala Morse of policy directions and a period of investments in museum projects, the Coalition and Conservative government years provided little in the way of a developed policy. References to social inclusion were dropped and this period has been characterised, according to one commentator, by a ‘vacuum of ideas, passion and commitment about culture’. 23 A single central announcement came in the form of a Culture White Paper in 2016.24 The White Paper places a strong emphasis on the contribution of the ‘creative economy’ to economic growth, and defines the social value of culture as part of the economic value calculus. The responsibility for museum funding was subsequently transferred to the Arts Council, which has continued with a focus on ‘great art for everyone’ and increasing access to culture. More broadly, this period has been marked by a cultural policy driven by austerity politics in response to the economic crash of 2008. There was an explicit retreat from New Labour’s public investment in culture, with successive cuts to the DCMS and the dismantling of MLA in 2012, 25 signalling the intention to revert culture to a marginal governmental concern.26 The most severe effects for many museums have been felt in terms of the reduction of local councils’ budgetary contributions – government figures for England show that local authority spending on museums and galleries fell by 31% in real terms between 2010 and 2016.27 The impact of these cuts across the sector has been reduced staffing levels, reduced opening hours, the introduction of admission charges in a small number of cases and a number of museum closures. 28 Significant, and highlighted in the Renaissance review, is the fact that many of the posts created in the context of the inclusion agenda were fixed-term positions and therefore found to be most vulnerable during a period of cuts. The report notes that ‘[t]he terms of their funding have meant that the hubs have been unable to recruit and retain staff, develop their capacity or implement the organisational change that had been envisaged’. 29 The lack of policy directive in the context of culture over this period is not directly synonymous with a lack of governmental concern over these matters, but rather an explicit politics that views culture as falling outside government concerns. As Ruth Levitas makes clear, austerity is itself a political program that aims to reduce state provision and to force down public sector spending.30 This was originally expressed as the later-abandoned Coalition idea of The Big Society, and the Localism Act 2011. The localism and decentralisation agendas devolved power over funding and policies to local authorities, and policy statements expressed ambitions to engage local communities in taking over and running local services, such as schools, libraries, and indeed museums, 31 with a number of local authority museums being transferred into community ownership. 32 Within this political program civil society and community organising is encouraged to step in with reduced funding, a phenomenon which has been termed ‘austerity localism’.33 This agenda was significant in relation to the reform of the health sector. In England, the Health and Social Care Act of 2012 (and following

The social role of museums  53 on, the Care Act of 2014) has led to a significant re-organisation of the provision of health services by extending the variety of provider organisations to include public and private sector, charity, voluntary and/or social enterprise organisations. Linked to the Act was the establishment of new clinical commissioning groups with direct responsibility to ‘buy’ care on behalf of their local communities, and the responsibility for public health was transferred from the National Health Service to local authorities. Mental health and wellbeing have become (at the time of writing) central concepts in cross-cutting UK policy areas.34 This has opened opportunities for museums to play an active role in improving the health and wellbeing of their local communities in the contexts of cultural commissioning35 and social prescribing, 36 integrating arts and cultural activities into a range of services, including mental health and wellbeing, older people services and place-based commissioning. This new policy landscape is leading many museums to look towards the health sector for new partnerships. There is now a considerable diversity of museum projects and programs across the country working with adult services, children and young people’s services, hospitals, care homes and sheltered accommodation, and the wider health and social care sector. In recognition of the growth of this area of practice, in 2015 the National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing was established to provide sector support. Two reports based on sector-wide surveys were produced37 with case studies showing how the sector is responding creatively to health and wellbeing areas such as loneliness and isolation, mental health and an ageing population. Examples include Birmingham Museum Trust’s Creative Carers programme, which offers a creative outlet to people in a caring role. Other examples include The Whitworth’s partnership with Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust and creative programmes delivered in the hospital sites, and the Sensing Culture group at the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in Canterbury, for adults with sight loss. In 2011, the Happy Museum project was launched, an initiative for museums to develop a holistic approach to wellbeing and sustainability38 (I return to this momentarily). This emergent practice is accompanied by a growing evidence base of the significant impact of this work for individuals.39 However, it is difficult to quantify the exact scale of this work; programs appear to be growing in numbers, though they remain relatively small-scale. In addition, there is a firm sense that museums’ contribution to health and wellbeing is now clearly established,40 and that this is a rapidly expanding area of work as learning and practice are shared. At a time of continued disinvestment in culture, one way to read this shift is on a pragmatic level as part of the museum sector’s efforts to access alternative sources of funding through partnership working with health and social care providers. However, arguments for the role of museums in prioritising human health and wellbeing also have purchase because of the real potential of the museum to construct a much wider social role along these

54  Nuala Morse terms. I want to suggest that health and wellbeing programs in museums might be seen as evolving out of the social inclusion work that preceded it. In the next part of this chapter I suggest this shift is better understood as part of a purposeful effort by museums to recast their social agency in line with the current ideas of how to respond to communities.

Evolving discourse: the Museums Association The MA was established in 1889 as a sector association for professional standards and advocacy. Prior to, and during the first period of social inclusion policies described above, the MA led a number of diversity programs and traineeships.41 Key initiatives at the time, developed through the Renaissance hubs with central government support, including the Campaign for Learning in Museums and Galleries (CLMG), focussed on young people’s engagement with museums through creative and formal learning opportunities.42 Another significant campaign focussed on sustainability in museums – economic, social and environmental.43 A sector-wide consultation in 2008–9 and collection review training program focussed this discussion aimed at rethinking the social role of museums in terms of present and future concerns: ‘Sustainability concerns the long-term role of museums and their relationships with communities, as well as the future of the planet’.44 A follow-on initiative spurred from these discussions was the Happy Museum. Here the concerns with sustainability were linked to the concept of wellbeing explicitly, providing a leadership framework for museums to develop this work. While there appears to be no direct campaign linked to social inclusion over this period, we can begin to trace discussion about the wider social role of museums across these other initiatives and campaigns. It is therefore later into the second period described in this chapter that the MA appears to engage more directly with a more active campaign around the socially responsible role of the museum, building on these campaigns and responding to the continuing economic uncertainty facing museums. In 2013, following a year-long consultation process about the desired shape of the sector for 2020,45 the MA launched the Museums Change Lives campaign, signalling a strong vision for the sector: a socially purposeful role for the museum in terms of its impact on individuals, communities, society and the environment. Based on research evidence and museum practice, the three headings of the manifesto (updated 2017) focus on enhancing health and wellbeing, creating better places to live and work, and inspiring engagement, debate and reflection. What is significant in this report is that impact (‘changing lives’) places individuals’ wellbeing and health at the centre,46 alongside a more explicit activist role linked to social justice and equality through creating spaces for questioning, debate and critical thinking. While it is not yet possible to ascertain the impact of this campaign to

The social role of museums  55 date, there have been efforts to push this campaign to affect a wider sector discourse on the role of museums. Since 2011, the MA has taken annual surveys on the impact of the cuts on museums. Reading across the reports, it is possible to draw out a number of immediate and longer-term effects of the cuts on socially engaged practice. The cuts survey for 2011 highlights a direct impact on outreach services and free events. In the following surveys, the impact on targeted work with specific groups cannot be established as the reports do not systematically address this, though qualitative comments refer to a perceived risk. Additionally, over this time there were a number of high profile closures of specialised departments, including the diversity team at the Victoria and Albert in London and the outreach department at English Heritage, a clear sign of the vulnerability of socially engaged work in the context of austerity cuts.47 As the Renaissance report highlights, many of the posts associated with this type of work were fixed-term rather than ‘core’ and therefore at risk during funding cuts. The results of the more recent sector surveys in 2017 and 2018 by the MA are noteworthy in signalling a further shift. Public funding cuts continue to affect the sector, notably in terms of year-on-year decrease in staff numbers and budgetary cuts to local authority museums. At the same time, the reports note that public-facing services are in many cases now being prioritised, and work with specific outreach groups has increased. This might be associated with the shift to Arts Council funding, with its own inclusive vision of ‘great art and culture for everyone’; or it might be read as part of a museum’s effort to secure its contemporary relevance in the face of these cuts. Of interest to this chapter is the appearance of health and wellbeing projects in the category of public facing work, with nearly half of the museums surveyed during 2017–8 engaging in this work, and complementing the findings of the National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing reports. To further understand these developments, I now turn to the case study of TWAM.

Evolving practice and partnerships at TWAM In Centres for Social Change, the TWAM mission statement is presented as an example of mainstreaming social inclusion in museums. Established in 2003, it reads: ‘to help people determine their place in the world, and understand their identities, so enhancing their self-respect and their respect for others’, and signals a commitment to socially engaged work that long precedes the policy context outlined above, work which began under director David Fleming (1991–2001). Fleming’s aim was to develop a museum ‘for and of the people’, based on widening access and harnessing the social agency of the museum.48 Central to this ambition was broadening audiences to better represent the local area and developing wider public programming

56  Nuala Morse focussed on audiences. A review of the annual reports and projects reveals a period of increased activity, including community exhibitions, outreach projects (the first outreach post is established in 1992) and learning activities, as well as a shift in the museum’s visiting audiences to include more families from lower socio-economic groups.49 Fleming’s assessment was that an inclusive way of working was embedded at TWAM and this marks the end of his directorship. Alec Coles followed as the Director in the social inclusion years, where this work continued apace, enabled by significant increases in external project funding. In 2004 the Outreach team was formally established with a remit to develop partnerships with local statutory bodies such as the probation service, social services, local authority youth teams, as well as voluntary social and health organisations, and community organisations. The partnership projects engaged directly with the different dimensions of social exclusion, and the DCMS target groups shaped much of the work over this period: We reached out to the different communities of the social inclusion agenda: BME, disability, the kind of communities for who we develop bespoke projects with, reaching out to them and also linking into external agendas. (Outreach team member interview, 2011) Over this period the team reached 17 staff members, and the rapid growth of the team can be directly related to the social inclusion agenda and Renaissance funded posts. The corporate plans over this period also show a close alignment of the museum service priorities with DCMS strategic priorities, Renaissance priority areas and Local Area Agreement (via the local council) priorities and their associated metrics. Reflecting on this period, the director at the time, Alec Coles, suggested the policy and discourse of social inclusion were a key influence in driving the work of the organisation by providing the infrastructures in terms of funding, strategic aims, target groups and forms of reporting on this work. While it is clear that policy had some effect in shaping socially engaged practice, at TWAM this built upon a longer institutional commitment to this type of work. Indeed, the strong alignment between the principles of social inclusion and the museum’s institutional objectives enabled museum professionals to use the policy trajectory and its funding infrastructures to further validate and enable the museum’s social role in its local settings. A number of studies in the UK have examined the ways in which the language of social inclusion was adopted but also revised and repurposed by museum professionals across the sector to their own ends50 – at times reducing the impact of this work to ‘getting people in’ and at other times augmenting the museum as an agent of social change, as in the case of TWAM. It can therefore be said that a certain combination of contextual settings (funding,

The social role of museums  57 policy directives, local priorities) and individual actions (both directors and frontline staff) framed the social role of the museum. Yet the question arises: what happens to this social role once these external (funding) infrastructures are dismantled? As a local authority museum service, the impact of the cuts on TWAM has been significant. In November 2012, Newcastle City Council, one of the main funders of TWAM, cut its contribution to museums by 50% over three years, a move widely reported in the local and national press. Between 2009 and 2017, overall TWAM budgets were reduced by about a third, leading to £4.3 million of savings.51 While central government grants were replaced by Arts Council funding, reductions in local council support have had a profound impact, leading to successive cycles of cost reductions, restructures and staff losses, including in the Outreach team. The effects on staff morale have been profound, in particular the lack of certainty: as one member of staff succinctly put it ‘the confusion – around jobs and budgets – is really damaging to everyone’. It is not possible to discuss this fully here, though this is a significant dimension of contemporary museum work that demands further and serious attention in terms of the trauma that it can inflict in and on organisations.52 Austerity has also pressured the museum to raise income from non-government sources. Reflecting on this transition, the current director stated: During the mid-1990s to mid-2000s there was a colossal amount of resources available, and there were a lot of projects and capital development works, and a feeling of affluence. We are now in a period where we are having to examine everything in forensic detail, every bit of expenditure and that changes the way you look at things and you are more aware of the pressure. […] if you are aiming to be socially relevant, and socially engaged, but at the same time you have to support yourself by generating some of your income, you have to be prepared to live with that tension and negotiate that through. (Iain Watson, interview, 2012) At this time at TWAM there is a clear continued commitment to socially engaged work, but managers, in particular, highlight the constraints of diminishing resources, the urgency surrounding income generation activities, and the tensions that arise when balancing different priorities.

Health and wellbeing at TWAM Despite the various policy shifts and uncertainties, what is nevertheless still notable at TWAM is how this context has created opportunities for the Outreach team to re-organise a significant proportion of its work under a health and wellbeing banner. In the period observed during the research, while

58  Nuala Morse policy directives and requirements were suspended, the team ­developed a new model of working focussed on consolidating the existing partnerships with health and social care providers in a strategic manner: What we have done is to establish relationships with key agencies which are intended to be long term … at least three years. We work in a very strategic way now that focuses on engaging some of the most vulnerable people. Currently we work with NECA, the North East Council for Addictions, we work with Northumbria probation trust we also work with Moving Forward through Mental Health concern, and we work with older people alongside NHS occupational therapists. (Interview, 2012) These strengthened partnerships emerged, at least in part, as a response to the restructures of public health funding. At the time that budget cuts and restructures were taking place across the museum service, it was imperative to find alternative funding sources. As one staff member stated: There is an opportunity here with the shift to commissioning […] there is a great opportunity for us to really get in and look at this wellbeing agenda, in terms of looking at what wellbeing actually means and where museums fit in. (Interview, 2012) More significant is the way in which these new conditions (or the appearance of their lack) shifted the ways in which museum professionals in this team view their work, and by extension, the social role of the museum: I think wellbeing is really important – because if you look at our mission statement it’s all about communities and identity and it’s a fairly obvious thing to be doing – any people with any background – you are helping them and supporting them with their wellbeing. (Interview, 2012) For those teams there was a clear synergy to be found in this new language of wellbeing as part of inclusion work, linked to their own interpretation of the mission statement, and, by extension, the social role of the museum. This articulation of their practice built upon over a decade of outreach work with local communities and the team’s sense of values-based museum practice. The strategic approach was about developing a more focussed and sustainable way of working for a smaller team. It also developed from a period of reflection – enabled in part by the suspense of policy directives and associated data collection work – as an opportunity to analyse the needs of the communities they serve. The teams in particular identified the significant health inequalities in the North East, including disproportionately

The social role of museums  59 higher levels of ill health, 53 disability, mental health issues and addiction, to consider how the museum might respond. In this way, the team framed its social role by establishing the most pressing societal issues in the region: There is also a wider societal benefit to the work that we do when we work with people with mental health problems or people with addiction issues or older people, we can support external organisations with their health and wellbeing agendas. (Interview, 2013) As such, the socially engaged ethos that was embedded within individuals’ values, practices and routines was re-oriented into new opportunities and new frameworks. Strengthening a smaller number of strategic partnerships was both a necessity, but also an opportunity in this second period. This shifts the ways in which the museum is connected into its locality by responding to local public health, mental health and social care issues, placing the museum within wider ‘landscapes of care’. 54 In the context of austerity, the development of partnership can also be seen as purposeful efforts to work with organisations whose clients include groups who are disproportionately affected by cutbacks. The team now works along three health and wellbeing strands: the Platinum Programme, for older adults over 55, including work in care homes and local hospitals, and with socially isolated adults; the Wellbeing programme, supporting people with mental health issues; the RICH – R ­ ecovering Identities through Culture and Heritage programme, supporting people in recovery from addiction or who have been involved in the criminal justice system. This work is building towards commissioning bids in which the museum is a partner in delivering adult social care, as well as exploring opportunities for social prescribing.

Conclusion This chapter has sought to formulate a short policy genealogy of the social role of UK museums. It marked out two periods: a first period organised around the policy concepts of social inclusion (and diversity) in the context of high investment in museums, followed by a second period of austerity, without policy directives for culture, but a clear intention to reduce the size of the state. As other commentators have suggested, the social inclusion agenda has had a significant impact in shaping the dynamics of the UK museum sector in generating the imperatives and funding for change towards more socially engaged and purposeful museum practice. How far this work has been embedded across the sector, however, is still an open question. Assessing the dynamics of sector change in 2003 in the context of the social inclusion agenda, Sandell cautioned that museums are resistant to change.55 The Renaissance 2008 review suggests this work perhaps

60  Nuala Morse remained marginal due to its funding structures and the failure of many museums to mainstream the work. Looking across these two periods, the review of key MA campaigns suggests a focus on young people and a sustainability agenda, which evolved into a campaign focussed on individuals’ wellbeing, place-making and museums as spaces of critical debate. The case of TWAM shows how this practice developed in an institution with a long-term commitment to its social responsibility. While the inclusion agenda further enabled this work, the ensuing context of austerity politics has led the Outreach team to reconfigure their social role by shifting to the field of health and wellbeing as a response to local health inequalities. There is now clear evidence that a growing number of other UK museums are also developing work in this area, which can be related to the new opportunities for partnerships with health and social care providers. In some ways, the case of TWAM is exceptional because of its institutional history and long-term commitment to social inclusion. However, as a case study it enables a closer look at the dynamics of socially engaged work in museums as a set of situated practices, with implications for research and practice internationally. Approaching these questions through a policy genealogy and locating the effects on practice of policy actions enables another view on how ‘socially engaged’ practice is formed and formulated by the social actors who engage with it, its temporary attachment to particular vocabularies, and the continuities and discontinuities with governmental concerns. Policy genealogies aim to interrogate terms and conditions, and then to question how they pertain to specific forms of practice in specific places. This includes taking a closer look at practice and the terms through which this social role is interpreted by those museum professionals who engage directly with communities as part of the cultural work of ‘connecting’ the museum. As a methodology, it aims to provide insight into the concept of social agency by acknowledging the social, cultural and economic changes that have informed its development, and the active role of professional actors in shaping these formulations through values-based practice. Museum discourse often emphasises paradigmatic narratives of ‘reinvention’ or ‘revolution’. However, this chapter suggests that in the case of the social role of the museum, change can also be viewed in a more continuous and adaptive manner. Another dimension of the policy genealogy approach is to consider the modalities of power across policy-driven settlements by subjecting these to critical analysis. Reflecting on these changes, one staff member at the museum commented: ‘I think the museum is finding out it has to work more like a direct statutory service provider’. This last reflection signals some of the ways in which museum professionals are working in the UK to reconfigure the civic role of the local authority museum, a non-statutory service, in a more fundamental manner, as part of the local services that support community wellbeing and public health. With regards to the social

The social role of museums  61 role of the UK museum in the context of austerity, one critical consideration is whether museums, like other community organisations, are being asked to fill the welfare gaps left by the retreat of the state. A further question to emerge is whether a focus on wellbeing sidelines prior work focussed on the causes health inequalities such as disadvantage, discrimination and exclusion. A critical assessment of these efforts to respond to local needs and articulate an alternative culture-led approach to meeting them requires further empirical research. To a certain degree, austerity appears to have led to the consolidation of the social role of museums. Indeed Museums Change Lives can be understood in this way, as a broader campaign to secure the contemporary relevance of museums faced with economic uncertainty. However, this conclusion is offered with significant caution as this work is also vulnerable, as the cuts surveys have shown. There is an equally present risk that socially engaged practices become displaced in favour of economic activities.56 Indeed, the focus on economic activities such as income generation can conflict with socially purposeful objectives when capacity and resources are squeezed, and this was highlighted by the current TWAM director as the present challenge for the organisation. Furthermore, at the time of writing there has not yet been widespread success in leveraging diminishing health and social care budgets into cultural programs. Despite suggestions in MA surveys of a renewed growth of this work, and the unique case study of TWAM, it would be naïve to read ‘resilience’ straightforwardly off these examples; these are perhaps better viewed as fragile settlements emerging from, and responding to, the local contexts in which museums are now ­situated and in which health and wellbeing have emerged as a one significant way of formulating the social role of the museum.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Maurice Davies and colleagues in the School of ­Museum Studies for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Notes 1 E. Heumann Gurian, Civilizing the Museum: The Collected Writings of Elaine Heumann Gurian (London: Routledge, 2006). 2 R. Sandell, ‘Museums and the Combating of Social Inequality: Roles, Responsibilities, Resistance’, in R. Sandell, ed., Museums, Society, Inequality (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 3–24; L. H. Silverman, The Social Work of Museums (New York: Routledge, 2010). 3 J. Dodd, ‘The Socially Purposeful Museum’, in Museologica Brunensia, 4, no. 2, pp. 28–31, 2015. 4 A. Tlili, S. Gewirtz, and A. Cribb, ‘New Labour’s Socially Responsible Museum: Roles, Functions and Greater Expectations’, in Policy Studies, 28, no. 3, pp. 269–289, 2007. DOI: 10.1080/01442870701437634; R. Mason, ‘Conflict and Complement: An Exploration of the Discourses Informing the

62  Nuala Morse Concept of the Socially Inclusive Museum in Contemporary Britain’, in International Journal of Heritage Studies, 10, no. 1, pp. 49–73, 2004. DOI: 10.1080/1352725032000194240; R. Sandell, ‘Museums as Agents of Social Inclusion’, in Museum Management and Curatorship, 17, no. 4, pp. 401–418, 1998. DOI: 10.1080/09647779800401704. 5 H. Chatterjee, and G. Noble, Museums, Health and Well-Being (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013). 6 T. Gale, ‘Critical Policy Sociology: Historiography, Archaeology and Genealogy as Methods of Policy Analysis’, in Journal of Education Policy, 16, pp. 385; 389, 2001. DOI: 10.1080/02680930110071002. Gale’s reflections pertain to educational policy, and I propose here it is possible to move these lenses of analysis onto the museum, as another form of a public institution. He also proposes two other overlapping lenses, policy historiography (tracing the wider discourses/hegemony shaping past and present policy) and policy archaeology (the rules of policy formation). Here I only develop one lens due to restrictions of space, but also in favour of developing a chronological argument. 7 R. Sandell, ‘Social Inclusion, the Museum and the Dynamics of Sectoral Change’, in Museum and Society, 1, no. 1, pp. 45–62, 2003. 8 A. Tlili, ‘Behind the Policy Mantra of the Inclusive Museum: Receptions of Social Exclusion and Inclusion in Museums and Science Centres’, in Cultural Sociology, 2, no. 1, pp. 123–147, 2008; V. McCall, ‘Social Policy and Cultural Services: A Study of Scottish Border Museums as Implementers of Social Inclusion’, in Social Policy and Society, 8, no. 03, pp. 319–331, 2009. DOI: 10.1017/ S1474746409004874; C. Gray, ‘Structure, Agency and Museum Policies’, in Museum and Society, 14, no. 1, pp. 116–130, 2017; R. Sandell, ‘Social Inclusion, the Museum and the Dynamics of Sectoral Change’. 9 E. Belfiore, and O. Bennett, The Social Impact of the Arts: An Intellectual History (New York: Springer, 2008); D. O’Brien, Cultural Policy: Management, Value and Modernity in the Creative Industries (London: Routledge, 2013). 10 C. Gray, ‘Cabined, Cribbed, Confined, Bound in’ or ‘We Are Not a Government Poodle’: Structure and Agency in Museums and Galleries’, in Public Policy and Administration, 29, no. 3, pp. 185–203, 2014. DOI: 10.1177/0952076713506450; M. Nisbett, ‘New Perspectives on Instrumentalism: An Empirical Study of Cultural Diplomacy’, in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 19, no. 5, pp. 557–575, 2013. DOI: 10.1080/10286632.2012.704628; C. Gray, ‘Local Government and the Arts’, in Local Government Studies, 28, no. 1, pp. 77–90, 2002. DOI: 10.1080/714004133; E. Belfiore, ‘‘Defensive Instrumentalism’ and the Legacy of New Labour’s Cultural Policies’, in Cultural Trends, 21, no. 2, pp. 103–111, 2012. DOI: 10.1080/09548963.2012.674750. 11 MLA (Museums Libraries and Archives Council), ‘Neighbourhood Renewal and Social Inclusion: The Role of Museums, Archives and Libraries’ (Report by S. Parker, K. Waterston, G. Michaluk and L. Rickard), 2002; MLA (Museums Libraries and Archives Council), ‘New Directions in Social Policy: Communities and Inclusion Policy for Museums, Libraries and Archives (by R. Linley)’ 2005; MLA (Museums Libraries and Archives Council), ‘New Directions in Social Policy: Health Policy and Museums, Libraries and Archives (Report by M. Weisen)’ 2005. 12 A. Dewdney, D. Dibosa, and V. Walsh, ‘Cultural Diversity: Politics, Policy and Practices. The Case of Tate Encounters’, in R. Sandell and E. Nightingale, eds., Museums, Equality, and Social Justice (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 114–125. 13 GLLAM, ‘Museums and Social Inclusion: The GLLAM Report’ (Group for Large Local Authority Museums, 2000), p. 5, J. Dodd, and R. Sandell, Including Museums: Perspectives on Museums, Galleries and Social

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Inclusion (Leicester: Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, ­University of Leicester, 2001). J. Stanziola, and D. Méndez-Carbajo, ‘Economic Growth, ­G overnment Expenditure and Income: The Case of Museums and Libraries in England’, in Cultural Trends, 20, no. 3–4, pp. 243–256, 2011. DOI: 10.1080/09548963.2011.589704, (though it should be noted this particular ‘golden age’ term is a contested point). Resource, ‘Renaissance in the Regions: A New Vision for England’s Museums’, 2001. Stanziola and Méndez-Carbajo, ‘Economic Growth, Government Expenditure and Income’, p. 246. Renaissance Review Advisory Group, Renaissance in the Regions: Realising the Vision. Renaissance in the Regions, 2001–2008 (London: Museum, Archive and Library Council, 2009), p. 68. A. Newman, and F. McLean, ‘Presumption, Policy and Practice: The Use of Museums and Galleries as Agents of Social Inclusion in Great Britain’, in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 10, no. 2, pp. 167–181, 2004; A. Tlili, ‘Behind the Policy Mantra of the Inclusive Museum: Receptions of Social Exclusion and Inclusion in Museums and Science Centres’; V. McCall, ‘Social Policy and Cultural Services’. NMDC (report written by T. Travers and S. Glaister), ‘Valuing Museums: Impact and Innovation among National Museums’, 2004. E. Nightingale, and C. Mahal, ‘The Heart of the Matter: Integrating Equality and Diversity into the Policy and Practice of Museums and Galleries’, in R. Sandell and E. Nightingale, eds., Museums, Equality, and Social Justice, pp. 13–37, 2012; Dewdney, Dibosa, and Walsh, ‘Cultural Diversity: Politics, Policy and Practices. The Case of Tate Encounters’. GLLAM, Museums and Social Exclusion: The GLLAM Report (Leicester: ­Department of Museum Studies, Leicester University, 2000). MLA, ‘New Directions in Social Policy: Health Policy and Museums, Libraries and Archives (Report by M. Weisen)’ (London, 2005); MLA, ‘New Directions in Social Policy: Developing the Evidence Base for Museums, Libraries and Archives in England’ (London, 2005). D. Pratley, ‘Beyond the 100 Mile City. Some Thoughts about the Impact of the Coalition’s Cultural Policies at the Edge of London’s Cultural Hinterland’, in Cultural Trends, 24, no. 1, p. 67, 2015. DOI: 10.1080/09548963.2014.1000588. DCMS, The Culture White Paper (London: Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2016). This included the transfer of museum responsibilities to Arts Council for England through a new funding programme of Major Partner Museums in 2012, and opening up the National Portfolio Organization funding to museums and libraries in 2017. C. Gordon, D. Powell, and P. Stark, ‘The Coalition Government 2010–2015: Lessons for Future Cultural Policy’, in Cultural Trends, 24, no. 1, pp. 51–55, 2015. DOI: 10.1080/09548963.2014.1000585. Museums Association, Museums in the UK 2017 Report (2017). Local authorities make up about 25% of the museum sector in the UK. Data for local authority spending in the devolved nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland was not available at the time of writing, though all have reported declining spending. The scale of the damage of the cuts to the museum sector has been documented through the annual surveys since 2011 by the Museum Association and their online cuts timeline. See www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/ museum-funding/19122012-cuts-timeline; although it should be noted that the survey sample sizes are small and preclude in-depth analysis. Closures

64  Nuala Morse

29 30 31 32 33 34

35

36

37

38 39

40 41 42 43

are recorded on the MA museums closures map, though numbers need to be ­interpreted with caution www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/museumfunding/19062013-museum-closures-map. Renaissance Review Advisory Group, ‘Renaissance in the Regions: Realising the Vision. Renaissance in the Regions, 2001–2008’, 11. R. Levitas, ‘The Just’s Umbrella : Austerity and the Big Society in Coalition Policy and Beyond’, in Critical Social Policy, 2012, 0261018312444408. DOI: 10.1177/0261018312444408. HM Government, Building a Stronger Civil Society: A Strategy for Voluntary and Community Groups, Charities and Social Enterprises (London: HM Government, 2010). B. Rex, ‘Exploring Relations to Documents and Documentary Infrastructures: The Case of Museum Management After Austerity’, in Museum and Society, 16, no. 2, pp. 187–200, 2018. D. Featherstone et al., ‘Progressive Localism and the Construction of Political Alternatives’, in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37, no. 2, p. 177, 2012. DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00493.x. HM Government and Department for Health, No Health Without Mental Health: A Cross-Government Mental Health Outcomes Strategy for People of All Ages (London, 2011), www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/213761/dh_124058.pdf. Between 2013 and 2017, the Cultural Commissioning Programme was funded by ACE to support arts and cultural organisations to come together with public service commissioners (see Working with Public Service Commissioners: A Quick Guide for the Arts and Cultural Sector, 2017). L. J. Thomson et al., ‘Effects of a Museum-Based Social Prescription Intervention on Quantitative Measures of Psychological Wellbeing in Older Adults’, in Perspectives in Public Health, 138, no. 1, pp. 28–38, 2018. DOI: 10.1177/1757913917737563. K. Lackoi, M. Patsou, and H. J. Chatterjee, ‘Museums for Health and Wellbeing. A Preliminary Report’, 2016. https://museumsandwellbeingalliance.wordpress.com/; S. Desmarais, L. Bedford, and H. J. Chatterjee, Museums as Spaces for Wellbeing: A Second Report from the National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing (London, 2018). www.museumsandwellbeingalliance. wordpress.com. http://happymuseumproject.org. All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing, ‘Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing’, 2017, www.artshealthandwellbeing.org.uk/appg-inquiry/; H. Chatterjee, and G. Noble, Museums, Health and Well-Being; J. Dodd, and C. Jones, ‘Mind, Body, Spirit: How Museums Impact Health and Wellbeing Report’ (Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG), University of Leicester, 2014), https://lra.le.ac.uk/ handle/2381/31690. All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing, ‘Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing’; the potential for culture to help people to be healthier is also noted in the White paper. Museums Association, Valuing Diversity: The Case for Inclusive Museums (London: Museums Association, 2016), 2016. This work built upon the case for museum supporting young people’s education in D. Anderson, A Common Wealth Museums and Learning in the United Kingdom (London: 1997). Museums Association, Collections for the Future (London: Museums Association, 2005).

The social role of museums  65 4 4 Museums Association, Sustainability and Museums: Your Chance to Make a Difference (London: Museums Association, 2008). 45 Museums Association, Museums 2020 Discussion Paper (London: Museums Association, 2012). 46 This also followed earlier comment pieces by MA figures about the need to include arts and cultural participation within the new Office of National Statistics measure of national wellbeing in 2011. 47 R. Atkinson, ‘V&A Denies Scaling Back Outreach Work’, 2013. www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/13022013-v-and-a-denies-scalingback-outreach; R. Atkinson, ‘English Heritage to Close Outreach Department’, 2010. www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/17112010-englishheritage-outreach. 48 D. Fleming, ‘The Politics of Social Inclusion’, in J. Dodd and R. Sandell, eds., Including Museums: Perspectives on Museums, Galleries and Social Inclusion (Leicester: Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, University of Leicester, 2001), pp. 16–19.; D. Fleming, ‘Positioning the Museum for Social Inclusion’, in R. Sandell, ed., Museums, Society, Inequality (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 213–224. 49 D. Fleming, ‘A Question of Perception’, in Museums Journal, 99, no. 4, pp. 29–31, 1999. 50 A. Tlili, ‘Behind the Policy Mantra of the Inclusive Museum: Receptions of Social Exclusion and Inclusion in Museums and Science Centres’; C. West, and C. H. F. Smith, in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 11, no. 3, p. 275, 2005. DOI: 10.1080/10286630500411259; R. Sandell, ‘Social Inclusion, the Museum and the Dynamics of Sectoral Change’. 51 TWAM, ‘Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums Statement of Accounts 2016/17’, 2017, https://twmuseums.org.uk/corporate-publications-and-policies/impactreport-and-accounts. 52 See E. Heumann Gurian, Institutional Trauma: Major Change in Museums and Its Effect on Staff (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 1995) for a discussion of staff and trauma in museums. 53 Health inequalities are such that the poorest adults in the North East of England on average will die eight years earlier than the richest adults in the South of England. 54 N. Morse, and E. Munro, ‘Museums’ Community Engagement Schemes, Austerity and Practices of Care in Two Local Museum Services’, in Social & Cultural Geography, 16, Online First 2015, DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2015.1089583. 55 See also B. T. Lynch, Whose Cake Is It Anyway? A Collaborative Investigation into Engagement and Participation in 12 Museums and Galleries in the UK (London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2011). 56 A. Abdullah, I. Khadaroo, and C. J. Napier, ‘Managing the Performance of Arts Organisations: Pursuing Heterogeneous Objectives in an Era of Austerity’, in The British Accounting Review, Public Services and Charities: Accounting, Accountability and Governance at a Time of Change, 50, no. 2, pp. 174–184, 2018. DOI: 10.1016/j.bar.2017.10.001.

4 Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales and the journey towards cultural democracy Janice Lane and Nia Williams Introduction This chapter sets out how Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum Wales is renewing its organisational culture and its relationship with society through a commitment to a cultural rights-based approach. Amgueddfa Cymru’s vision and values have been developed to achieve this commitment and to guide how we contribute to and influence civic society. Our journey towards achieving cultural democracy focuses on three key areas: cultural participation, cultural inclusivity and cultural agency. The aim is to develop community agency as the keystone of how Amgueddfa Cymru operates long-term and how we direct the museum’s work in civic leadership now and in the future. In this chapter we have provided case study examples to illustrate how we are developing and piloting this approach in practice. We will also explore how Amgueddfa Cymru, as a national organisation with seven museums across Wales, funded by the Welsh Government, is contributing to peoples’ cultural opportunities and responding to the changing social and political context of Wales today. It is over 70 years since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ­affirmed basic liberties. Article 27 specifically states that, ‘Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits’. Museums on the whole have been slow to respond to the detail of the declaration. It is true that most museums work with a variety of ‘cultural communities’ and make conscious efforts to incorporate inclusion and partnership. But, how many place center stage questions regarding definitions of cultural heritage, or the control of stewardship, or how equality works in terms of minority cultures and cultural inclusivity? At Amgueddfa Cymru we are exploring the challenges of embedding a rights-based approach and developing an organisational culture that is based on values and a commitment to supporting community agency and cultural democracy. The concept of social responsibility – individual, professional and ­institutional – is not new and in terms of community agency has been a contemporary strand within the museum and cultural sectors for decades now.1 However, complete organisational commitment to community

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales  67 agency is harder to find. There are many examples of partial rather than ‘complete’ organisational commitment. It is often still located within projects or specific departments (most obviously within outreach, learning and engagement teams), or dependent on individual champions within organisations for profile, permanence and impact. As Elaine Heumann Gurian has explored in her writings, complete organisational commitment has to be evidenced by, and is about, refocussing the core of the museum, rather than merely using the language of inclusion in mission statements whilst allowing the core to remain untouched.2 Without this explicit intention and focus on how resources are managed and decision-making interrogated, an organisation cannot ensure that cultural rights or core values shape the fundamental design and delivery of who they are, who they are for, and what they do long-term. Without this active management, the potential for institutions, like Amgueddfa Cymru, to influence civic society and contribute to creating cultural democracy is diluted and will stay forever on the margins. It will not challenge the personal or the organisational status quo, or the implicit privileges which reinforce inherent biases within our society as well as within organisational culture. From our own practice in Amgueddfa Cymru (and from sharing learning from other museums committed to social agency) we have learnt that no strategy to develop community agency can be fully implemented without an internal culture that places the UN human rights as core to organisational values. Cultural rights are a ‘crucial part of the responses to many current challenges, from conflict and post-conflict situations, to discrimination and poverty’ (Human Rights Council 2016: 3). People therefore, have a right to cultural participation and cultural inclusivity. Furthermore, we understand that it is only through participation that people are able to access their rights. Therefore, we and other institutions have a (legal) responsibility to ensure that we enable active access to rights and through this community agency. As a way of taking forward our vision for a more inclusive and participatory museum, we are using cultural rights to inform and shape organisational change. The framework we have developed focuses on three strategic areas: cultural inclusivity, cultural participation and cultural agency.3 To embed a greater degree of cultural inclusivity we are developing models of working which provide platforms for different cultures and voices to co-exist and to prevent one culture dominating the national stage. In so doing we must consider how different cultures are represented, and routinely challenge ourselves as to how inclusive we are, and how responsive we are to cultural change. This is not just in how we display, how we collect or in our programmes, but also about whom we employ and how we achieve a more diverse workforce. We have trialled this in our approach to Volunteer Development, which is outlined in the case study below. People have a right to cultural participation locally and nationally. We are trialling models to strengthen our role in eliminating barriers to

68  Janice Lane and Nia Williams participation and encouraging greater participation in cultural life. One foundation stone is remaining free to all people, but this is not enough on its own. This freedom to participate has to be accessible by all – not just in what is ‘on display’ but also in re-imagining what is public and open to participation, and should encompass all areas of museum work, from collecting through to basic visitor services. We have trialled this in the approach we took to redeveloping Sain Ffagan Amgueddfa Werin Cymru – St Fagans National Museum of History which is detailed in the case study below. In talking about cultural agency, we are challenging where power and control sit and how these are managed. For cultural rights to be fully realised with fair and equitable access to cultural resources, people need to participate in decision-making. We therefore need to be more ambitious and brave in how we open up and share decision-making if we are to drive cultural democracy. While we are aware there are different models of democracy throughout the world, we are questioning whether our current models are failing us. In view of changing political and social contexts, including the version of devolution in operation in Wales currently, we are exploring different democratic models such as communitarianism, which, along with cooperative societies, have existed in Wales as far back as the 1840s. Perhaps communitarianism may provide some guidance in recognising and dealing with competing principles between individual rights and social responsibilities. It may also help us engage better in substantive moral dialogues. We have yet to establish a framework for this aspect of the work but we have experimented with using participatory forums as models for increasing participation with other charities and organisations across Wales. The forums drive policy decisions, inform staff learning and development and shape public programs. Developing a model of shared ownership and mutuality would of course challenge our current corporate governance framework. The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 places a legal duty on all public bodies to work better to improve the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of Wales.4 The five ways of working outlined in the Act could provide a way for public bodies in Wales, including Amgueddfa Cymru, to increase participation, involvement and collaboration, and develop different models of governance. This is a journey and to better understand where we are on this journey, we need to establish systematic processes of reflection. To make this longterm and explicit, we also need frameworks to measure success and criteria that capture the value and quantitative impacts as part of our accountability. There are common standards accepted for collections management and other object-focussed processes in museums (such as the UK wide accreditation scheme). This has not yet been successfully resolved or embedded in terms of engagement practice and methodology in the museum sector. Shared standards and criteria would enable those participating (from inside and outside the organisation) to gain confidence and a wider understanding of the impact of working in this way -in effect a continuous learning model. Working through the interaction of different factors or behaviours

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales  69 and understanding what these are as a whole leads to lasting transformative thinking and activity. As Raymond Williams has suggested, the mere incorporation of ‘new men (sic)’ into (existing) structures, even with some improvement to material conditions does not count as revolution.5 At Amgueddfa Cymru we recognise that the values we work by are key to achieving long-term organisational change. We also need to ensure that the individual values of all our staff are aligned with those of the Museum. As Gardner and Straughn suggest, this is pivotal to ensuring ‘Good Work’, and real and sustainable change.6 Our aim is to not just try out the underpinning principles behind the models of work we are developing as described below, but rather to intentionally put ourselves in different relationships internally and with partners. It is through these relationships that we expose internal interactions that either enable or block what we are trying to achieve and, most importantly, enable us to interrogate why this is happening. We can then identify critical foundation principles that must be present to ensure the best potential for achieving cultural inclusivity, cultural participation and cultural agency. Furthermore, in order for us to realise real change professionally and as a sector, our professional code of ethics has to be refocussed so it is reframed to fully reflect and promote cultural rights.

Wales’ national context The Welsh Government has devolved powers for health, culture and education. Devolution is increasingly having an impact on Wales’ identity and enabling Wales to make its own decisions about the type of society it wants to be. In 2015 Wales had a major change in policy context and political expectations. Amgueddfa Cymru, as a Welsh Government Sponsored body is accountable through, and has to respond to, the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.7 The Act has ushered a change in Welsh Government strategic planning and delivery programmes that has created a shift, for example, from a focus on poverty to employability and skills. Public bodies now listed in the Act need to ensure that when making their decisions they take into account the impact they could have on people living their lives in Wales today and in the future. As a listed organisation, Amgueddfa Cymru has a legal duty to evidence and publish how we are meeting these well-being goals. As a result, the Act has strongly informed our recent review of the Amgueddfa Cymru vision in 2017. We have now framed our vision commitments and objectives so the goals and ways of working outlined in the Act are embedded into our long-term strategy and annual operational delivery plans. The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 expects Government and named Public Bodies to think and work in the following ways: •

Long term: the importance of balancing short-term needs with the need to safeguard the ability to also meet long-term needs

70  Janice Lane and Nia Williams • • • •

Prevention: how acting to prevent problems occurring or getting worse may help public bodies meet their objectives Integration: considering how the public body’s well-being objectives may impact upon each of the well-being goals, on their other objectives, or on the objectives of other public bodies Collaboration: acting in collaboration with any other person (or different parts of the body itself) that could help the body to meet its well-being objectives Involvement: the importance of involving people with an interest in achieving the well-being goals, and ensuring that those people reflect the diversity of the area which the body serves8

The Act also established a statutory Future Generations Commissioner for Wales whose role is to act as a guardian for the interests of future generations in Wales, and to support the listed public bodies to work towards achieving the well-being goals. The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 is providing a unique external national driver and opportunity for organisations to work differently and to develop a cross-sector strategy for what Wales needs now and in the future. This is a national conversation and a national framework which supports our aspirations for cultural inclusivity, participation and agency, and it is providing a focussed Wales-specific lens for change. By better aligning our policies and vision with what Wales in the twenty-first century needs, Amgueddfa Cymru will be better able to demonstrate relevance, as well as demonstrate how we work as a proactive public body when we are competing for diminishing funds. Our vision, therefore, guides our ethical framework and encourages us to seek out and engage with organisations who share these values. Building a strong narrative of what we offer people and how we contribute to community agency has also been central to growing our success in gaining support from funders and sponsors. At the moment we are proactively seeking funders whose ethical approach supports our vision rather than ‘chasing’ funding which diverts us – whether these are charitable or grant-giving bodies, research funding streams or sponsors.

Amgueddfa Cymru: vision objectives Amgueddfa Cymru has seven national museums across Wales and a National Collections Centre, employing around 600 people. Most of our museums are in south Wales: two in Cardiff, one in Swansea, one just outside of Newport in the Roman town of Caerleon, and the collections centre in Nantgarw near Cardiff. We have one museum in Gwynedd in north Wales and one in Carmarthenshire in west Wales. Most of our museums have a local museum role in their communities as well as a national role. They are very different in terms of scale and size: St Fagans National Museum

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales  71 of History is a large open-air museum with galleries which explore the history and culture of Wales and has recently undergone a major redevelopment; the National Museum Cardiff is a grand, very British Edwardian civic building housing our internationally significant Art and Natural Sciences collections. The National Museum Cardiff is also our major exhibitions venue and is located in Cardiff’s Civic Centre. In comparison, the National Wool Museum in Carmarthenshire west Wales, is a small rural museum. Big Pit: National Coal Museum is a former working coal mine located in the valleys, staffed by ex-miners. It is part of Blaenavon World Heritage Site. The National Slate Museum in north Wales sits in the foothills of Mount Snowdon in Gwynedd. All three museums are located in their original industrial settings. The local and regional contexts we operate in are diverse, and we must work with distinct challenges and accept the realities of being part of a nationally dispersed organisation. This section outlines our vision and commitment objectives. This is an evolving document that we will continue to test and reflect on to ensure it reflects ambitions and values. It has the support of our Board of Trustees and Welsh Government. It will focus on how we work across the different cultures and regions of Wales and also how we have responded to the goals outlined in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and how we are implementing the five ways of working described by the Act.

Our vision: inspiring people, changing lives Our purpose is to inspire people through our museums and collections to find a sense of well-being and identity, to discover, enjoy and learn bilingually, and to understand Wales’s place in the wider world. We have four core commitments: Fynnu/Prosper; Profiad/Experience; Dysgu/Learn; Cyfranogi/Participate, and underpinning these commitments are Amgueddfa Cymru’s core values. These are: • • • • •

We inspire creativity through our museums, collection and the skills of our staff and volunteers We act with integrity at all times, maintaining professional standards by being honest and trustworthy We are responsible towards each other, our visitors, the environment and the Welsh language, caring for each other’s well-being as well as the national collection Our museums are inclusive, and we respect the diversity of both our staff and visitors We work collaboratively, with each other, with communities, and with local, national and international partners

Table 4.1 shows our priorities, expressed as ‘commitments’.

72  Janice Lane and Nia Williams Table 4.1  Our Commitments for delivering the Vision are in four key areas Commitments

We deliver our commitments by

Prosper

• Acting as stewards of our cultural and natural heritage for the future generations of Wales. • Thriving, sustaining and diversifying our resources. • Building our cultural tourism offer in support of the Welsh economy. • Building and maintaining welcoming physical and digital spaces. • Telling inspiring stories through exhibitions and events. • Developing the skills of our staff and the people who use our services. • Promoting public understanding of health and well-being. • Promoting and delivering learning for life. • Building sustainable, effective partnership networks and collaborations. • Involving people and communities in shaping and taking part in our work.

Experience Learn

Participate

Framing the change: case studies This section will illustrate the models of working we are adopting to take forward change through a framework of cultural rights. Each case study illustrates how we are addressing cultural inclusivity, cultural participation and cultural agency. It outlines what we are doing, lessons learned and the challenges we are identifying and addressing. We have been making these alterations in a climate of reduced and changing annual Grant in Aid budget awards from the Welsh Government which has made realignment of staff and resources much more challenging. As part of this core change we identified key leadership roles. Engagement is explicit in one of the Director roles but is also a key function within all Directors’ roles and responsibilities. We have also introduced through the values and commitments the expectation that all staff are responsible for developing and delivering engagement as part of their core work. We have developed expertise within the museum through an engagement team to model and build internal practice, skills and expertise. Moreover, in order to diversify funding sources and find more sustained support to help us through this transition period we have targeted working with funders who support our direction of travel as an organisation. Such support also enables us to supplement resources in different departments and direct and expand resources to create capacity to innovate for change. It also enables us to more independently evaluate the impact and effectiveness of this approach. We have worked with the Paul Hamlyn Foundation for over five years as part of the Our Museum initiative and continue that relationship through the More and Better programme.9 More and Better is allowing

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales  73 us to resource further innovations and bring in additional skills to support our learning and change. We now have partnership agreements with over 50 organisations, both local and national, who work with us through our participatory forums to shape decisions regarding aspects of our public programmes and staff development. The Foundation is one of the larger independent grant-making organisations in the UK and its mission is founded on contributing towards a society that allows people to realise their potential and encourages and assists participation in, and enjoyment of, the arts and learning for all. Our work with Paul Hamlyn spans across cultural inclusivity, cultural participation and cultural agency and is enabling us to extend ways of working across different departments and staff groups, and with a wider range of communities and partners. This has been an important relationship in enabling change on a broader organisational level. It has also provided us with tangible examples of what this work feels like and what changes have to be in pace in order to do more and better work that takes forward cultural rights.

Cultural inclusivity case study: diversifying volunteering at Sain Ffagan Amgueddfa Werin Cymru – St Fagans National Museum of History and extending across Amgueddfa Cymru The involvement of volunteers from all community partners has ensured that Our Museum has offered access to the museum that those individuals would not otherwise have had. The enthusiasm of the volunteers is testament to the fact that what is being offered meets local needs, with local in this instance meaning areas that the museum would not previously have reached. (Member of the Our Museum Participatory Forum, Partner Joan Brown, DrugAid Cymru) St Fagans has a special place in the hearts of the people of Wales. It opened on 1 July 1948 and was the UK’s first national open-air museum. It was radical in its day because it reflected the everyday lives of ordinary people, and over the years has become Wales’ most popular heritage visitor attraction. Although over 40 historic buildings have been re-erected in the museum grounds, St Fagans isn’t just an open-air experience; it also has three participatory galleries, a play area and a centre for learning. The story of Wales is still evolving, and so is St Fagans. All around the museum there are opportunities for people to take part and add their own experiences to the story of Wales. In 2011 there were 11 volunteers at St Fagans, in just one area of the museum. These volunteers primarily came from similar backgrounds, fitting into a traditional demographic: caucasian, middle-aged, retired, well-educated and female. Students also traditionally volunteered at Amgueddfa Cymru. There was no formal monitoring system in place to

74  Janice Lane and Nia Williams understand who our volunteers were; there was no formal process in some areas for recruitment, supervision or support of volunteers, and no professional volunteer officer post to lead this area of work. As such it was reliant on individual staff preferences and contacts. As part of our involvement in the Our Museum initiative funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation we transformed this area of engagement.10 This work was initially located at St Fagans while it was undergoing major redevelopment (completed in October 2018).11 Our aim was to develop volunteering opportunities and programmes based on the needs of volunteers and partner organisations – not just the needs of St Fagans. We also wanted to open up the museum and develop volunteering opportunities across more areas of museum practice, turning our work (traditionally behind the scenes) into the content for our public engagement; we also wanted to involve a greater number of staff and departments. We worked collaboratively with ten partner organisations, focussing particularly on organisations and charities supporting people to overcome disadvantage and lack of opportunity.12 Together we drove the strategy for volunteering at Amgueddfa Cymru; we devised the programme framework, analysed the needs of potential volunteers and supported staff with learning and development programs. The latter was to enable staff and partners to support volunteers’ needs and break down preconceptions and alleviate fears about working with different people from different backgrounds or with different needs. Now, we have over 700 volunteers, with 41% of our volunteers coming to us from Third sector partners and other charities; 42% are under the age of 25 and 10% are classed as unemployed. Volunteering now extends across departments and different museums. We have also received Investors in Volunteers status. There were certain critical factors that were key to the success of this initiative, including the participation of nominated trustees throughout the Our Museum initiative, working alongside staff and partners to determine the strategic direction of volunteering. This trustee involvement raised the level of understanding of the Board as a whole about participatory practice and helped reinforce that participatory working is a central feature of Amgueddfa Cymru’s philosophy. We also had an equal balance of staff and partners involved from the start in the core ­decision-making group. This diversified the voices involved and helped champion change in different staff groups. Key to helping sustain the involvement of partners throughout this project (and beyond) was establishing partnership agreements from the beginning. This meant that the relationship was between organisations and not just dependent on individuals within organisations. These agreements also proved to be useful mechanisms for reviewing partnerships. We valued the expertise we gained from partners and demonstrated this not only through how we worked with them and applied learning, but also through how we allocated project resources, ensuring that some of

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales  75 the funding supported their costs. We also actively encouraged and identified ‘critical friends’ to challenge our practice, which we drew from other participating museums, the Our Museum Director and evaluators as well as partners. Finally, we built in time for reflection (formal and informal) throughout the project timetable to learn lessons and identify where to make change.

Cultural participation case study: Penderfyniad Pwy? Who decides? A co-produced approach to exhibition development How can cultural institutions reconnect with the public and demonstrate their value and relevance in contemporary life [….] they can do this by inviting people to actively engage as cultural participants […] When people can actively engage with cultural institutions, those places become central to cultural and community life.13 Over the last five years, Amgueddfa Cymru and the Wallich – a Welsh charity supporting adults facing homelessness – have developed a partnership with aspirations to challenge perceptions of homelessness, diversify volunteers at the museum, and work collaboratively to design programmes and share resources. The most recent collaboration is Penderfyniad Pwy? Who decides? a co-designed exhibition.14 Inspired by the participatory and political work of socially-engaged artists, Amgueddfa Cymru has worked with ten people using the Wallich’s services to curate an exhibition of recent acquisitions of contemporary art from Amgueddfa Cymru’s collection. We also worked together to shape the accompanying public and schools program. We established roles and responsibilities that were shared across staff and Wallich curators, and through this established learning and support needs; we also worked through disagreements on contested areas collectively. We applied the learning from the critical factors we had identified through Our Museum to this project. For example, we ensured from the outset that the whole exhibition project was devised jointly. We shared all decisions and the Wallich curators worked with the museum staff on every stage of a major exhibition: concept, design and installation, devising marketing and branding, development and delivery of the schools and public programme. The project involved staff across all the departments who contribute to the delivery of exhibitions, working alongside the Wallich curators. This allowed us to disseminate and share this approach to exhibition design and delivery across a wide number of teams. Finally, we also involved funders and key stakeholders in the process of development, so they directly engaged with the staff and the Wallich curators. Developing and delivering the exhibition in this way challenged our established ways of working and generated a fundamental debate about the value of art. Many of the Wallich curators

76  Janice Lane and Nia Williams had never used Amgueddfa Cymru. All the Wallich curators continue as Amgueddfa Cymru volunteers at our different museums, and five have completed an accredited course on Welsh Art. The exhibition opened in October 2017 and closed in August 2018, received over 90,000 visits, while some 8,000 took the opportunity to directly participate in the exhibition by debating and responding to questions such as: ‘Can Art change the world?’ and ‘Is access to culture a human right?’

Cultural agency case study: Re-developing Sain Ffagan Amgueddfa Werin Cymru-St Fagans National Museum of History [The] task was not to create a museum which preserved the dead past under glass but one which uses the past to link up with the present to provide a strong foundation and a healthy environment for the future of the people: and so to show clearly the unity of all life and all human activity, yesterday, today and tomorrow.15 St Fagans has been undergoing a six-year redevelopment process funded from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Welsh Government. The main aim of the redevelopment is to transform the displays and galleries, develop new archaeologically reconstructed buildings on site, and fundamentally change the way we engage with people so that the Museum is more representative and inclusive.16 Inspired by Iorwerth Peate’s original vision and Nina Simon’s work, we turned the whole redevelopment into a public programme. St Fagans remained open throughout the redevelopment. We created opportunities for participation in the process through a variety of methods. We established ten participatory forums made up of 80 organisations and charities across Wales who worked with us to shape and test the concepts for the new galleries and public spaces, pilot ideas and designs for exhibition content, and develop the public programme. These forums continue to work with Amgueddfa Cymru on other initiatives. In addition, we integrated volunteering and apprenticeship programmes into the building process for the archaeological reconstructions, which were based on historical sites from Anglesey in north Wales. We developed the interpretation for these buildings with the source communities so they would have a sense of ownership of the process and the final building. Our commitment to community engagement was also written into the contract tenders by including the need for a community benefits plan. This meant that the contractors had to work with local schools, support volunteers and work placements and provide opportunities for public engagement with their building work as it progressed. One of the new spaces, Gweithdy (which translates to Workshop in English), celebrates creativity and making. We wanted to incorporate a creative strand to the formal project management processes that rule major capital projects. A

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales  77 funded residency program provided a focus for artists to respond creatively to the redevelopment process, as well as interact with staff and visitors. Staff and artists were able to reflect on this experience, leading to the new play area being designed by artists with children rather than a contractor solution. In 2019, Amgueddfa Cymru’s St Fagans National Museum of History won the Art Fund Museum of the Year award. Stephen Deuchar, Art Fund director and chair of the judges descibed the museum as: ‘A monument to modern museum democracy’ adding that it ‘was made by the people of Wales for people everywhere, and stands as one of the most welcoming and engaging museums anywhere in the UK.’ Footnote reference: See Art Fund website https://www.artfund.org/news/2019/07/03/st-fagansnational-museum-of-history-wins-art-fund-museum-of-the-year-2019 Since 2013 we have tried to extend and embed social value into all aspects of the redevelopment. In some areas this has worked well and in others it has been more problematic. It has provided real examples of what can be achieved by working in a different way. The challenge is building the capacity for engagement at the earliest stages of project concept and design, and in all the formal project management stages (as laid out in the accepted formal RIBA stages). Key to changing how we operate in this environment is starting from the belief that supporting cultural agency is not optional, and that the question we are trying to resolve is how to embed cultural agency rather than why we should embed cultural agency at all.

Where next, challenges and lessons learned? All the case studies show that the there is still much to change for us to really be a museum that has permanently embedded cultural inclusivity, participation and agency as core to our organisational structures and strategy. In order to stay on the journey for change we have to ensure that the direction and philosophy is understood by our staff and the people who use or want to use our museums. We are trying to make our ethical position and values much more visible and to use this to guide who we work with and why we work with them. This informs the language we use in policy, our approach to a more commercially challenging environment and our approach to funders. As part of these updates we are using tools such as Investors in People to better understand our staff and how committed they feel to our vision and values. This will help us strengthen leadership across all levels and remove barriers to working differently. We have to recognise that we have the control and the mechanisms for change, that we can create the structures and the environments in which we work. We also need to be braver in changing, and this means challenging accepted governance and management structures. One way we are tackling this is through more agile ways of working so as to bring together staff with mixed skill sets. Our purpose in these

78  Janice Lane and Nia Williams instances needs to be actively reflected in all levels of the planning process, from high-level strategies to individual job plans, if we are to achieve change. Participatory museums are not static – we need to build in capacity for change as well as maintaining relationships for the long term. But we do control the environment in which people use museum spaces, and can widen the opportunities for public use in non-traditional ways. We know we need more diverse representation in terms of staff and trustees, and as a Welsh-sponsored body we now have less control over our governance. However, working with trustees on real projects alongside partners, participants and staff as we did in Our Museum is a powerful way of creating space for different perspectives. It takes time to develop wider representation and broaden what, why and how we collect and programme. It also takes time to develop trust between organisations in order to try out new methods. The Penderfyniad Pwy? Who decides? exhibition would not have been so effective if we had not had such a longterm trusted relationship with the Wallich. Developing a broad base of critical friends and partnerships that will challenge us to justify and question how we use our resources is essential. Making this sustainable for all partners is one of the challenges we face but making sure that the needs and objectives of both partner organisations are met is core to longevity in the relationship. In a world where democracy is being increasingly questioned, we would argue that public institutions like museums need to actively lead on cultural rights and maximise the public benefit of these civic spaces and resources. The journey continues.

Notes 1 There have been years of research into social agency, community engagement and the role of museums in combatting social inequality, notably E. Hooper Greenhill; L. H. Silverman; B. Lynch; M. O’Neill, and in edited publications for museums studies courses such as S. E. R. Watson, Museums and their Communities (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 2007). 2 E. Heumann Gurian, ‘Wanting to Be the Third on Your Block’, 5/4/2012. University of Michigan Working Papers in Museum Studies, Number 5 (2010). Paper presented to Michigan Museum Association in 2009. 3 D. Adams, and A. Goldbard, ‘Cultural Democracy: Introduction to an Idea’, in Webster’s World of Cultural Democracy. www.wwcd.org/cd2.html. 4 Information about the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, 2015 can be found at https://gov.wales/topics/people-and-communities/people/futuregenerations-act/?lang=en. 5 A. Bartnett, ed., Raymond Williams: The Long Revolution (Cardigan: Parthian, 2013), p. 1. 6 C. Straughn, and H. Gardner, ‘Good Work in Museums Today…and Tomorrow’, in J. Marstine, ed., The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 41–53. 7 Information about the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 can be found at https://gov.wales/topics/people-and-communities/people/futuregenerations-act/?lang=en.

Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales  79 8 The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. The Essentials 2015, p. 7 https://futuregenerations.wales/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/150623-guideto-the-fg-act-en.pdf. 9 For further information on the Our Museum initiative funded by Paul Hamlyn Foundation, see http://ourmuseum.org.uk/ 10 The Our Museum initiative supported museums across the UK. The final report and project story can be found here. http://ourmuseum.org.uk/. 11 For a summary of the redevelopment go to https://museum.wales/stfagans/ makinghistory/. 12 Amgueddfa Cymru Our Museum partners: The Wallich, New Link Wales, Diverse Cymru, Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA), Pedal Power, Quest: Innovate Trust, Action Caerau Ely, Voluntary Community Service Cardiff, Drugaid. 13 N. Simon, The Participatory Museum (US online version. 2010). www.participatorymuseum.org/. 14 To find out more about the exhibition and the Wallich curators go to https:// thewallich.com/museum-project-exhibition-cardiff/ and www.voluntaryarts. org/epic-awards-the-wallich-who-decides. 15 Iorwerth C. Peate, Amgueddfeydd Gwerin Folk Museums (Cardiff: Cardiff University Wales, 1948). 16 The concept and methodology for St Fagans Making History redevelopment project was developed by Beth Thomas (then Keeper of History and Archaeology at Amgueddfa Cymru) and Nia Williams (then Head of Learning at Amgueddfa Cymru).

5 Breaking out of the museum core Conservation as participatory ontology and systemic action inquiry Helen Graham The call for museums to reform themselves is prevalent in contemporary policy and practice: for museums to be places for social justice, for human rights, for democracy, for wellbeing.1 These demands have a particular character and are set in motion by the nature of the museum as a political form. Four interrelated ‘museum claims’ flow from this political form: • • • •

Representation: for museums to represent humanity and the world Access: for museums to seek to know about audiences so they can be accessible to all Conservation: for museums to conserve collections and other resources for everyone now and for future generations Impact: for museums to seek to use their resources on behalf of the public for the public good

Claims of this type are visible in international and national policy from the International Council of Museums (ICOM) to the UK Museums Association, as well as in statements from institutions such as the British ­Museum and the Smithsonian Institution 2 and in many civic museum mission statements.3 These propositions draw on representational logics in two senses; that of epistemic representation, that a concept, object or person can stand in for something or someone else; and of political representation, that the authority delegated to museums means they can make decisions on behalf of everyone now as well as in the future. Participation has emerged as one response to these claims: a desire for greater direct connection with people otherwise framed as ‘audiences’. From pioneering early examples to the proliferation of schemes and projects today, it has been hoped that direct involvement of people in co-producing collections, exhibitions and programmes will enable both greater representation and greater access.4 Yet attempts by museums to be participative have often proved fraught and have opened up two tendencies offering critiques of participatory work: one based on depth and extent of involvement and one based on scale of

Breaking out of the museum core  81 impact. The first derives from a critique of participation on its own terms; that projects are not participatory enough, do not hand over power and remain marginal, only work with the usual suspects, can be frustrated by staff resistance if not approached holistically and with support from the organisation’s leadership.5 The second has been that participatory work is not strategic, does not address itself to the core of museum practice (to affect the collections or permanent displays) and fails to scale from intensive and expensive small group work to create sustainable change in the overall inequalities in the demographics of museum visitors.6 Both the critiques of participation have, in different ways, been a response to museums’ representational logics in terms of a desire for greater diversity of representation in terms of collections, displays and audiences.7 Yet a central impetus to my argument in this chapter is that participation derives from a different set of political precepts than representation, as becomes clear if we look at the lineage of both terms in the concept and practice of democracy. In a representational form of democracy an elected member represents a constituency. In contrast, participation is in the tradition of direct democracy where people act and speak only for themselves.8 Doing participatory work in museums has been challenging because it has been mobilised in response to the demands of a representational tradition which the very logics of participation call into question. Not recognising that different political logics and traditions are at work in this debate will continue to cause tensions and frustrations, and part of my argument in this chapter is to extend this point also to epistemic traditions. However, if we do fully realize the potential of thinking about museums in a participatory way then productive alternatives to the ideal positions implied by the two established critiques of participation will also emerge. In order to imagine a participatory museum practice that addresses and reframes both the critiques related to depth and extent of involvement and scale of impact I use a specific combination of approaches, drawing on distinct theoretical resources. I begin by seeking to better understand what is at stake in museum work by drawing on normative democratic theory in order to clarify the representational logics of museums. I then draw from theories associated with ‘non-representation theory’ to develop a participatory ontology for museum work, one which extends the resonance of ‘participation’ beyond community action and decision-making to a broader understanding of non-representation which treats every ‘thing’ and every person as singular and constituted through their connections.9 Finally, I indicate how everyday museum practice and everyday participatory practice can become the ground for addressing inequalities through using techniques associated with systemic action inquiry – known as ‘a strategy for whole system change’ – drawn from development studies.10 A use of systemic action inquiry allows us to link everyday museum practice and participatory practice with building understandings of wider systemic conditions through parallel participatory action and an ongoing reflexive

82  Helen Graham inquiry into the nature of the museum. More specifically I identify the potential for whole system change that lies in recasting museums’ mission away from representation, access and reform and instead re-­emphasising another of its traditional missions: conservation. I seek to understand conservation dynamically, as an action inquiry and specifically as a ­social-material practice of world-making, enabled by an ontology which is non-­representational, enlivened by the interrelationships and connections between things, ideas and people, and unfolding transformation from, and at, the otherwise representational ‘core’ of the museum.

Museum claims I: Using democratic theory to understand representation logics Cultural theorist Tony Bennett diagnosed the ‘insatiability’ of the museum’s political demands in his 1992 book, The Birth of the Museum: Two distinctive political demands that have been generated in relationship to the modern museum: the demand that there should be parity of representation for all groups and cultures within collection, exhibition and conservation activities of museums, and the demand that the members of all social groups should have equal practical as well as theoretical rights of access to museums.11 While Bennett made this observation in the context of nineteenth-century museums, these demands are immediately recognisable to contemporary museum practice and, with tailored modifications, to many other types of large public or publicly-funded organisations such as theatre, classical music venues and local government. Crucially – which is again very relevant today – Bennett argues that these dynamics are ‘insatiable’ because of a ‘mismatch’ or ‘dissonance’ between public rights demands and the ‘political rationality’ of the museum: Public rights demands are produced and sustained by the dissonance between, on one hand, the democratic rhetoric governing the conception of public museums as vehicles for popular education and, on the other hand, their actual functioning as instruments for the reform of public manners.12 This dissonance remains very visible in policy today. To give one example, the UK Museum Associations ‘Museum Change Lives’ advocacy document draws attention to ‘active public participation, engaging with diverse communities, and sharing collections and knowledge’ as a way of ‘breaking down barriers to access and inclusion’. However, this is done in the name of reform and scale of impact and as instances of how the museums will ‘impact’ upon people’s lives.13

Breaking out of the museum core  83 The museum claims are normative in the sense that they are animated by ‘what ought to be’14 and when seen through the lens of normative democratic theory, however, the claims clearly propose a theory of legitimacy. That is, what makes museums legitimate is the extent to which they can: • • •

Represent and create access – which raise the question of constituency and the question of decision-making Conserve material culture for future generations – which raises the question of governance of limited resources Create public impact in terms of mission and purpose – which raises the question of definition of the type and status of museum work

The central problem raised by the museum claims is the question of the implied ‘who’ – the spatially and temporally expansive constituency of ‘all’, ‘everyone’, ‘the world’ and ‘future generations’15 – what is known in democratic theory as ‘the boundary problem’.16 Democratic theory has proposed one main answer to this problem and that is ‘The Principle of Affected Interests’, which suggests that ‘everyone who is affected by the decisions of a government should have the right to participate in that government’17 or ‘all those who will be bound by a rule should have a say in making the rule’.18 Yet if the museum claims to be accessible and for everyone now and everyone in the future then, as Robert E. Goodin puts it, ‘this expansive conception of “all possibly affected interests” causes the franchise to balloon dramatically and the scope for legitimate exclusions to shrink accordingly’.19 It is museums’ expansive constituency – too big and unimaginable to ‘make the rules’ collectively – that has underpinned the idea of the need for the delegated authority of professionals, working ‘on behalf of’ everyone/future generations, a version of what Steven Brint calls ‘social trustee professionalism’. 20 In this model, constituencies can be defined by the museum itself, the claims can be professionally managed and present and future needs can be balanced out. Yet – as the insatiability of the claims indicates – this representational approach to governance never settles the matter, precisely because of the epistemic representational duty to represent human life in some way or another. The legitimacy question behind this problem is clarified by Michael Saward’s work where he describes two different types of political issue. The first is named ‘non-contingent’, which is fundamentally political, as it defines what living together means; the necessary stuff of democratic debate. 21 However, Saward then defines a second type of knowledge as ‘contingent’, and as professional or technical: ‘the garage mechanic knows better than I how to fix my car; the nuclear engineer knows better than I how to build a nuclear reprocessing plant; the social worker knows better than I how to deal with runaway teenagers’. 22 Saward’s overall argument is ‘that politics is not a realm where contingent claims to specialized, superior

84  Helen Graham knowledge are legitimate; rather, it is a realm in which only non-contingent claims are admissible in principle’. 23 Like all professional work, museum work should be based in contingent knowledge. Yet the nature of the task, set in terms of the epistemic representation of humanity and the world, appears to be non-contingent. One way of thinking about this is that museum workers are given the scope and scale of non-contingent issues and yet they have, through the governmental framework of the museum, been delegated to do this as if it is a specialist technical form of work. On this view, there is a dissonance in forms of political legitimacy. And, as a result, the museums’ claims to work on behalf of never quite holds. Finally, one could read the reform agenda of museums – to reduce inequality; to increase wellbeing, etc. – as a way of rendering contingent work which otherwise is non-contingent in scope. If we were to adopt this view, we might see in such reforms an attempt at legitimising museum work by making of it a set of technical activities rather than the political act it arguably is. To draw this together, the lens provided by normative democratic theory suggests that museums are always open to critique because of the definition of constituency (representation and access for everyone; for future generations) and the political status of the work (non-contingent). The political nature of museum work is rendered constantly problematic because it often seems to be dealing in non-contingent (democratic) matters as if they were contingent (specialised, technical). In this context, reform then offers a tactic of legitimation by putting the non-contingent aim of exploring what it means to be human and live in this world into a contingent framework of policy. Therefore, the mismatch Tony Bennett notes is not simply about the difference between rights and reform, but even more fundamentally about the legitimacy of professional museum work itself. There are therefore good reasons why participation has proved so compelling for museums; participation is an acknowledgement of the non-contingent nature of museum knowledge and a search for a different form of legitimacy. In the last part of this chapter I will explore these dynamics through conservation, which is often seen as a specialist practice where technical decisions are legitimately made on behalf of everyone. Yet I will argue that if we were to think of conservation non-contingently it might well offer a key to a strategic whole system approach to participatory museum work.

Museum claims II: tracing the critiques of participation to the ‘core’ There are two main tendencies in critiques of participatory work, both promoted in different ways by the museum claims. As noted in the introduction, the first tends to emphasise the depth and extent of involvement. A second tends to emphasise the scale of impact. The tendencies differ – to evoke again democracy theory – in their imagination of what

Breaking out of the museum core  85 makes museums legitimate. Taking the ‘scale of impact’ tendency first, Mark O’Neill, ­former Director of Policy and Research for Glasgow Life and Head of Glasgow Museums, has drawn attention to issues raised by the use of intensive small group projects, especially in relation to health benefits. O’Neill has argued that ‘epidemiological research suggests that a strategy promoting less intensive attendance at cultural organizations among vulnerable communities may be able to achieve a health impact at a population level’.24 More specifically, the implications of this are that small group work and the depth of the work itself is not necessary for large scale positive ‘population-level benefit’. 25 Secondly, the inequalities in mainstream museum visiting mean ‘museums come to serve the most educated and best-off and the better educated they are, the better museums serve them’. O’Neill notes that museums often produce different ‘Museum Access Zones’ which he evokes concentrically, with the permanent collections at the centre, temporary exhibitions in the next layer and, on the outside of the circle, outreach activities. At worse, suggests O’Neill, outreach becomes ‘a way of protecting the core from change […creates] ghettos of staff that can engage with these groups which have no role that is integral to the museum’, while there is ‘little evidence the museum learns from these groups’, nor that the people feel any more welcome within its walls. 26 To counter this he advocates the idea of changing the collections and permanent displays so that museums can engage ‘mixed audiences in the core’; to do this he argues that ­population-level targets are needed, with the aim of ‘increasing the percentages of museum visitors in the communities in which we work’. O’Neill argues that ‘this is the only context in which small groups make a difference’ and ‘if you don’t have these strategic aims then small projects become ethically questionable’. The other tendency, more represented in the academic literature, places much more emphasis on depth and extent of involvement. In the work linked to the Paul Hamlyn Our Museum project, a strong argument has been made against ‘empowerment-lite’, as Bernadette Lynch characterised it (following Andrea Cornwall), underpinned by a critique of a beneficiaries model where the museum is ‘of service’ and ‘helps’ people.27 Instead the argument is made that participation should be seen as everyone’s job and that communities be seen as agents and active partners. For the Our Museum project ‘core’ always refers to community engagement being seen as central to the use of the resources of the museum (staff, money, time). 28 In terms of defining museums purpose, and in common with Nina Simon’s work at the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz, there tends to be an emphasis on agency itself, citizenship or civic voice, rather than outcomes like health benefits.29 It is worth reflecting on the interest in the concept of the ‘core’ in both tendencies, and in the context of large and publicly-funded museums there is a very good reason for this related to the tension in the purpose of museums,

86  Helen Graham in terms of the four claims and in the context of limited resources. In an article exploring an ethical approach to disposal of collections, Nick Merriman cites a report that up to 60% resources in museums are spent on conservation collections storage.30 It is this particular commitment to conserving collections which creates tensions between present use and future generations and pulls in resources of time and money.31 The issue of there being a ‘core’ is therefore a very real one for museums and is why both the depth and extent of involvement and scale of impact critiques of participation use the idea of core to indicate where power lies.32 But does conceptually reinforcing the concept of the core help address either the challenges for museum practice posed by the critiques relating to depth and extent of involvement or scale of impact? The use of the idea of ‘core’ poses a particular ontology for museums; a particular theory of what museums are. ‘Core’ suggests there is an inside and an outside; a centre and periphery; that there are museum staff and people who are the public/community and that there are things (objects, collections) and people. This ontology means that conservation is often seen as the key political challenge for museums. Not least because, to return to the representational logics of museums, when conservation is understood as a desire to protect material culture – to keep it safe via restricting use and access – it produces the tension of constituency between everybody now and future generations. Yet even conceiving of a ‘core’ draws participation into a particular spatial relationship, with participation being understood as being constantly, centripetally, in a contest-mode with a fixed centre. There clearly are some instances in which the narrowing of focus of the contest-the-centre model is absolutely necessary, not least in the calls for repatriation. 33 However, this is not always the case and in the repetition of the idea of a centre where the power is, power can also be reinforced and solidified. In many cases, alternative, more centrifugal approaches, which open out, widen the focus and treat power as distributed, can be taken. Rather than reinforce a particular ontology implied by the idea of ‘core’, a participatory museum practice benefits from a different ontology for objects and a different ontology for power and change. And I want to suggest that conservation, that aspect of museum work often seen as core, if rethought centrifugally, can be used to hold both together.

Conservation as thriving: a non-representational participatory ontology When thought of traditionally, conversation in museums is bound up with the imaginary of a fixed and non-renewable resource which needs to be protected from use. Yet this has come in for challenge in many ways. The idea that objects’ meanings might be in their use, rather than in keeping them safe and giving access only via glass cases is now well-established.

Breaking out of the museum core  87 Faith objects and objects of significance are often made available for use and conservators have been calling for honest conversations about ‘uncertainty’ over the implications of movement and use.34 Similarly, the conceptualising of heritage as intangible has a long trajectory in a variety of ways; both in that sustaining intangible heritage requires sustaining the ecologies and economies that allow communities to thrive35 or in the argument that really when we talk about heritage or culture what we are taking about is meaning.36 What these more recent debates allow us to do is to see conservation as a social-material act, the dynamic enlivening and sustaining of materiality and meaning. It is worth noting that underpinning this shift is quite a different ontology, a shift between a representational ontology to a participatory, relational ontology. Using democratic theory we have drawn attention to the representational politics at work in museums, but a representational epistemology is also at work; that one object can stand in for other objects, for other people, for other events and for other ideas. In her work on the emergence of the modern fact in the eighteenth century, Mary Poovey has argued that modernity is characterised by the new ability to link ‘individual claims about specific observations with generalizations about “larger” or “deeper” principles that presumably lie behind the observed phenomena’.37 This both produces a certain approach to the world – that we can explain ‘what-can-be-seen by reference to what cannot’ – but also ‘a standpoint of a nonparticipating, objectifying observer’ which has made it ‘possible to think about social structures, relationships, and processes as entities, as relatively autonomous, and as sufficiently systematic to warrant scientific descriptions, which are systematic as well’.38 Yet museum objects already play a hinge role in this modern epistemology in that they are both ­often used representatively in some way – to allow for ‘bigger issues’ to be ­explored – and at the same time are conceived of as unique objects and valuable because they are unique (have a certain specific provenance, have been used in certain ways). This interest in objects as singular – that even when mass produced, they have particular histories of use – open the way for us to explicitly think non-representationally about their role. That is, we can recognise that their role in museum displays can be thought of less as representation and more as offering, as John Law and Annemarie Mol have put it in their theorisation of complexities, ‘phenomena in their own right, each differing slightly’, whose role is not to ‘stand in for’ anything else but rather to ‘sensitize the reader to events and situations elsewhere [or to act as an] irritant, destablizing expectations’.39 When thought of non-representationally, each object explicitly requires the visitor to make all sorts of connections to other things. The idea of the visitor as active in constructing meaning is of course well established in the museum literature,40 but the shift this allows us to make is to no longer see this ‘constructivism’ as only meaning-making prompted by the representational capacities of the object but as part of the

88  Helen Graham same relational phenomenon of object-person-ideas-connections and as the making of reality itself. Annemarie Mol refers to this reframing of making meaning to making reality as an ontological politics which requires different ways of conceiving what is going on: Talking about reality as multiple depends on another set of metaphors. Not those of perspective and construction, but rather those of intervention and performance. These suggest a reality that is done and enacted rather than observed.41 When applied to museum practice, this allows us to move away from conceiving conservation as a core act separate from, but which enables, representation and visitor engagement. Rather we can understand conservation as a phenomenon which includes the object and the people and the connections they make and that this moment of enactment is doing conservation, bringing the future sustainability of that object, those social relationships and those ideas into being by producing reality itself. This draws on Karen Barad’s description of a relational ontology, given impetus by quantum physics, which ‘does not take the boundaries of any of the objects or subjects of these studies for granted but rather investigates the material-discursive boundary-making practices that produce “object” and “subjects” and other differences out of, and in, a changing relationality’.42 To put it another way, the basic unit of reality is not an object or a person nor is it a moment in time or a particular place, it is the ‘phenomena’ itself and is the mutual entanglement and mutual production of differentiation; not only of ‘objects’ and ‘people’ but also ‘past’ and ‘future’. This ontology offers a reorientation of conservation relationally and non-representatively. This ontology also allows us to connect differently and re-orientate the four museum demands we opened with, no longer as competing tensions pulling in different directions and requiring professional arbitration underpinned by a representational politics and epistemology. Rather it allows conservation to be conceived as the whole phenomenon where access, future-making and benefit is built from the now and how to do it is a necessarily participatory and open-ended inquiry.43

Museum work as systemic action research: rethinking the ‘depth and extent of involvement’ and ‘scale of impact’ critiques of participation The question then becomes how to operationalise a participatory ontology in museums, to reframe fundamentally their representational political form and to address the ‘depth and extent of involvement’ and ‘scale of impact’ critiques of participation. To indicate how this might be done I will draw on systems thinking and especially the systemic action research approaches

Breaking out of the museum core  89 developed by Danny Burns. Systems thinking – which has long flourished in organisation and management studies – nourishes this approach, as Yuha Jung and Ann Rowson Love have put it: Systems thinking sees the world as open and interconnected to and interdependent with all parts of the world; the parts are situated in context, shaping the whole, which is better understood by examining dynamic interrelationships among its parts […] it refers to a complex, interdependent, and open web of things, people, and relationships that reside within the larger social, cultural and natural world and are in a constant state of flux.44 Burns approach to systemic action inquiry elaborates how to operate in and make positive use of this connected web offering ‘a process through which communities and organisations can adapt and respond purposefully to their constantly changing environments’ in order to develop ‘participatory solutions to entrenched problems’ and ‘the possibility of strategy development that can meaningfully engage with the complexities of the real world’.45 As explored above, the effects of the representational logics of the four claims are to create irreconcilable tensions (between protection of collections and future generations and access for people today) that require professionals to manage the claims on behalf of everyone else and – through the emphasis on public impact – to turn heritage and culture, which otherwise might be considered non-contingent political issues, into technical, contingent, and therefore professional, work. As argued above, taking a participatory ontology to museums allows us to see people, objects and ideas as part of the same phenomena of conservation, with the future sustainability emerging precisely from that relational social-­m aterial dynamic. Enacting a participatory ontology via systemic action inquiry means we can conceive differently the challenges posed by the ‘depth and extent of involvement’ critique which is motivated by the idea that power can be located at the core in terms of museum decision-making over resources and that power over the core needs to be shared. The key challenge posed by this critique is the need to move away from professionals taking full responsibility for balancing out the various museum claims. A systemic action inquiry approach turns issues and sticking points into questions and enables an exploration of the challenges and for ways forward to be identified and shared between staff and community members. For example, it would allow a very open discussion about conservation practice in the sense of managing risk to material culture so that both the scientific aspects of materiality, temperature fluctuation, light levels and touch could be explored alongside the museum need to enable access and engagement. Not only would conservation itself (in the way described above) essentially

90  Helen Graham be happening through the conversations but new ways of dealing with the practical-political dilemmas might be collectively identified. This approach would allow for joint action inquiries which involve staff and community members to be initiated, directly following their energy and passion.46 This also offers a conceptual shift from ‘everyone’ to ‘anyone’. If the concept of ‘everyone now’ and ‘future generations’ pushes power back onto a mediating professional, ‘anyone’ creates open possibilities for direct involvement of interested people.47 In addition, a systemic action approach is not consensus orientated and opens up space for quite different strands of inquiry, what Burns calls ‘parallel action’. It therefore allows for a pluralisation of what the museum is to include a collaborative creation of heritage and culture in ways which might allow for moving beyond the idea of the museum as a fixed and non-renewal resource.48 In turn this shifts the idea of decision-making as only and specifically a formal process towards also recognising the ‘simultaneity of action and decision making’ because in a museum participatory ontology, action is conservation.49 At the same time ‘a structure for connecting organic inquiry to formal decision making’ can be created in order to speed up and actively facilitate that organisational shift and change.50 In terms of the scale of impact critique, systemic action inquiry allows for a shift from seeking to demonstrate impact on people to allow for positive benefit to be discussed and collaboratively articulated, evaluated and enacted.51 In terms of addressing the crucial question of persistent inequalities in museum visiting, this recognises change is only possible through engaging with the complexities of that specific museum in its locality, as Burns puts it ‘each situation is unique and its transformative potential lies in the relationships between interconnected people and organisations’.52 This fully contextual approach enables a non-generalising understanding of specific inequalities. It also allows the museum not to be the centre and focus of the question of inequality (Who comes? Who doesn’t come?) but to work across and beyond organisational boundaries about inequity and to play a role in a wider whole system, whole society change (which might in turn transform who is involved with the museum but that would be neither the starting point nor the end point). Burns argues that the key here is to move away from the ontological logics of formal decision-making and planning approaches which are ‘often out of date by the time [the plans] are finished and limit options’ and instead, drawing on a participatory and relational ontology, to ‘build emergence into organization decision-­making’.53 What this should then allow for is a collaborative focus on ‘direction of travel’ and ‘core values’, and an opportunity to create a ‘process of strategic improvisation that enables strategic intervention in ways that can respond flexible to real world change’.54 An enactment of this type of thinking in the context of museums has arisen from the work of Mike Benson, Kathy Cremin and John Lawson as developed at the Ryedale Folk Museum and Bede’s World which shows how

Breaking out of the museum core  91 heritage, conservation, action and organisational decision-making can be understood as fully congruent processes: Decision-making can be distributed across a museum. Instead of hierarchy, leadership can be passed between communities, volunteers and staff. This shifting, dynamic and shared approach to decision-making is enabled in Bede’s World by thinking of heritage as abundant and constantly renewed. Sharing your own knowledge, memories and cultures enables all of us to have ‘freedom of self’ and be active agents in our own lives. The image of a living stream helps us see how heritage is a means of sustaining the places in which we live. […] both conceptualizations of heritage and organizational structures need to be re-engineered.55 In the metaphor of heritage as a living stream, the authors inspire both a shift away from epistemic concepts of representation – heritage is life, is abundant and is a future constantly unfolding – and a shift from representational logics of legitimacy towards participatory logics of legitimacy, where decision-making is action itself and is distributed. A participatory museum is one that uses a participatory ontology.

A participatory ontology: museums and heritage as systemic action research In this chapter I have been exploring what might be gained for museum practice by making a shift from representational to participatory logics. The shifts we’ve been exploring look like this: • • • • •

Representation – Living: for museums to move from representation as an end point to embracing their non-contingent mission and supporting living cultures and dynamic debates Access – Creation: to move beyond an access model where ‘culture’ pre-exists engagement to seeing culture and heritage as an ongoing collaborative creation Everyone – Anyone: to sift from the impossibly expansive ideas of everyone and future generations which force power into the ‘on behalf of’ of professional hands towards opening out to ‘anyone’ Conservation – Thriving: expand the idea of conservation as protection ‘on behalf of future generations’ to conservation as a thriving material-­ social practice from which the future is constantly being made Impact – Transformation: to see museums not as agents who reform others (‘museums change lives’/ beneficiaries model) and instead for museums to see themselves as collaborators in wider systemic transformation (of inequalities; of democratic culture)

92  Helen Graham Museums are themselves ongoing research inquiries, in that everyday ­ useum work is always about enacting and reworking what museums are, m their ontological conditions and their political legitimacies. But more than that, and to turn the focus centrifugally outwards, one way of seeing museums is as an open experiment and a great participatory and non-contingent inquiry into what it means to be alive. Therefore, the scope for these shifts is there and is already emerging. As museums move away from conceiving themselves representationally and as defined by a centralised core and move towards a fully participatory approach to politics, knowledge, and world-making it is conservation itself that will thrive.

Notes 1 K. Message, The Disobedient Museum (London: Routledge, 2018); C. Mouffe, ‘Institutions as Sites of Agonistic Intervention’, in P. Gielen, ed., Institutional Attitudes: Instituting Art in a Flat World (Amsterdam: Antennae, 2013), pp. 63–76; G. Noble, and H. Chatterjee, Museums, Health and Well-Being (London: Ashgate, 2013); R. Sandell, and E. Nightingale, Museums, Equality and Social Justice (London: Routledge, 2012); R. Sandell, Museums, Moralities and Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2017). 2 At the time of writing ICOM are working on ‘revising the museum definition’, but at the moment it rests on the idea of being ‘in the service of society’; the British Museum mission ticks all these boxes, and mentions ‘greater access’, a ‘laboratory of comparative cultural investigation’, all of which it holds ‘in trust’; the Smithsonian Institution emphasises ‘engaging and inspiring more people’, ‘presenting diversity’, and characterises its role as ‘steward and ambassador’. 3 Glasgow Life: ‘Our mission is to inspire the city’s citizens and visitors to lead richer and more active lives through culture, sport and learning. In doing so we aim to make a positive impact on individuals, the communities in which they live and the city as a whole’. Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums: ‘Our mission… is to help people determine their place in the world and define their identities, so enhancing their self-respect and their respect for others’. 4 F. MacLeod, Out There: The Open Museum: Pushing the Boundaries of Museums’ Potential (Glasgow: Glasgow Life, 2010); M. Ames, ‘How to Decorate a House: The Renegotiation of Cultural Representation at the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology’, in L. Peers and A. Brown, eds., Museums and Source Communities: A Routledge Reader (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 171–180. 5 B. Lynch, Whose Cake Is It Anyway?: A Collaborative Investigation Into Engagement and Participation in 12 Museums and Galleries in the UK (London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2011); B. Lynch, Our Museum: A Five Year Perspective from a Critical Friend (London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2014); P. Bienkowski, No Longer Us and Them: How to Change Into a Participatory Museum and Gallery. Learning from the Our Museum Programme (London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2016). 6 M. O’Neill, ‘Keynote’, Museums Association Conference and Exhibition 2012. Available at: https://vimeo.com/54351262. 7 B. Lynch, and S. Alberti, ‘Legacies of Prejudice: Racism, Coproduction and Radical Trust In the Museum’, in Museum Management and Curatorship, 25, no. 1, pp. 13–35, 2010; N. Morse, M. Macpherson, and S. Robinson, ‘Developing Dialogue In Youth-led Exhibitions: Between Rhetoric, Intentions and Realities’, in Museum Management and Curatorship, 28, no. 1, pp. 91–106, 2013.

Breaking out of the museum core  93 8 C. Patman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). 9 T. R. Schatzki, K. Knorr Cetina, and E Von Savigny, eds., The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (London: Routledge, 2001); N. Thrift, Non-­Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect (London: Routledge, 2008). 10 D. Burns, Systemic Action Research: A Strategy for Whole System Change (Bristol: Policy Press, 2007). 11 T. Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, p. 9. 12 Ibid., p. 90. 13 Museums Association, Museums Change Lives, p. 3. 14 A. Sangiovanni, ‘Normative Political Theory: A Flight from Reality?’, in D.  Bell, ed., Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on a Realist Theme (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 222. 15 D. F. Thompson, ‘Representing Future Generations: Political Presentism and Democratic Trusteeship’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 13, no. 1, pp. 17–37, 2010. 16 R. A. Dahl, After the Revolution? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 60–61; F. G. Whelan, ‘Democratic Theory and the Boundary Problem’, in. J. R. Pennock, and J. W. Chapman, eds., Nomos XXV: Liberal Democracy (New York: New York University Press, 1983), pp. 13–47. 17 R. A. Dahl, After the Revolution?, p. 64. 18 R. E. Goodin, ‘Enfranchising All Affected Interests, and Its Alternatives’, in Philosophy & Public Affairs, 35, no. 1, pp. 40–68, 49, 2007. 19 Ibid., p. 55. 20 S. Brint, In the Age of Experts: The Changing Role of the Professions In Public Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). 21 M. Saward, The Terms of Democracy (Oxford: Polity Press, 1998), p. 9. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., p. 12. 24 M. O’Neill, ‘Cultural Attendance and Public Mental Health – From Research to Practice’, in Journal of Public Mental Health, 9, no. 4, pp. 22–29, 26, 2010. 25 Ibid. 26 M. O’Neill, ‘Keynote’, Museums Association Conference and Exhibition 2012. 27 B. Lynch, Whose Cake Is It Anyway?, p. 15. 28 Ibid., 18; B. Lynch, Our Museum: A Five Year Perspective from a Critical Friend (London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2014); P. Bienkowski, No Longer Us and Them: How to Change Into a Participatory Museum and Gallery. Learning from the Our Museum Programme (London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2016). 29 Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, ‘About Us’, https://santacruzmah.org/ about/. 30 N. Merriman, ‘Museum Collections and Sustainability’, in Cultural Trends, 17, no. 1, pp. 3–21, 9, 2008. 31 Ibid. 32 ‘Strategic political philosophy can be thought to picture its world as a set of concentric circles, with the core or base problematic lying at the centre […] what is crucial is not the content or nature of the core circle, but the fact that think proceeds concentrically. This distinguishes it from tactical thinking, which pictures the social and political world not as a circle but instead as an intersecting network of lines’, T. May, The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism (Pennslvannia, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 10–11. 33 BP or Not BP (2018) ‘Rodney Kelly: Stolen Goods Tour’, 8th December 2018.Availableat:https://bp-or-not-bp.org/2018/12/01/join-the-unofficial-britishmuseum-stolen-goods-tour-on-december-8th/.

94  Helen Graham 34 M. Clavir, ‘Reflections on Changes In Museums and the Conservation of ­Collections from Indigenous Peoples’, in Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, 2 no. 2, pp. 99–107, 1996; J. Henderson, ‘Reflections on the Psychological Basis for Suboptimal Environmental Practices In Conservation’, in Journal of the Institute of Conservation, 41, no. 1, pp. 32–45, 2018; J. Ashley-­ Smith, N. Umney, and D. Ford, ‘Let’s Be Honest—Realistic Environmental Parameters for Loaned Objects’, in Studies in Conservation, 39, pp. 28–31, 1994. 35 B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, ‘World Heritage and Economics’, in I. Karp, C. A. Kratz, L. Szwaja, and T. Ybarra-Frausto, eds., Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), pp. 161–202. 36 L. Smith, The Uses of Heritage (London: Routledge, 2006). 37 M. Poovey, ‘The Liberal Civil Subject and the Social in Eighteenth-Century British Moral Philosophy’, in Public Culture, 14, no. 1, pp. 125–145; 130–131, 2002. 38 Ibid., 125; 143. 39 J. Law, and A. Mol, Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 1–22; 15. 40 G. Hein, Learning in the Museum (London: Rouledge, 1998). 41 A. Mol, ‘Ontological Politics. A Word and Some Questions’, in J. Law and J. Hassard, eds., Actor Network Theory and After (Oxford England Malden, MA: Blackwell/Sociological Review, 2002), pp. 74–89; 77. 42 K. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), p. 33. 43 H. Graham, ‘The ‘co’ in Co-production: Museums, Community Participation and Science and Technology Studies’, in Science Museum Group Journal, 5, 2018. DOI: 10.15180; 160502. 4 4 Y. Jung, and A. Rowson Love, ‘Systems Thinking and Museum Ecosystem’, in Y. Jung and A. Rowson Love, eds., Systems Thinking in Museums: Theory and Practice (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), pp. 3–16, 3. 45 Burns, Systemic Action Research, p. 1. 46 H. Graham, and J. Vergunst, Heritage as Community Research Legacies of Co-Production (Bristol: Policy Press, 2019). 47 This conceptual shift from ‘everyone’ to ‘anyone’ is explored more in H. Graham, ‘Horizontality: Tactical Politics for Participation and Museums’, in B. Onciul, M. L. Stefano, and S. Hawke, eds., Engaging Heritage: Engaging Communities (Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2017), pp. 83–84. 48 Ibid., 50. 49 Ibid., 34. 50 Ibid., 94. 51 Ibid., 32. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., 173. 54 Ibid., 73. We are drawing on this approach in the Arts and Humanities ­Research Council funded project ‘Bradford’s National Museum: Connecting the National Science and Media Museum and Bradford’. Available at: https:// bradfordsnationalmuseum.org/. 55 K. Cremin, M. Benson, and J. Lawson, ‘Heritage as a Living Stream: Distributed Decision-making and Leadership at Bede’s World’, 2015. Available at: http:// heritagedecisions.leeds.ac.uk/phase-2-research/heritage-as-a-living-stream/.

6 Thinking through health and museums in Glasgow Mark O’Neill, Pete Seaman and Duncan Dornan

Introduction This chapter aims to represent a dialogue between museums and public health in Glasgow, in the historical context of civic reform and of current efforts to develop new approaches in both sectors which are adequate to the issues faced by the city. Although it focuses on the partnership between Glasgow Museums (GM) and the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH) it starts, not with the perspective of the museum, but with an overview of the recent socio-economic history of the city and its relationship to long-standing and complex problems of inequality, poverty and ill-health. The scale and depth of these issues are part of the operating and ethical context for Glasgow’s civic museums and their engagement with the current trend of health-related activity in the cultural sector. The responses of both GM and GCPH to these problems are placed in the context of the founding principles of the city’s museums and their relationship with the emergence of public health as part of the civic agenda of the Victorian city. It will then recount how these traditions have bolstered the approach taken to the modernisation of Glasgow Museums in the past 40 years which combined economic regeneration with local inclusion. The limits of current public health and museum approaches will be explored along with an emerging new paradigm of public health and its implication for museums and how they might connect with communities in ways which improve health, not just for individuals, but for whole populations.

A public health perspective on Glasgow Between 1945 and 1980 Glasgow’s iron, steel and other manufacturing industries collapsed and its population fell by nearly 50%. The experience of the ‘deindustrial revolution’ was as dramatic as the nineteenth-century boom. Despite the advent of the NHS and the expansion of the Welfare State, new, large scale public health problems emerged which, by many measures, were amongst the most significant in Western Europe.1 These included worse outcomes than in cities with comparable levels of socio-­ economic deprivation such as Liverpool and Manchester. The Glasgow

96  Mark O’Neill et al. Centre for Population Health was established by Glasgow City Council, the Scottish Government and the University of Glasgow in 2004 to understand and explore solutions to these problems. Although Glasgow is, on several indicators a successful post-industrial city, to which a thriving cultural sector has been a major contributor, health inequalities evident across the city’s population persist.2 In recent years, Glasgow has come to understand its experience and responses to social and economic upheaval through the lens of resilience3 which has included the publication of a city resilience strategy.4 The strategy takes stock of the mixed fortunes of the city and its population in navigating the social, economic and environmental consequences of industrial decline and renewal. In 2016, the city contributed £17 billion GVA (Gross Value Added) to the Scottish economy and had an employment growth rate of 3.4%. Much of this growth is in high value services and the city’s continued expansion as a centre of science, technology and education is underpinned by the presence of five higher education institutions and the largest student population in Scotland (130,000 from a total population of just under 600,000). Yet the strategy also highlights or indicates that 13% of the population are disadvantaged in competing for the new opportunities by an absence of any formal qualifications, and socio-economic inequalities remain stark. As the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH) web resource Understanding Glasgow5 highlights, 19% of households in the city have a net income of less than £10,000 per annum, and 34% of the city’s children ­experience poverty. The experience of poverty is compounded in ­Glasgow by its concentration within the local authority area, with almost half (47.3%) of Glasgow’s residents - 283,000 people – residing in 20% of the most deprived areas in Scotland. In comparison, 4.4% of Glasgow’s population live in the most affluent (or ‘least deprived’) areas of Scotland. If Glasgow’s economic inequality profile was to match that of Scotland as a whole, we would expect a less skewed distribution of the city’s population living in the ‘most deprived’ deciles. The city’s concentration of people living in the most deprived neighbourhoods puts additional pressure on health and social care services operating on the front line of response, funded as they are on a per capita basis rather than to reflect the scale and complexity of the problem. Rates of socio-economic inequality in Glasgow remain a key health issue in the city, not only in terms of the disproportionate burden they present to already deprived communities but also in that inequality itself is a public health risk factor for all.6 Unequal access to economic opportunity is intertwined with, and inseparable from, a lived experience of health inequality within the city. Some aspects of the city’s health profile have improved with success in the treatment and prevention of conditions associated with the industrial era, such as heart disease and respiratory conditions.7 Such improvement attests to advances in medical technology, treatment and environmental conditions, and to public health actions across arenas such as health education and prevention building on improved knowledge of the behaviours which increase

Health and museums in Glasgow  97 the incidence of certain disease outcomes across a population. The GCPH report, ‘Glasgow: health in a changing city’8 has however shown that despite improvements in life expectancy across the population in Glasgow since the 1990s, a gap between the most and least deprived areas in Glasgow remains. This disparity is dynamic, with an increase in the gap highlighted for women (from 8 to 11 years) and a larger gap in male life expectancy (of approximately 14 years) remaining unchanged. The dynamism in the life expectancy gap indicates a shifting experience of inequality as well as representing an injustice in itself. Inequalities further disadvantage the city through acting as an ‘effect multiplier’ in the face of future uncertainties (such as climate, labour market, global economic and political change), ­potentially preventing the city taking full advantage of economic opportunity, through negative effects on human capital, aspiration and attainment. Inequalities in health remain a persistent feature of the city’s statistical profile and policy conversations, and have proved impervious to repeated efforts to reduce the gap in opportunity and outcome. A continuing program of reduced public investment in welfare benefits that have offered protection to the most vulnerable looks set to exacerbate the city’s economic inequalities, with households in the already poorest areas of the city, and Scotland, set to lose the greatest amounts of income.9 From GCPH’s perspective the fact that the city’s health inequalities remain ingrained and recalcitrant to the opportunities of economic growth, raises questions about the fit and appropriateness of established ways of tackling population health issues through existing health services. New ways of thinking about and delivering public health services are required.

Glasgow museums Such economic and social realities have been the operating context for Glasgow Museums since they began to modernise in the late 1970s. The significant investments by the city in culture, including the opening of the Burrell Collection in 1983 and securing the title of European Capital of Culture were part of a conscious effort to change the external image of the city and to boost the morale of its population. Sometimes called ‘­culture-led regeneration’10 recent research suggests that it was more ­‘regeneration led culture’, driven by the fact that, unlike an economy based on heavy ­industry, one based on services needed to have a positive image of being liveable and visitable.11 This meant that, despite the many problems it was facing, the city has continued a century-old pattern of spending more per head of population on museums than any other large UK city. The practical politics of this, however, meant that despite the economic and branding motivations, funding attractions solely, or primarily, for tourists, was not tenable and cultural facilities, and museums in particular, had to serve local people. This sense of the need to serve the city derives directly from the tradition of ‘municipal socialism’ which was an important feature of Glasgow’s history.

98  Mark O’Neill et al.

Museums and public health – a shared history of civic improvement Glasgow was one of the ‘shock cities’12 of the industrial revolution, becoming known as the ‘workshop of the world’ and the Second City of the Empire for the scale and quality of its manufactures. Its population grew from 70,000 in 1800 to over one million by 1914. This unprecedented level of growth created great wealth for some, and massive social problems for the city, most notably overcrowded slums, high infant mortality and regular outbreaks of infectious diseases such as cholera, smallpox and typhus.13 Glasgow Corporation set out to address these ills and in the last quarter of the nineteenth century acquired an international reputation for innovation and ambition in solving the problems of urban living.14 A belief in unfettered capitalism was combined with a determination to use the powers of the local state to address issues. This determination was built on complex intellectual foundations – Reformation traditions of moralistic governance, a culture of civic republicanism inspired by ideas of ancient Athens and Rome and Renaissance Florence, a commitment to modern best practice, looking to Paris and Berlin, the Ruskinian combination of a cult of beauty and social reform, which was supported by evangelical Christianity, political liberalism and a commitment to ‘one nation’ politics. It was also based on the need to incorporate an increasingly enfranchised population, to contain labour unrest and, later, the increasingly organised Labour Movement. The latter reflected a strong and vibrant working-class culture, which shared with the bourgeois elites a strong sense of civic identity and pride.15 Glasgow Corporation opened the first Municipal Art Gallery in the UK in 1857, the result of the first of many bequests and gifts from proud citizens which have formed the city’s great collections;16 it was followed by the City Industrial Museum in 1870. That same year the Corporation set up a Health Committee and appointed its first full time Sanitary Inspector. In 1872 it appointed as Medical Officer of Health James Burn Russell (1837–1904), who became internationally known for his innovations in the analysis and eradication of infectious diseases.17 In 1876 James Paton was appointed the first Superintendent of Museums. These were not simply parallel processes, but part of a single vision of reform in the city. Both Russell and Paton derived their main political support from Councillor Robert Crawford, who chaired both the Art Galleries and Health Committees. In an 1891 lecture to Glasgow’s Ruskin Society, Crawford set out the rationale for the Corporation creating the People’s Palace museum in the city’s densely populated, industrial East End, explicitly linking culture and health. He asked: is it possible for any public body to deal effectively with institutions and conditions of life apparently so widely removed as PUBLIC HEALTH

Health and museums in Glasgow  99 AND MUNICIPAL ART? [original emphasis]…. It is of the very ­essence of that common bond which links together the members of this Society, that these two extremes not only do, but must meet and blend together to their mutual advantage…The heart that vibrates to the truly beautiful in art will vibrate also to human suffering.18 In 1879 Paton went on a European trip to explore best practice in museums. Interestingly he did not go to Paris or Berlin, which were the models of many aspects of Glasgow’s town planning, but to Holland and Belgium. His report emphasised the role of museums as expressions of local culture and achievements, industrial as well as cultural, and their role in building a sense of community.19 The People’s Palace opened in 1898 in the industrial heart of the city’s East End and comprised a museum, library and Winter Garden. This was the culmination of a series of local temporary exhibitions which the Corporation had ‘experimentally organised’ from the mid-1880s in civic ­facilities  – the Eastern District Police Buildings in Bridgeton, the Public Baths and Washhouse in the Gorbals, and the New Gorbals Hall. These ‘outreach’ exhibitions attracted crowds of up to 150,000 people. They showed a wide range of Scottish and international historical and natural history material and were uncompromising in the quality of the art on display, including works by Canaletto, Dolci, Rubens, Raeburn and Whistler, some on loan from the National Gallery in London and the Royal Collection. 20 At the opening of the People’s Palace, the former Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery, described the People’s Palace as a ‘palace of pleasure and imagination around which the people may place their affections, and which may give them a home on which their memory may rest’. 21 The pinnacle of this movement was Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, which expressed the confidence of the city at the height of its economic power. Its completion was celebrated with Glasgow’s 1901 International Exhibition, which set a new UK record for attendance at 11.5 million. 22 But even this statement of civic prestige was not built solely with an eye to its external reputation. Paton had set out the city’s vision for the role of this museum in 1891: the museum is of the people and for the people, for rich and poor, for high and low. More indeed it will minister to the humble and needy than to the wealthy, who possess their own pictures, their own sumptuous books, and their own art objects. Art collections the people can only possess in common, and the Museum they should learn to regard as their own property, placed within their own park, and surrounded with their own flower gardens. Therefore, I say it becomes a duty to render such an institution cheerful, bright, and gay, and to attract the people into it by every honourable device. 23

100  Mark O’Neill et al. In 1914, Glasgow had a population of 1.1 million and was the fifth largest city in Europe. The Corporation was recognised globally as a major innovator in the provision of civic services, including electricity, gas, trams, and most radically in terms of liberal economics, housing, competing directly with the private sector, since the establishment of the City Improvement Trust in 1866. 24 By 1914 Glasgow Corporation was managing six museums, two high prestige venues, one in the city centre and one in the West End, the other four in parks in its working-class districts, including the People’s Palace and Tollcross Museum. The latter opened in 1905 and was the first Children’s Museum in the UK (inspired by the Brooklyn Children’s Museum of 1899). While the Corporation’s vision of a single civic community, joined by ­human empathy and paternalistic services aimed at managing huge populations and great social problems, was criticised at the time for its inadequacy in the face of massive social problems and for failing to ­address ­fundamental injustices and inequalities, it did lead to a working-class ­tradition of museum-visiting on a scale not apparent anywhere else in the UK. 25 This tradition was reinforced in the 1940s when GM developed the largest museum education service in the UK, embedding museum visiting within the culture of schools across the city. When Julian Spalding was appointed Director of Glasgow Museums in 1989, to ensure that the service contributed fully to the cultural regeneration program, he brought a new energy to the modernisation – and ­inclusion – program. He set up the Open Museum, an award-winning outreach service (the largest in the UK until recent cuts), inspired by Ruskinian principles of object-based adult education. Over the next 25 years, the Open Museum built a city-wide network which offered handling kits and touring exhibitions to libraries, community centres, care homes, prisons and many other venues, including neighbourhoods and communities at risk of discrimination as well as those suffering from economic, social, educational and ­geographical disadvantage. 26 All of its projects are developed in partnership with community organisations and in response to their interests. More recently, GM, like other UK museums, have been using these ­approaches to develop health and wellbeing related projects, including: mindfulness sessions in museums for people suffering from stress (with LifeLink, a mental health charity); regular afternoon tea seasons for elderly people living alone (with Contact the Elderly); a veterans’ program (with Combat Stress); a heritage research project with prisoners researching the Barlinnie Special Unit’s art; a skill-sharing forum for people working with, and with experience of, homelessness; an art project in Yorkhill Children’s Hospital. Where these projects have been evaluated, they have found positive impacts and there is constant demand from community groups. The greatest task facing GM for the decades after 1990 was the refurbishment of Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery – the UK’s largest civic museum – which finally reopened in 2006, and won global recognition

Health and museums in Glasgow  101 for its ‘paradigm-shifting’ inclusiveness. 27 However it was also based on a conscious effort to explore and renew their founding Victorian principles for the twenty-first century. 28 This was partly to recover an alternative tradition and create a counter-narrative to the prevalent idea of the ‘traditional museum’. This was an expert-centred approach which primarily served those who were already educated, and which, for Glasgow Museums’ staff, resulted in significant peer pressure to serve an abstract ideal of a ‘professional’ museum, rather than to meet the needs of the community which they are employed to serve. Thus the project drew on a Victorian idea of inclusive ‘progress’ to ensure that the modernisation did not gentrify the museum and alienate its traditional working-class audiences. Glasgow Museums have long sought to create an integrated rather than incremental approach to public engagement. In other words, rather than addressing hitherto neglected audiences in temporary exhibitions which are relevant to them, relevant themes are included in core displays. Similarly, interpretation is included in the exhibitions, rather than presenting paintings or artefacts, and relying on educational programs to create points of access for school or family groups. Building on these foundations the wider development of GM, and the refurbishment of Kelvingrove and the development of the Open Museum in particular, led to the elaboration of an approach to the service being seen as a field leader in the democratisation of museums. This approach involved: • • •

The development of new displays based on extensive visitor and non-­ visitor research and consultation with target groups29 Deep engagement with community groups through Open Museum projects, which over decades created a network throughout the city, responding to a wide range of requests for support and engagement30 Displays which increasingly represent the lived experience of the city’s communities and cultures, often based on the expertise and networks of the Open Museum

The results of these strategies are reflected in the number and nature of visitors to Glasgow Museums. Since c1980, visit numbers in the city have grown from about 1 million a year, to 2.5 million in 1990, and nearly 4 million in 2017 – about the same number of visits each year as the National Galleries of Scotland and the National Museum in Edinburgh combined. The differences in the composition of Edinburgh’s and Glasgow’s visitors are however significant. GM attracts a lower percentage of tourists and many more local people, including nearly double the percentage of local visitors from the lowest socio-economic groupings.31 The combination of visitor studies, community engagement, and a health-focussed approach is being currently applied to the refurbishment of The Burrell Collection, which is due to reopen in 2020. This world-class fine and decorative arts collection, opened in 1983, marking the beginning of the city’s cultural

102  Mark O’Neill et al. regeneration. It had, however, been built on a modernist model, and though a source of civic pride, had engaged less with the local tradition of working-­ class museum visiting than GM’s other venues. Based on the belief that people engage with museums better when they see some aspect of their humanity reflected in the stories told about the objects, the new displays will reflect upon topics such as mental health, loneliness, disability (including visual impairment and BSL), refugees and immigration, and LGBT amongst others. Building this content into the core displays supports more sustainable future programming by both the museum and its partners. It will also aid visitors in making sense of these complex issues, whether they are experiencing them or not.

Developing a museum-public health partnership Despite the effectiveness of much of its work, over the past decade GM’s increasing awareness of the depth of the city’s health problems led to a dissatisfaction with its approach and a sense that a new strategic approach was required. This led to a deeper engagement with issues of health and a partnership between GM and GCPH, which involved a process of mutual engagement in order to share understandings of each other’s roles, of the city’s health problems, and of the potential for collaboration. Staff from GCPH and GM made presentations about the issues with their current paradigms and their thoughts about emerging new ways of working. A ­series of workshops helped to develop a deeper understanding amongst both partners of the potential for museums to connect with communities in a way that helped address the psychosocial affects and the disempowerment consequences of inequality as part of a society-wide effort to improve conditions and provide a foundation for population health improvement.

Questioning the museum paradigm GM’s review of the evidence for the health and wellbeing benefits of ­museums found that the strongest evidence was not based on evaluation of specific projects typical of the Open Museum but came from large scale, long-term statistical studies carried by epidemiologists. These found that regular visitation (3 to 5 times a year) had such an impact that people live longer as a result. The studies were controlled for age, income, education, gender, smoking and chronic illness, and argued that cultural attendance was a separate variable.32 This finding affirmed GM’s commitment to increasing museum visiting amongst people whose health was most at risk due to the city’s inequalities. It also posed a question about the role of outreach and other community engagement projects. While the quality of this work and the positive impact on the individuals and groups with whom they engaged was not in doubt, staff felt a growing dissatisfaction. In terms of health and wellbeing, the underlying approach could perhaps

Health and museums in Glasgow  103 be seen as a treatment, where services which could benefit people’s health were provided in the museums or using museum objects in community settings. While these made a contribution, in the face of the scale of Glasgow’s health problems, it became imperative to ask whether this was the best approach. Better still, in the context of declining budgets many wondered if this was the most effective use of precious resources. Even with significant additional resources, could the Treatment Model ever be developed on a scale sufficient to have an impact at a population level in the city?

Questioning the public health paradigm From GCPH’s perspective the fact that the city’s health inequalities remain ingrained, despite opportunities afforded by years of economic growth, raised questions about the fit and appropriateness of established ways of tackling population health issues through growth and provision of existing health services. There is a need to explore and harness the potential of a broader conceptualisation of health and wellbeing. Taking the timeframe across the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the same span over which the city’s economy transitioned from one of heavy industry to services, a shifting pattern of disease burden became evident. Disease conditions of the industrial period, in which museums and public health emerged, have proven tractable to the technologies and knowledge of health services and health improvement, with heart and respiratory diseases making a lessening contribution to mortality and morbidity in Scotland’s post-industrial society. Other conditions, however, remain resistant to improvement or are increasing their contribution. In particular, chronic liver disease, lung cancer and deaths from suicides, overdoses and violence are having an increasing impact. These highlight the limits of a modernist model of medicine and public health against an increased influence of ‘psycho-social factors’ as much about inequalities in society, the erosion of community, social cohesion and shared sources of meaning and inclusion. Looking at the burden of disease beyond causes of death to include years lost to disease from people living in less than ideal health adds greater weight to the prevalence of psycho-social factors in shaping the post-industrial health profile. The Scottish Burden of Disease Study for 2015 highlights mental and substance use disorders as the third most prevalent disease burden, behind cancer and cardiovascular disease. In Glasgow, an estimated 75,000 people experience common mental health problems such as depression or anxiety and is the single biggest factor in terms of ill-health and disability in the city, 33 compounded by its disproportionately high levels of poverty and deprivation. Different responses and understandings of prevention and treatment from those yielded from medical science thus come to the fore. A balance is required that Michael Marmot identifies as (paying homage to Robert Tressell) that of ‘technical solutions and education of people and patients about healthy behaviour’ and ‘(creating) conditions for … fulfilling lives

104  Mark O’Neill et al. free from poverty and drudgery’.34 To wed fulfilment with the eradication of poverty and drudgery represents a challenge to the accepted technologies and praxis of public health. These difficulties are further compounded by a continuingly disconnected and privatised experience of community, family and work – meaning loneliness and isolation have become public health issues both at a broad population level as well as when viewed through an inequalities lens. Research findings equating the impact of loneliness and social isolation as equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day35 have become well known; evidence also indicates social isolation is higher in the most deprived neighbourhoods with lack of work contributing to social isolation and exclusion.36 The intermediate effects of poverty and inequality in producing inequalities in health are at least three-fold. Marmot has described these intermediate effects as having material, psychosocial and political outcomes.37 With regard to the material and redistributive aspects, culture and museums roles are limited, as solutions tend to sit in the area of progressive taxation and within wider systems of social protection. However, the infrastructure of cultural services does represent a form of publicly owned (and therefore redistributed) wealth. Here the epidemiological evidence that cultural attendance is an ‘independent variable’ for health outcomes38 is as significant for GCPH as for GM. If cultural facilities provide direct individual health and wellbeing benefits, then ensuring equitable access and benefit for all in a population is essential.

Museums and public health The psychosocial dimensions of public health connect with cultural services through their ability to support the conditions in which people can lead fulfilling lives. The pathways to impact here are two-fold. Firstly, engagement with cultural services can stimulate personal development and growth that can be seen as a positive health and wellbeing benefit in its own right, but also stimulates growth in a range of individual measures advantageous to wellbeing and improved life chances; self-confidence, self-esteem and self-efficacy. According to how the opportunity for cultural participation is delivered, it can also lead to increased opportunity to connect with others and therefore becomes protective against loneliness and social isolation.39 In terms of the second pathway, White’s challenge relates to why participation in arts-based activities is different from other forms of participation such as sport; White resolves this through Francois Matarasso’s recognition that: The essential reason why the arts are so important is not the socio-­ economic outcomes they share with other activities, but with the human and cultural outcomes which are wholly distinctive to them, questions of identity, meaning and values and all the otherwise inexpressible thoughts and feelings that we are.40

Health and museums in Glasgow  105 This connects to an issue for citizens of a city that has undergone rapid transformation in a manner that has been experienced by many as profoundly dislocating and which has in many ways exacerbated inequality. Further, as a city which is described as ‘post-industrial’, a term which implies a past but does not signpost a direction, imaginings of Glasgow’s future are multiple and contested. Set against a defining narrative of poor health and inequa­lity, especially during the past decade of economic tumult, are narratives of the city’s resilience, its humour, its cultural contribution to the world and its recent renaissance. The story of ill-health and lowered life expectancy can become, problematically for collective wellbeing, a story Glaswegians tell of themselves and others tell for them. A scientifically neutral description of place has the potential to become a morally charged description of the people that live there, evident in preoccupations with the behavioural ‘choices’ posited as an explanation for population health outcomes, but also, just as damagingly, setting limits on the perceived possibilities for people and communities. Places which come to be known by their indices of problems first and foremost can be perceived as places that are not ‘proper’41 and mythologised in ways that perpetuate negative imaginings of people as ‘passive, stuck and disconnected’.42 The GCPH’s Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Representing Communities project sought to explore the narratives created by statistics, official accounts and extant cultural representations and use them as a foil to bring forth new narratives of the city’s well storied east end. From a public health perspective, as well as providing psycho-social benefits, culture becomes as a tool for unearthing, negotiating, telling and retelling a common story and incorporating new stories for people living in one place, particularly in times of upheaval and discontinuity. The collaboration between Glasgow Museums and GCPH provides an element missing from modernist, twentieth century approaches to both health improvement and public health which has found itself limited by its inability to treat forms of ‘dis-ease’ caused by relational processes and to museums, even those which have successfully created inclusive services. For public health, the inclusion of subjective and inter-subjective dimensions as required fields of knowledge and action is supported by Hanlon et al.’s development of Wilber’s integrative model for twenty-first century ­public health.43 Their model proposes complementary focuses on individual and emotional dimensions of experience allied with a focus on collective meaning-­making and the creation of belonging as valid areas of both evidence and action. This also requires a step-change in museum functioning, to move beyond providing occasional health related services, but to utilise a wider range of agencies, disciplines and approaches, and become partners in public health. These require museums to not only become strategic contributors to health and wellbeing within their own sphere, but to work as co-learners with the disciplines of more traditional public health, in recognition that multiple forms of knowledge and expertise will bring solutions and promise.

106  Mark O’Neill et al.

Developing GM as a health promoting organisation In order to better understand the issues and explore how they could respond in a strategic and sustainable way, GM began a process of learning and change. From a public health perspective, GM’s approach to inclusiveness is ‘universalist’, making the core as accessible to all. However, universalist approaches also require additional targeting to population groups for whom improvement would have greatest impact on reducing inequalities. In order to understand how effective GM’s engagement with communities was, they worked with two expert evaluators.44 They worked with staff to apply logic modelling to museum activities, in order to assess whether there were credible links between intended outcomes and the huge range of work which was undertaken, in terms of exhibitions, events, outreach and learning projects. This process found that, while individual projects could be evaluated with positive results, in general it was difficult for GM to achieve clarity about expected outcomes from services, programs and projects; develop standardised definitions and terms; create good quality documentation; articulate a theory of change and identify evidence which would support it; move beyond short-term planning and funding of projects (‘projectitis’); to learn from pilots and to develop services which reached significant numbers. A parallel review of the Open Museum found that while communities valued their work, many educational and outreach services took place in isolation from other museum processes – curatorial, conservation, customer services, security, technical and collections management. While the Open Museum’s autonomy enabled it to be responsive to community needs and interests, this also made it difficult to develop a population level strategy. GCPH and Glasgow Life, GM’s parent body, jointly commissioned research to understand not just the reasons why many people from lower socio-economic groups did not visit museums, but also why, relatively speaking, so many did. The study found that those who did visit were likely to have learned the habit from their parents, to live in areas that had been regenerated or to work in the city centre. Those who did not visit and felt alienated from museums, saw them as dull and unchanging and serving not them, but tourists and ‘yuppies’.45 Thus the exclusion of people who were geographically isolated, and/or not participating in the economy was compounded by a feeling that major civic facilities were ‘not for them’. Again, this seemed to require a new strategic approach – no accumulation of outreach projects by GM and other cultural organisations would be able to break down these barriers. But the fact that a significant number of residents in the city’s poorest areas did visit museums meant that there was a foundation to build on. Funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, the Our Museum project was designed to support museums in achieving a step-change in access. It began with a research phase in which ten museums which had the potential to make such a change were identified – including GM.46 The Paul

Health and museums in Glasgow  107 Hamlyn Foundation has subsequently funded two three-year programs for GM. While the Our Museum team were keen for GM to revise its governance structures, by incorporating community representatives on its Board, this was not a viable option, because of GM being part of the much larger Glasgow Life, whose governance was determined by the requirements of its contract with the City Council. Responding to the Open Museum review, a range of Our Museum activities enabled staff from across the museum to develop a greater mutual understanding and to meet representatives from a wide range of communities and to explore together how more people could benefit from the museum. It became clearer that the whole museum service needed to become part of the process of connecting with communities. Thinking through how this might work, and how best to use the engagement skills of the Open Museum and Learning and Education staff to leverage the whole of Glasgow Museums as a health promoting service is a difficult and continuing process. An essential feature is a framework which connects projects which work intensively with small groups with the ideal of everyone feeling that museums are part of their lives. But it is not a simple matter of creating a structure – based, for example on targeted groups, or an advisory panels and consultations, or thematic projects on issues of, for example, loneliness, mental health or poverty. It needs to be able to respond to emergent requirements, specific to communities and the places where they live and at the same time to avoid ‘projectitis’ and have a population level reach. At the time of writing, the elements of this approach would seem to be: • •

•

•

To continue to develop the inclusive core displays, supported by events, to continuously increase the number of people who feel a sense of ownership and belonging in their museums To develop a more democratic, learning culture within GM, where learning is not simply the acquisition of more scholarly or technical knowledge, but a process where all staff learn with partners, and where connecting with communities is everyone’s responsibility To work with partners, such as the NHS and third sector organisations, to deploy GM’s community engagement expertise to move beyond one-off projects with priority groups, to create services which enable those groups to feel a sense of ownership of and belonging in Glasgow’s museums To co-create with partners and develop pathways to museum-visiting for those who are most excluded from society, pathways which enable them to incorporate museum visiting into their daily lives

A shared vision of museums and public health Throughout these processes GCPH and GM have worked on developing a shared vision of the potential contribution of museums to public health.

108  Mark O’Neill et al. This is founded on a sense of civic tradition, which saw the inclusive elements of Victorian municipal culture as a foundation on which to create a new paradigm. To the extent that this culture and the institutions which embodied it, such as museums, libraries and parks, survive as part of the civic infrastructure, they have a potential contribution to make to public health.47 Museums and other cultural institutions (especially libraries and parks) can have an important role in creating a city which supports the health of all its citizens, supporting the building of more resilient individuals, families and communities. Museums are amongst the very few public spaces which serve as non-commercial sites of citizenship and belonging, owned by all. They are multi-generational – both in the sense that they can appeal to people of all ages, and also that they have been visited by young people’s grandparents when they were children. Even though they need to be renewed regularly, museums can bring a great sense of continuity to their communities. They offer a great variety of experience, where people can engage in free-choice learning, both in the simple sense that they are not compulsory, like school, but also insofar as visitors can choose what to look at, and decide what to pay attention to. Creating an institutional culture of welcome and access helps ensure that these buildings come as near as possible to being open, democratic spaces where all citizens, irrespective of their level of education or income, their physical or intellectual capacities, their gender, sexuality, ethnicity or country of origin feel at home. The combination of these buildings and their symbolic messages with powerful, inspiring, thought-­ provoking objects provides opportunities for emotional dimensions of experience for individuals and families, allied with a focus on collective meaning-making and belonging. Perhaps, above all, museums provide an overall symbolic narrative about the nature of the city, representing its ideal of inclusive citizenship and helping to reduce the impact of living in a stigmatised place. This narrative is embodied in physical spaces, often in monumental, prestigious and beautiful architecture, which represent the status of that vision of citizenship. Wilkinson and Pickett argue that the vector through which increasingly visible inequality damages health is a sense of humiliation.48 If this is true the symbolic meaning and lived experience of equality through belonging in these prestigious sites of civic participation – museums that are ‘of the people and for the people, for rich and poor, for high and low’ – is the foundation of their contribution to public health. At the point where this ideal of inclusiveness fails, where people feel that museums are ‘not for the likes of them’, the very prestige of museums means that they are not simply opportunities which are not taken up, but active contributors to a damaging sense of isolation and humiliation. What drives GM’s partnership with health organisations is therefore the conviction that neutrality is not possible: unless museums are actively contributing to reducing health inequalities, they are actively making things worse.

Health and museums in Glasgow  109

Notes 1 M. Taulbut, D. Walsh, S. Parcel, P. Hanlon, A. Hartmann, G. Poirier, and D. Strniskova, The Aftershock of Deindustrialisation Study – Phase Two ­(Glasgow: Glasgow Centre for Population Health, 2011). 2 D. Walsh, G. McCartney, C. Collins, M. Taulbut, and G. D. Batty, History, Politics and Vulnerability: Explaining Excess Mortality In Scotland and Glasgow (Glasgow: Glasgow Centre for Population Health, 2016). www.gcph. co.uk/assets/0000/5988/Excess_mortality_final_report_with_appendices.pdf. 3 P. Seaman, V. McNeice, G. Yates, and J. McLean, Resilience for Public Health: Supporting Transformation In People and Communities (Glasgow: Glasgow Centre for Population Health, 2014). 4 Glasgow City Council, Our Resilient Glasgow: A City Resilience ­Strategy (Glasgow: Glasgow City Council 2016). www.glasgow.gov.uk/index.aspx? articleid=17668. 5 www.understandingglasgow.com/indicators/poverty/overview. 6 R. Wilkinson, and K. Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better for Everyone (London: Penguin, 2009). 7 See for example Scottish Burden of Disease Study, 2015. ScotPHO. www.­ scotpho.org.uk/comparative-health/burden-of-disease/overview. 8 B. Whyte, Glasgow: Health In a Changing City a Descriptive Study of Changes In Health, Demography, Housing, Socioeconomic Circumstances and Environmental Factors in Glasgow over the Last 20 Years (Glasgow: Glasgow ­Centre for Population Health, 2016). 9 C. Beatty, and S. Fothergill, The Impact on Scotland of the New Welfare ­Reforms (Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament, 2016). 10 See for example, S. Miles, and R. Paddison, ‘Introduction: The Rise and Rise of Culture-led Urban Regeneration’, in Urban Studies, 42, no. 5/6, pp. 833–839, 2005. 11 C. Edwards, Regeneration-Led Culture; Cultural Policy in Glasgow 1 ­ 970–1989 (Unpublished PhD, University of Glasgow, 2018). 12 A. Briggs, Victorian Cities (London: Penguin, [1963] 1990). 13 E. Robertson, Glasgow’s Doctor, James Burn Russell 1837–1904 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1998). 14 See, for example, A. Shaw, Municipal Government in Great Britain (New York: Macmillan, 1904), pp. 38–144. 15 I. E. Maver, ‘A (North) British End-view: The Comparative Experience of ­Municipal Employees and Services In Glasgow (1800–1950)’, in M. Dagenais, I. E. Maver, and P. Y. Saunier, eds., Municipal Services and Employees In the Modern City: New Historical Approaches (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 177–199. 16 J. Morrison, ‘Victorian Municipal Patronage, The foundation and management of Glasgow Corporation Galleries 1854–1888’, in Journal of the History of Collections, 8, no. 1, pp. 93–100, 1996. 17 E. Robertson, Glasgow’s Doctor, op. cit. 18 R. Crawford, The People’s Palace of The Arts for the City of Glasgow, A ­L ecture Delivered to The Ruskin Society of Glasgow (Society of the Rose) (Glasgow: The Ruskin Society of Glasgow, 1891). 19 J. Paton, Report on Visit to Museums and Art Galleries in Holland and ­Belgium, 1879 (Glasgow: Glasgow Corporation, 1879). 20 J. Paton, Report on the Kelvingrove Museum and the Corporation Galleries of Art, Glasgow, for the Year 1883 (Glasgow: Glasgow Corporation, 1883); J. Paton, Report on the Kelvingrove Museum and the Corporation Galleries of Art, Glasgow, for the Year 1885 (Glasgow: Glasgow Corporation, 1885).

110  Mark O’Neill et al. 21 Glasgow Herald, 23 January, 1898. 22 J. Kinchin, and P. Kinchin, Glasgow’s Great Exhibitions, 1888, 1901, 1911, 1938, 1988 (Dorchester: White Cockade, 1988). 23 J. Paton, ‘An Art Museum and Its Structural Requirements’, in Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Glasgow 1890/91, 22 (Glasgow: Philosophical Society of Glasgow, 1891) p. 10. 24 A. Shaw, Municipal Government in Great Britain, op. cit. 25 In 2001, before its refurbishment, 40% of local visitors to Kelvingrove were from the C2DE socio-economic groups. On the shift in museum aims from creating a single community of museum visitors to shoring up middle class confidence and identity see K. Hill, Culture and Class in English Public Museums, 1850–1914 (London: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 143–149. 26 www.glasgowlife.org.uk/museums/venues/the-open-museum. 27 E. Gurian, ‘Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum’, in Curator: The Museum Journal, 50, no. 3, pp. 358–361, 2007. 28 L. Fitzgerald, ‘Building on Victorian Ideas’, in S. McLeod, ed., Reshaping Museum Space (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 133–145. 29 For an early account of this approach see M. Economou, ‘Evaluation Strategies In the Cultural Sector: The Case of the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery in Glasgow’, in Museum and Society, 2, no. 1, pp. 30–46, 2004. 30 See J. Dodd, A Catalyst for Change: The Social Impact of the Open Museum (Leicester: University of Leicester, 2002); A. Newman, and F. McLean, ‘The ­I mpact of Museums Upon Identity’, in International Journal of Heritage ­Studies, 12, no. 1, pp. 49–68, 2006; H. Geoghegan, ‘Museum ­G eography: ­Exploring Museums, Collections and Museum Practice in the UK’, in ­Geography ­C ompass, 4, no. 10, pp. 1462–1476, 2010. 31 M. O’Neill, ‘Museum Visiting in Edinburgh and Glasgow – 150 Years of Change and Continuity’, in Cultural Trends, 2019, online edition. DOI: 10.1080/09548963.2019.1559464. 32 M. O’Neill, ‘Cultural Attendance and Public Mental Health – From Research to Practice’, in Journal of Public Mental Health, 9, no. 4, pp. 22–29, 2010. 33 NHS Health Scotland Inequality Briefing 1; Health Inequalities: What Are They? How Do We Reduce Them? (Edinburgh: NHS Health Scotland, 2015). 34 M. Marmot, The Health Gap; The Challenge of an Unequal World (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 32–33. 35 J. Holt-Lunstad, T. B. Smith, and J. B. Layton, ‘Social Relationships and ­Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review’, in PLOS Medicine, 2010. https:// journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316. 36 Go Well, Loneliness in Glasgow’s Deprived Communities (Glasgow: Go Well Briefing Paper 22 March 2015). www.gowellonline.com/assets/0000/3722/ GoWell_Briefing_Paper_BP_22_Loneliness.pdf. 37 M. Marmot, The Health Gap; The Challenge of an Unequal World, p. 137. 38 O. Bygren, L. Johansson, S-E. Boinkum, B. Konlaan, A. J. M. Grjibovski, A. V. ­ ortality: Wilkinson, and M. Sjöström, ‘Attending Cultural Events and Cancer M A Swedish Cohort Study’, in Arts & Health, 1, no. 1, pp. 64–73, 2009. 39 P. Taylor, L. Davies, P. Wells, J. Gilbertson, and W. Tayleur, A Review of the Social Impacts of Culture and Sport (London: DCMS, 2015). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/416279/A_review_of_the_Social_Impacts_of_Culture_and_Sport.pdf. 40 Quoted in M. White, Arts Development in Community Health: A Social Tonic (Oxford: Radcliffe, 2009), p. 53. 41 J. Popay, C. Thomas, G. Williams, S. Bennett, A. Gatrell, L. Bostock, ‘A Proper Place to Live: Health Inequalities, Agency and the Normative Dimensions of Space’, in Social Science & Medicine, 57, no. 1, pp. 55–69, 2003.

Health and museums in Glasgow  111 42 L. Hanley, Estates: An Intimate History (London: Granta Books, 2008), p. ix. 43 P. Hanlon, S. Carlilse, M. Hannah, and A. Lyon, The Future of Public Health (Maidenhead: Open University, 2012). 4 4 The lead evaluator was Avril Blamey. For an account of her approach see A. Blamey, and M. Mackenzie, ‘Theories of Change and Realistic Evaluation: Peas in a Pod or Apples and Oranges?’, in Evaluation, 13, no. 4, pp. 439–455, 2007. 45 Social Marketing Gateway, Sport and Cultural Participation in Glasgow (Glasgow: Social Marketing Gateway, 2014). 46 B. Lynch, Whose Cake Is It Anyway? (London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2011). www.phf.org.uk/publications/whose-cake-anyway/. See also chapters by Lynch and Benson and Cremin in this volume. 47 E. Klinenberg, Palaces for the People: How To Build a More Equal and United Society (London: Bodley Head, 2018). 48 R. Wilkinson, and K. Pickett, The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Well-being (London: Allen Lane, 2018).

7 Partnership for health The role of cultural and natural assets in public health Helen Chatterjee

There is increasing recognition that community assets and social networks have a major influence on individual and population health.1 Globally, populations are living longer but unhealthier lifestyles, resulting in greater numbers of individuals with diseases such as dementia and diabetes, all of which places considerable pressure on health and social care services. 2 It is also widely acknowledged that there is a social gradient to health, whereby individuals from poorer socio-economic backgrounds experience reduced health, wellbeing and social resilience.3 This chapter focuses on the social role of museums and seeks to reposition museums as vital community assets supporting public health and community cohesion. The notion of community assets focuses on positive benefits as a mechanism for solving individual and community challenges, rather than the deficit model underpinning modern health and social care systems.4 Such community-based assets include the physical, environmental and economic resources within a community, such as museums, public parks and open spaces, as well as voluntary and third sector organisations. Social prescribing is gaining considerable traction as a route to providing access to community assets to address specific physical and mental health issues, with a significant rise in a wide range of ‘on prescription’ programs including: exercise, arts, museums, books, education, food and time banking, and Green Gyms.5 This chapter will focus on evaluating the commonalities and distinctions between social prescribing programs, with a specific focus on cultural (museums) and natural (parks, natural environments, gardens) referral pathways. Drawing on case studies involving cultural activities and nature-based interventions, this chapter explores the overlap and synergies between natural and cultural capital in public health.

Introduction There is a wide body of evidence demonstrating the positive impact of arts and culture on health and wellbeing,6 with research showing that arts and cultural participation impacts upon biological, psychological, social and behavioural aspects of health, across the lifespan.7 Population level

Partnership for health  113 studies have shown that people who engage in arts and cultural activities have a lower risk of dying prematurely and are significantly healthier.8 In England it is estimated that the arts, museums and heritage sites save the NHS around £700 million per year through reducing General Practitioner (GP) visits and use of mental health services.9 There is also evidence that leading an active, socially-engaged lifestyle might protect against cognitive decline. In a recent study the arts have been proposed as potentially beneficial activities due to their combination of cognitive complexity and mental creativity.10 Using data from over 3,000 participants drawn from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, the study explored the association between three types of cultural engagement (visiting museums, going to musical or theatrical performances and going to the cinema) and change in cognitive function over ten years, amongst adults over 52 years of age. The authors measured memory and semantic, or verbal fluency at baseline and ­follow-up, and found that visiting museums and going to performances were associated with a lesser decline in cognitive function, compared to going to the cinema. The results were shown to be independent of demographic, health and social confounders, providing robust evidence that regular engagement in creative, cultural activities not only affords protection against cognitive decline but enhances cognitive functioning. The Creative Health Inquiry Report cites over 1,000 peer-reviewed studies and grey literature evaluations outlining the depth and breadth of the ‘arts and health’ landscape, including specific sections on museums. In tandem, there is a growing evidence base demonstrating the social value of museums11 and the role that museums play in improving health and wellbeing.12 Research which draws on a range of museum programs, research projects and grey literature, shows that engaging in museums provides a number of benefits including: • • • • • •

Positive social experiences, leading to reduced social isolation Opportunities for learning and acquiring news skills Calming experiences, leading to decreased anxiety; increased positive emotions, such as optimism, hope and enjoyment Increased self-esteem and sense of identity; increased inspiration and opportunities for meaning-making Positive distraction from clinical environments, including hospitals and care homes Increased communication between families, carers and health professionals

Given the wide range of benefits it is not surprising that more and more museums are adapting their access programs to consider the wider social, health and wellbeing benefits that museum encounters can elicit. Such programs are aligned with the increasing recognition that there are many associations between ageing and social isolation, loneliness, physical and

114  Helen Chatterjee mental ill-health,13 and that in order to tackle these complex public health challenges a more inclusive, multidimensional and person-centred approach is required.14 Given the aforementioned benefits of museum engagement, it is apparent that there are many opportunities (and challenges) for museums to be re-valued in terms of their social, community and public health offer; one of the biggest challenges facing the museums sector is understanding how best to meet these needs. Many arts and other community-based organisations have developed more formalised relationships with health and social care providers, offering schemes described as ‘social prescribing’. Social prescribing is a term used to describe the process whereby healthcare professionals refer patients to non-clinical sources of support in the community to improve their health and wellbeing.15 Social prescribing includes referrals to support health behaviour changes, especially for long-term conditions, schemes to develop community cohesion, or address the social determinants of health by providing support for welfare, debt advice, housing and employment. Well known models include: • • • • • • •

Arts, books, education and exercise on Prescription Green Gyms Healthy Living Initiatives Information Prescriptions Supported Referral Social Enterprise Schemes Time Banks

Social prescribing has developed as a strategy for tackling health inequities through partnerships between health, social care and third sector organisations, and provides a conduit for individuals to access community-based assets to support their health and wellbeing. According to NHS England, nearly half of all clinical commissioning groups in England are investing in social prescribing programs, and one in five GPs regularly use social prescribing, whilst a further 40% would refer if they had more information about available services.16 The General Practice Forward View17 lists social prescribing as one of the ten high-impact actions and has identified social prescribing as a valuable mechanism for supporting personalised care and for managing the demand on their services. Friedli et al. showed that social prescribing is especially helpful for vulnerable groups including: recently bereaved older adults; those with chronic physical illness; mild to moderate depression and anxiety; enduring mental health problems; and frequent attenders in primary care.18 As core community assets museums are well-placed to offer public health interventions in the form of activities and programs that are community-­ led, person-centred, low-cost and nonclinical; but museums are relative newcomers to the social prescribing scene. Several museums have piloted

Partnership for health  115 prescription schemes, with the first of its kind at Tate Britain (Art-based Information Prescription19); other projects have included the Beaney House of Art & Knowledge, Canterbury (Paper Apothecary, 2013); the Cinema Museum, London (Cinema Museum Prescriptions, 2014); the Holburne Museum, Bath (Recollection, 2014); and Oxford University Museums (Memory Lane Prescription for Reminiscence, 2015). This chapter will draw upon a recent three-year research project that developed a ‘Museums on Prescription’ scheme with partner museums across London and Kent; findings from this research, along with research and evaluation from the wider social prescribing sector, will be used to advocate that museums should be revalued – and re-evaluated – as public health assets.

Museums as Public Health assets Foot and Hopkins argue that as well as having needs and problems, those members of the community who are marginalised also have social, cultural and material assets, and identifying and mobilising these can help to overcome specific health challenges, build resilience and social capital. As community resources, I argue that museums are well-positioned to meet these needs by promoting creative, cognitive and physical activity, and in so doing promote individual and societal wellbeing. The Marmot Review articulated the principles of a fair society, linking them to the challenge of addressing health inequalities which, it is suggested, have resulted in a social gradient in health. In short, the lower a person’s socio-economic status the worse that person’s health is likely to be. The review states that given health inequalities are driven by underlying social factors, including where people are born, grow, live, work and age, actions needed to alleviate health inequalities must tackle a range of social factors. Furthermore, the review suggested that due to the growing demands on health and social care, these services are insufficient to reduce health inequalities and that a wider range of organisations and actions are needed to tackle the social determinants of health, including community assets. Chatterjee and Noble argue that museums can be viewed as a conduit for individual and community assets, with cultural encounters, including many museum programs and activities, acting as vehicles which can lead to direct improvements in health and wellbeing. Friedli advocates interventions that sustain resilience including those that: strengthen social relationships and opportunities for community connection for individuals and families, especially those in greatest need; build and enable social support, social networks and social capital within and between communities; strengthen and/or repair relationships between communities and health and social care agencies; and improve the quality of the social relationships of care between individuals and professionals. Viewing cultural encounters and museums through an assets-lens affords an opportunity to advocate for the importance and value of museums as essential community resources,

116  Helen Chatterjee providing a space where meaningful, creative and socially-engaging activities can support community cohesion and inclusion; thus supporting many, if not all, of Friedli’s resilience-based recommendations.

Museums on Prescription Social prescribing is the mechanism by which community assets can be formally incorporated into health and social care pathways. Whilst there isn’t a ‘one model fits all’ approach to social prescribing there is increasing recognition of the need to develop a framework for implementing and evaluating social prescribing interventions, programs and activities. The National Social Prescribing Network has published an accessible guide to social prescribing, and attempt to explain what it is, what different models look like, as well as detail referral mechanisms, governance and risk management, and much else. 20 Thomson et al. 21 and Chatterjee et al. 22 provide reviews of social prescribing and outline pathways to implementation, including referral mechanisms; these studies highlight the diverse but somewhat fragmentary evidence base and advocate for the importance of developing robust evidence that is meaningful for both referrers and practitioners. Whilst the scope of social prescribing encompasses arts, reading, exercise, nature and information-based programs, museums have not typically been part of this practice; this could be because a key focus for museums over the past 20 years has been on education and inclusion, rather than specifically health. In light of this gap and with a view to evidencing the potential of museums to operate within the social prescribing spectrum, a three-year Museums on Prescription program was developed across London and Kent from 2014–7.23 Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council the project explored the value of museum-based social prescribing programs for lonely older adults at risk of social isolation. The project was developed in response to government statistics about a significant public health problem regarding social isolation and loneliness in older adults. The Office for National Statistics 2015 report into loneliness found that amongst older people, rates of chronic loneliness have remained steady since the 1940s, with 6 to 13% of people over the age of 65 reporting that they feel lonely all or most of the time.24 Furthermore, social isolation in older adults has been linked with a range of physical and mental health problems including depression, and recent studies have shown it can lead to early death (see note 22). The award winning project, led by University College London and Canterbury Christ Church University, established novel programs of museum-­ based, creative activities for lonely, older adults aged 65 to 94 at risk of social isolation, who were identified and referred by a range of NHS and Local Authority social and psychological services, local third sector and/ or community organisations.25 Partner museums (The British Museum; The British Postal Museum; Canterbury Museums and Galleries; Central Saint Martin’s Study Collection; Maidstone Museum and Gallery; Tunbridge Wells Museums and Gallery; UCL Museums & Collections) carried

Partnership for health  117 ­ useums-based activities lasting one to two hours out weekly programs of m across ten weeks, ­attended by over 100 participants in groups of around 8 to 10 older adults. Sessions were led by museum staff and included curator talks, behind-the-scenes tours, museum object handling, and creative and co-­productive activities inspired by the collections involving writing, drawing, print-­making, weaving, and designing exhibitions, booklets and guides. ­ easure26), Measures of psychological wellbeing (UCL Museums Wellbeing M mental wellbeing (Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale) and social isolation (Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale) were taken at baseline (Week 1), mid- (Week 5) and end-program (Week 10), and follow-up interviews with short versions of the measures (Short Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale and 3-Item Loneliness Scale) were implemented at three and six months. In-depth interviews were conducted at the end of ten weeks with participants, facilitators and carers who also filled in weekly diaries, called Museum Passports, reflecting upon their experiences. Partners and participants also attended workshops every six months to share experiences, discuss research findings and help develop best practice guidance.27 Quantitative analysis of the measures found significant improvements in psychological wellbeing that were sustained beyond the end of the program. 28 Qualitative analysis revealed a sense of belonging, improved quality of life, renewed interest in learning, increased creativity and social activity, and continued visits to museums. In addition, the museums, health, social care and third sector partners also reported benefits; for referrers the project offered novel community-based programs for their service users and museums were able to attract new hard-to-reach audiences. 29 Museums on Prescription drew upon key policy reports to develop an understanding of health improvement for older adults. The Foresight Report30 found, for example, that positive mental health and wellbeing were associated with social and economic benefits, identifying both the vulnerability of mental resources to future challenges, and the potential of these resources to adapt and meet challenges. Mental wellbeing, defined as ‘a dynamic state, in which the individual is able to develop their potential, work productively and creatively, build strong and positive relationships with others, and contribute to their community’ was linked to ‘mental capital’, involving cognitive and emotional resources, and emotional intelligence comprising social skills and resilience to stressors. Museums on Prescription outcomes, such as involvement in purposeful activity, social support and increased health awareness, are effective in enhancing mental capital and helping individuals develop informed lifestyle choices, particularly those related to their own health and wellbeing.

Synergies between museums and other community assets As demonstrated by the Creative Health report there are many synergies between both the types of activities and range of outcomes experienced in museums and other arts or cultural activities. These synergies are further articulated in Museums as Spaces for Wellbeing; a report that highlights a

118  Helen Chatterjee diverse range of creative and novel museum programs and projects, demonstrating how the heritage sector is responding to ongoing cultural, and wider societal, policy shifts.31 A series of case studies and examples (The Lightbox; Yorkshire Sculpture Park; Birmingham Museums Trust; Canterbury Museums and Galleries; Museum of London; Bristol Museum and Art Gallery; Horniman Museum and Gardens; Tyne and Wear Museums and Archives; Hampshire Cultural Trust; The Restoration Trust; Mansfield Museum; Cambridge University Museum; York Museums Trust) illustrate how innovative museum programs are tackling key issues in society including: demographic changes; a growing commitment to co-creation in service design; the cumulative effects of entrenched health inequalities; and a growing awareness of the potential and importance of ‘green’ wellbeing, amongst other factors. The report also describes how museums are meeting organisational opportunities and challenges in relation to new audiences, partnerships, evaluation, organisational change and funding. The main findings from Museums as Spaces for Wellbeing 32 are summarised in eight ‘top tips’ or take home messages, detailed below: 1 Work in partnership: effective partnerships multiply expertise, resources and networks. Make sure assumptions and objectives are shared through dialogue and recorded in written agreements that are regularly reviewed 2 Embed health and wellbeing organisationally: where wellbeing is understood as a core part of an organisation’s mission, a health and wellbeing offer is easier to develop and maintain 3 Consider sustainability carefully: museums and galleries have a duty of care towards vulnerable audiences, and an ethical responsibility to develop new programs or projects with due thought to the long-term needs of, and consequences for, participants 4 Respond to local needs: heritage organisations have a vital role in place-making, and can use consultation, piloting and documents like JSNAs (Joint Strategic Needs Assessments) to clarify where their energy is best invested in order to make a difference to their communities 5 Take an asset-based approach: the multiple assets of museums include staff, partners, visitors, expertise, location and indoor and outdoor spaces as well as collections 6 Document your work: documentation and evaluation are key to reflective practice, and essential for making a case for your work to funders, managers, colleagues, partners and participants 7 Give yourself time: take all the time necessary to build strong relationships with funders, partners and participants, and factor this in from the start 8 Shout about it: good practice and organisational change come about through sharing the work, within, beyond and between heritage organisations

Partnership for health  119 The aforementioned findings highlight the importance of building effective, sustainable partnerships and programs in museums, which are co-­ produced with health, social care, third sector and, most importantly, intended ­audiences. This model of partnership-working is closely aligned with the notion of asset-based working, so there is clear potential within this space for the wider adoption of Museums on Prescription. The report also advocates the importance of responding to local needs and by so doing, museums can clearly articulate their social, cultural and economic value. Furthermore, evaluation is a crucial part of wellbeing-program ­development, and this should take place at all stages of planning and implementation. Whilst a standardised clinical approach to evaluation might not be relevant or feasible given financial constraints, the notions of formative and summative evaluation, piloting activities and programs, pre- and post-­ testing, or test-retest, are all extremely helpful and essential for the sector to continue to build a robust evidence base. The value of co-produced research and evaluation, conducted in collaboration with partners, stakeholders and participants, is also gaining considerable traction and is an excellent mechanism for ensuring that programs are well designed and meet mutually agreed objectives.33

Natural, or green, wellbeing There is a robust and well-accepted evidence base for the wellbeing benefits of natural, or green, wellbeing activities. Human populations are increasingly disconnected from nature, yet research in recent decades has yielded substantial evidence (see note 33) exemplifying multiple health benefits from engaging in nature-based activities.34 Such activities include Green Gyms, Healthy Walks, Exercise on Prescription and other so-called Ecotherapies. The physical health benefits of outdoor activities, including walking, are self-evident and the obvious links with physical exercise have resulted in widespread acceptance of natural and exercise-based programs within social prescribing. Nature-based interventions involving horticulture and environmental conservation have also been shown to increase mental wellbeing, reduce depression, anxiety and stress-related symptoms, and improve self-esteem and confidence.35 Furthermore, self-esteem and mood have been shown to improve in non-clinical populations as a result of walking in green spaces of high natural and heritage value.36

Green Gyms, Ecotherapy, Exercise on Prescription Green Gyms seek to improve the participant’s physical and mental health through contact with nature (gardening, walking in parks, developing green spaces). Pretty et al. reviewed the effects of ten green exercise ­studies (conservation activities, cycling, horse-riding and walking) for over 200 participants across the UK. 37 The study found that green exercise led to

120  Helen Chatterjee significant improvements in self-esteem and reduction in measures of negative mood regardless of the duration, intensity or type of exercise, indicating the potential of green schemes as public health interventions for mental health. Webber, Hinds and Camic assessed the wellbeing of 171 UK ­allotment gardeners; findings revealed the importance of meaningful activity, increased feelings of connectedness, and improved physical and mental health. 38 The Conservation Volunteers (TCV), found significant mental health improvement in the first three months of green gym participation, using the SF-12 Health Survey. 39 In addition to physical and mental health benefits, improved quality of life and wellbeing, TCV found that being in the countryside emerged as a significant motivating factor, which supported other findings on the therapeutic value of natural environments, including acquiring new skills, increased awareness of conservation, participating in something worthwhile, as well as the social aspects of group working.40 Exercise on Prescription involves referring patients to supported exercise programs (cycling, guided healthy walks, gym or leisure centre activity, keep fit and dance classes, swimming, aqua-therapy and team sports). In addition to physical health improvements, the benefits include learning new skills and achieving goals, improving the way that people look and feel about themselves, meeting new people and making friends, adding structure to the day and improving patterns of sleep. Since their inception in 1990, UK exercise referral schemes have increased to around 600 and this type of social prescribing is one of the most popular community-based ­referral pathways in the UK.41

Synergies between cultural and natural wellbeing It is perhaps not surprising that many of the outcomes identified for nature-­ based activities are the same as those for cultural participation. Psychological improvements in mood, self-esteem, confidence, quality of life, reductions in anxiety and stress, learning and acquisition of new skills, and development of social bonds, are shared across the two seemingly varied types of activities. Both types of activities also have a physical component. Museums have been quick to recognise the value of incorporating outside spaces into wellbeing programs. Heritage walks, guided trails both in and outside museums, historic houses and other heritage sites, gardening, yoga and other green or exercise activities are increasingly part of many organisations wellbeing provision. The Whitworth Gallery in Manchester’s ‘Art Garden’ hosts a horticultural wellbeing program that takes advantage of the outside space in combination with collections-based activities, which is run in collaboration with local charities. The Human Henge project, developed by the Restoration Trust, organises walks in Stonehenge for people with mental health problems, living on low incomes in Wiltshire, accompanied by archaeologists and musicians.

Partnership for health  121 These examples demonstrate the close practical associations between nature and culture-based wellbeing programs, but it is likely there are a number of underlying mechanisms that explain why these forms of engagement bring about similar outcomes. Culture and nature-based activities are inherently multisensory; as the aforementioned evidence reveals such activities all have a physical component. Even for participants who may have sensory, cognitive or mobility impairments many forms involve touch, real or virtual engagement (be it objects, art materials for drawing or making activities, tools for gardening). Touch has been shown to have important emotional connections, with some researchers advocating a new form of touch known as ‘emotional touch’.42 The notion of emotional touch is rooted in neurological evidence that sensory information gathered by touch is directly linked with emotional regions of the brain responsible for emotional states or feelings, behaviours and memories.43 Evidence also highlights the importance of learning, and research has shown that being actively involved in learning is linked to levels of engagement and cognitive processing.44 Both culture and nature-based activities involve participants meaningfully engaging with new ideas, information and actions;45 this deep-level cognitive processing is also likely to be a vector in the underlying mechanisms behind culture and nature-based activities. Finally, the majority of culture and nature-based activities are social, occurring in groups in public or social spaces. Social bonds and connectedness have already been highlighted as important contributors to physical and mental health. The close affiliation between nature and art is not a new idea; numerous artists and writers have long appreciated the notion of nature as art, including the likes of John Ruskin and Katsushika Hokusai.46 However, it is likely that gaining an enhanced understanding of how different forms of engagement, and types of interventions or activities, bring about similar health outcomes will aid in the wider acceptance of such initiatives within society, such that culture and nature are not just viewed as ‘nice to have’ but instead are valued as essential community public health assets.

Conclusions Whilst museums face a range of potential challenges resulting from economic austerity, demographic changes and entrenched health inequalities, this chapter has outlined evidence for revaluing museums as community public health assets. The work of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Arts, Health and Wellbeing has achieved new visibility for the connection between cultural engagement and health, and this provides new opportunities for museums. In tandem, the growing acceptance of social prescribing as an effective and economically sustainable mechanism for tackling major public health challenges, affords an opportunity for the museums and heritage sector to take advantage of increased awareness of the importance of community-based assets. As this chapter demonstrates, museums are ideally

122  Helen Chatterjee placed to become key players in supporting health and wellbeing for individuals and communities, via community inclusivity, creativity, lifelong learning and partnership, as well as exceptional resources in the form of dedicated and highly trained staff, engaging public spaces and material culture. Museums as Spaces for Wellbeing (see note 33) has highlighted some of the obstacles that may stand in the way of growth; these include: • • • • •

Ethically important issues of legacy and sustainability The lack of established models through which social prescribing might be rolled out The challenges of project evaluation The slow rate of organisational change on which progress depends The low visibility of health and wellbeing in museums, even where embedded organisationally

The report however offers possible routes forward. With regard to legacy and sustainability, museums that have made health and wellbeing central to their offer find themselves increasingly able to sustain this work with core funding, and in some cases (for example, Canterbury Museums and Galleries) have experienced an uplift in funding on the basis of their wellbeing provision. With a growing focus on community asset working and social prescribing, mechanisms for developing more formalised relationships between culture and health will be increasingly available, and it has perhaps never been timelier for museums to be re-framed as vital community public health assets.

Notes 1 www.euro.who.int/en/publications/abstracts/review-of-social-determinantsand-the-health-divide-in-the-who-european-region.-final-report. 2 www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-and-wellbeing-a-guide-to-­ community-centred-approaches. 3 www.local.gov.uk/asset-approach-community-wellbeing-glass-half-full. 4 www.instituteofhealthequity.org/resources-reports/fair-society-healthylives-the-marmot-review. 5 H. J. Chatterjee, M. Polley, and G. Clayton, Social Prescribing: Community-­ based referrals in public health, in Perspectives in Public Health, 138, no. 1, pp. 18–19, 2017. DOI: 10.1177/1757913917736661. 6 Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing (All Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing, 2017). 7 S. E. Johansson, B. B. Konlaan, and L. O. Bygren, ‘Sustaining Habits of ­Attending Cultural Events and Maintenance of Health: A Longitudinal Study’, in Health Promotion International, 16, pp. 229–234, 2001. 8 L. O. Bygren, B. B. Konlaan, and S.-E. Johansson, ‘Attendance At Cultural Events, Reading Books or Periodicals, and Making Music or Singing In a Choir as Determinants for Survival: Swedish Interview Survey of Living Conditions’, in BMJ, 313, pp. 1577–1580, 1996. 9 D. Fujiwara, L. Kudrna, T. Cornwall, K. Laffan, and P. Dolan, Further Analysis to Value the Health and Educational Benefits of Sport and Culture ­(London: DCMS, 2015).

Partnership for health  123 10 D. Fancourt, and A. Steptoe, Cultural Engagement Predicts Changes In Cognitive Function In Older Adults over a 10 Year Period: Findings from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, in Nature-Scientific Report, 8, p. 10226, 2018. DOI:10.1038/s41598-018-28591-8 1. 11 R. Sandell, and E. Nightingale, Museums, Equality and Social Justice (London: Routledge, 2012). 12 H. J. Chatterjee, and G. Noble, Museums, Health and Wellbeing (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013). 13 E. C. Schoenmakers, T. G. Van Tilburg, and T. Fokkema, ‘Awareness of Risk Factors for Loneliness among Third Agers’, in Ageing and Society, 34, pp. 1035–1051, 2014. DOI:10.1017/S0144686X12001419. 14 www.scie.org.uk/publications/briefings/briefing39/. 15 L. J. Thomson, P. M. Camic, and H. J. Chatterjee, Social Prescribing: A ­Review of Community Referral Schemes (London: University College London, 2015). Available at: https://culturehealthresearch.wordpress.com/museums-onprescription/. 16 www.england.nhs.uk/personalised-health-and-care/social-prescribing/. 17 NHS England, General Practice Forward View, 2016. Available at: www.england.nhs.uk/gp/gpfv/. 18 L. Friedli, C. Jackson, H. Abernethy, and J. Stansfield, Social Prescribing for Mental Health – A guide to Commissioning and Delivery (Lancashire Care Services Improvement Partnership, 2009). Available at: www.centreforwelfarereform.org/library/by-az/social-prescribing-for-mental-health.html. 19 D. Shaer, K. Beaven, N. Springham, S. Pillinger, A. Cork, J. Brew et al., ‘The Role of Art Therapy In a Pilot for Art-based Information Prescriptions at Tate Britain’, in International Journal of Art Therapy, 13, no. 1, pp. 25–33, 2008. 20 M. Polley, J. Fleming, T. Anfilogoff, et al., Making Sense of Social Prescribing, 2017. Available online at: www.westminster.ac.uk/patient-outcomes-in-healthresearch-group/projects/social-prescribing-network/. 21 L. J. Thomson, P. M. Camic, and H. J. Chatterjee, Social Prescribing: A ­Review of Community Referral Schemes, 2015. 22 H. J. Chatterjee, P. M. Camic, B. Lockyer, and L. J. Thomson, ‘Non-­clinical Community Interventions: A Systematised Review of Social Prescribing Schemes’, in Arts & Health, 2017. DOI: 10.1080/17533015.2017.1334002. 23 https://culturehealthresearch.wordpress.com/museums-on-prescription/. 24 http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105171432/http://www.ons. gov.uk/ons/rel/wellbeing/measuring-national-well-being/older-people-s-wellbeing/art-older-people-s-well-being--2015.html. 25 www.rsph.org.uk/our-work/awards/public-health-england-commendations/ sustainable-development-2017-winner.html. 26 L. Thomson, and H. J. Chatterjee, ‘Assessing Well-being Outcomes for Arts and Heritage Activities: Development of a Museum Well-being Measures Toolkit’, in Journal of Applied Arts & Health, 5, no. 1, pp. 29–50, 2014. DOI: 10.1386/ jaah.5.1.29_1. See, also, L. Thomson, and H. J. Chatterjee, ‘Measuring the Impact of Museum Activities on Wellbeing: Developing the Museum Wellbeing Measures Toolkit’, in Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship, 30, no. 1, pp. 44–62, 2015. DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2015.1008390. 27 D. Veal, et al., Museums on Prescription: A Guide to Working with Older Adults (London: UCL, 2017). Available at: https://culturehealthresearch.wordpress.com/ museums-on-prescription/. 28 L. J. Thomson, B. Lockyer, P. M., Camic, and H. J. Chatterjee, ‘Effects of a Museum-based Social Prescription Intervention on Quantitative Measures of Psychological Wellbeing In Older Adults’, in Perspectives in Public Health, 2017. DOI: 10.1177/1757913917737563.

124  Helen Chatterjee 29 C. Todd, P. M. Camic, B. Lockyer, L. J. Thomson, and H. J. Chatterjee, ‘Museum Programs for Socially Isolated Older Adults: Understanding What Works’, in Health & Place, 2017. DOI: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2017.08.005. 30 Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project, Mental Capital and Wellbeing: Making the Most of Ourselves In the 21st century, Final Project Report (London: The Government Office for Science, 2008). 31 S. Desmarais, L. Bedford, and H. J. Chatterjee, Museums as Spaces for Wellbeing: A Second Report from the National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing, 2018. Available at: https://museumsandwellbeingalliance.wordpress.com. 32 H. Frumkin, G. N., Bratman, S. J. Breslow, et al., ‘Nature Contact and ­Human Health: A Research Agenda’, in Environmental Health Perspectives, 2017. DOI: 10.1289/EHP1663. 33 N. Morse, and H. J. Chatterjee, ‘Museums, Health and Wellbeing Research: Co-developing a New Observational Method for People with Dementia In Hospital Contexts’, in Perspectives in Public Health, 2017. DOI: 10.1177/ 1757913917737588. 34 R. Aerts, O. Honnay, A. Van Nieuwenhuyse, ‘Biodiversity and Human Health: Mechanisms and Evidence of the Positive Health Effects of Diversity In Nature and Green Spaces’, in British Medical Bulletin, ldy021, 2018. DOI: 10.1093/ bmb/ldy021. 35 R. Bragg, and G. Atkins, ‘A Review of Nature-based Interventions for Mental Health Care’, in Natural England Commissioned Reports, 204, 2016. Available at: http://publications.naturalengland.org.uk/publication/4513819616346112. 36 J. Barton, R. Hine, and J. Pretty, ‘The Health Benefits of Walking in Greenspaces of High Natural and Heritage Value’, in Journal of Integrative Environmental Science, 6, no. 4, pp. 261–278, 2009. 37 J. Pretty, J. Peacock, R. Hine, M. Sellens, M. South, and M. Griffin, ‘Green Exercise in the UK Countryside: Effects on Health and Psychological Well-­ being, and Implications for Policy and Planning’, in Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 50, p. 2, 2007. 38 J. Webber, J. Hinds, and P. M. Camic, ‘The Well-being of Allotment Gardeners: A Mixed Methodological Study’, in Ecopsychology, 7, no. 1, pp. 20–28, 2015. DOI: 10.1089/eco.2014.0058. 39 www.tcv.org.uk/greengym. 40 www.tcv.org.uk/greengym/health-benefits/green-gym-research. 41 T. G. Pavey, A. H. Taylor, K. R. Fox, M. Hillsdon, N. Anokye, J. L. Campbell, … R. S. Taylor, ‘Effect of Exercise Referral Schemes on Physical Activity and Improving Health Outcomes: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis’, in British Medical Journal, 343, pp. 1–14, 2011. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.d6462. 42 H. J. Chatterjee, ed., Touch in Museums: Policy and Practice in Object Handling (Oxford: Berg, 2008). 43 H. Critchley, ‘Emotional Touch: A Neuroscientific Overview’, in Ibid. pp. 61–71. 4 4 H. J. Chatterjee, and L. Hannan, Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Leaning in Higher Education (Oxford: Routledge, 2015). 45 M. Csikszentmihalyi, ‘The Flow Experience and Its Significance for Human Psychology’, in M. Csikszentmihalyi, ed. Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 46 H. H. Bawden, ‘Art and Nature’, in The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 7, no. 19, pp. 521–526, 1910.

8 Transforming health, museums and the civic imagination Esme Ward

What is the role of museums in developing a healthy culture and society? Drawing upon practice in the ‘radical city’ of Manchester, this chapter brings cross-sector and new perspectives to wider debates about the relevance and future of museums. How might museums realise their potential as agencies that shape growth, and where culture leads social change? Are we living in a time of renewal and reinvention, where the possibilities of ­museums – hope, values, narratives, participation and action – might be more imaginatively and widely used for the public and civic good? During the mid-nineteenth century Manchester evolved to become the centre of Lancashire’s cotton industry and eventually become known as ­‘Cottonopolis’, leading to a remarkable rise in the local population, from nearly 77,000 people in 1801 to over 400,000 by 1851. Such rapid population growth meant that very quickly the provision of clean water, sewerage and waste removal was inadequate to the population’s needs and the death rate soared, particularly amongst infants and children. Friedrich Engel’s account of mid nineteenth-century Manchester described it as a place of ‘filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness [sic]’; it was, quite simply, ‘Hell upon Earth’.1 However, Manchester was also at the birth of the modern industrial world and its founders embraced progressive principles and civic responsibility. From the Peterloo Massacre (1819) onwards, social unrest, radicalism and reform, marked the city out from many others. Moreover, by the 1860s, industrial wealth had also fuelled the development of science, culture and education in Manchester, including the birth of public libraries, museums, parks as well as England’s first civic university. Leaders were committed to improving people’s lives and in 1868 the first medical officer of health for the City of Manchester was appointed. This was in the same year as the first ever Trade Union Congress was held in the city. In 1886 in East Manchester, in its ‘dirtiest dreariest neighbourhood’, a pioneering philanthropist by the name of Thomas Coglan Horsfall opened a new kind of museum. The Ancoats Art Museum was an educational, social and civic experiment, with a resident Poor Man’s Lawyer, and a team called the Associates who gave advice and support to local people. Its rooms were dedicated to painting, sculpture, nature, architecture and

126  Esme Ward domestic arts, and it was intimately connected to contemporary life. For example, there were history classes, a successful series of Monday popular lectures given by leading university academics, as well as debating societies which reflected the political concerns of the day. An early focus was children with disabilities and, by 1898, regular Santa Fina parties were held (named after an Italian disabled girl, Fina da Cardi). 2 Museum staff mapped out the homes of all disabled children within a ¾ mile radius of the museum. Such events provided activities to end isolation and museum staff lobbied parliament in recognition of special educational needs. Manchester Art Museum played an important role alongside the Manchester University Settlement: founded in the hope that it may become common ground on which men and women of various classes may meet in goodwill, sympathy and friendship; that the residents may learn something of the conditions of an industrial neighbourhood, and share its interests, and endeavour to live among their neighbours a simple and religious life.3 The events in Manchester were inspired by the first Settlement at Toynbee Hall in London’s Whitechapel. Needless to say, Thomas Horsfall was involved in the formation of the University Settlement and his art museum espoused similar causes and aims; they were both educational institutions and civic experiments and they formally amalgamated in 1901. Horsfall did not expect his museum to change the world, but he did expect it to be a force for good in the neighbourhood, to play a part in improving where people lived, alongside better housing, more parks and recreational opportunities. His vision was of museums as engines of civic engagement: It is not enough that in our rooms tired people may find pictures and other beautiful objects among which they may forget their weariness – or that from time to time Concerts, At Homes, and other gatherings bring the refreshment of music and good company to our neighbours […] Alongside these other activities, therefore, we must develop and stimulate a healthy and vigorous sense of citizenship, which in time will find its expression in the work of our municipality.4 In the twenty-first century the commitment to addressing life inequalities and health outcomes through cultural participation and civic action is re-emerging, and museums are learning how to reclaim and realise their potential as catalysts for social change and health reform. This chapter will explore these new initiatives, and it will focus on the example of Greater Manchester, especially as it engages with the growing interconnections between museums and public health. Furthermore, by drawing upon practice

Health, museums and the civic imagination  127 internationally, I want to propose a radically optimistic role for the future, where museums inspire civic imagination and social change.

Greater Manchester revolution Greater Manchester is arguably pursuing the most comprehensive and ambitious program of health and social care transformation in the world at the moment. Through collaboration across public and private sector and academia, and through the empowerment of citizens, the region is pioneering a new approach to addressing the health and social care needs of 2.8 million people. The widely recognised challenge and belief is that Greater Manchester will not realise its potential until people realise theirs: For us in Greater Manchester, the starting point for our NHS was not the establishment of a service but the confirmation of a promise. A promise made by, and on behalf of every citizen that we will care for each other. As Bevan stated, “health by collective action, builds up a system of social habits which constitute an indispensable part of what we mean by civilisation…It was a commitment to solidarity through a social model: one for all, all for one.”5 The reform program reimagines services across the whole care system. However, it has a different starting point to traditional health and care services, and asks the question ‘what makes us healthy?’ rather than ‘what makes us ill?’ The population health plan adopts a life-course, asset-based approach which encourages and promotes self-care and mutual care across communities and stages. This program, now started, aims to achieve the greatest and ­fastest ­improvement to the health, wealth and wellbeing of the 2.8 million ­people who live in Greater Manchester.6 It takes a life-course, person and ­community-centred approach, focussed on starting, living and ageing well underpinned by system reform. This aims to develop a new population health commissioning plan, and develop and test a new Greater Manchester population health function including future resourcing model. It seeks to maximise the social value benefit from health and social care commissioning and contribution of the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector. The program is gaining momentum; from integrated budgets and restructured neighbourhood teams to the mobilisation of public services and commissioning processes driven by new forms of place-based and lived expertise. Arts and culture have been embedded from the outset. The Greater Manchester Population Health Plan states: ‘We intend to position the strong inter-relationship between arts and individual and community health as one of the key foundations of building sustainable and resilient communities across Greater Manchester’.7 But, what does

128  Esme Ward this look like, and what role do museums play: witness, participant or catalyst for reform?

Through an institutional lens I will draw upon my own professional experience and museums’ work to convey the breadth and complexity of relationships and activity to date, in an effort to illuminate the role of health as a dynamic, distributed practice across Greater Manchester (and the role of museums therein). In April 2018 I was appointed Director of Manchester Museum, at the University of Manchester; before that, I had led the learning, engagement and cross-sector work at the museum and its sister institution, the Whitworth Art Gallery. During that time, work in hospital schools grew to a ten-year strategic partnership with Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CMFT), the appointment of the UKs first museum-based Arts for Health Manager, and a wide range of programs and services. In 2012, two awards from the Royal Society of Public Health were awarded for innovative and outstanding contributions to arts and health practice and research. Now in its fifth year, the annual event +Culture Shots, includes a week-long takeover of hospitals with workshops, activities and events for NHS staff to explore how culture can enhance individuals, professional practice, and patients’ health and wellbeing. The Whitworth and Manchester Museum, both leading university museums, developed and manage this, injecting a ‘shot of culture’ into the NHS. All work is co-developed with patients, clinicians, carers and museum staff; from preventive projects to recovery programs, especially for those living with dementia, or as stroke survivors, or with poor mental health. Medical training programs, research funding, projects and consultancy followed. Today, the museum has as many staff supporting health and wellbeing programs as in formal learning. The Arts and Health Manager recently received an MSc in Dementia Care, fully funded and supported by the NHS. In its early days in Manchester, SICK! – a festival exploring the physical, mental and social challenges of life and death and how we survive them – was based in the museum. For the last three years, the Public Health Team have funded a museum-based Coordinator who works across the city to support active ageing, while the museum is connected and increasingly embedded within health services, staff training and infrastructure. The possibility of the arts, and institutions like museums, impacting on health and social change is of growing interest to communities and policy-­ makers alike, bringing with it a spirit of collaboration and new alliances. In the UK the All Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health & Wellbeing published the ground-breaking report, Creative Health, illuminating new possibilities in how to better understand and address contemporary health challenges: The essential need we identify is culture change: change in conventional thinking leading to change in conventional practice. The key

Health, museums and the civic imagination  129 to progress will be decentralised leadership and collaboration diffused across the complex systems of health and social care and the arts.8 In Greater Manchester, this new ecology is most developed in the field of active ageing. In 2009, Manchester became the UK’s first Age Friendly city and Greater Manchester has recently been named the first Age Friendly city-region.9 Led by the World Health Organisation, this is an internationally recognised concept that enables and facilitates good quality of life for all older people. There are key characteristics which shape the Age Friendly city-region and its culture, not least the role of older people in d ­ eveloping this work. Over the last decade, a citizen-based approach to ageing has emerged, shifting the focus away from traditional medical-care models around provision to developing programs that are led by older people as active citizens. Museums are at the heart of this vision, leading cultural organisations across the city to work ‘with and for, not to’ the people of Manchester. This work is underpinned by a core commitment to social inclusion and tackling inequalities in health, social class, ethnicity and education on the one hand, and an ambition to be the most culturally democratic city-­ region in the UK on the other. For six months in 2016, I undertook a secondment to the Greater Manchester Ageing Hub, within the public health team, to explore and embed museums, arts and culture within the strategic, practice and policy-based priorities for ageing. The hub, formed as part of the devolution agreement, coordinates a strategic response to the opportunities and challenges of an ageing population. As Strategic Lead for Culture, alongside leaders from other sectors, I explored how to make Greater Manchester a great place to grow older. Today the focus is still on bringing together research, policy, practice and lived experience to shape co-ordinating programs of activity around economy and work; Age-Friendly places; healthy ageing; housing, planning and transport; culture and learning; and communications. As a framework for social inclusion the emphasis is on co-design with older people and improving the quality of later life in Greater Manchester. At the strategic level, culture is valued for many of the things one might imagine; it encourages active ageing, volunteering, new skills, creativity and agency. Over 40 cultural organisations regularly come together to share ideas, review and develop Age-Friendly work, and explore new partnerships and programs. The ambition is to create scope and scale through partnership working. Over 150 Culture Champions, older volunteers, advocate for, program, broadcast and advise cultural activity in their neighbourhoods and city. Museums involved include Manchester Museum, Manchester Art Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery, Salford Museum and Art Gallery, People’s History Museum, Manchester Jewish Museum, National Football ­Museum, and the Museum of Science and Industry. Museums are valued for their social impact, and recent evaluation of museum-based volunteering (particularly amongst older people) in Greater Manchester concluded

130  Esme Ward that outcomes were underpinned by a strong sense of connectedness to people, local stories and events: This connectedness to human experience over time has enhanced the level of self-awareness, belonging, imagination and ability to narrate and relate better to others, and thus improve social relationships.10 The English Longitudinal Study into Ageing research suggests that social connectedness, above anything else (including medical intervention), made the most significant difference to longevity, wellbeing and most critically, perhaps, quality of life.11 If, as many believe, the key advance in health and social care will come from fostering greater personal responsibility for health, developing a narrative based on abilities and strengths is an important part of this, alongside addressing the wider determinants of health. Museums are powerful narrators that tell a different story about ageing and have a licence to do things differently. As part of its work whilst closed for redevelopment, the Whitworth started to address public health priorities and under-represented communities on its doorstep. Supported by the Baring Foundation, it undertook a two-year program focussed on engaging older men, including study visits, exhibitions and workshops. Manchester had the second lowest male life expectancy at the time, low levels of social connectedness, and traditionally low levels of cultural participation. At the beginning, existing older men’s groups came together to explore where and how to work, and quickly identified a local pub where groups of older men regularly met. So, the museum commissioned the poet Tony Curry, who was also founder of the organisation Manchester Men’s Health, to sit in the pub, every week for a few months, to build relationships and insights about museums and life, and who eventually produced the poem Life, Love, Death and Art Machismo: I like playing poker, drinking with my mates, football and my garden I like the bookies, sports on TV I used to like to climb, to hike, Marquetry and playing the bagpipes Don’t go in. Never go in. May go in. I have been in. ‘Please gents tell me what you think about art?’ Art’s not my thing Often look at Art and think a three year old could do that. Bit stuffy […] In addition to giving voice to the men he encountered the poem also acted as a provocation for wider thinking, including the national conference ­Isolation and older men: Understanding the challenge and ­developing new services, organised by Independent Age, International Longevity ­Centre-UK and the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research, University

Health, museums and the civic imagination  131 of Manchester. A local Director of Public Health observed that for years, with varying degrees of success, they had attempted to engage socially-­ isolated older men, but never thought that by placing a poet in a pub they would find a solution. If, as the Royal Society for Public Health encourages, we all see ourselves as members of the public health workforce, how museums and artists foster imagination and creativity could play a key role in the shared agenda of re-imagining public health. The convening power of museums and other cultural institutions was further acknowledged by New Economy in its report on the future of ageing in Greater Manchester, with its recommendation to develop an international centre of Arts and Ageing.12 New Economy is the policy, strategy and research arm of Greater Manchester’s Combined Authority and Local Enterprise Partnership.

Arts, health and social movements Whilst the Greater Manchester Population Health Plan embeds the arts at the heart of its delivery agenda, it is through distributed networks, collectives and social movements that energy and momentum builds. The newly-­ created Manchester Institute for Arts, Health & Social Change, with the strategic support of John Rouse, the architect of health and social care devolution and led by Manchester Metropolitan University, is a newly-­ formed collective of people and organisations committed to improving public health and addressing inequalities. In addition, since 2014 Live Well Make Art, an informal social movement of over 100 artists, practitioners, organisations, health activists and professionals from across Greater Manchester has explored new ways to realise its vision: We want a healthier Greater Manchester, where all its people can share the benefits of engaging in and enjoying the arts and creative activities with each other. We want our streets, neighbourhoods and communities to be vibrant places to live.13 A core of volunteers drive this, including a community activist and practitioner, researcher, policy-maker, museum professionals as well as an ex-­ Director of Public Health. There is no dedicated post and no leader, whilst activity can be sporadic; people meet in neighbourhoods to share thinking and build alliances. Yet, although it takes time, the project has tapped into the wealth of community and participatory arts history and stoked interest in engaging more people in arts practice and activism: Pursuing social change is more of an art than a science. There is no fixed model. No curricula. No rules. No guarantee. Its about reading power. Building relationships. Framing issues. Honing messages. Mobilising supporters. Bringing pressure to bear. All of this in an increasingly

132  Esme Ward complex, networked society in which assumptions that held even a year ago no longer hold.14 The breadth of activity and partnerships makes ‘arts and health’ in Greater Manchester a far-from-simple story to tell. A health leader described it as a ‘messy network’. This was not a criticism. Some of our biggest global ­challenges – from health to climate change and ageing populations – ­require collaborative solutions. However, there is a paradigm shift under way, as both health and museum sectors increasingly embrace social models and methods and democratise decision-making (whether framed as moves towards patient power or co-curation). This is not a story limited to the UK. Parkinson and White (2013) identified international practice that sought to embed arts and health within public policy and practice, and drew on examples from Sweden, Finland, Norway, Australia, Peru and Lithuania. They highlighted the WHO Rio Political Declaration on the Social Determinants of Health and its call to engage with wider civil society.15

Museums of the future In the shipyards of Gdansk, Poland, an institution has been created for – and devoted to –solidarity across Europe. The European Solidarity Centre (ECS) is a mix of museum, archive, library and Trade Union HQ (Lech Walesa still has an office on one of the floors). It promotes itself as an ­agora  – ‘a space for people and ideas that build and develop a healthy and civic society, a meeting place for people who hold the world’s future dear’.16 The exhibitions, archives, media library, research and national heritage department focus on telling the story of the solidarity movement. A Play Department works with young children, exploring solidarity in play, ­developing cooperation, building confidence and small communities. One of the floors is dedicated to ‘everyday solidarity’, a free space for local NGOs; rent-free, with room to profile their activities, and seed-funding for their projects. In spite of strong and long-term partnerships, we rarely witness this level of civic integration in UK museums. While conducting fieldwork in Gdansk I observed a strong awareness of the power of the museum to ­convene, ­influence and support action. Across their programs, they ­fi nancially ­support the imaginative ideas and activities which emerge from ­participants – whether visitors or partners. Lang and Rayner suggest that: Public health success is as much about imagination as evidence: challenging what is accepted as the so-called normal […] and public health must regain the capacity and will to address complexity and dare to confront power.17 If we accept these statements, it would seem there are arguably few spaces or organisations better placed than museums like ECS to drive conversation.

Health, museums and the civic imagination  133 The English Museums Civic Network, supported by National Museum Directors Council and in response to ongoing funding crises, considers whether they might yet become reform catalysts. The National Inquiry into the Civic Role of Arts Organisations calls for a new Enlightenment, with strengthened, more inclusive and democratic public services and institutions. In the US, this has been at the forefront of American Alliance of ­Museum’s thinking for over a decade, with Robert Putnam’s ‘Bowling Alone’ charting the decline in civic engagement and social connectedness in America: ‘[we need] to invent new forms of connections that reach out to bridge different parts of society, different races, different ethnic groups, different generations, different social classes and so on’.18 Last year I visited the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco, the Bay Area’s creative home for civic action, or as they would say, the Center for the Art of Doing Something about It. Their commitment is to work across sectors to advance the insights, ideas and projects that can create real change. The YBCA Fellows Program brings together creative citizens from across the Bay Area – artists and everyday people alike – to engage in a yearlong process of inquiry, dialogue, and project generation. Each Fellowship cohort explores and responds to a question, and together they use art and culture to inspire community transformation. Most recently they’ve asked, ‘Where is our public imagination?’ In 2010 whilst exploring how a city feeds itself, they created the People’s Garden in the Tenderloin District. One of the only neighbourhoods in the city of San Francisco without a full-service grocery store, access to fresh, affordable food was a daily struggle for the many low-income families. Over 30,000 people live there. A vacant parking lot near San Francisco’s City Hall was transformed into what is now a thriving community garden. In partnership with YBCA, it was created as part of the Neighbourhood Development Corporation’s work for food justice, and today brings together hundreds of volunteers to grow food and build community, the ‘art of doing something about it’, of addressing inequality and a seemingly intractable public health challenge whilst supporting the arts ecosystem and its role within the broader civic conversation. Across the Bay, in Oakland at OMCA, I observed deep internal questioning about their role in the civic infrastructure and ongoing review of their cultural competency and networks. In Santa Cruz, I spent time at MAH Abbott Square, a new public square, park and foodhall created by the museum, which has extended into the public realm to bring communities together to focus on the health and wellbeing of its citizens. What is implied here is that MAH is seeking to address the needs of its citizens, rather than its collections. When they asked, visitors requested safe public outdoor spaces, late opening and food providers – essentially social and civic space, was the top priority. They decided to extend into the public realm and develop this, and what I encountered was a movement of arts leaders, organisations and museums committed to finding a new role and

134  Esme Ward relevance within their communities, deeply engaged with civic and social change. The political, philanthropic and cultural contexts may differ, but there are lessons to be learned here. I visited the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto. The Institute was set up in 1968 by four US military researchers who, finding themselves increasingly at odds with government policy (particularly the Vietnam War), broke away and set up as a separate independent, non-profit body. They decided to use their tools and expertise not for military purpose, but for the citizen sector and social good. Initially, they focussed on technological and quantative data and forecasting. Today, it describes itself as methodologically agnostic. Through a series of programs and lab initiatives, it publishes research on a wide range of issues, including health, urbanisation and ageing. Their role is to catalyse strategic thinking about the future, to remain in touch with the fringe and new forms of thinking and creativity. When innovation is so readily aligned with tech and digital, we explored how museums have a unique opportunity to become a space for new thinking and ideas to expand the civic imagination; this, at precisely the moment when public health and the future of healthcare is being critiqued and reimagined: In the 21st century, the pursuit of public health requires the analysis of the composite interactions between the material, biological, social and cultural dimensions of existence. This demands a new mix of interventions and actions to ameliorate the determinants of health; the better framing of public and private choices to achieve sustainable planetary, economic, societal and human health; and the active participation of movements to that end.19

Care and compassion Back in Manchester, health leaders summarise the ongoing process: We are engaged in an urgent task of renewal and reinvention, to create a health and care system fit for 21st century needs and priorities. We pursue a shift that is wholly contemporary but also fully rooted in the original vision for our NHS – a social model of care for the people by the people, our people. 20 The word curator comes from the Latin, ‘curare’ – to care, watch over, attend. A commitment to care underpins the work of all museums; we understand that, in caring for the past, we stake a claim on what will matter in the future. At Manchester Museum, care now represents a core value and priority: care for our collections, but also for people, ideas and relationships. The future of Manchester Museum, in part, will lie in our ability to become a leading pro-social space, working with a wide range of people to

Health, museums and the civic imagination  135 imaginatively address the key issues of our time. For example, by seeking to re-write the story of old age; co-creating programs that develop creative capacity at moments of cognitive decline; challenging stereotypes and assumptions through broadcasting and events; exploring positive images and traditions of ageing from different cultures and, finally, supporting the resulting civic and social action. Museums make our understanding of the world more complex (from ­hyper-local, lived experience to global perspectives, across time). Research undertaken whilst on placement at the Heritage Lottery Fund during my Fellowship highlighted how heritage could encourage care, kindness, compassion and love within their communities. 21 From UN Sustainability Development Goals to international campaigns (including Charters for Compassion), care and empathy is widely acknowledged as an important attribute of healthy communities. Yet, alongside his call for a new economics of compassion, Peter Block suggests that ‘we marginalise compassion in the public conversation […] having a view that people who need help, who are vulnerable or in crisis, are a communal liability. The generosity that serves these people goes unmentioned as an asset’. 22 Museums, in partnership with voluntary and health sectors, have an opportunity to change this. For the last two years, Manchester Museum has worked closely with the charity Common Cause Foundation to explore this and demonstrate how the museum can convey a deeper appreciation of the values that most people in Greater Manchester share. The research found that ¾ of us prioritise ‘compassionate’ values over ‘selfish’ values also showed that over ¾ of people in the UK underestimate the importance that their fellow citizens place on these compassionate vales. 23 As we develop our ambition and role, we are exploring how the museum might address misunderstanding and convey an accurate perception of the values of others – key to citizens everywhere feeling empowered to be more civically engaged in building a better world: We will continue to be actively involved in messy networks. We will do as much, if not more work in health, care and community settings as inside the museum. As we embark on a new capital development, inclusive and age friendly design will shape the museum environment. We will care. In the context of devolution and with increased political appetite for new models of change and collaboration, we will find new ways to reignite the civic spirit and reclaim the purpose of our museum as an agent of public good. We will play our part in imagining and creating a healthier city. 24 In Manchester, whether in the field of culture or health, it’s not about what we’ve done before or even do now, but together, what we might be capable of doing in the future.

136  Esme Ward

Notes 1 F. Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 (London: Sonnenschein, 1892), p. 53. 2 Horsfall’s Christian faith shaped much of his thinking and work, and the Santa Fina Society eventually became the Invalid Children’s Aid Association. See M. Danvers Stocks, Fifty Years in every Street: The Story of the M ­ anchester University Settlement (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1945), pp. 43–45. 3 M. E. Rose, and A. Woods, Everything Went On at the Round House: A ­Hundred Years of the Manchester University Settlement (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). 4 S. Eagles, Thomas Coglan Horsfall, and Manchester Art Museum and University Settlement, at www.infed.org/settlements/manchester_art_museum_and_ university_settlement.htm. 5 J. Rouse, Taking Charge? Learning from Health and Social Care ­Devolution in Greater Manchester (Teddy Chester Lecture, Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership, 2017). www.gmhsc.org.uk/wp-content/­ uploads/2018/04/Teddy-Chester-Lecture-Jon-Rouse-291117.pdf. 6 Details of the plan can be found at www.gmhsc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/ 2018/04/GM-Population-Health-Plan-Full-Plan.pdf. 7 GMHSC, The Greater Manchester Population Health Plan 2017–21, GMCA, 2017, p. 26. 8 Lord Howarth of Newport, Creative Health: The Arts for Health and Wellbeing (All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing Inquiry Report, 2017), p. 6. 9 Greater Manchester is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United ­K ingdom and comprises ten metropolitan boroughs: Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Wigan and the cities of Manchester and Salford. In 2011, the councils combined to become the country’s first statutory ‘Supercouncil’ GMCA Greater Manchester Combined Authority. 10 Inspiring Futures: Volunteering for Wellbeing. Final Report 2013–2016. Retrieved from http://volunteeringforwellbeing.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/IF_ VOLUNTEERING_FOR_WELLBEING_REPORT_2013-16_SROI_IWM. pdf. 11 J. Banks, G. D. Batty, J. Nazroo, and A. Steptoe, The Dynamics of Ageing: Evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing 2002–15 (The Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2016). www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/elsa/docs_w7/ELSA%20 Wave%207%20report.pdf. 12 Scoping for the centre, to be based at Manchester Museum, has begun, and is due to open in 2021. 13 The project ‘100 moments’ exemplifies this approach; https://100momentsuk. wordpress.com/2017/04/13/100-moments-publication/. 14 S. Tibballs, from J. del Castillo, L. Nicholas, R. Nye, and H. Khan, We Change the World: What Can We Learn from Global Social Movements for Health? (NESTA, 2017). 15 World Health Organisation, Rio Political Declaration on Social Determinants of Health, 2011. Retrieved from WHO website www.who.int/sdha conference/ declaration/en. 16 ECS website, www.ecs.gda.pl/title,Jezyk,pid,21,lang,2.html. 17 T. Lang, and G. Rayner, ‘Ecological Public Health: The 21st Century’s Big Idea?’, in British Medical Journal, 345, pp. 2–5, 2012. Doi: BMJ 2012;345e5466 PubMed.

Health, museums and the civic imagination  137 18 R. Puttnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001). 19 G. Rayner, and T. Lang, Ecological Public Health: Reshaping the Conditions for Good Health (London: Routledge, 2012), p. 353. 20 J. Rouse, Taking Charge? Learning from Health and Social Care Devolution in Greater Manchester, 2017. www.gmhsc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ Teddy-Chester-Lecture-Jon-Rouse-291117.pdf. 21 E. Ward, The Story of Us: Heritage and Communities (HLF and Clore Leadership Programme, 2018). www.hlf.org.uk/about-us/news-features/ story-us-heritage-and-communities. 22 P. Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging (San Francisco: Berrett-­ Koehler, 2008), p. 44. 23 Research is published at https://valuesandframes.org/values-in-action/survey. 24 E. Ward, interviewed as part of the MA Heritage Futures advocacy.

9 ‘Who me?’ The individual experience in participative and collaborative projects Mike Tooby This chapter is shaped by responses to some recent curatorial projects in which I have been involved, projects that took a participative or collaborative approach to curatorial leadership, and where individuals of different backgrounds shared in the making of exhibitions, displays and curatorial projects. The testimony of participants has been both affecting and powerful, and making meaningful connections with individuals through participative curating can lead to the possibility of a new social body. Through sharing people can feel that their lives are somehow enhanced, that new possibilities have opened, and new experiences created for them and the people with whom they work. As a recent participant explained: ‘what I have enjoyed about the process is that it has brought local people together around a project’.1 This is a tremendous reward for any curator: to feel part of a community, and to provide an immediate sense of the impact of engagement. Such responses also affirm the civic value of curating, resisting the recent appropriation of the term as denoting taste-making in the market. This chapter considers how participation and collaboration, in becoming familiar tools to make connections in informing curatorial work and building communities, prompt a discussion of what an individual’s role might be within such practices. In the analysis which follows, collaboration will generally refer to people taking an active decision to work together as equals, agreeing on ways to deliver a project, and on each other’s roles in doing so. Participation, on the other hand, refers to when people become actively involved in a project across a spectrum of roles; they may contribute or respond in a way that is conscious of their interaction with others, and which can be seen to have modified the project. Explicit agreement to work together across those roles need not be taken. Forms of curatorial practice, such as co-curation or consultation, may require either collaboration or participation, but are not necessarily ipso facto collaborative or participative. Equally, within a project, participants may choose to become collaborators, even for specific moments or tasks. This stands in contrast to what one might label the ‘show and tell’ ­approach, where the traditional role of the curator as a single leader or

Participative and collaborative projects  139 expert arbiter may apparently bring clarity and authority, but also reinforce the perception of curating solely as an expert individual’s capacity to use knowledge, taste and position as decision-making power.2 The methodology discussed in the present text also reflects the breaking down of a binary contrast: that between curator as author in generating the idea of the exhibition and overseeing its delivery; and the subsequent (and only subsequent) work of the learning and engagement curator in sharing this with audiences. It also compares ideas generated in socially-engaged art practice with their general applicability.

Working with people Ten years ago I decided to test for myself differences of process and purpose by changing my own approach to work; I sought a new ‘portfolio’ way of working. After three decades in full-time institutional curatorial roles, including generating collaborative, participative, and socially-­engaged projects to diversify the approach to engaging audiences, I wanted to explore the ecology of differentiated practices and sites with which I felt I had become familiar. I wanted to do so without a single institutional starting point as a driver, in a sense forcing myself to create an individual professional identity. My new sphere included the temporary project in the mainstream museum and arts venue, the ‘pop-up’ and one-off temporary project in in-between site-specific spaces, and the ‘Academy’. I say this as personally as I do for two reasons. Firstly, to suggest how I asked myself to work through assessing my role as an individual in the social body. In the neutral language of institutional reports and academic discourse, is there the possibility to speak or act as an individual without conforming to the authority models of such acting, the voice of the ‘star curator’, the model of the single subject expert? Secondly, my current relationships to institutions are increasingly typical of the society of which museums, heritage sites and arts venues are a part. Curatorship today is widely upheld by part-time work, time-limited contracts, occasional projects, some paid, some unpaid; and in a complex relationship between personal circumstances and diverse locations of work, requiring travel, re-orientation and building new relationships. Institutions, including public bodies in the UK, so hugely impoverished through the diminishment of public funding, have become commissioners of such contract and part-time workers alongside core staff still on the payroll. In order to explain why this matters I will describe some projects I have undertaken since leaving a full-time role as a museum curator. I give as justification the need to share specific experiences and ideas when acting as an individual in dialogue with institutions. Soon after I left Amgueddfa Cymru, National Museum of Wales in 2011, I began the first of three related, small-scale installations over three annual editions of a community-­ based arts initiative, Made in Roath. Invited to present a project as one of

140  Mike Tooby a group of people from beyond Roath itself, I wished to foreground the ­ elvin personal, seeking a discussion of ideas of local connection. I called it K Road Mantelpiece. It was presented in a house on a road with the same name as the one in London where my daughter lived with her newborn son. Each road’s name in turn recalled the district in Glasgow where my daughter herself was born. I used possessions and images belonging to myself, my daughter, and the family living in the house – whom I had not met before – in a display that offered a pastiche of National Trust-style room presentation. It was about, I thought, moving into a new home and finding personal identities through such connections. The result was understood by many visitors to be a show about coincidences. I was fascinated by the passion with which visitors adopted this idea and the range of anecdotal examples they offered in spontaneous response. So the following year I followed the fashion for projects called ‘Museums of…’ and created The Museum of Amazing Coincidences.3 Objects and stories were gathered through experiences based on the motif of ‘valuation’, which I offered in events and encounters where objects brought along were valued by the level of coincidence demonstrated in the associated story. Outstanding examples became loans to another house display, this time in the home of the artist Sara Annwyl. In turn this led to a spin-off exhibition project, Apophenia, held in a nearby venue and led by Sara Annwyl, Julia Thomas, and their collaborators. Apophenia directly addressed people’s experiences of mental health, and the possibilities of outreach and support.4 For Made In Roath in 2014 I made a project called Storio: Store, in two different locations: at an artists’ project in rural Camarthenshire, and an extended version at Spit & Sawdust skatepark and arts venue in Cardiff. I invited diverse contributors to form a temporary collection of objects that constituted personal memories of past editions of Made in Roath and personalities associated with the festival. The objects were catalogued, bubble-­ wrapped, put into a specially created temporary store and locked away. Access was in three forms: via CCTV security cameras viewed remotely, such as in the skatepark’s café area; by consulting the catalogue, with its extended labels and descriptions; or in guided visits made by appointment. The central theme to emerge was a discussion of how community memory is actually a sharing of individual personal associations which, in order to be preserved, become locked away, the stories living independently in the imagination. What my role in these projects was became a question for some visitors and professional peers. In particular, some asked if I would now term myself an artist rather than a curator. Discussion led to asking why that title would seem appropriate – was it because my name was in a listings guide, alongside the exhibitors across the festival in open studios, galleries and temporary venues? Was it the evident level of authorship in the displays, making a serious joke about the mechanisms of curatorship and the perception of museums? Had I exchanged my role as a curator with that of artist

Participative and collaborative projects  141 interpreter or socially engaged artist? I chose not to answer, but noted that, despite the way I saw these projects as re-imaginings of the methodologies I had built as an institutional curator, the term ‘curator’ now seemed in many minds to be inappropriate as a term to describe me as an individual. With no institutional label, I was a new version of myself, known or newly introduced in the community. Over this period I also developed curatorial projects with mainstream large-scale venues beyond Cardiff. For example, in wavespeech, the artists Edmund De Waal and David Ward asked me to help manifest their ambition to collaborate in a site-specific project. We secured the involvement of the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Orkney as a host. This resulted in 2015 in a presentation of collaborative and new individual works by the two artists, integrated in a temporary redisplay of the Pier’s remarkable collection, and an associated learning program. At the same time, I proposed a project later called Journeys with The Waste Land, to Turner Contemporary Margate as a long-term participative project. It was initiated in 2012 and presented in Margate and Coventry in 2018.5 Both required me to share or give up key aspects of the single author/curator role, and in contrast with the projects made within my own community, remodelled the role of a guest curator. Both addressed the nature of making connections as a way of building relationships and changing the organisations’ practices, either in a nuanced way, as in Orkney, or in a demonstrative, radical way, as in Margate. In Orkney, the familiar Modernist collection and exhibition gallery presentation was renewed by the participative methodologies of the artist-­ intervention approach to reconfiguration. The collaborative curatorship involved brokering relationships between the proactive individual curatorial staff of the host venue, its own networks of relationships, and the two artists and their own collaborators in their practices. At the same time, with named artists but no single author-curator, the audience was prompted to reflect upon and share the relationships involved. The means ranged across traditional gallery methods and included: open discussion sessions with the project collaborators; targeted work with young people facilitated by locally-­based staff with a collaborating ‘guest’ artist-curator, Rhona Warwick; and more intimate informal conversations in locations such as the Pier’s library space. These activities shifted senses of working together signified not simply by changed relationships between objects and spaces, but by debate over how these visiting collaborators ‘passing through’ responded in a new form of place-making. A shared text work by Ward and De Waal was acquired for the Pier’s collection, and will now figure in future redisplays and learning work as a legacy. More importantly, the project demonstrated a key distinction between collaboration and participation. As a collaboration it involved around 20 people in different roles, defined by skillset and personal interest. However at its core, the relationship to people was participative in a

142  Mike Tooby traditional sense of engaging audiences in a formed idea, in understanding the nature of the collaborative process, and by absorbing its impact in a small, tightly knit community. In Journeys with The Waste Land, the curatorial methodology was different. It sought to further extend in a radical way Turner Contemporary’s participative approach to curating and engagement. People drawn from the locality and beyond participated at every stage over three years in the development and implementation of a major project. It was initiated as a major loan exhibition, to be based on the idea of sharing responses in the visual arts to T. S. Eliot’s poem, often said to be begun in earnest when Eliot stayed in Margate in the autumn of 1921. However, once underway it also developed its own outreach, offsite and learning programs, all of which refracted different content and methods generated through the individuals and organisations involved in the overarching curatorial process. The principle was simple: to engage diverse people in a collective enterprise where the entire curatorial process was open to discussion and shared decision-making. The project addressed a subject without a specific ‘demographic’ definition of participants that linked them to the subject. The project’s content and form would depend on the shared experience of learning together from the outset, informed throughout by diverse expertise and life experiences. As a ‘guest curator’ I worked closely on its management with another independent curator, Trish Scott, a locally based artist-­curator taking on a dedicated role in Turner Contemporary for the duration of the project. A wide group of participants, some new to the venue, some familiar, were all recruited from an ‘open call’. They became known collectively as the Research Group. The Research Group included people with no prior knowledge of either Eliot and modernist poetry, or modern and contemporary art and curatorial methodologies, alongside people who had longstanding interests in one or the other. It included people from Margate, from the wider community of the Isle of Thanet, and people who travelled from across east Kent and beyond. Some members of Turner Contemporary staff joined, attending meetings in their own time. Online participation was facilitated through a ‘closed’ group website. Over the three years of its existence the group varied in size, at times near 100, at others and more consistently around 35 to 40, with a small number – around 25 – directly involved in everything from beginning to completion. Members of the Research Group debated each stage of planning, and every decision made. Many key sessions were informed by the participative methodology developed at Turner Contemporary with practical philosopher Ayisha De Lanerolle, and by other strategies drawn from work in audience engagement and learning.6 The group also informed other aspects of methodology with its own initiatives and reflections. In some cases, these led to strands with their own identities and momentum, both as research and as engagement. Dedicated elements were created around social cohesion,

Participative and collaborative projects  143 mental health and wellbeing, as well as place-making through organisations such as the local volunteer-run museum, all brokered through initiatives by individuals and smaller collaborative groups within the Research Group.7 Over the process, the curatorship was therefore collaborative and participative. As collaborators, members of the Research Group and the curatorial leads worked closely together, whilst also engaging with audiences as different kinds of participants, often with much in common with the Group, and so requiring further negotiation of the roles of collaborative curators. For example, one key issue addressed within the Research Group concerned how best to express the role of the Research Group itself, and the individual identities and interests of its members. At the time of writing this is also being debated by a group in Coventry and Warwickshire who are creating a heavily revised version of the exhibition for the autumn of 2018; this element tests whether a locally generated project can ‘transfer’ in a way that maintains the integrity of the methodology. The conclusion of the discussions in Kent was that individual contributions within the Research Group would be attributed to someone only where necessary or unavoidable: for instance in first-hand testimony in introductory talks and secondary interpretation.8 Otherwise, the creation of a clear narrative about that process for visitors was the priority, and the way the Research Group accepted and embraced particular individual insights and priorities would be anonymised, all of which emphasised collective identity. The exhibition and its learning and engagement programs received over 114,000 visits. The related off-site program generated 33 projects in 16 venues across the town. The project was featured in a huge range of reviews, feature articles and media coverage not usually afforded participative projects, while fascination with the process and the relevance of it to Eliot’s poem ran throughout: This exhibition ends up drawing attention to the profound gap between the disdainful seriousness of high modernism in 1922, and our own desire for culture to be sharable and democratic. It ends up conveying – to use the words of Elliot [sic] – nothing with nothing. […] What a sprightly show. What a sprightly idea for a show [….] What you get with amateur curators, and not with their professional kin, is an emotional response you can trust. No one here is trying to further their career or make a mark. There are no gimmicks or weaselly bits of provocation. No trendy choices, no fashion-chasing. And the calibre of the loans is astonishing.9 The process of reflection on this project continues at the time of writing this chapter. Indeed, the nature of evaluation in such a project has itself led to rich debate and testing of processes.10 At this early stage, two themes emerge as relevant to the present discussion of the individual and the collective.

144  Mike Tooby First, the project shows how the social body of those involved evolves over time. Just as the original protagonists in the small-scale projects in Made in Roath travelled from offering participant responses to being lenders and interpreters within displays, and makers of their own projects in response, so in a more complex way in Journeys with The Waste Land did individuals occupy different roles at different times, as collaborators and participants, over a project’s lifetime. Circumstances change, and learning generates new demands and opportunities. Since participants understand the changing nature of their own roles, different elements can appear: new learning initiatives, separate exhibits, different site-specific works and new artist or institution-led displays, all reflecting the way individuals might seize opportunities in their own way. Secondly, decisions about exhibition content, presentation and interpretative role, and how to prioritise participants in the approach to engagement, will have been grounded in different arguments: original historical or content-led research; personal choice, offering subjective association as a moment of enlightenment or reward; or a result of strategic decision-­ making about collaboration and the permeability of the project. These issues are familiar in traditional curating, but here with a crucial difference. As the Research Groups’ discussions needed to be made visible in order to be shared, all those who took part were capable of reading those intentions and outcomes in their own ways. The testimony of the participatory and collaborative approach to the whole project was emphatically transparent and shared, and itself had meaning created by its audiences.11

Curating and curating In my own work I have found that to embrace the perceptions and insights of others through sharing the curatorial process is hugely rewarding, while acknowledging that the traditional dissemination of expertise offered by the sole lead curator can generate memorable experiences. However, one might suggest that the idea of any project being curated by a sole expert or a single personality as imagined in the role-model of the ‘star curator’ is a falsity. Even when an audience is expected to understand a project as being the product of a single lead voice or expert, the realities of exhibition-­making or collection-building are such that a single author will, of necessity, need to work with a group to realise such outcomes. The first set of connections the curator must build is with those within an immediate community of colleagues creating a project. A curatorial enterprise requiring different skillsets, from managing buildings to fundraising, from commissioning artists to developing interpretation, from handling loans to maintaining AV and digital hardware, requires collaboration. All curatorship, therefore, is to some degree or other collaborative and participative. A primary challenge for the curator in building collaborative methodologies, then, is to address who can join

Participative and collaborative projects  145 this community in creating a project. More sophisticated processes of evaluation may help evolve the basis by which participants are engaged, but we nevertheless are also measuring whether the platform they are given addresses the paradox that they are involved by permission of the institution. For example, the extent to which participation reinforces the underlying power structures of a political system enmeshed with the market, and indeed is explicitly used by the market in presenting itself to consumers, is now a fundamental question for curatorship. The way public organisations and individual curators can respond to this is to test how to use participation and collaboration to open out and share the curatorial strategy itself.12 One way to address the response to institutional parameters is to test how far back in the curatorial process participation and collaboration can be traced. Two diagrammatic metaphors illustrate this. In the pyramid image of institutional structure, trusteeship and directorship is at the top and audience is at the bottom. Can we imagine the points on a chronological linear diagram of a project plan where we might indicate critical moments so that we can see how participants engage with decision making ‘up or down’ the pyramid? Take a hypothetical example of people involved in a new display re-orienting the presentation of a collection: how was the collection formed in the first place? For people involved in having a say in acquisitions the material must be made available through research and facilitation, so the question arises: whose research? And for any exhibit outcome to be presented a venue must be available, with all the strategic issues about its funding and its accessibility taken into account; who sources these and so on? This discussion comes at a time when the label ‘curating’ and its association with sole authorship risks being settled in a particular meaning. This generates problematic contexts in which to analyse and celebrate participative and collaborative curating. For example, the term ‘curating’ is now casually deployed in everyday use, from music playlists to restaurant menus. It usually associates curating as the exercising of special insight, taste and discretion, generally by an individual who has demonstrated some sort of specific expertise or qualification in a given field. Moreover this meaning is often how ‘curation’ is also used in the language of the new digitised market: ‘in tough markets where 80% or 90% of products fail, curation helps focus on what works’, suggests Michael Bhaskar, and he goes on to argue that phenomena like pre-curated stock choices in shopping and online ­selections using algorithms show that the shift from top-down industrialised organisation to a user-centric Consumer-Curated Model is here […] It also comes back to that perennial of curation – expertise. Good content curation demonstrates expertise and builds trust. Lastly, content curation may take a lot of intelligent selection, which itself is a resource but it requires less upfront spend than classic marketing.13

146  Mike Tooby Curation, in other words, doesn’t facilitate choice or boost knowledge but, rather, proposes we accept that others – including designers of marketing algorithms – know better, and will make more intelligent choices for us. In response, it must be said that if it can be reassuring to know that someone else is better placed than oneself to advise, this usage of ‘curation’ also ensures that the audience is understood as consumer, not as someone with their own ability to make choices and propose ideas through sharing knowledge and understanding the field. A different problematic context is the assumptions about curating as authorship embedded in the institutions where the discourse of curating takes place. The museum must define roles for a variety of reasons: for example, what is the role of a curator in a project team of diverse skill sets – is that the person in charge, or is it the subject expert who is first among equals? And how can the museum best procure the value of known names to make an impact in a personality-­ driven media environment? At the same time the systems for funding and evaluating those universities, art schools and policy-making institutions which generate ideas and perceptions of curating require individual curators or writers on curating to create a personal academic identity and status through an account of their individual authorship of texts and projects – such as this author with the present text. The single lead expert and author model therefore becomes one that institutional career structures and the literature offers as that to which we should aspire. At times it can seem circular: in discussing curating, the single role author becomes that by which curating itself is defined. A key confusion therefore centres around the definition of expertise, as Bhaskhar’s discussion testifies. It is crucial to ensure that curatorial expertise is not simply described as a transference of an individual’s expertise in a subject field; it also embraces the arenas of curatorship as they interact with a subject field. Making exhibitions, building collections, engaging people in interpretation and appreciation are practices in which people can have diverse levels of expertise and where engaging participants as equals brings benefit. Just as a subject expert can open up their discipline, so the expertise in the methodologies of curatorship, inscribing as they do the experience for audiences, can and should be subjects for sharing through making them transparent and available.

The individual as collaborator and participant Jacques Rancière’s writing on the ‘emancipated spectator’ takes as its formative question the attempts to change the relationship between performer and audience in the theatre. This leads him to consider more widely the nature of the relationship between artist (as producer, writer, maker and so on) and audience. In his discussion, Ranciere embraces the institutional mechanics of the form – the stage and the auditorium, the cinema screen and its rows of seats, the object in the museum – and questions how we define the social body that is gathered by participation in such sites.14

Participative and collaborative projects  147 This discussion builds on Rancière’s study of pedagogy, and his text The Ignorant Schoolteacher reflects on the testimony of one Jacques Jacotot. In exile in the 1820s Jacotot faced the task of teaching Belgian pupils a French text. Not knowing Flemish himself, and with the class not all knowing French, Jacotot decided they would all read a bilingual edition of the text and learn together. Rancière explains the success of Jacotot’s enterprise by reminding us of something still widely acknowledged by experienced educators: that ‘explication’ by the expert teacher, showing and telling their subject to the class, only reinforces the inequalities of the power relationship between the apparently ‘educated’ and the apparently ‘ignorant’. In any field of learning, sharing experience is a more powerful and more positively equal process than one that enshrines inequality. Rancière comments: ‘The pedagogical myth divides the world into two’. The parallels with the model of the expert curator creating the exhibition in the museum, allowing the marketing and learning teams to then create ways to engage audiences, are obvious. Rancière asks us to consider the way a community is formed through attempts to redesign the relationship between actor and audience. He questions not merely the revision of structures for the experience – Artaud’s theatre of cruelty, for example, where performer and audience share the same physical space – but the very way in which sharing the work of art in a social body requires rethinking the individual relationships embedded in the roles of actor and audience member: Emancipation begins when we challenge the opposition between viewing and acting: when we understand that self-evident facts that structure the relations between saying, seeing and doing themselves belong to the structure of domination and subjection. It begins when we understand that viewing is also an action that confirms or transforms this distribution of positions. The spectator also acts, like the pupil or scholar. She observes, selects, compares, interprets. She links what she sees to a host of other things that she has seen on other stages, in other kinds of place.15 Rancière’s argument reminds us that the apparently – and potentially – communitarian creation of the audience as a social body, in fact creates a group of individuals making choices and decisions, understanding their own position vis-à-vis the material around them, and contributing their own potential. This social body is not simply that which the author, the director, or the curator defines and addresses, but one that includes them. In other words, we must recognise the potential of ourselves – curator, artist, collaborator, participant – as individuals within this community, so as to best recognise our ability to affect and share change: This shared power of the equality of intelligence links individuals, makes them exchange their intellectual adventures in so far as it keeps them separate from one another, equally capable of using the power everyone has to plot her own path.16

148  Mike Tooby Rancière here emphasises that when participants bring their own knowledge and life experience to their role as participants, this does not reduce their equality through expressing difference, but instead allows greater scope for equalities to be expressed through understanding and sharing each other’s individual potential. Far from seeking ways for the curator to reach the community, the curator’s task becomes how to be an active part of a community. In defining who are collaborators and who are participants, each project requires its own thoughtful articulation of what each individual’s role might be: it is ‘the capacity of anonymous people, the capacity that makes everyone equal to everyone else. This capacity is exercised through irreducible distances; it is exercised by an unpredictable interplay of associations and dissociations’.17

Curare: to take care The definition of curatorship and leadership as principally to do with facilitation is central to the discussion of how individuals form roles, share ideas and gain agency in collaborative and participatory projects. It underpins the fundamental ethical and political impact on institutions.18 In developing curating methodologies for Journeys with The Waste Land, nonbuilding-based curating and artist-led projects that embraced individuals’ agency offered important models. One key example was idle women, led by Rachel Anderson and Cis O’Boyle. idle women is a participative and collaborative curatorial project based in the north-west of England. Their ‘headline’ descriptor is clear: ‘idle women initiates and creates contemporary art with women’. So too is its statement of purpose: ‘idle women offers a place for all women and girls to belong […] idle women is responding to the devastation caused by austerity cuts to women’s services and to the systematic erasure of women’s contributions to public life’. They believe in creating opportunities, networking and other connections with women across the UK and beyond, and nurturing long-term partnerships with specialist women’s providers.19 Anderson and O’Boyle describe themselves as idle women’s care-takers. The term reappraises the etymology of ‘curator’ and generates specific ethical and political meanings. Their leadership role is redefined, not as authorial, but as the nurturing of individuals and the sharing of responsibility with others with whom they collaborate. They take care, in turn, to identify with clarity other roles that their projects require: for example, those involved as leaders and generators of content, as well as project participants. Care-taker is a term we might contrast with gate-keeper. The curator and the collaborator in the curatorial process – front desk, invigilator, learning facilitator, object handler and so on – will all have individual roles to play as gate keepers. They must make individual decisions about how to respond to the wider body of participants in curatorial projects, from co-curators to visitors, recognising all as individuals within a community. Choosing

Participative and collaborative projects  149 a care-taking approach to modify their custodial role helps to ensure that other individuals share in the wider enterprise. The relation with feminist discourse of gendered roles has generated fresh thinking about the necessary impetus behind breaking this down: ‘it comes as no surprise that, particularly in the discussions around the so-called “educational turn” in curating, a sometimes more, and sometimes less latent dichotomous gendering of curating and mediation may be observed, one which discursively links curating with masculinity and education with femininity’. 20 In addressing the opportunities of collaborative and participative curating, there is a shared process of giving up power. With the institution – whether the large museum or the innovatory small artist-run initiative – there will of necessity be roles in which power inheres. The responsible individual takes day-to-day and strategic decisions about the ways in which they recognise this. Taking responsibility for decisions gives power, but the decision-making process can be shared. As the care-taking curator may retain aspects of the role of gatekeeper, and certainly must recognise the leadership role of facilitator, so they learn with the participant and collaborator alongside them how to re-model these very roles. In responding to the dynamism, originality and different experience and knowledge that comes through working collaboratively with participants, the extent to which the individual is empowered to be an equal part of a project is surely a measure of its success. At the same time, recognising their own individuality promotes the consideration of their own personal identities within the collective enterprise. The care-taking curator recognises how they connect with others and cannot exclude themselves from the dynamics of individual relationships, even while adhering to an appropriately ‘professional’ approach. Individual roles will reflect personal qualities and interests, personal circumstances such as whether people live in the locality of the project or travel long distances to take part. Crucially the facilitating curator must recognise the potential impact of disadvantage on individuals, and engage with personal priorities of ethics, politics and spiritual values. In the connected project, strategic decision-making, content creation and delivery vehicles are all part of the collaborative and participative curatorial practice. They are not predetermined givens around which engagement is then delivered. The care-taking curator shares the recognition and understanding of this with the participant collaborator. They facilitate what this shared learning means as people’s lives develop together with new opportunity and a sense of empowerment, their role in the institution becoming a model of their potential to develop and promote change in other social and political contexts. The characterisation of curatorship as being the product of a single author can only reinforce the audience’s perception that they are ‘other’. It may lead to wonderful exhibitions and develop collections with excellent content, but it will not do anything to address the power relationship between actor and spectator, just as its use as metaphor

150  Mike Tooby misrepresents the realities of curating. Yet perhaps the way an individual care-taking ­curator evidences their own presence within the participant community is why they can be perceived as adopting the approach of the socially-engaged artist. If we reclaim the term ‘curating’ as being the taking care of objects and communities of people, then it becomes a way of resisting the appropriation of the term as one to describe the exercising of taste and selection based on an individual’s prior knowledge. In so doing we can resist its appropriation by the market, and help preserve the wider civic value and the potential political and ethical role of the curator. Should this seem a narrow set of reflections on making exhibitions and learning programs through shared individual agency, we can recall the experience of The Ignorant Schoolteacher: the power of the participant to tell and share their own story is at the heart of a collaborative enterprise and, through being told, empowers the participant, whether collaborator or spectator: Storytelling then, in and of itself, or recounting — one of the two basic operations of the intelligence according to Jacotot — emerges as one of the concrete acts or practices that verifies equality. (Equality, writes Jacotot, ‘is neither given nor claimed, it is practiced, it is verified’.)21 Individual testimony demonstrates the transformation of the lives of collaborators and participants when the potential of their individual agency is released. The real challenge is for the impact of this on the institution – the large museum, the white box gallery, the small organisation, the academy – to ensure that it truly supports and nurtures those individuals who seek to work with shared experiences and collaborative values at the heart of their practice, and so see their own lives, as well as the institution, transformed.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to Trish Scott for sharing her expertise and experience, and to Kristin Claxton and Colin Johnson for suggestions that have informed this text.

Notes 1 I. Jones in ‘Discover “Journeys with The Waste Land” at Turner Contemporary’, the exhibition introductory video, now available at https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=3zuhOKYBwRM&t=72s. 2 R. Storr, ‘Show and Tell’, in What Makes a Great Exhibition (Philadelphia, PA: University of the Arts, 2006). 3 ‘The Museum of Broken Relationships’ in Zagreb was a particular inspiration. See D. Babic, and Z. Miklosevic, ‘Museum as Creativity: Building the Universal Through the Individual’, in Museums of Ideas: Commitment and Conflict (Edinburgh: Museums Etc, 2011). pp. 116–117

Participative and collaborative projects  151 4 M. Tooby, Professorial Lecture, It Was Amazing! Reflections on Connecting People Places and Things (Bath Spa University). Available at https://youtu.be/ KEPywb3tNhI; and M. Tooby, ‘Learning and Interpreting’, in Twenty Five Years of Gallery Education (London: Engage, Winter 2014). 5 M. Tooby, ed., wavespeech (Bath: Wunderkammer, 2018); ‘Journeys with “The Waste Land”’will be the subject of dedicated forthcoming publications and online resources (2018), via Turner Contemporary Margate website listings. 6 T. Scott, A. De Lanerolle, and K. Eslea, ‘Philosophical Inquiry: A Tool for Decision Making in Participatory Curation’, in P. Villeneuve and A. Rowson Love, eds., Visitor-Centered Exhibitions and Edu-Curation in Art Museums (Maryland: Roman and Littlefield, 2017). 7 T. Scott, and M. Tooby, in A Journey with The Waste Land, Community, Arts & Education, 8, Spring 2016 available at http://wellingvisualarts.org/wp-­ content/uploads/2014/09/æ-Issue-8.pdf. 8 An example is ‘Discover “Journeys with The Waste Land” at Turner Contemporary’, the exhibition introductory video, now available at www.youtube. com/watch?v=3zuhOKYBwRM&t=72s. 9 J. Jones, The Guardian Review, 2 February 2018; W. Januszczak, The Sunday Times Lead Review, 11 February 2018. 10 The development of an open evaluative website led by Michele Gregson and including individual testimony will be available from autumn 2018 via the Turner Contemporary website. 11 ‘The point is to show that, as in the pedagogical situation, where the master speaks without ever passing his knowledge into the mind of his pupil, so too the artist may work out grand strategies […] but to no purpose. What happens is that the artist arranges the elements and the spectators, the visitors arrive and they decide how to assemble what they see in the light of their own histories, experiences and so on’. E. Battista, ed., Dissenting Words: Interviews with J. Rancière (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), p. 269. 12 B. Lynch, Whose Cake Is It Anyway: A Collaborative Investigation Into Engagement and Participation in 12 Museums and Galleries in the UK; Paul Hamlyn Foundation London, (n.d.). 13 M. Bhaskar, Curation: The Power of Selection in a World of Excess (London: Paitkus, 2017), pp. 108; 227. 14 J. Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. G. Elliott (London: Verso, 2011). 15 Ibid., p. 13. 16 Ibid., p. 17. 17 Ibid., p. 17 18 M. Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986); P. O’Neill, L. Steeds, and M. Wilson, eds., How Institutions Think: Between Contemporary Art and Curatorial Discourse (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2017). 19 www.idlewomen.org/about-us.html. 20 N. Buurmann, ‘Engendering Exhibitions: The Politics of Gender in Negotiating Curatorial Authorship’, in Journal of Curatorial Studies, 6. no 1, (2017) pp. 115–138. 21 K. Ross, ‘Introduction to J. Ranciere’, The Ignorant Schoolmaster (California: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. xxii.

10 Coalville Heroes Graham Black and Stuart Warburton

Introduction In 2015, Leicestershire County Council (LCC), faced with major cuts to its income from central government and rising costs, particularly in social care, closed and, in 2016, demolished Snibston Discovery Museum as both a cost-saving exercise and an opportunity to raise funds by selling part of the site for housing. At the time, it was the largest museum of science and industry in the East Midlands, located on the site of the former Snibston Number 2 Colliery in Coalville, a deprived urban area in north-west Leicestershire. The extensive displays included major galleries on the social and industrial history of Leicestershire, including coal-mining, and on the history of fashion (reflecting the importance of the county to the textile and fashion industry and heavily used by contemporary students). A gallery of interactive science exhibits was balanced by an external play area based on principles of engineering. A Toys gallery (reflecting the importance of Palitoy to the area – see below) was an important draw for Key Stage 1 school groups from across the region. These permanent galleries were supplemented by temporary exhibitions on the social history of the Coalville area, and by guided tours given by ex-miners of the intact colliery pithead buildings. Snibston received over 100,000 paying visits a year, mainly from day trippers, especially families. But closure was a particularly bitter blow to the people of Coalville. The town owes its existence to industry – in male-­dominated coal-mining and the railway, but also other manufacturers, several of them linked to an almost exclusively female labour market that provided a steady source of employment in the area from the late ­nineteenth-century onwards, including elastic webbing and hosiery. With the gradual demise of these historic industries since the 1970s, many local people have felt increasingly bereft of any reference to the driving forces that first brought their families to the town. The closure of the museum removed a key link to their past as well as a visitor destination. This chapter is not, however, principally about the closure of Snibston Discovery Museum. Rather its primary focus is on the response of the local

Coalville Heroes  153 community to this. Instead of passively accepting its loss, the town has experimented with new ways of promoting both Coalville’s heritage and local pride in it, with both short-term measures and the development of a Heritage Strategy for the longer term. What makes the chapter particularly relevant for today are the tentative steps North-West Leicestershire District Council and the local history and heritage societies and community groups are taking towards an approach to heritage that truly reflects a partnership of equals – essential in this age of austerity when local authorities no longer have the resources to go it alone. Writing on the issue, the accountancy firm Price Waterhouse Cooper stated: Local government must learn to give up traditional notions of control if it is to remain relevant in the future. If councils do not shift quickly to an effective model of participation with their partners, communities and citizens, they will lose the ability to make a positive impact in their local areas.1 The authors of this chapter are not neutral observers. Stuart Warburton is Secretary of the Coalville Heritage Society and Chairman of the Snibston & Coalville Preservation Trust. He lives in, and has a long association with, Coalville as well as nearly 40 years’ museum/heritage experience. Graham Black is Professor of Museum Development at Nottingham Trent University, also with 40 years’ involvement with museums across the UK. Together, they are authors of the Coalville Heritage Strategy, which forms a core element in this chapter. They have also played active roles in other aspects covered in the chapter, not least the eventually unsuccessful attempt to save Snibston Discovery Museum and ongoing negotiations to develop a heritage centre in the surviving pithead buildings at the site (see below). Nevertheless, they have sought to provide an as objective as possible account of developments in the town. Readers must now reach their own conclusions as to whether they have succeeded in doing so.

Coalville Coalville is the largest town in NW Leicestershire, with the population of ‘greater Coalville’, including its outlying villages, approaching 35,000. In many ways, it typifies the story of small communities of the industrial revolution – a story too often ignored by those who concentrate on major sites. Until the 1830s Coalville only existed as a crossroads, between a north-south track from Whitwick to Hugglescote and an east-west track known as ‘Long Lane’ (now Ashby Road) that ultimately ran from Leicester to Ashby de la Zouch. It was not even a Church of England parish and instead incorporated elements of four parishes (Whitwick, Hugglescote, Swannington and Snibston).

154  Graham Black and Stuart Warburton Although coal had been mined in the area since the middle ages with seams reaching the surface at Swannington, the seams were only fully exploited when mining technology advanced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The first deep-shaft mine was at Whitwick, sunk by William Stenson (the ‘father of Coalville’) in the mid-1820s. A native of nearby Coleorton, he developed his pit on a relative’s farmland. As well as locating coal, Stenson had to sell it, and at this point we might argue that Coalville enters the national picture, because Stenson turned to none other than George Stephenson, the ‘father of the railways’, to help further his plans. Long before his involvement in passenger railways, Stephenson worked on the development of railways for the haulage of coal, having originally trained as a colliery engine wright. Stenson persuaded Stephenson to build the Leicester & Swannington Railway, one of the first in the county, to take his coal to market. It opened in 1832 and was extended to Long Lane in 1833. Interestingly, given Stenson’s success at Whitwick, Stephenson was persuaded to sink his own pit at Snibston, describing it as ‘the most profitable enterprise I have ever undertaken’. 2 Number 1 Colliery, built at the side of the railway, opened in 1831 and closed in the 1880s. The more successful Snibston Number 2 Colliery opened in 1834 and stopped turning coal in 1983–4. Its pithead buildings and headstocks survive and are both listed buildings and a scheduled ancient monument. Both Stenson and Stephenson built housing for their workforces, creating two communities – one around Snibston Colliery and the other around Whitwick Colliery, which combined to create Coalville. Stenson added a school and a Baptist chapel, while the school built by Stephenson was used by Primitive Methodists on Sundays. Both Stenson, with his business partner John Ellis of Leicester, and Stephenson raised money from Liverpool merchants for their village developments – another reflection of the inter-relationship between local and national. As the settlements grew, speculators built more housing and traders added shops and other outlets along the roads linking the pits, with the name ‘Coalville’ first used in the mid-1830s. Meanwhile other industries developed, particularly quarrying, brick and tile-making and, employing predominantly women and children, elastic web manufacture and textiles. Later came railway wagon-building, employing 1,000 men and boys by 1900. By the late nineteenth century there were around ten collieries in the area, while the railway expanded to Burton-on-Trent, carrying passengers as well as freight. The Clock Tower War Memorial and the council offices were both signs of continued confidence in the first half of the twentieth century. Perhaps most famously, Coalville was the home of Palitoy from 1937–85, making Action Man and Star Wars toys. Decline came with the abandonment of the railway and mines, beginning with the closure of the passenger line after the publication of the Beeching Reports of 1963–5, although it continues to take freight. More serious still was the closure of the collieries which took place between 1983–91 and left 5,000 men

Coalville Heroes  155 redundant. Since then, the town has made a significant recovery, not least as a transport hub, with its location close to the M1 motorway and major trunk roads. In 2016, Amazon opened its largest ‘fulfilment centre’ in the UK at Coalville. But what of Coalville’s heritage and local history? How can local people have access to it? First, we must discuss the tragedy of Snibston Discovery Museum.

Snibston Discovery Museum The c100 acre site of Snibston Number 2 Colliery, redeveloped as Snibston Discovery Park (an Industrial Museum and Country Park), opened in 1992. The Century Theatre, Britain’s oldest travelling theatre, was added in 1996, relocated from Keswick. The development was part of a national program to regenerate redundant coalmine sites following the collapse of the coal-mining industry in the UK.3 As such, the museum was expected to attract enough paying visitors to be commercially viable. Equally, it was to be a symbol of new growth to encourage tourism, new businesses and jobs in the area. Yet, alongside its regeneration role, the museums service saw the site from the outset as a key point of access to their social and industrial heritage for the people of Leicestershire. There was, therefore, an underlying conflict between the museum’s economic expectations and heritage functions – a conflict that came to the fore in the lead-up to the museum’s closure. As hoped under the regeneration scheme, Snibston Discovery Museum immediately became an important visitor destination in the East Midlands. In the first three years of operation, it was awarded 13 regional and national museum, tourism and visitor service awards. It initially attracted around 150,000 paying visitors per year which levelled out at around an annual 100,000, including 14,000 schoolchildren in organised parties. When the museum was created in 1992, there was a single museums service covering all of Leicestershire and Rutland. In 1997 Leicestershire Museum, Arts and Record Service was divided into three separate services  – ­L eicestershire, Leicester City and Rutland County – as part of a national reorganisation of local government. The Discovery Museum became the largest and most expensive element of the new Leicestershire county service. By 2013, it ­required an annual subsidy of £600,000 (LCC figures), a sum that was projected to rise. So far as LCC was concerned, the museum could only have a future if it could pay its own way, something which no comparable museum in the UK has achieved. It was this which led to its eventual ­closure – although the possibility of running the museum much more cheaply was subject to a dispute between LCC and the ‘Friends of Snibston’ who campaigned for it to remain open.4 As part of Leicestershire Museums Service, the museum had a county-­ wide remit. This meant that in its early days, despite having a local community gallery, it paid too little attention to the specific heritage of Coalville.

156  Graham Black and Stuart Warburton But, over time, that changed. Recognising the importance of the area to the North-West Leicestershire coalfield, the museum worked with the local community to provide guided tours of the colliery pithead by ex-miners and to revive the annual Miners’ Gala, which had been abandoned when the collieries closed. It also instigated an ambitious program of oral history recording (‘Mines of Memory’5) and planned new mining displays, to be installed in the pithead buildings. These plans came to a halt in 2011, when LCC, as the owner and operator of the site, having received a £3 million first round grant offer from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), decided against making a second-round bid on the grounds that it could not guarantee the future of the site and therefore could not meet HLF conditions. By 2011, LCC was already faced with having to identify £110 million of savings as part of a national program of austerity measures – a figure that has since increased considerably. LCC announced plans to close the museum in 2013 as part of its austerity savings. A local campaign against closure, led by the ‘Friends of Snibston’, eventually led to a judicial review, but to no avail. The museum ceased ­operations on 31 July 2015. It was so busy on its final day that last admission was at 2.00 pm. Campaigner Frank Robinson summed up the feelings of many when interviewed by the BBC: We want to make people aware of what we are about to lose and we feel that Leicestershire County Council have acted in a disgusting manner and showed utter contempt for the people of Coalville. This is a valuable asset and it is just shocking. We have nothing here now.6 Guided tours of the pithead buildings and headstocks also ceased at the same time, and the museum was demolished in March to April 2016. The museum collections not on loan from Leicester City Museums or private individuals and companies were put into storage and cared for professionally, but with little public access; the Century Theatre remained operational on site, managed by LCC and staffed by volunteers.

The Coalville Project Like all smaller communities in England, Coalville comes under the auspices of two local authorities, in this case LCC and North-West Leicestershire District Council (NWLDC), each with different areas of responsibility but with some overlap in practice. As LCC was scaling back its expenditure in the area so, in January 2016, NWLDC launched a new flagship scheme, The Coalville Project: (branded Choose Coalville) ‘to regenerate and build confidence in Coalville over the next three years and beyond’.7 Its overall aims were to build confidence for all parts of the community and to help business groups and various organisations work together on projects that would benefit the town. A further challenge centred on asking what the NWLDC could do differently.8

Coalville Heroes  157 As part of the project, the town’s heritage was to be celebrated, and local history and heritage groups were challenged to show how they could help build confidence in the town: Now that Leicestershire County Council has made its decision about the Discovery Museum, we need to make the most of the assets – the ­Century Theatre, the country park and the Scheduled Ancient ­Monuments – on the site, as well as the collections previously held in the museum. We also need to make sure the town’s rich heritage is celebrated in new ways that are accessible to all.9 The focus on heritage reflected a survey of residents conducted in September 2015 which, amongst other things, illustrated that ‘…people are really positive about the town’s people, its sense of community and its heritage’.10 However, this was not NWLDC’s first venture into the heritage field. The council has shown a commitment to local heritage over many years, independent of the museum, including: • • • • • •

Co-ordinated the North-West Leicestershire Heritage Forum, bringing together local societies to discuss issues of joint interest Introduced a Small Grants scheme Maintained a built heritage historical record Raised the profile of the heritage through environmental and economic development initiatives Co-ordinated local volunteering activities in partnership with county and regional voluntary and community agencies Provided access to internet promotion through Council websites

It also supported or ran a variety of popular local events and activities, some linked to regional and national initiatives, which raised awareness and promoted local heritage – including Heritage Open Days, a Festival of Archaeology, a Miners’ Gala, a community ’Picnic in the Park’, and several others. Thousands attended the larger events, while underpinning all this activity were the memberships and actions of 12 local history and heritage societies, including the Coalville Heritage Society, Swannington Heritage Trust and the Whitwick Historical Group. On the whole – as across the country – these groups depended on the active commitment of a few retirees and their focus was on research into and promotion of their local areas. Other research was carried out by non-affiliated individuals. For most of the time, however, many people in the Coalville area were untouched and unaffected by the local heritage, and this was particularly the case for children and young people. Could a new focus through the Coalville Project change this? Could it help energise a local population which was very proud of the roots of the town? NWLDC decided to take three new initiatives. First, in June 2016, the council grant-aided two community engagement professionals, Deana

158  Graham Black and Stuart Warburton Wildgoose and Julia Burkin. Second, it partnered Coalville Heritage Society to produce a ‘street exhibition’, The Coalville Timeline, which told the story of Coalville and, thirdly, it commissioned a Heritage Strategy to define long-term direction.

The Hero Project CIC11 Under the title of the Hero Project, the community professionals developed three themes: Future Heroes (children and young people), Food Heroes (community growing and sharing), and Heritage Heroes (community-wide but especially schools and young people, to raise awareness of local heritage). With a £25,000 grant from NWLDC spread over 18 months, they generated a further £127,500 of grant aid and in-kind donations, to tackle all three themes, including creating a community kitchen and garden and setting up a youth club in the Century Theatre. As Heritage Heroes they brought together local schools, societies and universities to develop education resources and workshops that engaged children with local heritage. They also consulted over 700 young people on what they wanted in Coalville. Two examples illustrate their approach to engaging local people with their heritage: 1 Newbridge High School Newbridge is a school for 11 to 14-year-olds. A joint project between the school and the Hero Project in 2016–7 sought to engage young people with local heritage projects and societies to raise aspiration, develop creativity and to enhance community identity, a sense of belonging and a sense of pride in the town. Extracts from the end of year report illustrate how both sides benefitted from the project. The school believed that working with the local societies enhanced their connections to the town and helped the pupils develop their individual talents, while working alongside postgraduate students inspired them to think of their own future potential. The local history societies involved gained access to large numbers of young people and experience working with children, as well as new ideas for future projects. The work of the Hero Project across Coalville schools and colleges included presenting to the Coalville Headteachers Annual Conference as well as running in-school workshops. It showed the role heritage groups could play in supporting local pupils – and not only in helping children learn about their heritage. Heritage groups would benefit greatly from older pupils and college students using local sites for curriculum-related projects, not least IT. Making positive connections between schools and heritage groups benefits all – but the connections must be sustained to be of long-term value.

Coalville Heroes  159 2 The ‘Famous Fifty’ exhibition The ‘Famous Fifty’ was the name given to the first 50 volunteers of the First World War from the Coalville area, who in August 1914 marched from Hugglescote, cheered on by thousands of local people. As miners, many of them were used for tunnelling at the front. Only 22 of the Famous Fifty returned home. In November 2016, a Leicestershire project, the Century of Stories, filmed the Remembrance Day parade at the Memorial Clock Tower in Coalville. This HLF-funded project sought ‘to empower local people to discover their own personal connection to the conflict and uncover how all of our stories combine to create the diverse and unique history of Leicestershire in the First World War’.12 The Project invited the people of Coalville to create ­community-led stories on each of the soldiers which were then published weekly in the local paper, the Coalville Times, up until Remembrance Day 2017. The Hero Project then linked the Century of Stories work with the local author, Michael Kendrick, whose book Fifty Good Men and True provided essential background, the British Legion, local groups, businesses and charities, as well as all the schools and other educational establishments already engaged by the Hero Project. By its end they had created the largest community-led and developed exhibition ever to be hosted in the area, involving upwards of 1,000 people. The final exhibition, mounted within Coalville’s Covered Market, was viewed by over 3000 people in three weeks. The central feature consisted of 50 life-size wooden ‘soldiers’, each decorated on one side to reflect how the ‘artists’ saw that soldier; on the other side was his biography. Empty market stalls were used to create a trench, a bunker, a conflict booth, a poetry wall and a space for the Coalville Heritage Society to share information and photographs about women during the war. The project not only engaged with a cross-section of the local community – young and old – but also brought a new vitality into a struggling market hall providing additional custumers and income for the market traders, while at the same time creating a link between art and heritage and commerce. It continues to tour other venues including visits to the Barbara Hepworth Gallery as part of a University Public Engagement Symposium, Leicestershire Record Office and Ashby Arts Festival. Other Hero Project schemes include films on heritage themes made with youth groups who also carried out the research, authorship, design and installation of a billboard poster on the Victorian philanthropist George Smith, one of their ‘Coalville Heroes’.13 This was sponsored by a local firm of solicitors. Three things characterise the work of The Hero Project: collaboration, ambition and a passion to promote high quality thinking skills. Underpinning this is their network of contacts across the local area – schools and colleges,

160  Graham Black and Stuart Warburton community and heritage groups, businesses and local authorities. With this network of contacts, the organisers have secured a small amount of funding to continue the legacy of the Famous Fifty. They do not have any premises from which to work; instead they seek the cooperation of their contacts. Most successful is the use of part of a Co-operative Supermarket where the Famous Fifty have been given a long-term display area. They are currently working on a self-funding exhibition featuring ‘Fifty Fantastic Females’, celebrating women’s right to vote and the contributions women have made and do make today. Communities need activists like Deana and Julia who pride themselves in taking heritage into the community, at outdoor events, in social media, and where people gather naturally, like the market hall – and who believe that people will get involved if you create the right opportunities. But this cannot be sustained without long-term investment – the sort of small-scale flexible funding that can make possible this type of creative development and is sorely lacking across the country at present.

The ‘Coalville Timeline’ One Coalville Project objective is to improve the townscape and retail environment, aided through grants and planning policy. In 2014, the town centre was designated a conservation area, described by English Heritage as ‘a good example of the type of commercial and industrial settlement that grew up rapidly in the nineteenth century following the discovery of coal’.14 NWLDC had anticipated this designation and, since 2007, has been providing guidance to owners of shop properties in the area to apply for a ‘shop front’ grant to improve the appearance of their premises and to give them a ‘traditional’ look that, as well as creating a more attractive environment, NWLDC believes will attract more trade to the area: Poor quality and tatty shop fronts suggest that the goods and services offered inside will be much the same. This can also reflect on the town or village as a whole. A town centre full of well designed, well-­maintained shop fronts would project an impression of quality that would attract visitors and provide a nice environment for the residents.15 But what can NWLDC do with large empty spaces? Coalville, like many towns and cities, has fallen foul of the indiscriminate demolition of buildings, with a landowner sitting on derelict land awaiting an upturn in land price or a financially beneficial developer. This is the case on Ashby Road, one of the main streets into the town. A row of early nineteenth-century cottages, later converted to shops and including some of the oldest buildings in the town, was demolished, leaving 75 metres of bland corrugated steel hoarding where the shops once stood. As the hoarding was a blight on the town, NWLDC approached the Coalville Heritage Society to work in partnership to develop a ‘Coalville Timeline’, a street exhibition, showing the history and development of the town.

Coalville Heroes  161 With an archive of over 2,500 local photographs, the Heritage Society was asked to create 17 A0 sized graphic panels for mounting on the hoarding, using photographs, maps and drawings, taking a chronological ­approach to the history of the town, from the early nineteenth century to 2017, and grouped into ten-yearly sections. The choice of images was to represent key monuments in the town, local industries, prominent buildings and shops, events and celebrations. Text was kept to a minimum and each panel incorporated a local quotation, extracted from a memoir or an oral history recording, plus picture captions. The NWLDC produced the artwork and paid for the printing of the panels on high quality external boards, and ‘Coalville Timeline’ was unveiled with much media attention in May 2017. Although, at the time of writing, no formal evaluation has yet taken place, there have been favourable observations carried out and comments from the local community have been complimentary and positive. Many people stop to look at the panels as they walk along the street. A genuine fear was of defacement by graffiti but, to date, there has been no vandalism, an indication that the panels were respected and cherished. The Society is now adapting the timeline, to place copies in local schools.

Coalville Heritage Strategy NWLDC, in seeking to plan for the long-term, commissioned the authors to write a Heritage Strategy for the town. While Heritage Strategies are a common feature within local authorities, they are normally produced by planning departments – and focussed on the built environment – with support from library/museum, tourism and community teams; NWLDC clearly cares for its built environment, including employing a full-time conservation officer. However, from the off, the challenge set was to create the Strategy in partnership and consultation with the local community, and to pay close attention to the life experiences of past and present inhabitants and their contributions to the development of Coalville and its environs, as well as the surviving physical heritage. Work on the Strategy began in 2016 and it is likely to be adopted by NWLDC in late 2018. If this seems like an inordinate amount of time it should be remembered that such work depends upon voluntary groups whose members are already heavily engaged and the buy-in by the local authority to a new way of partnership working. However, it was seen from the outset as a working document, with agreed activities taking place while it was being developed, rather than waiting for formal approval. As the remainder of this chapter will demonstrate, much has already been achieved. Warburton and Black’s first decision was to follow the Coalville Project and restrict the lifespan of the Strategy to three years. The ambition was to establish what could be achieved in terms of building sustainable ­momentum – given that funding is in short supply, and the active members

162  Graham Black and Stuart Warburton of the local history and heritage societies are already heavily committed. The second, more controversial, decision was not to consult the wider Coalville community initially, but to focus on the volunteer groups, individuals and organisations who are responsible for collection, preservation, access and community engagement with the local heritage. The idea was to use the initial strategy to develop something solid that the wider community could be consulted on – to explore different opportunities for access and involvement, to establish which fired the imagination. All the local history societies were severely exercised by the closure of Snibston ­Discovery Museum and were keen to be involved in developing alternative ways of engaging local people with their heritage. They also hoped to encourage new society members, especially amongst young people. Consultation began with the development of a SWOT analysis. This highlighted the diversity of heritage assets, the commitment of local groups and volunteers and, particularly, the strength of local community identity. However, there was a lack of leadership and vision, poor coordination, only limited training, and a failure to involve young people, while the closure of Snibston Discovery Museum left a gaping hole in provision. Nevertheless, the opportunities were there to build on existing activities. NWLDC and the local societies were keen to work together and recognised the need to coordinate their activities, and the existing events noted above showed how new audiences of young and old could be engaged – and working together would be the most effective way to bring in new funding. The greatest threats came from a collapse of leadership to galvanise collaboration, which would result in the societies withdrawing back into themselves, a failure to build momentum around the involvement of young people, and the ongoing poor relationship with LCC following the closure of the Discovery Museum. From this base, participants eventually agreed on core actions to be tackled in the three-year lifespan of the Strategy. They hoped to expand the ­existing program of events and activities to further raise local awareness and build momentum in their engagement with existing and new ­audiences – and especially to build close working relationships with local schools, colleges and young people. Particular concerns focussed on developing a strong digital presence and innovative ways of heritage delivery, as well as promoting resource sharing and training opportunities. There was also a recognition of the need to re-establish a working relationship with LCC, not least in relation to gaining public access to the historic headstocks and pithead buildings of the Snibston colliery. Underpinning all of this was a need to identify funding opportunities and to support subject-related research. All involved recognised that the Strategy should focus on short-term gains, with evaluation essential in preparation for a much fuller Strategy in three years’ time. With agreed core actions, the big issue of how to deliver them still remained. Initially, an Action Plan was drawn up linking tasks, costs and personnel but this proved more of a barrier than a route forward – where to

Coalville Heroes  163 start, what to prioritise in the knowledge that it could not all be achieved. Most important – what was the end product that the wider community could see? In the end, given that the Strategy was effectively a test bed with a short lifespan, it was felt the best way forward was to build on work already in progress and past successes. Eight core priorities were established, each given specific challenges linked to the core actions: 1 Co-ordination Every project tackled must show the effectiveness of working together and agreeing on priorities across the area, including on funding bids. It was clear from the consultation that, without strong co-­ordination, individual societies and their members would focus on their own ­localised work. Close control to ensure agreed work was completed on time and within any budget would also bring essential credibility to the Strategy, making funding and other outside support more likely. 2 A strong digital and social media presence This was an important project in its own right, but also one that provided a key element for involving young people. All the societies hold collections of historic images. Digital access would transform the ability of local people – and people from further afield – to engage with Coalville’s heritage at any time. Linking the images to online ­exhibitions and to newly-created Heritage Trails would also support local people in their exploration of the historic environment. Crucially, ­copyright-free access to historic images, themed to reflect curriculum needs, was the most urgent request from the Coalville Headteachers’ Forum. In addition, developing the digital and social media side provided a welcome opportunity to work with young people, using their skills in developing content. At the time of writing, Coalville Heritage Society and Ravenstone History Society are working together to catalogue and digitise their historic image collections as a joint project, the first step in making these accessible, particularly in themes for school project use. In time, they hope that other societies will join them. 3 A dynamic program of events Events are already a successful part of the Coalville social and heritage calendar. They are central to maintaining a heritage presence in people’s minds and to reaching out to both established and new communities in the town. Local societies have a strong presence at events such as the Coalville Miners’ Gala, ‘Picnic in the Park’ and ‘Hello Heritage’ festival. The challenges are to constantly refresh, so local people continue to take part in large numbers, and to develop new ways of involving young people. A schools-driven ‘Coalville History Day’ would also be a real advance. In 2018, NWLDC hired marquees for the major events so the local societies could mount displays and run activities. 4 Churches and Chapels Heritage Trail The town has a rich heritage of places of Christian worship, especially non-conformism. Faith communities form a large and active element in

164  Graham Black and Stuart Warburton local society but can often be ignored by heritage groups. With work under way on a gazetteer of nonconformist and Roman Catholic places of worship in the area, there is an opportunity to raise awareness of the religious heritage of Coalville and its environs. Developing a trail that includes access to sites also gives an opportunity to explore ways of working more closely with local faith communities. 5 Palitoy 100 Can local societies mount museum-quality displays? Palitoy was based in Coalville from 1937 but began life in Leicester in 1919. With its centenary beckoning, there is an opportunity to celebrate this muchloved company by creating and mounting an exhibition in the town. As a strategic project, it has other advantages. Not least, it provides an opportunity to develop an oral history resource by interviewing past workers at the company, many of them female. It also represents an important case around which to negotiate the loan of historic collections relating to Palitoy from both the City of Leicester Museums Service and LCC. Crucially, it should be possible to build a credible grant application to the Heritage Lottery Fund. In late 2018, as a test bed for the Palitoy exhibition, the Coalville Heritage Society partnered with NWLDC to celebrate 40 years of Star Wars toys being made in Coalville. The centrepiece of the celebration was an exhibition, curated by a private collector, Matt Fox, which showed his substantial collection of Palitoy- and Kenner-made Star Wars toys, as well as film memorabilia. Planning for the exhibition highlighted another problem resulting from the demise of the Discovery Museum, namely the lack of a venue in which to mount larger exhibitions of this kind. An obvious location would be the local library, but its exhibition space is small and changes in access and opening hours are detrimental to visitors from out of town. In the event, the Heritage Society was able to negotiate use of a conference centre in what had been the Palitoy factory. As a result, the exhibition attracted many ex-employees who came to re-visit the site, as well as adults who played with them as children, children of today and collectors. At the time of writing, plans are well under way for the proposed Palitoy 100 exhibition, with a grant application to the Heritage Lottery Fund due to be submitted shortly, and the same venue to be used. 6 Improve relationship with LCC over access to Snibston Colliery Headstocks and Pithead Buildings While the societies continue to feel bitter about the loss of Snibston Discovery Museum, Coalville’s heritage needs LCC to be involved. The most urgent issue is the future of the LCC-owned Snibston Headstocks and pithead buildings. These historic buildings sit adjacent to the site of the now-demolished Snibston Discovery Museum and are recognised as one of four sites in the country which best represent the coal-mining industry in England from the late nineteenth century to the period of

Coalville Heroes  165 peak production in the mid-twentieth century.16 Despite LCC spending over £2 million on the conservation of the Headstocks, they remain on Historic England’s ‘Buildings at Risk’ register as they have no clear future use. Historic England had scheduled the pit tops (headstocks and winding houses) in 1999 but other important associated pithead buildings were unprotected. At the behest of Coalville Heritage Society they were listed in 2018 to prevent their demolition or internal gutting. At the time of writing, LCC has submitted a planning application for housing on the site of the museum, a café to serve the Century Theatre and country park, and outside interpretation of the historic colliery buildings. The ‘Friends of Snibston’, rebranded the ‘Snibston & Coalville Preservation Group’, has proposed to LCC that, rather than leaving the pithead buildings sitting empty to slowly decay, a volunteer-run heritage centre is created. In principle, LCC has expressed a willingness to develop a ‘Third Party’ independent approach to the site and town interpretation as well as the formation of a Community Liaison Group comprising of stakeholders, heritage groups and local residents who will work with the Council to develop access to the site, interpretation and external funding. Significant issues remain – but there is at least potential for collaboration, which is a major step forward. 7 Building relationships with schools Within greater Coalville there are 12 primary and three secondary schools. Most work together as the ‘Coalville Family of Schools’, with head teachers meeting quarterly to develop cross-school projects. This facilitated the delivery of the ‘Famous Fifty’ project, discussed above, and successes such as this have encouraged head teachers to engage their pupils in projects that are heritage or community-focussed and bring added benefit. The head teachers also actively support the themed digitisation of historic images, seeing this as a major resource for pupils. The Strategy tries to ensure that schools are a part of any heritage-­ related project. The most important in 2018 has been the restoration of the War Memorial Clock Tower. The project involved an HLF-funded collaborative partnership between NWLDC, Coalville Heritage ­Society, Swannington Heritage Trust, the Friends of Thringstone, Belvoirdale Primary School and Historic England, and delivered classroom teaching aids and sessions as well as field work around the Tower. The children were shown how the environment around the Clock Tower has changed over the last 200 years and were tasked to develop new designs and schemes for the future of the Memorial Square, which were then presented by the children to the Chief Executive of NWLDC, in the Council Chamber. The project also trained children in oral history techniques and over two days a group of children made recordings of people who had memories about the Clock Tower, Memorial Square and the town. As a result, Historic England awarded Belvoirdale ­Primary School a Heritage School Award.

166  Graham Black and Stuart Warburton Two projects reflect the ambition to involve schools in the events program. Firstly, each year Picnic in the Park attracts thousands of people. In 2018 NWLDC approached the ‘Family of Schools’ to produce around 30 A0 posters on board reflecting the children’s thoughts and impressions of Coalville, and these were displayed at the event to general acclaim. There is still a strong affinity with local mining heritage, and this was reflected in the Leicestershire Coal Industry Welfare Trust Fund (LCIWTF) providing support to ensure the Miners’ Gala lived on in the area. A high point of any Miners’ Gala is the parade of Union Banners to the sounds of a colliery brass band. For 2018, the Coalville Miners’ Gala approached Coalville’s All Saints Primary School to create four A1 banners representing the two Coalville Collieries – ­Snibston No. 2 and Whitwick Collieries. This pilot will be developed in partnership with the ‘Family of Schools’ in 2019 to produce 25 A1 banners, one for each of the nineteenth and twentieth century pits and collieries that were around the Coalville area. Each school will be allocated a colliery or pit in their locality and local volunteers from the heritage groups and retired miners’ associations will visit the schools to talk with the children about the local mining industry and the life of a mining family. The banners will be paraded alongside the Union Banner. They will then be displayed in community venues around the area and kept by the Coalville Miners’ Gala for posterity. 8 Monitoring and Evaluation Monitoring and evaluation will underpin the development of a new strategy in 2022. However, teaching local society members how to evaluate their projects will be important in itself in terms of how they regard their work – and a further mechanism for driving the credibility of the Strategy.

What is not covered by the Strategy? The projects outlined above are important and allow local activists to challenge themselves and to build partnerships with NWLDC. They also have the potential to fire the imaginations of local people. But there are big absences, set aside for the re-writing of the Strategy in 2022. These include the relationship between local heritage developments and tourism, a fuller engagement with and interpretation of the historic built environment, the ­relationship with LCC, including access to historic museum collections, and a sustainable funding regime (whilst recognising that individual projects will fundraise). Underpinning issues include acknowledging the ­villages that make up greater Coalville (a core consideration for the different local societies), ensuring a gender balance in the interpretation, and seeking ways to counter the issues caused by the bitter breakdown in relationship between members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and of the Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) in the miners’ strike of 1984–5, a rift that has yet to heal.

Coalville Heroes  167 Perhaps most importantly, the next version of the Strategy must reflect a detailed consultation with local people. Given that by 2021–2, we will be approaching 40 years since the closure of the pits, what does local heritage mean to the community – a sense of pride and belonging, a means of exploring our place in the world, a memorial to the past that is important for young people to understand? What do they think about the work done in recent years? How important is access to the heritage? How do we ensure that the heritage belongs to them? What are their aspirations for the local heritage? How can we best celebrate it – but also share it with people from outside the area, as Snibston Discovery Museum did? What would ­encourage people, especially the young, to get involved?

Concluding thoughts We often speak of ‘Museums without walls’ – reaching out beyond their boundaries to engage actively with local communities. Snibston D ­ iscovery Museum had begun to fulfil this role in the period leading up to LCC ­turning down the HLF grant offer in 2011. After that, starved of display funding and building maintenance, it struggled on until closure in 2015 and demolition in 2016 – when it literally lost its walls. The result to date has been a limited rejuvenation of the heritage community in Coalville, and the beginning of enhanced access to local heritage for local people. Good work is being done, collaborations established, a vision being developed and momentum created. It shows the scale of engagement with heritage that exists in a small corner of Leicestershire but is probably replicated in many parts of the country. What is needed to drive Coalville heritage forward – and, by implication, is relevant to many places – is leadership/co-ordination and regular, small amounts of grant aid. But neither of these is guaranteed at present. Yet without them collaborative working will cease, and the local societies will revert to their core activities. What has this to do with ‘Connecting Museums’, when there is no ­museum to connect with? The authors of this chapter each have 40-year careers working in and/or with museums, so we clearly favour them. But this is not just our bias. The constant reference by local societies and community groups to the closure of Snibston Discovery Museum, and their continuing bitterness about this, shows how much the museum mattered to local people – its collections, the stories these told and their permanent availability, as well as the expertise of the staff – before we even consider its loss to the wider region and the removal also of any public access to the historic collections it held. We are all poorer for its closure. And yet the Coalville experience is revealing about what can be achieved with even tiny budgets when not distracted by the day-to-day responsibilities of running a museum and caring for collections. Museums describing their priorities as engaging with local communities should consider the need to re-balance their allocation of staff and funds and their understanding of

168  Graham Black and Stuart Warburton what is meant by partnerships of equals, to create a far healthier relationship between in-house and outreach. It has been too easy for too many museums to expend their revenue budgets on maintaining buildings, collection care, staff salaries and permanent exhibitions, and to rely exclusively on external short-term project funding for community engagement work. There is also a huge question mark over the extent to which museums truly share power with their communities.17 For museums to adequately meet their role of serving their local communities requires a re-think on relationships and budgets – even in a time of austerity. What has been achieved so far in Coalville is strictly limited and the future direction is still uncertain. To be sustained it will require the continuing commitment of the local societies, but also the recognition by LCC and NWLDC that we are in a different world – one in which there must be a partnership of equals if the ambitions are to be achieved and sustained in the long term. NWLDC is a long way down this route already. LCC has some way to go.

Notes 1 Price Waterhouse Coper, Beyond Control: Local Government in the Age of Participation, 2010. www.pwc.com/gx/en/psrc/assets/beyond-control.pdf ­(accessed on 10 November 2018). 2 L. T. C. Rolt, George and Robert Stephenson: The Railway Revolution ­(London: Pelican, 1978), p. 210. 3 For a review of the work of the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, see: https://assets. publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/­attachment_ data/file/6295/1728082.pdf (accessed on 10 November 2018). 4 For a case study of a mining regeneration scheme, see B. Dicks, Regeneration v Representation in the Rhondda: the Story of the Rhondda Heritage Park. www.academia.edu/3239423/Representation_versus_Regeneration_in_the_ Rhondda_the_Origins_and_Development_of_the_Rhondda_Heritage_Park (accessed on 10 November 2018). 5 The oral histories are now accessible at the East Midlands Oral History Archive. www.le.ac.uk/emoha/catalogue/mines.html (accessed on 10 November 2018). 6 BBC News 31 July 2015. www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire33715157 (accessed on 10 November 2018). 7 North-West Leicestershire District Council, The Coalville Project, 1, 2016. www.nwleics.gov.uk/coalville (accessed on 10 November 2018). 8 Ibid, p. 3. 9 Ibid, p. 4. 10 Ibid, p. 6. 11 For more information on the Hero Project, see their website at www.theheroproject.org.uk (accessed on 10 November 2018). 12 For more information on the Century of Stories Project, see their website at: www.centuryofstories.org.uk (accessed on 10 November 2018). 13 See, for example. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y298L-4TZjl (accessed on 10 November 2018). 14 Coalville Times, 20 June 2014. For an overview of the conservation area, see: www.nwleics.gov.uk/pages/conservation_area_appraisals (accessed on 10 November 2018).

Coalville Heroes  169 15 See NWLDC (draft, 2018) Supplementary Planning Document: Shop Fronts and Advertisements. www.nwleics.gov.uk/files/documents/proposed_2018_ shop_front_planning_document/Shop%20front%20SPD.pdf, (accessed on 10 November 2018), p. 4. 16 For a detailed account of the site, see: www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=MLE10053&resourceID=1021 (accessed on 10 ­November 2018). 17 See, for example, B. Lynch, Whose Cake Is It Anyway? (Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2011). http://ourmuseum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Whose-cake-is-itanyway-report.pdf (accessed on 10 November 2018).

11 On a hungry hill Museology and community on the Beara Peninsula Glenn Hooper

Travelling north-west from Bantry eruptive sandstone, several metres across, first appear in Glengarriff, framing homes and small graveyards, and making sport of suburban rockeries with their finicky alpines and heathers. Such scale and proximity is arresting, a startling integration of the natural and man-made. Ridged and angular they present a restful merging of the geological and the commercially exploitable. Tourism is an important staple in these parts and the traveller who might venture further northwards, towards Kenmare and the Killarney National Park, is well rewarded. But swing left at the bottom of the main street, out towards the Beara Peninsula, and watch the Caha mountains rise up in jagged slabs, on out towards the townlands of Adrigole and Ballydonegan, through the fishing town of Castletownbere with its deep water harbour and its small but growing Spanish community, and onwards yet, until the hillside village of Allihies is sighted. Here, the narrow road swerves, navigates around a few shops and cut-stone outbuildings, before forking behind a soft play area and a recently built housing scheme. Primary colours. Big skies. Rock and the North Atlantic. And then, some 200 metres or so apart two buildings of architectural and historical note: the Catholic church and the Methodist chapel, both consecrated in 1845, the year the Famine struck, and both erected for very different constituencies: Cornish and Irish miners who were brought together to work the copper mines from the 1820s to the 1880s. The population on the Beara Peninsula stood at a little less than 40,000 before the Great Irish Famine (1845–52); today it totals not much more than 4,000.1 The Famine, migration, and the drift towards Irish urban centres for work and opportunity have all taken their toll. But while the Ring of Beara is not as well known or travelled as the Ring of Kerry there are visitors and tourists to these parts, and new opportunities have emerged. This chapter examines one such moment: the conversion of the Methodist chapel, until recently exposed to the elements and straying sheep, into the Allihies Copper Mining Museum. Officially opened in September 2007 by the then President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, it is a testament not only to community perseverance, but to the collective determination of the ­local Parish Co-Operative Society to both preserve their local history and heritage, and

Museology and community in Beara  171 create a tourism offering that would add to the well-established attractions of Killarney and the West Cork Food Trail. Unusually for Ireland, and for this part of the country, the heritage being foregrounded is an industrial one, making this venture something of an outlier in terms of Irish tourism attractions. This chapter examines the development of the Allihies site in the context of international industrial heritage, and presents a case study of what it is possible to achieve through a locally-driven community initiative that is as much about social inclusion as it is revenue generation.

Mining and methodism The copper mining industry reached its peak in Great Britain in the late nineteenth century, with an extensive industry established in Cornwall and Devon as well as south-west Ireland. In the villages of Gwennap and St Day, Camborne and Callington, the efforts of the Cornwall engineers are still visible on the landscape in the form of huge engine houses (once numbering 600) that pumped water from deep underground. Unlike coal mines where shafts were opened and miners could work along a horizontal seam, copper and tin mines were sunk and worked vertically, with long ladders to lower the men beneath, well below the water table, from where the ore was taken. Copper, tin, zinc and lead were all brought to the surface from these small and vertical mines, where it was pulverised by stamping machines, mechanical devices that crushed it to a manageable size before it was broken down further in what were called bucking houses. Mostly extracted by hand, the ore was then ground further with anvils and hammers and the precious minerals carefully picked out; the fine sand left over after each of these successive stages of reduction and refinement was frequently discarded on a nearby shore. Indeed, the coast near the village of Allihies has just such a strand: entirely man-made, the sugary coarse grains of Ballydonegan Beach are the historical detritus from its nearby mines. 2 The first mine to open at Allihies was the result of the entrepreneurial efforts of the local landlord, ‘Copper John’ Puxley, in 1813. Originally settled in County Galway, the Puxleys moved to West Cork around 1730 when they were granted the Dunboy Estate and surrounding lands that had been owned by the O’Sullivan family, totalling some 7,000 acres. In the early years of the nineteenth century a greenish vein was detected on a nearby hill – soon to be named Mountain Mine – and a rudimentary open cast mine was immediately secured with men set to loosening the precious ore with gunpowder. Since it was felt that copper might exist in commercially viable quantities a second shaft – Caminches Mine – was opened in 1818, while Dooneen Mine, where a steam engine was brought from Cornwall to pump out water, was begun in 1821. Copper was an important component in many industrial processes and industries, and before competition from overseas, a valuable commodity in Britain and Ireland. It was a principal constituent of brass, and was therefore in great demand in the

172  Glenn Hooper manufacturing of steam engines, as well as assorted trading goods and gun cartridges. It was also used in the construction of boilers and vats, piping and coinage. During the early decades of the nineteenth century many Cornish men moved to Allihies, bringing their mining and engineering expertise to this new venture. Devout veterans of the Methodist revivals of 1799 and 1814, they stood in sharp contrast to their overwhelmingly Catholic neighbours. Many had experienced at first hand the extensive campaigns of John Wesley and other itinerant preachers throughout the mining communities of Cornwall, and were therefore regarded with some trepidation by not only the Catholic church in Ireland, but the established Anglican church, who feared what they regarded as their fundamentalist ways. As David Luker suggests, rising levels of ‘religious excitement [and] a considerable chapel-­ building programme’ had been in operation across West Cornwall at precisely the same time as the copper industry was being developed in Cork and appeals were being put out for Cornish miners to emigrate: It was during the 1830s, in fact, that the region [Cornwall] experienced its greatest population influx as local copper mines were opened up to their maximum extent, and throughout the decade regional populations increased by 25%. In this period of special social turmoil, with Methodist chapels now well-established within local communities, two substantial revivals took Methodist membership in 1841 to a peak of around 11.3% of total regional population.3 Nevertheless, many miners must have felt somewhat isolated in the midst of a predominantly Catholic population,4 and the erection of a chapel was surely important in terms of consolidating their role, as well as providing them with a sense of cultural and religious solidarity. In addition, since Mountain Mine was proving to be highly productive (and would continue as such until 1882), and a new mine – Kealogue Mine – was opened in 1842, one may assume that many men must have predicted a lengthy period of employment on the Beara Peninsula and sought ways to deepen their connection to the area. The Methodist ‘Miners’ Chapel’ in Allihies is a very simple, small-scale vernacular structure, barely 20 × 12 metres, and built to the standard ‘auditory plan’ of all Methodist chapels where the emphasis is on seeing and hearing the preacher. With a central entrance porch (ruinous at the start of conservation work), the gable-entry chapel was constructed from local materials: a slate roof, rubble walls with three lancet windows on either side and a larger gothic window to the rear, behind where the pulpit would have been. Whether the pews flanked the pulpit or faced it is unknown, though a narrow aisle of red pottery tiles ran the centre of the chapel, one of the few architectural features that was intact after many decades of neglect and now repositioned on the outside of the newly-extended structure.

Museology and community in Beara  173 The chapel is unlikely to have had wall plaques, memorials or any other furnishings, and the internal joinery would have been simple, although possibly with the now quite rare box pews, which would have helped alleviate draughts coming in off the sea and sweeping the chapel’s length. Since the congregation was associated with mining they would have most likely been Wesleyan Methodists from South or West Cornwall rather than Bible Christians (a breakaway sect from Methodism that took hold among the agricultural poor). Some 30 years later some of those same men still remained on the Beara Peninsula when the mines were closing and work was drying up, but the majority returned to Cornwall or went to Butte, Montana and Minnesota, to other mining communities. Despite such a shift, the small chapel in Allihies maintains a direct connection to Cornish Methodism to this day, both in terms of ecclesiastical architecture and religious identity, and the Cornish flag – a white cross on a black background – hangs from the inside of the reinstated chapel roof.

Urban and rural regeneration The Industrial Revolution saw a rapid increase in population, with a concomitant expansion of Britain’s cities. However, by the 1960s and ‘70s, many of these Victorian cities were in physical decline, suffering from large-scale unemployment, neglect and a host of social ills. After the massive demolitions and rebuilding, driven by the ‘rational planning’ of the post-war decades, regeneration initiatives from the late 1980s were perceived to be as much about improving the quality of residents lives as about repairing the physical fabric of the city. As Jones and Evans remind us, although urban regeneration is a relatively new concept, ‘it indicates that the process is about something more than simply demolition and rebuilding’.5 Today, regeneration is as much about people and communities, and their relationship to a particular place, as it is about planning and the finer details of urbanisation. Given the social problems associated with cities, it is unsurprising that successive governments focussed their attention on urban rather than rural areas for investment, and that a number of initiatives presented the rejuvenation of derelict areas as providing new opportunities for ailing sites, including the idea of a series of Garden Festivals.6 In Britain the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher first floated the idea in 1980, and the initial Festival was launched in Liverpool in 1984, continuing every two years at a different venue until the final one was held in Ebbw Vale in 1992. When the newly-elected Labour administration took over in 1997 a key commitment was the revitalisation of British cities, a pledge to tackle numerous social and cultural deficiencies through urban renewal programs. As Claire Colomb suggests, New Labour put cities ‘at the core of its agenda, launching new initiatives in neighbourhood renewal to ­address social exclusion as well as championing a new agenda for the

174  Glenn Hooper “Urban  Renaissance” of British cities’.7 However, at the same time as a number of government initiatives were underway to help restore pride in British cities, the tourism and heritage sectors were themselves developing new ideas and attractions, many of which focussed on urban environments. Indeed, John Heeley argues that the emergence of city marketing agencies throughout the 1990s – in places like Coventry, Sheffield, Birmingham and Nottingham – all demonstrated the increasing confidence of urban venues, and the new heritage and tourist attractions which sprang up, increasingly facilitated by the growth of budget airlines and regional airports, greatly increased visitor numbers to British – and increasingly to Irish – cities.8 It is often said that Ireland never had an industrial revolution, and that with the exception of Belfast in the north-east where ship-building was a major source of employment and wealth, that the country was – and still is – a fundamentally agricultural country.9 It is true that the IT and pharmaceutical companies, as well as medical technologies and food e­ xports, all indicate a growing and diverse economy. But the importance of the farming sector is still absolutely crucial, and for many citizens rural Ireland is something they either have a direct family connection to, or an understanding of. This is not to suggest that the Irish countryside is without its problems. There is a degree of hopelessness and underinvestment that is sometimes masked more easily in rural environments, and one of the reasons traditionally put forward to explain the failure of the Irish Labour Party to gain traction in rural areas: that the issues of the countryside are different, that social class – if it exists at all – isn’t as conspicuous, and because the sort of politically informed mobilisation that can be found in city areas is absent from country ones. That said, rural Ireland has certainly changed and in recent years there has been a specific linking of farming with other industries, including hospitality and the wider tourism sector, with the latter increasingly regarded as a diversified add-on to the former: While agriculture will continue to be the cornerstone of rural areas, the need to generate a second income in order to attract a successor and ensure viability is a reality for most farm families. Each year, Rural Tourism is one of the most popular diversification opportunities […] The economic benefits of rural tourism and the continued development of this sector have huge potential to revitalise local economies, provide job opportunities for farm household members and enhance the quality of life of rural communities.10 Like many rural heritage initiatives of the past 20 years or so, the ­Copper Mining Museum in the village of Allihies is the product of a complex interplay of factors. Part tourism push, part economic necessity, part community initiative, its formation is also the result of various government department plans to revitalise rural areas and to ensure greater levels of inclusion, ­especially in remote locations such as on the western seaboard. F ­ ianna Fáil’s plans for the decentralisation of much of the Irish civil service in 2003

Museology and community in Beara  175 might have failed to redistribute wealth and opportunity as comprehensively as hoped, but a concern for rural areas has been maintained, and several departments have been specifically tasked with addressing social and economic inequalities, as well as providing funding and myriad forms of support.11 For example, the Wild Atlantic Way (WAW), launched in 2014 by Fáilte Ireland, was not only the country’s first long-distance touring route, stretching from Donegal to Cork, but a deliberate effort to redirect the growth of Irish tourism away from Dublin. In the midst of the worst recession in living memory, the WAW was a conscious attempt to alleviate the hardship of rural towns and villages by creating a conduit of interlinked attractions and ‘discovery points’ along a 1,500 mile tourist highway from Inishowen to Kinsale. Also in 2014, the Commission for Economic Development of Rural Areas produced its report, Energising ­Ireland’s ­Rural Economy, followed by the Charter for Rural Ireland in 2016 which: contain specific commitments that will establish frameworks and practices to support the rejuvenation of the rural economy and rural society. The objective of the Charter is to support and accelerate rural Ireland’s regeneration, and it will be rolled out in tandem with other initiatives supporting overall national development, and in cooperation with relevant rural stakeholders and rural communities.12 If regeneration had been for too long unproblematically coupled with a sense of the urban, then Irish initiatives of the last ten years or so would seem to be emphatically recalibrating those terms and increasingly tying issues of regeneration and uplift to rural as well as urban communities. Indeed, the government’s resolve has been further demonstrated since the Department of Rural and Community Development was established in 2017. Its Action Plan for Rural Development not only states that tourism is one of its key concerns, but it seeks to aid the development of an Atlantic Economic Corridor, another counterweight to the cultural and economic dominance of the capital. Among its key objectives are to ‘increase tourist numbers to rural Ireland by 12% by 2019, support sustainable jobs through targeted rural tourism initiatives […] and promote Activity Tourism in rural areas through the development of blueways, greenways and other recreational opportunities’.13 Such pronouncements are a source of encouragement to enterprises on the western seaboard, and especially for those developing heritage projects that must not only balance the complexity of various community, social and educational projects, but also exploit tourism opportunities for the benefit of all.

Developing industrial heritage Getting a museum off the ground is never easy. Indeed, with no funds, little support, in a geographically isolated area with limited infrastructure and a declining population, a museum might seem something of a non-starter.

176  Glenn Hooper The prospects at Allihies certainly looked bleak. Lying empty and pitifully neglected, the forlorn structure of the Methodist Chapel was a historic relic without a purpose, congregation or roof. And yet even though it looked abject and abandoned, on the hillsides all around stood evidence of industry and heritage, a built environment that with perseverance and endeavour might once again be made to work for the local community. ‘Having investigated and decided that a chosen building has the potential to be developed as a voluntary-sector project’, write the authors of The Regeneration through Heritage Handbook, ‘the next step is to gather together a group of like-minded and interested people to take matters forward’.14 The idea of turning the small chapel into something heritage-related was first mooted around 1996–7 when a community group of around nine people accepted the gift of the building from a local man who was a direct descendent of a Cornish miner, and whose family were still in the parish almost 200 years after copper was first detected in its hills. From the outset it was felt that converting the old building into a museum seemed a viable option, providing a focus for the heritage they wished to protect, but also offering the possibility of linking to existing hospitality initiatives which were moving towards green and rural activity tourism. Although the Allihies Parish Co-Operative Society was first registered as a Co-Op in 1993, this was its first major project and its entry into the world of grant applications and planning consultations, though daunting, produced very favourable results. The committee emphasised the work of the local residents groups, indicated that any regenerated structure would have an educational element and, most importantly, stressed that this would be a ‘community centre with a difference’, a multi-purpose and multi-functional venue that would make a lasting socio-cultural as well as economic impact.15 In due course, they received small grants from Fáilte Ireland, Cork County Council, as well as larger sums from the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, the Ireland Fund, the Millennium Celebrations Project and the Irish Fisheries Board. In total they brought in around 500,000 euro, and while this was quickly swallowed up in building, excavating, and professional fees, it transformed the building from a sodden shell into an architectural form that blended the old and new, with a glass link through to a mezzanine for art exhibitions, a cafeteria for ruminating eco-tourists, and an educational space where networked facilities were made available to locals. It was still a modest structure, but it was now weather-proofed and conserved for future generations, and in its revamped architectural clothing constituted a revival of the village’s built heritage. The Allihies project reflects the growing importance not just of heritage attractions throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, but the steady acceptance by many people, tourists as well as stakeholders, of industrial heritage. Of the British experience Waterton and Watson reminds us that there was a ‘kind of cultural moment in the 1980s when […] heritage seemed to amount to an “industry”’, and a conservative fascination with all things historic endorsed

Museology and community in Beara  177 Laura Ashley on the High Street as enthusiastically as it did Brideshead Revisited on the television.16 Big Houses and parkland, country seats that offered tea in converted stables, gift shops that sold notepads and keyrings stamped with heraldic insignia, all sprang seemingly ready-made upon a cultural-heritage market that was remarkably receptive. It was not an unproblematic development, however, and critics such as Patrick Wright, ­David Lowenthal and Robert Hewison all engaged with the troubling political as well cultural implications of such developments. As Bella Dicks has suggested, such ‘arguments kick-started a decade of academic wrangling over the functions (social, political, ideological) of heritage’, a set of arguments that are in some ways still with us to this day.17 Industrial heritage proved a slower development, partly owing to the costs associated with the development of such sites, and partly because industrial heritage seemed less attractive as a tourism offering, suggesting something that went against the very grain of what many people understood by the term heritage.18 A more typical appreciation – even in ­I reland – presumed an interest in art, classical architecture, and historically significant narratives that complemented the educated tastes of its visitors. Industrial heritage, on the other hand, required this target audience to engage with ways of life which they might have little if any experience or understanding of. Moreover, many industrial sites lacked the lofty views, expensive artefacts, and ‘above stairs’ narratives that underpinned more traditional tourist offerings. Mines or factory visits, or even the history of agricultural and industrial developments more generally, necessitated new ways of thinking about learning, about culture, and how visitors would engage with offerings outside of the usual ‘Big House’ attractions. As Alfrey and Putnam have noted, there are specific issues associated with the marketing of industrial sites: ‘many branches of historical study have also tended to be ignorant, even contemptuous, of material culture’, a situation unhelpful to say the least: For the present, what has been recognised as industrial heritage still faces inadequate appraisal of material and cultural resources on the one hand, and stereotyped ideas of industry on the other. Even so, we can already observe tensions between the outlines of an industrial heritage which are emerging and established ways of treating the heritage resource.19 Despite such challenges the economic environment of late 1990s Ireland proved far more favourable than previous decades. The development of the site at Allihies neatly coincided not just with the Celtic Tiger years, but with a growing acceptance that heritage – like the term culture – could be applied more widely than was previously the case. Indeed, the growing appreciation of industrial sites, farms and factories, and the novelty of a m ­ ining museum in an area of outstanding natural beauty, soon appeared like a

178  Glenn Hooper marketing advantage all of its own. 20 The international context also proved important: the development of industrial heritage on the world stage was specifically discussed as a growth area that could benefit socially excluded communities and bring precious benefits to emergent tourism initiatives. 21 In an area such as Allihies, which (ironically) since the mine closures had suffered from migration and a concomitant rise in social isolation, this proved an important initiative. Dallen Timothy argues that since the 1970s there has been a broad movement to ‘preserve the extractive and manufacturing patrimony (industrial archaeology) of places […] Many currently functioning factories, mines, quarries and docklands have joined with their abandoned counterparts in an effort to promote themselves as important industrial attractions’. 22 The Allihies development can therefore be regarded as part of a growing movement to reassess what actually constituted heritage. Drawing on the ‘history from below’ approach that increasingly informed academic research, the term ‘industrial heritage’ gained significant traction in the late 1980s and ‘90s, 23 and in fact Britain provided a model for what was possible when the historical narrative that was The Industrial Revolution was itself reimagined as a tourism offering: Ironbridge Gorge in Birmingham – the very centre of Industrial development – was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986, while the British Tourist Authority marketed 1993 as Industrial Heritage Year in the UK. Timothy suggests that throughout the 1990s ‘UNESCO began listing industrial heritage […] and has continued this reach with a large handful of sites being inscribed in the early 2000s’. 24 Indeed, the Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape was also inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, its various railways and villages testimony to the advances of eighteenth and nineteenth-century industrialisation: The substantial remains within the Site are a prominent reminder of the contribution Cornwall and west Devon made to the Industrial Revolution in Britain and to the fundamental influence the area asserted on the development of mining globally […] The transfer of mining technology and related culture led to a replication of readily discernible landscapes overseas, and numerous migrant-descended communities prosper around the globe as confirmation of the scale of this influence. 25 UNESCO’s imprimatur was issued for Cornwall in 2006. However, the success of these initiatives, and their contribution towards social inclusion and economic regeneration, produced broader, international impacts, with Holland for example designating 1996 as its Industrial Heritage Year, and Ireland forming the Industrial Heritage Association that very same year. Thus, even countries such as Ireland, with a limited industrial past, were beginning to recognise the potential of such sites. Despite its relatively small scale, the Allihies Museum had the advantage of positioning itself as an

Museology and community in Beara  179 additional, yet distinctive, tourism offering, in an immensely attractive part of the country. Scenic tourism in Killarney is one of the best-known and longest-established industries, adding over €400 million in revenue annually, spent by some 1.1 million visitors.26 In addition, the region’s famed ‘food tourism industry’ is part of a national €2 billion spend by visitors to Ireland. 27 But were visitors ready to accept a (in Irish terms) non-traditional offering? And how was the site developed and managed, in order to both attract visitors with no connection to the area, and play a part in community development and tourism wellbeing?

In a Miner’s Chapel The team developing Allihies faced challenges that lie beyond the usual difficulties inherent in reviving a derelict structure. The use of an older building for heritage purposes – either in itself (because of its historic or ­architectural importance), or as a receptacle for something else – n ­ ecessarily raises concerns. Site research and an archaeological inspection, the first steps in protecting noteworthy features and identifying structural safety issues, are perhaps the most nerve-racking elements in site planning. Even where an historic building is largely intact (not the case at Allihies), and if many original features remain, the restoration must not merely refurbish them, but ‘future-proof’ against the hugely increased traffic that a tourist site attracts. The core building at Allihies is the Methodist chapel used by the community’s miners, and although the structure may have been employed more than once a week, it was never structured to cope with the large-scale through-flow of other historic buildings, such as factories, prisons, or castles. The myriad challenges facing those responsible for the conservation, care and upkeep of ‘living churches’ has been noted by David Baker, who illustrates how the location of notices and lighting, the interaction with fittings and furnishings, all present obstacles for conservation and heritage officers. The physical impact of surging visitor numbers, however, is regarded by Baker as constituting the greatest challenge of all: Visitors make direct impacts through, in order of severity, their feet, hands and breath. The time-worm hollows in steps and stone ­flooring have been greatly increased by later twentieth-century tourism […] There is serious wear on newel staircases up to towers and galleries, and sometimes on ledgers and tomb slabs set into aisles or cloister walks. Grit on hard shoes causes major damage; the frequent use of floor cleaning equipment adds its own abrasions. 28 The Allihies site had, however, some advantages that facilitated its development in this relatively inaccessible location. As a Methodist place of worship, the original building would have been without the sort of ­ecclesiastical fittings or decoration that requires the attentive upkeep of the

180  Glenn Hooper curator. Non-conformist places of worship have fewer conservation-related worries because such institutions have traditionally placed little emphasis on architecture or monuments. ‘High’ Anglican and Catholic churches are associated with sophisticated levels of decorative and aesthetic finish, including wall paintings, carved stonework and elaborate memorials, all of which present their own conservation needs. In non-conformist churches the focus is directed towards ‘the people, the congregation and their worship; the building is the means to the end of their fellowship, the shell where it takes place’. Although this might suggest that their chances of survival are higher, the reverse is in fact true: Redundancy followed by demolition or reuse has been much higher amongst chapels than Anglican churches. Between 1985 and 1992, there were over 100 applications to demolish listed non-Anglican buildings, mostly affecting chapels, which have been identified as the second most threatened historic building type in England, after barns. 29 It would seem that without an obviously ornate interior, a building’s chance of appreciation, and more importantly survival, are low. However, from the perspective of Allihies’ development, it proved a major benefit. Once the building was made weather-tight, the interior became literally a blank canvas upon which the miner’s history could be inscribed, while remaining true to the original architecture and fit-out of the chapel. The story to be told at Alliheis is that of the miners and their working lives. However, as a relatively small-scale, community-based tourism initiative, it was beyond the scope of the initial project to develop the mines themselves as the core attraction. The prohibitive cost of re-opening mine shafts, excavating space for underground displays, and securing sufficient levels of insurance (as well as bringing the site up to health and safety standards) meant that a different way had to be found to foreground the history. There were other obstacles in telling the story of the mines: Allihies differs from many UK mining museums in that it closed in the late nineteenth century, and therefore lacks modern first-hand testimony from mine workers, and the potential to employ them as guides in the museum. This ‘living history’ approach has proved highly successful in mines in the UK that closed under Margaret Thatcher, but was not an option for Allihies.30 Nor was there video footage of the mines as a working site, hence the focus on the chapel as an artefact in itself, and as a means of interpreting the area’s history. The restoration and repurposing of the chapel is a valuable conservation project in its own right. For the visitor to the site today the chapel now stands roofed and lime-plastered, a building where issues of thermal performance, light exposure levels and paper conservation have been addressed to a high standard with the support and guidance of professional bodies.31 The once modest chapel has had its footprint extended by as much again, and it is into that brightly lit, white-walled threshold that the visitor first

Museology and community in Beara  181 arrives. A plaque confirms that the museum was in 2012 given both the Initiative Award and the President’s Award by the Association for Industrial Archaeology (AIA), the leading UK body dedicated to industrial heritage.32 Thus the chapel, the original purpose of which was to encourage reflection through its emptiness, is now filled with artefacts and sources of information that direct the visitor in very specific ways. The area around which much focus is initially concentrated is a largely interactive space into which a small cafeteria (a major source of revenue) is situated. Windows face onto the sea and distant headlands. Overhead hangs a cantilevered mezzanine. Some local history and heritage pamphlets are for sale, and the area is one of agreeable minimalism and light, a place of spartan reflection or sociability, depending on the numbers present. It is important to note that the restored chapel deliberately evokes its original purpose: for the small and isolated Methodist mining community the chapel was a place of worship and reflection, but it was also a vital place of social interaction. Miners in Allihies worked in shifts, and their chapel was an important place in which to meet with fellow community members outside of the mines. There was little other opportunity to socialise in A ­ llihies, and the miner’s employer, John Puxley, frowned on drinking or other irreligious forms of entertainment. The combined museum footprint can be divided between the social and the educational, the new and the old, though a glass link, often an architectural flourish, here brings the disparate halves meaningfully together. The shadow of the original arched porch is still visible and although to enter the old chapel is to approach a deconsecrated space the subdued lighting – a conservation requirement – has the effect of re-creating an aura in keeping with its prior purpose. Stepping through the doorway the visitor discovers that circulation is unforced, and while there is a story here, a sense of thematic and narrative progression, it is possible to engage at random with the various panels, even if the information is conveyed chronologically. There are no sound effects and very little technological enticements, save a steam engine exhibit and some screened black and white footage of miner’s who worked when the mines were briefly re-opened in the 1950s, plus a single touch screen producing additional narration. As is the case at many industrial sites, there exists a high degree of authenticity, and of a sense of real experiences being shared. A few of the illustrations that are reproduced refer to the local area more generally, especially in relation to educational standards and opportunities, a social element that helps to alleviate the prevailing emphasis on geology and industrial developments. However, the majority of information panels and sketches explain the various mine depths, extraction processes, health hazards, and so on. No photographic record exists of arguably the richest period in the mine’s history, the early and mid-nineteenth century, although a sense of the volume of copper being generated, and the mine’s importance to the local community, is emphasised throughout. From ‘June 1862 to

182  Glenn Hooper June 1863, the Berehaven Mines sent 7,678 tons of ore to Swansea, which were sold for £66,662’, writes Diane Hodnett, with the total workforce at that time in the region of 1200–1500 miners across various sites.33 Whatever about the wealth generated, for those employed in Allihies there were also considerable risks, and not just from ‘miner’s lung’ – silicosis – but from myriad dangers, including collapsing mine stopes and mechanical errors. Unsurprisingly, one of the most compelling panels on display includes the names of local men who died from rock falls, drownings and explosions, a simple, dignified testimony without an overtly political message. Like any other museum the Allihies site deals not just in story-telling, but historical story-telling, and although the plight of miners and the physical hardships they faced is alluded to, the emphasis is largely on collective achievements and industrial developments, including technical and mining data.34 History can be easily manipulated, and it is perhaps with that in mind that the management chose to avoid the industrial unrest of the 1860s when Allihies miners went on strike for better pay and conditions. This is a pity, for to have included such material might have deepened the viewer’s experience without compromising either historical accuracy or objectivity or, indeed, to have detracted from the industrial aspects of mining. By contextualising the strike with reference to developments in Britain – the rise of Chartism, say, or the development of more militant trade unionism35 – the history of industrial unrest in Allihies during the 1860s would have provided another layer, an important socio-political element that would have enriched the overall narrative.36 As Michael O’Connell suggests, although ‘conditions at the mines were an issue even in the 1830s’ and there is ‘no evidence of any formal type of union’, the mines were developing a reputation for unrest and inequality, and attracting the attention of several newspapers including the Cork Examiner, the Cork Constitution, and The Nation. Indeed, the (British) Fisheries Commission had reported in 1837 upon ‘the squalid misery’ of the people, demands for a decent wage, fairer conditions, and so on.37 By the 1860s even the local Protestant rector, Revd. George Stoney, was forced to take up the plight of the Catholic Irish miners, referring to ‘the real agonising poverty of the people’.38 Within a few years, however, it had all passed, or at least the people and the passions had subsided. Copper prices fell, the Puxley family sold up and returned to Cornwall, and the mansion they had built on the profits from mining was put to the torch by the IRA during the War of Independence on the night of 9 June 1921.39 Omissions aside, the museum succeeds in doing what it sets out to do, a far from modest achievement given the combined challenges of funding and geography. Does it offer much in the way of technology? Not a lot, no. But would a visitor to the site derive a sense of community involvement, local heritage and collective effort? Most certainly. Participation and inclusion lies at the heart of all that the museum has done, and its connections to other communities – in Butte, Montana as well as the mining villages in Cornwall – continues, and is carefully foregrounded.40 Moreover, the

Museology and community in Beara  183 ­ useum has had a key role to play within Beara Tourism, and has been m routinely utilised for ‘gathering’ events, public lectures, workshops, exhibitions and music evenings.41 Local community groups are encouraged to make use of the facility, and it is a centre for several nationally publicised events, including the Michael Dwyer Festival and the Family Festival, held each June and August respectively. While there are few material objects from the mines, there is a raw poignancy in the scraps of clothing – the miner’s lamp, belt and boots – that are currently on display. One might add that what it lacks by way of a collection it supplements in other, less tangible, but no less important ways: in the coastal educational hub that has been recently established, and in the tentative tourism initiatives that emphasise sustainability and wellbeing. This is the real achievement of the museum: that it sees itself not as a finished product, but as a thing in progress, as a facility that can support a range of rural community initiatives that are established, planned and ongoing. The miners may be long and forever scattered, but in that small chapel they continue to be linked to Beara and beyond.

Notes 1 The population of Ireland has never recovered from the famine of the 1840s, when it stood at around 8.5 million. Today, the combined population for ­I reland – North and South – is in the region of 6.6 million. See C. Ó Gráda, Ireland’s Great Famine: An Overview (Dublin: UCD Centre for Economic Research, November 2004), p. 3. 2 For a lively and brisk account of the development of mining in the area see D. M. O’Brien, Beara: A Journey through History (Castletownbere: Beara Historical Society, 1991). Interestingly, in the book’s foreword it is claimed that in addition to preserving ‘historical places and objects from the ravages of progress’ a hope among 1980s activists was that ‘a folk museum’ could be built. 3 D. Luker, Cornish Methodism, Revivalism, and Popular Belief, 1780–1870 (Unpublished D. Phil Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987), p. 148. 4 The first reliable census of Ireland took place in 1861, and recorded a Protestant (of all denominations) population of 8% for County Cork. However, this figure included the city of Cork, which included a large Protestant population. The numbers of non-Catholics in Allihies and the surrounding areas when the Cornishmen arrived would have been minute. 5 P. Jones, and J. Evans, Urban Regeneration in the UK (London: Sage, 2013), p. 3. 6 On policy and what they call the ‘competitive city’, see ibid. 7 C. Colomb, ‘Unpacking New Labour’s “Urban Renaissance” Agenda: Towards a Socially Sustainable Reurbanization of British Cities’, in Planning, Practice & Research, 22, no. 1, p. 1, 2007. For additional analysis of post-war regeneration urban policy, see A. Tallon, Urban Regeneration in the UK (London: Routledge, 2010). 8 See R. Prentice, Tourism and Heritage Attractions (Routledge: London, 1993), especially the section on tourist demand and heritage consumption. 9 www.irishtimes.com/news/health/ireland-s-population-one-of-most-­r ural-ineuropean-union-1.2667855. 10 Further examples may be found in the Rural Tourism Pamphlet, produced as part of the Rural Economy and Development Programme currently run by Teagasc (The Agriculture and Food Development Authority of Ireland), 2016.

184  Glenn Hooper 11 See A. O’Brien, The Politics of Tourism Development: Booms and Busts in Ireland (Palgrave: Basingstoke, 2011). 12 www.chg.gov.ie/app/uploads/1970/01/charter_for_rural_ireland-1.pdf. 13 https://drcd.gov.ie/about/rural/action-plan-rural-development/. 14 F. Taggart, S. Thorpe, and L. Wilson, eds., The Regeneration through ­Heritage Handbook: How to Use a Redundant Historic Building as a Catalyst for Change In Your Community (Chichester: The Prince’s Regeneration Trust, 2006), p. 13. See also V. Golding, and W. Modest, eds., Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections and Collaboration (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). 15 For interesting discussion of local heritage outcomes, see D. Byrne, ‘Heritage as Social Action’, in G. Fairclough, R. Harrison, J. H. Jameson, and J. Schofield, eds., The Heritage Reader (London: Routledge, 2008). 16 E. Waterton, and S. Watson, ‘Heritage as a Focus of Research: Past, Present and New Directions’, in E. Waterton and S. Watson, eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Heritage Research (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015), p. 4. 17 B. Dicks, ‘Heritage and Social Class’, in ibid, p. 370. 18 In this instance, one might consider the case of Glasgow as especially telling. In a city associated with heavy industry its post-1980s regeneration focussed extensively on heritage and museum offerings that validated the city’s tarnished cultural reputation, and allowed it to compete (very ably, as it turned out) with the myriad attractions of Edinburgh. See, among many publications and ­reports on the subject of Glasgow’s transformation, M. Keating, The City that Refused to Die. Glasgow: The Politics of Urban Regeneration (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988); D. Leslie, ‘Urban Regeneration and Glasgow’s Galleries with Particular Reference to the Burrell Collection’, in G. Richards, ed., Cultural Attractions and European Tourism (Wallingford: CABI, 2001). 19 J. Alfrey, and T. Putnam, The Industrial Heritage: Managing Resources and Uses (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 6–7. 20 See B. W. Porter, ‘Heritage Tourism: Conflicting Identities in the Modern World’, in B. Graham and P. Howard, eds., The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). 21 J. Pendlebury, T. Townshend, and R. Gilroy, ‘The Conservation of English ­Cultural Built Heritage: A Force for Social Inclusion?’, in International Journal of Heritage Studies, 10, p. 1, 2004. 22 D. Timothy, Cultural Heritage and Tourism: An Introduction (Bristol: C ­ hannel View, 2011), p. 368. 23 I. J.M. Robertson, Heritage from Below (London: Routledge, 2016), especially Chapters 3, 8 & 9. 24 Ibid, p. 374. 25 https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1215. 26 Killarney Tourism Economic Impact Review, 2018. 27 Fáilte Ireland Food and Drink Strategy 2018–2023, 2018, p. 18. 28 D. Baker, ‘Churches and Cathedrals’, in G. Chitty and D. Baker, eds., ­M anaging Historic Sites and Buildings: Reconciling Presentation and Preservation ­(London: Routledge, 1999), p. 107. 29 Ibid, p. 102. 30 D. Che, ‘Developing a Heritage Tourism Attraction in a Working Salt Mine’, in M. V. Conlin and L. Jolliffe, eds., Mining Heritage and Tourism: A Global Synthesis (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 89. 31 See J. H. Morris, ‘The Man Engine House, Mountain Mine, Allihies, Co. Cork: A Pictorial Record of Conservation Works in 2003’, in Journal of the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland, 3, 2003 p. 16–28. 32 See The Bulletin of the Association for Industrial Archaeology, no. 162, ­Autumn 2012.

Museology and community in Beara  185 33 D. Hodnett, The Metal Mines of West Cork (Penryn: Trevithick, 2012), p. 253. 34 On ‘history’ and the Irish heritage site, see D. Brett’s case studies in The Construction of Heritage (Cork: Cork University Press, 1996). 35 See, for example, A. Downing, ‘The ‘Sheffield Outrages’: Violence, Class and Trade Unionism, 1850–70’, in Social History, 38, no. 2, 2013 p. 162–182. 36 For interesting analysis, see R. Burt, ‘Industrial Relations in the British Non-­ ferrous Mining Industry in the Nineteenth Century’, in Labour History Review, 12, 1984–85. Burt contends that unlike coal miners, non-ferrous mining communities were less militant, a stance largely attributed to the culture of freemasonry which predominated, especially among copper mining communities in Cornwall. How many of those involved in industrial action in Allihies were Cornish is unknown p. 55–79. 37 M. O’Connell, ‘What a Pity at the Very Source of Wealth!’ Strikes and Emigration, Berehaven Mining District, 1861–1900’, Saothar, 34, p. 7, 2009. 38 www.ireland.anglican.org/news/7857/divided-loyalties-in-a-west. 39 For a literary angle, see the Cornish writer Daphne du Maurier’s Hungry Hill (1943): ‘You should have asked permission of the hill first, Mr. Broderick […] Ah, you can laugh’, he said. ‘You, with your Trinity education and your reading and your grand progressive ways, and your sons and your daughters that walk through Doonhaven [Berehaven] as though the place was built for your convenience, but I tell you your mine will be in ruins, and your house destroyed, and your children forgotten and fallen maybe into disgrace, but this hill will be standing still to confound you’. (London: Gollancz, 1950), p. 12. 40 Interestingly, there is evidence to suggest that Cornish-Irish relations were far from amicable, and in some instances tensions generated in Allihies were transferred overseas, to communities where both Irish and Cornish miners had migrated: ‘In Hancock, Michigan some years later Irish (largely from Allihies) and Cornish miners worked for the same company, but never together, and regularly engaged in massive brawls on the street. They can hardly be said to have gotten along’. W. H. Mulligan, Jr., ‘The Irish Landscape as Seen by Mining Promoters, 1835–80’, in U. Ní Bhroiméil and G. Hooper, eds., Land and Landscape in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts, 2008), pp. 108–109. 41 www.southernstar.ie/Community/Unique-mining-heritage-of-Allihies-tobe-commemorated-at-Gathering-event-06092013.htm.

12 ‘Only connect’ The heritage and emotional politics of show-casing the suffering migrant Christopher Whitehead and Francesca Lanz In recent years the plight of contemporary refugees has become the d ­ ifficult heritage of the future. Attention to historical forced migrations related to slavery, deportation, genocide, extreme poverty and displacement is commonplace in numerous museum types: the city museum, as in the case of Amsterdam Museum; migration museums, such as the Museum of the History of Immigration in Catalonia in Barcelona; museums and sites dealing with difficult history, such as the Jewish Museum Berlin; and national history museums such as the German Historical Museum. This has particular resonance in former colonising and colonised countries and in s­ ettings where border crossings become freedom or survival stories, as with pre1989 East and West Germany. But interest in the mass refugeeism of our time, and the suffering, immeasurable distress and innumerable fatalities it involves, has produced a contemporary counterpoint to the common ­focus on the historic migration of oppressed people. Although one is of the past and the other of the present (or, to be precise, the immediate past), they resonate together and can be read against one another in curious and problematic ways. Each one poses challenges relating to the communication and apprehension of both human suffering and its impersonal causes, potentially at a global level. And both can be seen as heritage, in the sense ­articulated by Rodney Harrison: Heritage is primarily not about the past, but instead about our relationship with the present and the future. As such, heritage poses urgent questions that arise as a result of our consideration of contemporary geopolitical issues. Heritage is not a passive process of simply preserving things from the past that remain, but an active process of assembling a series of objects, places and practices that we choose to hold up as a mirror to the present, associated with a particular set of values that we wish to take with us into the future. [Original emphasis]1 If it seems strange at first to think of the plight of contemporary refugees as a heritagised phenomenon (less so historic slavery, or East Germans

Heritage and politics of suffering migrant  187 fleeing to the West), its widespread inclusion in museums, in collections and in the form of large and often permanent exhibitions, prompts us to reconsider. Today’s refugees trust their lives to the inadequate boats and lifejackets that first pile up on the beaches of Lampedusa or Lesvos; or they trek through Mexico to the US border with woefully inadequate shoes. But many such objects subsequently take on an iconic second life as they are collected or displayed by museums eager to mark a phenomenon of the present for inclusion in the future past.2 Filmed testimonials from refugees about their dangerous journeys, lost friends, spouses and children, and the then-and-now of their lives are produced for museums, or borrowed from news media. This is, as it were, a difficult history happening now, which we are invited by museums to project as a matter of contemporary discomfort and future regret. It is also laden with values for future-making, for its representation in museums is generally undergirded by tacit propositions about how, henceforth, we humans should treat each other, and how the fortunate should care for the unfortunate. This, to use another of Harrison’s terms, is the ‘production of our own tomorrow’.3 What then should the perspectives of the museum be when representing refugees and suffering migrants, and how should it position visitors emotionally? Should the perspective be a coolly cognitive, from-above view of the globe, with arrows on the map to represent flows of people; or a distressing eye-level view into the life and struggles of a migrant; or even an embodied experience in which we visitors are subjected to a simulation of the duress that refugees live through? If museum producers seek to alternate between these (and if they should), what are the techniques of this, and how and why should they negotiate and manage their different politics, effects and affects? This chapter addresses these questions in reference to recent trends in the representation of illegal migration in museums and exhibitions, attending to the representational potentials and politics of display. Some of these potentials and politics are relatively new, as museums and exhibitions gradually borrow and mix technologies and techniques from other cultural technologies, such as Virtual Reality (VR) and the videogame. We explore some of these using visits of our own, building on theories of positionality in museums and in moral spectatorship to bring together different understandings of how and why museums visitors are positioned by displays to respond affectively, cognitively and ethically. An idealised proposition can be (and often is) made here, which is that visitors’ encounters with museum or exhibition representations of migrants may trigger empathetic responses based on the imaginative capacity to ‘step into the shoes’ of another person, ‘to understand their feelings and perspectives’.4 This in turn – still ideally – conducts those visitors towards critical and ethical reflection on grievous social concerns and towards personal, collective and elective responsibilities of care. Now, the real consecutiveness of this process can and should surely be problematised, for visitors are not blanks slates with no prior knowledge or

188  Christopher Whitehead and Francesca Lanz dispositions, as any sociological, hermeneutic or constructivist perspective will show. We must also problematise the further effects of the process. What does the reflection ‘do’? Does it lead to action on the part of the visitor to try to make the world a better place? What is that action? Or does it merely play out as an empathetic call-and-response with no particular concrete effects? This is, of course, a significant question about the social power of museums and, in particular, what it is that empathy does therein: what are the long-lasting effects of empathy in the museum, both on the individual and on wider society? We pose these questions in a moment when the value of cultivating empathy is critiqued across various fields, but less so in museums, where it is often mobilised as remedy for tremendous global problems. We will make two general arguments. Firstly, that provoking empathy in the museum for the distant suffering of illegal migrants is liable to promote a moral citizenship that involves only momentary attention and limited possibilities for care. Secondly, and connected to this, in reducing encounters with migrants to empathetic engagements, museums screen off wider and more complex geopolitical considerations of the causes and contingencies of m ­ igration crises. To do otherwise requires a radical shift, for it would involve engaging and participating in ideological disputes and going against the ­museum’s institutional grain of representing an imagined consensus; but it is this that would create the grounds for a critical, reflective and active moral community.

Memory and migrations At the entrance of the permanent exhibition ‘Memoria e Migrazioni’ (Memory and Migrations) in Genoa, Italy, life-size photographs of individuals greet visitors. Some, in black and white, are historic images of Italian emigrants. In between them is a colour image of a young black man, wearing jeans, red shirt and vest, a rucksack on his back. His social ­status and economic standing are indeterminate: he could be a wealthy, casually-­dressed tourist or a destitute refugee. A text panel entitled ‘Italy of ­M igrations, 1861–2011’ makes some sense of the images. It tells the story of the post-unification exodus of Italian emigrants – a heterogeneous group ‘divided by culture and languages’ – to the rest of Europe, Argentina, Brazil and the US. After a hiatus between the World Wars, ‘the flow starts again’, but in 1973 the ‘stream of migration reverses’: Less emigrants, more immigrants. In Italy different ethnicities, languages and religions arrive. They have different expectations and hopes: get a job, let their children study, build a house and a future. Are these different stories? Or are these just different sides of the same coin?

Heritage and politics of suffering migrant  189 Now, we visitors are given a passport bearing one of a range of identities that can be scanned at various interactive units within the display. We embark on a simulated journey of emigration. A border officer – a sensor-­ activated video of an actor in role – seems to talk directly to us, berating or obsequiously flattering us according to the social and financial status evident from our newly-acquired passports; we see that there are nonsensical inequalities, and life is easier for some, harder for others. We step aboard a large reconstructed ship and experience something of the conditions of passage. We reach new territories and endure vicissitudes: at one point there is a diorama of a jaguar in the Brazilian rainforest, and its loud (audiotrack) growl is shocking. Later – and elsewhere in our simulated journey of ­migration – we submit to an unforgiving immigration test at the inspection centre on Ellis Island in New York Bay by two brusque onscreen officials. It is easy to fail, and as a text panel explains, for migrants this represented the ‘judgement of their life’. Afterwards, in a second section of the exhibition, the emigration story ends and the museum turns to the present. We are no longer first-person protagonists of the story but spectators of human suffering. There is one of the infamous boats from the illegal passage across the Mediterranean from Africa to Lampedusa, strewn about with the possessions, lifejackets and detritus of the journey. We meet onscreen characters such as Bilal, from Kurdistan. Upon activation of an interface, he explains in broken Italian the difficulties and dangers of his journey from Aqrah to Lampedusa. But some way through his grim monologue, ‘Bilal’ removes his hood and outs himself as an Italian actor – a person just like us, who can only imagine the harsh realities of Bilal’s journey, and feels blessed not to have to endure it. Then, the tone shifts. There is a display about food and cuisine in which people from Ecuador, Morocco, Senegal and Romania demonstrate recipes, as a celebration of multiculture. The exhibit stresses both the richness of our diversity and our essential sameness, for we all must eat. Afterwards, an onscreen curator takes us through a myth-busting test, challenging assumptions, for example about relationships between immigration and increases in criminality and delinquency. Finally, in interactive stations we can vote yes or no for questions such as ‘is immigration good for me/my neighbourhood/country?’ The results are updated in real time and presented as pie charts and percentages. (As it happens, at the time of our visit, the collective results for each of the questions were pretty evenly split.)

‘Only connect’ In a nation still grappling with changing social dynamics resulting from becoming a country of immigration – where racisms and xenophobia are pervasive, and the shadow of Fascism never quite disappears; where many immigrants (particularly from African countries) have stigmatised, illegal and/or low-income work – the appeal made to the target Italian audience is

190  Christopher Whitehead and Francesca Lanz to see an equivalence between the historic experiences of Italian emigration and contemporary immigration. To adapt E.M. Forster’s famous plea from Howard’s End: ‘only connect’. It is a story repeated in other Italian migration museums, in Rome (Museo Nazionale dell’Emigrazione) and Lucca (Fondazione Paolo Cresci per la Storia dell’Emigrazione Italiana). These too present the hardships and prejudice suffered by historic Italian emigrants, before switching the focus to those of recent immigrants to Italy. The imperative here is to create the grounds for identification: as once we were, so are they now. The purchase of this message depends on the success of the museum in fostering appreciation of the legitimacy of migration – to understand what dangerous or deadly push factors justified people’s attempts to seek a home in far territories. This requires some broad, meta-level understandings of the premise for all of this suffering, population movement and change: why would people put themselves through this? Consequently, what right do they have to our care? It also requires the communication of a more personal sense of what migrants went through in the past, and what they go through today, to survive and thrive. These, inverted, are the two sides of ‘Bilal’s’ job – Bilal the character represents global geopolitical forces on the person. The actor who plays Bilal then reframes this as a story of global inequalities and translates it into the affective and cognitive ­horizons of the imagined (privileged) visitor, explaining its meanings for our own positionality. What is new about Bilal, or other such museal portrayals? Notwithstanding their role as domains of things, the focus of many large history ­museums has – until relatively recently – been a wide one, working on the higher scales with national, transnational, global or planetary stories. There has been a tendency to think big: a god’s-eye, map view of the world and its histories. This technique seems apolitical, as if a top-level viewpoint rises above politics to find a final truth that is only evident from high up. But it was never immune to governmental or ideological inflection. Indeed, the appearance of disinterested top-scale explanation makes it ideal for this. In seeking to represent the flows of people into and out of territories (that are always nations or nations-to-be), in and across the world, the dispassionate affect of looking down from above is good cover for the transmission of values, ideologies and belongings. These have been active in constructing the ideal citizens of the present, who gaze upon the past, upon historicised images of themselves and, consequently, upon otherness. This is scaled-up history, where multitudes of lives are just numbers or ­arrows on the map. Things, more often than not, are made to point up to the big scale, as parts of a big whole, rather than down, to the individual life, to the experience and the minutiae of specific people’s existences. If there are testimonials from individuals, they function as momentary cuts downwards into lifeworlds from a macro-focus. Such testimonials allow alternations of scale, but there is usually an instant return to the view from above. The nearest comparison in terms of the modes and affects of representation

Heritage and politics of suffering migrant  191 is the history text book, with its schematics, graphics, timelines, charts, chunked information and overviews. To appropriate Andrea Witcomb’s terminology, we might see this as a ‘pedagogy’ of reading, rather than of ‘feeling’.5 The effect is a disintegration of individuals into the indistinguishable particles of a whole, but the result is chartable and graspable and comfortable analytical sense can be made of the world. Against such traditional worldviews there has been a move in recent decades, most particularly in history, city and migration museums, away from a singular focus on big history and greatness to smallness, to ordinary lives and people who do not normally go down in the history books – a turn, as Sheila Watson terms it, in which the personal and the pattern of everyday life replaces the former emphasis on events, causes and great characters.6 The migration experience has played a particular role here. Although Italy’s migration story is different from those of other countries in the occident, certain representational, ethical and emotional commonplaces exist across museums that are explicitly concerned with migration experiences. Primary among these is the project of fostering a sense of care for geographically or culturally distant others. Behind this, in turn, sits a project of ­changing public attitudes, perhaps from indifference, anger at and resentment of ­migrants, fear of otherness, and mixtures of these, to tolerance, respect for and openness to difference and an inclusive sense of collectivity.7 But in order for our geo-historical understanding to grasp the formation of migration crises, we visitors may need to see the ‘big picture’, with arrows on the map (literally and metaphorically speaking), showing the flow of migrants from one place to another at certain points in time, and an explanation of why this happened. In our experience, few museums concerned with contemporary migrations attempt this, perhaps because it returns us to the affects of the textbook, to a pedagogy of reading that might now seem anachronistic in its cerebral techniques and its expectations of studious visitor attention. Maps and arrows and the textbook pedagogy of which they are part have been conventions of history museums whose intention is to posit a closed and completed past that is severed from the politics of the present. Their value has been to transmit elite erudition (what citizens should know) about the history of non-individualised collectives of people in the regions, nations and the world in which they moved. Such museum representations do not showcase suffering as an object for ethico-political reflection in or on the present. They are abstract and schematic, and their viewpoint is distanced.8 To feel involved, to engage our imaginations, to ‘only connect’ at a human level, we need something different from arrows on a map – perhaps to look a migrant in the eyes, or to view her inadequate lifejacket as a real thing and a testimonial of duress – to identify, to empathise or imagine as our own her suffering. This is a transition from the worldview to the lifeworld, and it connects to interests in a politics of care and empathy on the one hand, and in effective visitor communication about, the other.

192  Christopher Whitehead and Francesca Lanz

Care and empathy The current attention to care and empathy in the museum is a complex blend of axiological issues: the promotion of elective, sometimes putatively ­activist, responsibility for human society and people’s wellbeing; and a­ pparent remedy to certain careless global mechanisms relating to geopolitical logics, neoliberal capitalism and the self-serving accumulation of power by political actors. This is an implicit refusal of the idea – whether tacit or explicit – that some human lives can be expendable or can be sacrificed to world orders in which they are incidental. To portray such ordinary people is to introduce a counter-affect to the crude numbering of casualties or the faceless statistical rendering of global suffering, affliction, disempowerment and inequality. It is also why museums and sites of genocide seek to present people as we might know them, to mitigate the doubled dehumanisation of the statistical representation of mass victimhood. This is about the importance of making abstract stories of tragedy conceivable at the human scale. Stories that affect large, sometimes unimaginable numbers of people risk becoming just a statistical river without the human mediator who says, ‘this is what it is/was like for me’, into whose eyes we can look, and whose voice we can hear. Portraits of individuals in museums capture a sense of what global issues mean on the body, in the moments, determinants and possibilities of a life lived. Instead of reproducing the affects of a textbook, this is more akin to realist cinema and to encountering the protagonists of a sobering film. The encounter with them invites us to care, and to identify – ‘there but for the good fortune of our place in time and space, go we’, much as the actor playing the part of Bilal explained. When portrayed in a museum, a refugee who barely survived and made it to the ‘developed world’ is no mere part of a ‘swarm’9 or some other rhetorical collectivisation of sub-human otherness.10 She is a suffering subject, with a life story, with hopes, losses and emotions, trying to survive, just as we would. The only difference is that we may have been spared the iniquity that forced her to become a statistic of misfortune. We are thus invited to reflect on our own positions and assumptions vis-à-vis otherness, and to empathise with people we do not know. Comparable affective regimes take hold through photo-­journalism: Nilüfer Demir’s 2015 photograph of the drowned three-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi on a beach near Bodrum elicited popular shock and pity across European and Anglophone contexts. A frequent discourse attached to this was one of recognition and identification: that boy could be the infant son of any of us.11 To be sure, the use in museums of migrant stories has different conditions and politics of encounter with the suffering of others than news media images. But both work to humanise a reality that can be more coolly seen as a geopolitical shift – arrows on a map – or held at a dissociative distance, through techniques of dehumanisation that enable publics to disavow responsibility and the moral obligation to care. Later, we will return to think over the aspirations, effects and limits of this showing and telling of human lives.

Heritage and politics of suffering migrant  193

Communicating through individuals The communication argument for presenting personal stories in the ­museum is that visitors are more likely to engage with and comprehend phenomena if they can be presented inasmuch as they bear on an ­individual – a person, to whom we can compare ourselves, finding commonalities. In history museums, this can be about ‘bringing the past to life’ and enabling us to experience vicariously the effects of historical phenomena, from plague and famine to warfare. It has not been free from critique. For Pierre Nora, this is hallucination, grounded in our fundamental disconnection from authentic memory. ‘Never’, he said, ‘have we longed in a more physical manner to evoke the weight of the land at our feet, the hand of the devil in the year 1000, or the stench of eighteenth-century cities’.12 Identification with historic or distant individuals can be further problematised because of the possibility of radical discontinuities in social consciousness and the changing nature and experience of personhood across time,13 meaning that feelings of sameness and commonality might be illusory, however important they may be to promote a sense of collectivity that spans temporal and generational chasms. Nevertheless, the appeal of this has led variously to the theatrical use of immersive, recreated historic environments, mannequins, first- and third-person costumed interpreters, re-enacted events, and so on – anything that can enable visitors to play with a feeling of inhabiting the past and engaging at eye-level with history. Perhaps the most sustained and articulated engagement with personhood in a museum focuses on a fictitious individual. Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence, a museal tie-in with his 2008 novel of the same title, focuses on the life of the protagonist Kemal, who is not one of history’s great men but rather an unknown inhabitant of Istanbul in the 1970s and 80s. Through the vicissitudes of his everyday existence, we see, as through a prism, the cultural conditions, situations and paradoxes of his time and place. The museum is, putatively, Kemal’s own invention (we willingly suspend our disbelief to accept this) and contains objects meticulously – p ­ erhaps ­morbidly – collected and invested with meaning by him. It follows that the museum is as much a fiction as Kemal is, although there is a paradoxical authenticity to the museum as a record of the past atmosphere of an Istanbul struggling with its histories and futures, or with change and modernity, whether in the cityscape or in gender relations. The impulse to use an individual as prism for broader histories has also appeared in written historiography, most famously in Carlo Ginzberg’s 1976 The Cheese and the Worms, where the life of a sixteenth-century miller, known as Menocchio, is explored as an avenue of cultural history through which we understand his circumstances and actions relationally with the forces at work in his time and place.14 A key difficulty with this is that it is hard to do – it is exceptional that surviving documentary evidence allows for this kind of reconstruction, and painstaking, slow work to build from it a picture of someone’s cognitive world. In the case of the Museum

194  Christopher Whitehead and Francesca Lanz of Innocence, the detailed presentation of Kemal’s life story, and how this is shaped by the particular geo-historical junctures in which he finds himself, is eminently possible because he is not real in himself, and could be made up, or fashioned as a composite built creatively from the novelist’s acquaintances and imagination. Of course, a museum could seek to document the fullest complexities of a real contemporary refugee’s life in comparable depth to the story of Kemal. But none has, perhaps because of the forbidding costs and questions that would emerge about the politics of representation. How can one person ­legitimately stand for so many? – And then, how might an audience’s interest be sustained? What if aspects of a fuller biography lead to disidentification because of incommensurable cultural difference, or unfavourable moral judgement? Easier by far to concentrate on the finite event of the suffering endured – usually in the story arc of the journey and its before and after – to engender unperturbed empathetic responses. Here is what tends to happen: in museums we engage summarily with the refugee as a character, either a ‘real’ one interviewed post-factum, or an invention, like Bilal. There is a documentary film and some objects – possibly belonging to the refugee but maybe just typifying the materials, physicality and ‘bodyness’ of his struggles. He is not presented in his complexity. He has a minimal, barely-sketched backstory justifying his flight from home (maybe there is a nearby ‘high-scale’ text or graphic in which the global issues that affect him are explained simplistically). The main event is the account of suffering, loss and misfortune, perhaps on a boat to Lampedusa, in the desert, or perhaps in a detention centre. In some cases, there is an epilogue, whether positive, negative or more likely both, for survival tends to come at a personal cost.15 If the museum borrows from drama and film, then the migrant is – to use another of E.M. Forster’s terms – a ‘flat ­character’, essentially reduced to a sign of suffering.

Collectivity? Sameness? In Pamuk’s museological thinking, his attachment to the lives of ordinary individuals connects to an ethical purpose of rethinking human collectivity, to counter his disaffection with the grand stories told by history museums. In his 2012 Manifesto for Museums, Pamuk proclaims: We are sick and tired of museums that try to construct historical narratives of a society, community, team, nation, state, people, company or species. We all know that the ordinary, everyday stories of individuals are richer, more humane and much more joyful than the stories of colossal cultures. This is not just a matter of ennui. The aim of the big, state-sponsored museums about which Pamuk complains is to represent the state, and he clarifies

Heritage and politics of suffering migrant  195 that this is ‘neither a good nor an innocent objective’.16 The nation-state is, of course, a representation of collectivity par excellence, also in Anderson’s sense of the imagined community,17 but contemporary arguments about the obsolescence and exclusionary ontology of the nation state – including in museums18 – pose questions: would post-national, cosmopolitan senses of collectivity be less likely to produce exclusionary dynamics that cause immense human suffering? Is the exhortation to care and empathise just a new governmentality (or an old one, reframed)? Is it a means of inaction that maintains the status quo? And why, if we are the same, and if we are one people (conditions about which there is certainly no consensus), do our fortunes differ so? This is a question asked and answered in the politically progressive humanist geography practiced by Doreen Massey and others from the early 1990s.19 The idea, for example, that people are subject to unequal ‘power geometries’ formed a critique of parochialism, exclusionary claims on place, senses of self and other and, ultimately, any blood-and-soil articulation of belonging and non-belonging. The question also powers desires that certain media – notably social, but potentially also ­exhibitionary – might constitute a site for the construction of a moral community that transcends the national in order to be commensurate with the scope and scale of global politics. 20 The question is implicit in portraits of individual migrants in museums, or indeed in the appeal of distressing photojournalistic images, that call for spectators to make moral bonds with distant, suffering subjects.

Flesh and Sand The matter of sameness and human commonality also animates the latest (at the time of writing) experiments in the representation of difficult migrations in exhibitionary settings. In film director Alejandro G. Iñarritu’s 2017s exhibition ‘Carne y Arena’ (Flesh and Sand), virtual reality (VR) headset technology is used to put visitors through a simulation of the harrowing experience of an illegal border crossing, walking alongside avatars of real immigrants whom Iñarritu interviewed and filmed. 21 The visit is an invitation to identify, to ‘only connect’ on a bodily level: we first encounter the shoes of immigrants on the floor of the entrance chamber. These are ‘traces abandoned by real people attempting to cross the border between Arizona and Mexico’. 22 We, too, are asked to remove our shoes and socks. The physically cold environment of the room is intended to recall the US Border Police’s holding cells for immigrants, and we are obliged to wait there for more than is comfortable or diverting, abnegating agency; discomfort is built into the ‘pedagogy of feeling’.23 The message is: you are not in control. Then an alarm sounds, a door opens into a sand-covered room and the VR immersion begins. This is a game of making equivalences between us and other. In what Iñarritu calls a ‘semi-fictionalised ethnography’, we visitors live on the body a simulation of duress, so that the immigrants’

196  Christopher Whitehead and Francesca Lanz stories ‘would not be just a statistic for the rest of us, but would instead be seen, felt, heard and experienced by others’. 24 In the final room are large photographic portraits of the people interviewed for the exhibition, alongside texts with their ‘very real, suffered stories’, as explained by Germano Celant, director of the Fondazione Prada: It is a dramatic gallery of testimony that stares the visitor straight in the eye, forcing him or her to participate anew in their life affairs: an anthology of stories that “chains” the visitor to a reading, transiting from an experience lasting several minutes in the cold antechamber, to the seven-minute-long in the desert, to the long, empathetic sharing of these horrible, unacceptable and horrifying life experiences. 25 To ask the question – implicitly or explicitly – why our essential sameness is traduced by different fortunes and misfortunes is nevertheless to swim against the tide. The legal world is one of nations. It is bordered and internally differenced as such. And the prevailing tendency in populist politics  – consider the case of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Donald Trump’s US, or Matteo Salvini’s Italy, for example – is to undermine supranational collectivities (such as the EU or the UN) in favour of a number of exclusive, small-state and insular nations imagined as discrete and unique, internally homogenous and embattled by incursions from others who do not legitimately belong. The state seeks to protect with borders the interests of those citizens who subscribe in identity terms to the nation as such. These are the citizens to be protected from migrants, whose dehumanisation – as a swarm, as vermin, as sans papiers, ‘illegals’ or (unintentionally) as arrows on a map – is a necessary condition of a status quo conditional on a failure of conscience and an absence of real empathy. And of course, while experiments like ‘Carne y Arena’ may seek to teach us that we are the same at a human level, our circumstances are not. As visitors, we can leave, however strong the illusion of confinement or wandering desperately in the desert. We willingly suspend our everyday subject positions and play at suffering; in this case we pay a considerable entrance charge to do so. Celant’s description of the experience ends before the crucial part, when we exit the exhibition and go back to our lives and resume our status as legitimate, legal citizens, makers and agents of our own destinies. To be sure, calls to action have appeared in some few museums and exhibitions, but not yet – to our knowledge – in relation to migration. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Montreal Holocaust Museum have both staged exhibitions inviting visitors to take action, for example by lobbying political actors or sharing information via social media. The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History’s exhibition ‘Lost Childhoods’ on foster care issues encouraged visitors to take action through making available postcards giving advice about how to help (‘Donate a Warm Jacket’; ‘Help Youth Write a Resume’, etc.). 26 Such approaches – were they to take

Heritage and politics of suffering migrant  197 root in migration museums – may be modest and small gains in relation to the extensive geopolitical problematics of distant suffering in migration flows. They would address effects and not causes, immediate problems and not deep-seated ones, lives and not worlds. Indeed, here we may butt up against fundamental limits of the museum’s power to effect systemic change above and beyond raising awareness of and anguish about iniquity among audiences who already represent a limited demographic. Nevertheless, it would do something to encourage a transfer from empathy in the museum to action outside.

Discussion: empathy, the suffering subject and us Theorist of history Mark Salber Phillips notes that ‘every history has to take on the task of positioning its audience in relation to a past’.27 In an analysis that spans media forms including historiography, the novel and the museum, he shows that this is a matter of technical management of the representational technologies proper to such forms (exhibitions can do things that novels and history books cannot, and vice versa). It is also a political proposition from producers about how audiences should respond to represented phenomena. He points to a recent representational shift in museums, from distanced to proximate positions, involving audiences ­affectively, and appealing to them at a personal level by inviting them to identify with ­specific groups, whether past or present. While some of this is – as ­discussed – an experimentation in more compelling visitor communication, a more or less explicit purpose of this in museums that entertain senses of social purpose has been to expand our senses of collectivity and to promote empathy responses in audiences. Linking this to the literatures on moral spectatorship, 28 we argue that this is not just about the diverting use of new display technologies but also the construction of a moral community. This notional community is not bound together by national identification but by shared attention to ‘distant suffering’ that is brought near, by way of representation. The community also shares senses of common ethical values and commitments to care. But – and here’s the rub – the form and meaning of care are generally vague, and its timescales and effects uncertain. If we turn to recent audience theory relating to social media use, we find some optimism about the capacity of such media to engender cosmopolitan publics galvanised to action by the emotive sight of distant suffering. This is partly because of the dialogical and communicative faculty of those media, whereby spectators comment and effectively exchange views, spurring moral position-taking through many-to-many communication. 29 But a visit to a museum or exhibition is obviously not the same as engaging with social media forms. For example, museums and exhibitions have different potentials for sociality, since we usually visit with relatively few people, and they tend to be known to us; museums and exhibitions do not have

198  Christopher Whitehead and Francesca Lanz the potential for virality of an image trending on social media. But in other ways they can do more, for they can place before visitors the real, material accompaniments of tragedy – the lifejackets, children’s toys and discarded shoes – upon which we may (with the help of museum scenography) project a tremendous, affecting aura, and perceive an emotional freight. Exhibitions can immerse us in a simulation of dialogue or duress and are, for now, capable of far greater multisensory impact and bodily involvement than other media (with the possible exception of VR). Philosopher Amy Coplan sees empathy as an ‘imaginative process in which an observer simulates another person’s situated psychological states while maintaining clear self-other differentiation’, 30 and exhibitions are capable of supporting this simulation through reconstructions of physical conditions. But we need then to return to the critical question of action, or, in other words, the possibility that the visitor who witnesses or has some proxy experience of distant suffering is so transformed that she is compelled to act more ethically, with greater care towards those oppressed by circumstance. But how? What actual effects might this have in the world to ameliorate the suffering in question? Is it beyond the remit of museums and exhibitions to promote more than just people’s internal reflection, by effectively opening and modelling practical ways for visitors to act concretely and to practice care? Or is promoting attitudinal change through empathy and identification enough? We point here to a pervasive tendency in museum and exhibition practice and discourse now to conceive of empathy as unequivocally good. Elif ­Gokcigdem – editor of the 2016 anthology Fostering Empathy in ­Museums – notes that empathy ‘is our inherent ability to perceive and share the feelings and thoughts of another’, that can be taught and learned in the museum, allowing ‘us to connect with others who seem different, making us more aware of our commonalities’.31 Gokcigdem and many of the contributors to her book make significant claims for the power of empathy in the museum: ‘when we tune into empathy for others, we are more likely to act with compassion and altruism to help reduce their suffering’.32 Popular philosopher Roman Krznaric has founded a travelling ‘Empathy Museum’ and makes similar appeals: that empathy can ‘help tackle global challenges such as prejudice, conflict and inequality’.33 Such claims are based on the idea that an ‘empathy deficit’ (borrowing a term coined by Barack Obama) is at the root of social problems. Rectifying this can ‘shift the contours of the social and political landscape’ by degrees, through the gradual transmission of humanitarian values. Empathy here is a nebulous ‘collective force’ for good.34 But as Phillips points out, ‘empathy… can lead to some dangerous paths’. He continues: ‘when the sufferer is someone to whom we have no direct or demonstrable connection, identification may seem unearned and can ­easily degenerate into self-indulgence or even prurience’.35 Similarly, Coplan problematises over-identification and ‘empty empathy’.36 Philosopher Paul

Heritage and politics of suffering migrant  199 Bloom has also argued that empathy is a harmful stand-in for the informed, ‘rational compassion’ that alone can lead to effective programs of care.37 We have suggested, provocatively, that the crucial part of ‘Carne y Arena’ is when you leave and return to your everyday subject position. While some visitors may be profoundly affected and lastingly transformed by their visit, in other ways empathy can fix positions and relations: of privileged empathisers and monadic sufferers. In the context of the museum or exhibition visit this can also be a form of ethical tourism, where one pays one’s dues into a bank of empathy, only to leave the museum morally purged, to resume one’s privileged life. Museum displays and exhibitions that seek to foster empathy for distant suffering may indeed help to create an imagined ‘moral community’, and that may be where museums are most effective, which is to say that symbolically representing key moral values is as much as they can do. The response that this elicits among visitors may be superficial shows of moral citizenship and an indulgence of momentary sentiment or serious political action, but in either case the museum helps to legitimise the virtue and, in so doing, to shape an ideal citizenship of empathy for others in a transformation of previous governmental regimes of knowledge of others.38 The ideological component of this is a consensus that people should not suffer unfairly, which is – apparently – agreed by both left and right. To explain explicitly the causes of distant suffering (which is also to evoke our privileged exemption from it) is to go beyond the consensus that museums have been designed both to create and represent. It is to openly enter the realm of ideological conflict as protagonist rather than observer. While we all agree that Bilal suffers and we may empathise with him, we do not agree about the geopolitical causes that have led to his suffering; we have different explanations for his plight that implicate different actors to greater or lesser degree. To acknowledge causes is to invoke disagreement and to invite aspersions of culpability. This is a radical and problematic change for museums. It requires the admission of partisanship and action within dissensus, and the addition of new pedagogies of intervening and doing.39 We began this chapter by claiming that refugeeism has been positioned in museums and exhibitions as a future difficult heritage, as a difficult history happening now that is marked out for future collective regret. We drew on Harrison’s definition of heritage as a future-making activity in which we assemble, through configuring materials, ‘a particular set of values that we wish to take with us into the future’. But the problem-word here is – ­always – ‘we’, for those of us who engage emotionally with distant suffering and indulge feelings of connection, identification and empathy are precisely those who can disengage at will. By the same token, extending ‘our’ sense of collectivity to include distant sufferers may be better than a total deficit of empathy, but it may also do little to change their situations in the short-term. Indeed, the discrete, bounded space of the museum or exhibition may even promote self-contained emotional engagement, because

200  Christopher Whitehead and Francesca Lanz it compartmentalises empathy, permitting a cognitive and affective retreat back to the spaces of privilege. This resonates with recent questioning of the real ‘difficulty’ of difficult heritage, inasmuch as it comes to resemble a show of moral citizenship and an indulgence of momentary sentiment, rather than a process of reflecting on the discomforting past to build a just future.40 The global military and economic concerns that sit behind distant suffering are perhaps too complex and abstract for many visitors to grasp, or to want to grasp, and too extensively concatenated and contested for museums to communicate. This chapter has talked about the taking of perspective: between the global, cool and abstract level of schematic arrows on the map, to the embodied, eye-level or embodied engagement with migrants’ suffering (and it is notable that the empathic appeal of these representations is gradually ratcheting up as we become inured to horror – indeed, what next?). The museum as medium has the potential to combine empathy and analysis through the modulation of exhibitionary techniques, through thoughtful transitions and switches between them that can prompt visitors to new forms of reflection. We have talked about a turn in museum practice from the worldview to the lifeworld. Museums need, in fact, to shuttle back and forth, while remaining mindful of the representational limits, affective politics and ethical problems of each. Currently, in any case, the appeal to empathise with the distant sufferer has stopped at a pedagogy of feeling, and not of doing. More critically, it has militated against a properly historical and historicised account of the concatenating and colliding causes, effects, cleavages and actors across time and space that collectively produce tragedy. It is not enough to ‘only connect’ with the unfortunate; we must also connect suffering – and our engagement with it – to heterogeneous phenomena, circumstances and seemingly banal details, and to make of them expansive and complex understandings that inform projects of care. Only then can we address ourselves as heritage makers and audiences, to ask: who, and where, are we in this complex global picture? What are our diverse positions towards, and complicities in, distant suffering? What are our obligations and responsibilities?

Notes 1 R. Harrison, Heritage: Critical Approaches (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 4. 2 The Manchester Museum, for example, acquired a lifejacket from the Island of Lesvos in 2017. For a discussion of this and other recent museum acquisitions see B. Sitch, ‘Radical Objects: A Refugee’s Lifejacket at the Manchester ­Museum’, in History Workshop, 2017. www.historyworkshop.org.uk/­radical-objects-arefugees-life-jacket-at-manchester-museum/ and C. Whitehead, Radical Objects: Migration and Museums – A Response, History Workshop, 2018. www. historyworkshop.org.uk/radical-objects-migration-and-museums-a-­response/ (both accessed 3 October 2018). 3 R. Harrison, Heritage: Critical Approaches.

Heritage and politics of suffering migrant  201 4 R. Krznaric, Empathy: Why it Matters, and How to Get It (London: Random, 2016), p. x. 5 A. Witcomb, ‘Toward a Pedagogy of Feeling: Understanding How Museums Create a Space for Cross-Cultural Encounters’, in A. Witcomb and K. Message, eds., International Journals of Museum Studies: Museum Theory (London: Wiley, 2015), pp. 321–344. We are grateful to Andrea Witcomb for conversations about the themes of this paper. 6 S. Watson, ‘Emotions in the History Museum’, in Ibid, pp. 283–301. 7 A. Witcomb, Ibid, p. 322. 8 There are exceptions to this rule. The Neukollen Museum in Berlin attempts to provide some complex causal and global geopolitical accounts of the reasons for the contemporary migrations of the people upon whom the exhibition focuses. 9 British Prime Minister David Cameron controversially used this term to describe people travelling across the Mediterranean to the UK at the height of the Refugee Crisis in 2016. 10 N. Haslam, and S. Loughnan, ‘Dehumanization and Infrahumanization’, in Annual Review of Psychology, 65, pp. 399–423, 2014. 11 M. Mortensen, and H.-J. Trenz, ‘Media Morality and Visual Icons in the Age of Social Media: Alan Kurdi and the Emergence of an Impromptu Public of Moral Spectatorship’, in Javnost – The Public, 23, no. 4, pp. 343–362, 353, 2016. DOI: 10.1080/13183222.2016.1247331. 12 P. Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, in ­R epresentations, 26 (Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory), 17, pp. 7–24, 1989. 13 G. Cubitt, History and Memory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 17. 14 English edition Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. 15 A typical example can be found on the top floor of the House of European History in Brussels, opened in 2017. 16 O. Pamuk, ‘State Museums are so Antiquated’ theguardian.com, 2012. www. theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/apr/20/orhan-pamuk-make-museumsmuch-smaller (accessed 14 August 2018); this manifesto was published in numerous outlets including several global broadsheets. 17 B. Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983); see also A. Witcomb, ‘Toward a Pedagogy of Feeling: Understanding How Museums Create a Space for Cross-Cultural Encounters’, in A. Witcomb and K. Message, eds., International Handbooks of Museum Studies (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), p. 326. 18 For example, in the conference and exhibition ‘Now is the time of monsters: what comes after nations?’, at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in 2017. www. hkw.de/en/programm/projekte/2017/die_jetztzeit_der_monster/die_jetztzeit_ der_monster_kuratorisches_statement/kuratorisches_statement.php. 19 For example, D. Massey, ‘Geographies of Responsibility’, in Geografiska Annaler Series B Human Geography, 86, no. 1, pp. 5–18, 2004; M. Rodman, ‘Empowering Place: Multilocality and Multivocality’, in American Anthropologist, New Series 94, no. 3, pp. 640–656, 1992. 20 M. Mortensen, and H. J. Trenz, 2016, p. 344; L. Boltanski, Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 34. 21 Also shown (at the time of writing) at a range of other venues in the US, Mexico and the Netherlands. 22 G. Celant, ‘A Virtual Journey in Reality’, in A. G. Iñarritu, ed., Carne y Arena (Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2017), pp. 24–29.

202  Christopher Whitehead and Francesca Lanz 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

A. Witcomb, 2015. A. G. Iñarritu, Ibid, pp. 2–3. G. Celant, Ibid, p. 27. See: www.ushmm.org/information/press/press-releases/united-states-holocaustmemorial-museums-new-exhibit-from-memory-to-action-;www.cjnews.com/news/ canada/new-montreal-holocaust-museum-exhibit-explores-genocide-andhow-to-prevent-it; and http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2017/07/how-do-youinspire-visitors-to-take.html. (All accessed 3 October 2018) We are grateful to Areti Galani for bringing these examples to our attention. M. S. Phillips, On Historical Distance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 89. L. Chouliaraki, The Spectatorship of Suffering (London: Sage, 2006). M. Mortensen, and H. J. Trenz, 2016, p. 345. A. Coplan, Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 5. E. Gokcigdem, ed., Fostering Empathy Through Museums (Lanham, Rowman, 2016), p. xix. Ibid. Empathy Museum, www.empathymuseum.com/#ourmission, (accessed 14 ­August 2018). R. Krznaric, Empathy: Why It Matters, and How to Get It (London: Random, 2016), p. xix. M. S. Phillips, ‘On the Advantage and Disadvantage of Sentimental History for Life’, in History Workshop Journal, 65, no. 49–64, p. 51, 2008. A. Coplan, Amy Empathy, pp. 3–18. P. Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (London: Bodley Head, 2017). A. Witcomb, 2015. We are grateful to Mark O’Neill for insightful discussion on these points. S. Macdonald, ‘Is “Difficult Heritage” Still “Difficult”? Why Public Acknowledgement of Past Perpetration May No Longer Be So Unsettling to Collective Identities’, in Museum International, 67, no. 1–2, pp. 6–22, 2015. C. Whitehead, ‘Critical Heritages and Serious Play In Museums: Engaging with Difficulty between Europe and the Nation’, CoHERE Critical Archive, 2017. http:// digitalcultures.ncl.ac.uk/cohere/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ WP1-essay-1.pdf (accessed 14 August 2018).

13 The changing shape of museums in an increasingly digital world Oonagh Murphy

In less than two decades Web 2.0 technologies have triggered a paradigm shift within museums, and seen visitors become active participants, rather than passive observers. Web 2.0 technologies, and the wider digital culture it has spawned, have not only changed how we communicate museum practice, but also museum practice itself. The ubiquity of digital technologies has provoked a wider cultural shift, with visitors now seeking to enter into a reciprocal dialogue with cultural institutions. No longer are museums expected to merely provide communication platforms to share collections, publish research and communicate with visitors; they are expected to go beyond traditional, analogue modes of museum practice, and respond to the movement towards participatory engagement. Web users are now active creators and participants in the development and analysis of available knowledge, rather than simply consumers of information.1 These technologies have catalysed the development and implementation of an eclectic range of new modes of museum practice from social media to 3D Printing, to museums opening their own incubator hubs for new creative businesses. 2 Whilst these changes may seem rapid and revolutionary, this chapter argues that the museum is a robust, reflective, adaptive and ever-changing institution that evolves in parallel to the society in which stands. The core function of museums has always been to collect and care for objects, but the ethos underpinning that has evolved from the original cabinets of curiosities, ‘look don’t touch’ mentality, to one of education, public engagement and entertainment.

Communicate or die In the early part of the twentieth century, John Cotton Dana, a revolutionary museum thinker and founding director of Newark Museum, wrote about challenges similar to those currently facing museums today. Cotton Dana introduced the concept of the ‘useful’ museum, which he defined as ‘The Kind of Museum it will profit a City to maintain’.3 In his self-­published book he argued that museums should avoid collecting objects for rarity and prestige but, rather, focus on objects based on their relevance to the local

204  Oonagh Murphy community. His four-point strategy, which is instrumentalist in nature and founded on the ideals of the enlightenment, suggests: • • • •

Making the city known to itself, and especially to its young people; Presenting one of the city’s activities in an attractive, interesting and advertising manner to non-residents; Encouraging improvements in manufacturing methods; and, Presenting a modern industry in a comprehensive and enlightening manner to pupils in schools4

Rather than rewriting the concept of a museum, he reflects upon the need to innovate within the existing, and accepted social understanding of the museum concept: ‘the traditional conception of a museum is very deeply set in the minds of our people rich and poor, ignorant and cultivated’. 5 In order to gain support from citizens, however, he felt he had to use certain established practices, from creating a grand entrance to having impressive objects in the reception hall; he also believed that once visitors had crossed the entry threshold they would be more tolerant of the unexpected. Schubert echoes Cotton Dana’s thinking on the increasing centrality of the visitor, arguing that we can trace the movement of visitors from the periphery to the core of museum practice from the French Revolution to the present day.6 In stating ‘objects do not make a “museum;” they merely form a “collection”’,7 he suggests that people breathe life into museums, for without people, collections are merely inanimate objects. Rather than a stagnant institution that fears change, Schubert paints a picture of museums as adaptive, agile and socially relevant institutions. Whilst the core purpose of museums (collecting objects), has remained unchanged, he notes that museum practice has altered in parallel to the social, political, economic and technological conditions in which they sit. Whilst recognising the importance of international standards and partnerships Schubert notes a contemporary move towards individual museums, and regional museum sectors developing ‘their own answers to particular cultural, national, political and economic circumstances’.8 Change is at the centre of Schubert’s account of the history of museum practice, and whilst recognising that the future relevance of museums is uncertain, he asserts with confidence that ‘whatever the future holds, the museum remains an exceptionally adaptable cultural construct both deeply vulnerable to outside interference yet of awesome robustness’.9 When thinking about museums and digital culture, it is perhaps helpful to think about this developing relationship, or perhaps better put, operating context within a wider historical trajectory, by thinking about change, and processes of change. Schubert asks us to look beyond the traditional stuffy stereotypes of museums, and look instead at how museum practices, and the institution itself has developed over time: It could be said that one of the greatest myths about the museum is that it is an oasis of calm untouched by the storms of politics and history.

Shape of museums in digital world  205 Nothing could be further from the truth. Over time, the museum has responded to political and social shifts with seismic precision. Its very success is the result of its exceptional flexibility and capacity to adapt.10 So perhaps, then, in order to truly understand current practices we need to look at the social, political, economic and technological conditions that created the museum as we know it today.

A story of change Led by Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative UK government of the 1980s shook museum practice to its very core.11 Rather than recognising the intangible value of museums as educational institutions the Thatcher government sought to exploit the museum sector’s ability to generate revenue through ticket sales, attracting tourists and contributing to urban regeneration. During this time governments (national, regional and local) began to adopt an economic rationalist approach.12 Whilst deemed to be a step-change in museum policy at the time, it was an approach that echoed much of what Cotton Dana was advocating in the early 1900s. The ideas may have been around for more than a 100 years, and the language may have changed in the intervening years, but the debate around the role and purpose of museums became as evident then as it had ever been. Indeed, a key debate of our own time still centres on ‘cultural value’ and the impact that museums can have within both an increasingly digital and divided society.13 As governments strive to measure the economic impact of funding, cultural organisations are seeking to fight back with the development of new metrics, whilst the age-old question of ‘what is culture?’ remains unanswered. In the 2010 Measuring the Value of Culture report, O’Brien seeks to link the academic pursuit of defining culture (from elite to popular) with metrics that government can use to assess the value of culture, and the impact of funding.14 He looks at value metrics from other sectors, such as healthcare, and concludes that the DCMS may seek to create value guidelines as a means of streamlining the current ad hoc approach taken by many cultural organisations. More specifically, O’Brien recommends the DCMS take an economic rationalist approach in line with the wider government Green Book publication, How to appraise proposals before committing funds to a policy, programme or project.15 In essence we see DCMS exploring the language, metrics and rationale of National Health Service Funding with a view to developing policies that will place museums and cultural organisations under increasing pressure to demonstrate their economic and cultural value in order to sustain funding; people, not objects, are central to this emerging model of cultural value. Beyond the economic rationalist model, we see museums pushed towards serving a wider, perhaps even welfare state, focussed agenda;16 from the Happy Museum Project17 to the social inclusion agenda.18 A model that

206  Oonagh Murphy sees value as being determined by visitor engagement rather than rarity and prestige of collections. This move towards wider social value demands on museums was endorsed by British Prime Minister, Tony Blair under his parties ‘New Labour’ vision. The inclusion agenda had started long before New Labour, indeed it is particularly evident in local authority museums, with museum directors such as David Flemming (the long standing director of National Museums Liverpool, who was in post from 2001 until his retirement in 2018) advocating for and providing a platform to social history as a force for social inclusion. This work led to the Renaissance report, which ultimately served as the foundation for the Labour Party’s adoption of ‘social inclusion agenda’ as a key policy point for museums.19 Whilst the New Labour support for public museums may have initially seemed a welcome shift in government thinking, it soon became clear that support only came to museums when they were able to demonstrate a wider commitment to ‘value’. This brought changes, undoubtedly, many of which were welcome, but it also delivered fresh demands that museums develop new audiences and metrics by way of demonstrating their value for both individuals, as well as their communities. 20

The centrality of the visitor The increasing centrality of visitors to museum practice is a recurring theme across much of the literature on contemporary museology and ‘museum practice’. In Museums and Their Visitors Hooper-Greenhill notes how in the later part of the twentieth century museums moved away from the model of a museum as ‘static storehouses for artefacts into active learning environments for people’. 21 We know from Cotton Dana that radical thinking around visitors began long before the late twentieth century. However, for Hooper-Greenhill this move towards thinking about visitors, and towards enacting a more visitor-centric approach, was driven by political and social agendas in the 1990s, and she argues that political pressure on and within museums to demonstrate a social purpose influenced museum practice. Competing with other commercial leisure providers, museums were faced with a potentially fatal challenge: ‘communicate or die’. 22 Change is not a new concept for museums, however the financial cuts they faced in the 1980s required radical rather than evolutionary change. Whilst battling with other leisure providers, museums needed to safeguard their status as unique and valuable cultural institutions, contending with, but distinct from, theme parks and shopping centres. Interestingly, the challenge for museums today is similar to that faced by Cotton Dana in the early twentieth century, namely to create a contemporarily relevant museum experience within the parameters of a socially accepted understanding of the term. Rather than placing this in an academic debate on museology, Roy Clare, former Director of Auckland War Memorial Museum in New Zealand, positions this challenge within a business context, focussing on the need for

Shape of museums in digital world  207 museums to embrace new technologies, and celebrate their unique selling points: As in most things in life, balance is everything. Museums need to act like museums – retaining their authority as museums – and take care to avoid the ultimately futile tail-chase involved in trying to copy Disney. Audiences are in any case a discerning and prevailing presence; they can tell the difference and they can express their views through the marketplace. So museums need to be business-like, but they are not conventional businesses, except to the extent that they need to be sensitive to their markets.23 The shift towards visitor-focussed practice is perhaps best exemplified by the changing tone in which museum visitors are greeted upon their arrival at a museum. In the 1800s visitors to the British Museum had to apply to visit, with visitation limited to the upper classes, who, once admitted, were met with stern and formal security, and led on a tour by a curator who very much determined what and how they experienced collections.24 Today we are greeted by reception desks, signage and information leaflets all designed to create a more visitor-focussed and friendly first impression. More than simply ‘welcoming visitors in’ the contemporary museum is increasingly striving to take account of diverse visitor needs.

Communicating (not dying) It is useful to link Hooper-Greenhill’s ‘communicate or die’ challenge back to the work of Ballantyne and Uzzell on the economic rationalist approach of the Thatcher era.25 Throughout those years, the government began to demand that museums communicate their economic value in order to sustain funding, even though the need to communicate ‘value’ is a challenge still faced by all museums to this day.26 While museums may have superficially appeared as static storehouses, conservative in nature and slow to change, the work of Schubert, 27 Ballantyne and Uzzell, 28 as well as Hooper-­ Greenhill29 all suggest that museums may be more agile than they are sometimes given credit for. Sandell examines this adaptability in Social Inclusion: The Museum and the Dynamics of Sectoral Change, when he writes that: much of the museum studies literature from the last decades is based upon the assumption that museums are now operating within a turbulent and rapidly changing environment, requiring new approaches to their management, new sources of funding and new and evolving working practices.30 Rather than stagnant institutions, slow to change, and conservative in nature, available literature shows that museums are flexible and adaptive, and

208  Oonagh Murphy at times can even act as a mirror to government policy agendas, agendas which can quickly shift the parameters of museum practice. Whilst policy agendas can shape museum practice in a fleeting and short-term manner, museum collections provide us with a tangible demonstration of the impact of cultural, social and political thinking on the museum concept over time. Examples of museum practices that are directly shaped by wider social and political practices include: imperialist collection policies that brought treasures of the world to London.31 While more contemporary examples relate to the repatriation of human remains, 32 increased integration of black history into national museum collections33 and the growing/emerging collection of digital culture from computer games34 to code.35 Collections are not only fundamental to museums, but they also act as important indicators of how museum practice has changed over the years. The Museums Association, for example, note that the ‘collections that museums care for, display, interpret and hold in trust for future generations form the basis of all the work a museum does. Without collections museums could not exist’.36 The shifting parameters of museum practice, from welcoming visitors in, to educational and social agendas, are all built on the strong and indelible foundation of a museum’s collection.

Towards the porous institution In Embracing the Desire Lines – Opening up Cultural Infrastructure, Tom Fleming observes a move towards more porous organisational structures. For Fleming the need to become more adaptable is centred on the issue of relevance, in a belief that cultural organisations need to appeal more to the public if they are to survive. His provocation is written in the context of social media, Web 2.0, and changing modes of participation in, and dialogue with institutions, as a result of the new technological landscape in which cultural organisations now find themselves operating. In a broad sweep he cites approaches ranging from ‘co-commissioning and co-­ curating, connecting the knowledge, content and tastes of different communities’ and suggests that this should happen throughout the institution, both onsite and online.37 However, once again we are reminded that openness, partnership and collaboration in any form are not easy, as ‘to open the doors a little wider is to encourage vulnerability as much as innovation and opportunity’.38 Social media has provided new ways to collect and share information, and harness ‘collective intelligence’. This approach is a significant value shift, in that it requires museums to move away from the role of custodian of knowledge towards a more open model which recognises that there is more talent outside of the institution than within it. Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty coined the term ‘Web 2.0’ in 2004. However, their initial emphasis on software and technology platforms has, in recent years, ‘lost its tether to the web-programming models it espoused and has become closely

Shape of museums in digital world  209 linked to a design aesthetic and a marketing language’.39 As such, Web 2.0 can best be defined as an ‘ethos or approach’ rather than a specific technology platform.40 Govier also identifies how participatory culture (a result, in part, of social media) has made museums question their core ideals.41 However rather than a revolutionary ideal she argues that focussing the co-creation debate on ‘power’ is a bit of a red herring and suggests that museums are never going to relinquish all power to visitors. As such it is important to move the debate beyond one of democracy-versus-elitism towards an enquiry as to how museums and their visitors can work together, an evolutionary conversation that museums have entered into since their very creation.42 Through her research Govier seeks to find co-creative practices that exist at the core rather than the fringes of museum practice; she also speaks of inviting members of the public in so as to extend a museum’s ‘collective intelligence pool’. However, Govier extends her analysis by stating that rather than simply adding value to an institution, that those that want to co-create at the core, should be also recognised as potential new audiences and markets for museums. Govier argues that museums need to look at themselves before they can look out to the world. It requires a confident institution, comfortable with its values, and secure in itself to manage these new communities, communities that no longer exist in a finite program or workshop, but instead through digital culture are becoming active communities of creators, co-creators and cultural advocates – advocates that museums badly need in this difficult economic climate. The challenge for museums, therefore, is to develop new forms of institutional knowledge, both by employing specialist staff with digital skills, and providing existing staff with opportunities to develop the skills required to be a confident, innovative and efficient museum professional in this digital age. In an increasingly digital world, technology and remix culture has opened up the avenues to participation. However, increasingly, participation is becoming self-directed, with visitor-generated participatory practices existing in parallel to facilitated participatory opportunities offered by an institution. For some visitors this means a quick snap on their phone, the addition of a funny comment, a physical response such as copying the pose in a painting or editing a work of art using digital filters and text overlay. For others, participation can be more sophisticated, longer term and strategic, including everything from dedicated blogs to websites and apps. One such example is Nipples at The Met, a blog created by artist James Cabot Ewart which documents every nipple on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.43 Yet another example is Ugly Renaissance Babies, a blog which invites people to take photos of ‘ugly babies’ in renaissance paintings and then submit them with satirical descriptions. The blog’s tag line sums up both its irreverence and cultural relevance – ‘The Kids Aren’t Alright’.44 ‘All Hail Damien Hirst’ is ‘An Augmented reality App celebrating the work of Damien Hirst’ developed by Tamiko Thiel.45 This App provides

210  Oonagh Murphy an alternative lens through which to view the 2012 Hirst retrospective at Tate Modern. Thiel had previously produced Reign of Gold, an AR App for Occupy Wall Street, which allowed users to augment a shower of gold coins falling over significant financial institutions. Both of these examples have a power struggle embedded in their narrative. Whilst Reign of Gold sought to critique the financial power imbalances between banks and the ‘majority’, All Hail Damien Hirst sought to both celebrate and critique Hirst and Tate. The religious iconography places Hirst within a god like context, but Thiel suggests that not only does this App change how we view the work of Hirst, but also because visitors consume the AR content within the walls of Tate they place greater value on the AR content itself: If I was a painter I would’ve gone off and made a painting, and that would have been the end of that. Since I work with augmented reality however I could place the image in and around the Tate Modern itself, the very site of Hirst’s exhibition. This puts a whole different spin on the artwork, as having an artwork “in” a prominent arts venue is seen as a form of “canonization” in the art world, even if the artist places the work there by him- or herself, as did Banksy.46 The digital layering of content in these instances is legal and often humorous. However, even when done in malice museums are somewhat limited in what they can do to respond, something that Thiel reflected on in an interview with the online magazine Furtherfield: ‘Walls cannot keep us out, nor can walls keep us in. Even Hirst, who is known as a control freak, cannot exercise control over augmented reality’.47 AR is a step further than say ‘Nipples at The Met’ or ‘Ugly Renaissance Babies’, because rather than existing solely online it exists in a convergent environment, both online and in gallery. AR is also a mixed reality experience and this provides a challenging and potentially disruptive progression from online creations. The approach, therefore, brings new creative works and interpretations of museum collections into museum spaces through the pockets of their visitors. These examples demonstrate that not all visitors engage with museums solely through the interpretive lens of the museum. Instead they use their own creative vision to interpret, reinterpret and engage with museum spaces and collections; although it is how that participation is mediated, and not the intellectual exchange itself, which has been radically changed through digital culture. In the Netherlands, the Rijksmuseum has made 125,000 high-resolution images available online, inviting visitors to use them freely for both personal and commercial purposes. This invitation to participate can be viewed as a radical approach to involvement since the openness of the invitation lays the foundation for what Kidd calls both ‘tyrannical’ and ‘chaotic’ storytelling, by which she means storytelling that is not constructed within the physical or ideological confines of the museums; instead

Shape of museums in digital world  211 it can be distributed by content creators through social media platforms, without requiring permission of a museum.48 Providing access and removing traditional rules for the use of images arguably helps challenge the power imbalances of participatory practices. By removing the traditional image use fee, we see a move towards a free at-point-of-use model, a model commonly used by social media platforms. The image is not ‘free’ but is instead paid for by public subsidy, in other words users pay through taxation. In social media terms, social media platforms are not free, but instead, are free at point of use, with users paying for service through their creation of content and distribution of their personal data. Taco Dibbits, Director of Collections at the Rijksmuseum, suggests images could be used to create such things as tattoos, iPad covers and more: ‘If visitors want to have a Vermeer on their toilet paper I’d rather they have a very high-quality image of Vermeer on toilet paper than a very bad reproduction’.49 Whilst the approach taken by the Rijksmuseum may seem radical or revolutionary, it reflects the increasing pressure on museums to justify their value not in terms of their ability to collect and care for objects, but also ‘their ability to take such objects and put them to some worthwhile use’.50 By moving towards a collaborative model of management and programming, museums can take steps towards becoming ‘useful’ and ‘active’ places, as facilities which can be used rather than just visited.

Museum practice in a participatory environment Available literature suggests that while some museums such as Newark Museum (and Cotton Dana), have showed an interest in visitor experience since the early 1900s, other museum have been slower to embrace this vision. In more general terms what we find is a slow, but evolutionary development towards the recognition of the visitor, a recognition that has led to a shift in focus that has moved visitors from the periphery to the core of museum practice, over the last 100 years. The increasing centrality of the visitor has picked up pace since the museum boom of the 1970s. Cultural policy agendas and the rise of Web 2.0 and digital technologies have pushed this change deeper and faster in the last two decades than any other force in the last century. However, there is very little discussion of how museums are equipping staff with the skills, and support required to develop and grow as professionals within this agile and fast-evolving climate. Unlike other areas of museum practice ‘digital engagement’ or digital technologies themselves do not form part of the Arts Council England, Museum Accreditation Standard.51 In recent years a number of attempts have been made to outline what ‘digital engagement’ might look like. From The Digital Engagement Framework, 52 produced by Richardson and Visser, to The Digital Engagement Strategy produced by Derby Museum (England)53 each takes a different approach to defining digital engagement. Jane Finnis, ­Director of Culture 24, argues that nobody under 20 talks about ‘digital’,

212  Oonagh Murphy and as such we should be talking about engagement (without the digital prefix). For Finnis engagement ‘is fundamentally about attention, inspiration or connection’.54 Mia Ridge, former chair of the Museums Computer Group, also argues that engagement should come before digital: ‘Digital strategies should be embedded within a wider public engagement strategy, and decisions about audiences and goals should always come before decisions about technology’.55 The exact definition of digital literacy, digital strategy, and digital practice has yet to be outlined in a taxonomy as readily accepted as that which exists for collections management. As such, digital engagement could include the development of a new App, but it could also be the acknowledgment of digital culture within a traditional exhibition. Instead of embracing all technology and copying what the latest ‘cool’ brand from Adidas or Apple are doing, museums need to strategically engage with the opportunities that new technologies provide. Without such a strategic approach, museums could lose their place as unique cultural intuitions and become nothing more than a showroom for the latest technology. It takes a confident institution to recognise that whilst digital technologies are quickly becoming an imperative for contemporary businesses, these technologies must advance a museum’s strategic and business plans if they are to truly add value to their work.56 Rather than categorising the museum experience as time spent ‘visiting’ a physical museum, Falk and Dierking conceptualise the museum experience in a much broader way. Their definition spans from the first thought of attending a museum, the decision-making process, the journey to the museum, the museum visit itself, social experiences around the visit, as well as the memories that are ­retained.57 Whilst not written within the context of museums in a digital age, this idea of the museum experience extending beyond a visitors interaction with a physical museum space is one that maps neatly onto the emergence of the museum as a multi-platform institution, as something that exists beyond a physical, three-dimensional structure.

Conclusion The challenge for museums today is that rather than simply providing access for visitors, they must define and redefine their approach to collecting, and programming, and work towards exhibiting relevant and meaningful stories. In particular, museums need to respond to the growing digital culture in which they now operate, as this culture transcends technology platforms and drives expectations of democratic participation. Whether we like it or not, such technological innovation has changed the wider operating context of museums, has transformed visitor behaviour, driven changes in cultural policy, and transformed how metrics such as value are now defined. This chapter outlined how early innovators such as Cotton Dana ushered in the first wave of the democratic museum in the late 1800s, an ethos that was once again given space within museum practice in the post-war era. This second wave of democratisation increasingly linked museum values to

Shape of museums in digital world  213 cultural policy and wider social welfare consciousness. It could be argued then that we are now witnessing the third wave of museum democratisation, brought about by digital technologies and the participatory practices that they have enacted.

Notes 1 O. Murphy, ‘Rethinking Participatory Practice in a Web 2.0 World’, in K. Mc Sweeney and J. Kavanagh, eds., Museum Participation: New Directions for Audience Collaboration (Edinburgh: MuseumsEtc, 2016), pp. 104–129. 2 O. Murphy, ‘Coworking Spaces, Accelerators and Incubators: Emerging Forms of Museum Practice in an Increasingly Digital World’, Museum International, 70, pp. 62–75, 2018. 3 J. Cotton Dana, A Plan for a New Museum, the Kind of Museum It Will Profit a City to Maintain (Woodstock: Elm Tree, 1920). http://archive.org/details/ aplanforanewmus00danagoog. 4 Ibid, p. 24. 5 Ibid, p. 15. 6 K. Schubert, The Curator’s Egg: The Evolution of the Museum Concept from the French Revolution to the Present Day (3rd Ed.) (London: Ridinghouse, 2009), p. 66. 7 J. Cotton Dana, A Plan for a New Museum, p. 9. 8 K. Schubert, The Curator’s Egg, p. 66. 9 Ibid, p. 153. 10 Ibid, p. 75. 11 N. Kawashima, Museum Management in a Time of Change: Impacts of Cultural Policy on Museums in Britain, 1979–1997, Working paper/Centre for the Study of Cultural Policy, School of Theatre Studies, University of Warwick ([Coventry]: Centre for the Study of Cultural Policy, School of Theatre Studies, University of Warwick, 1997). 12 R. Ballantyne, and D. Uzzell, ‘Looking Back and Looking Forward: The ­ useum’, Rise of the Visitor-Centered Museum: The Visitor-Centered M in Curator: The Museum Journal, 54, no. 1, 85–92, January 2011. DOI:10.1111/j.2151-6952.2010.00071.x. 13 See for example: ‘The #culturalvalue Initiative’, The #culturalvalue Initiative. http://culturalvalueinitiative.org (accessed 30 July 2018). 14 D. O’Brien, Measuring the Value of Culture: A Report to the Department for Culture Media and Sport (London: DCMS, 2010). 15 ‘The Green Book: Central Government Guidance on Appraisal and Evaluation’ (H.M. Treasury, 2018). 16 E. Belfiore, ‘Art as a Means of Alleviating Social Exclusion: Does It Really Work? A Critique of Instrumental Cultural Policies and Social Impact Studies in the UK’, in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 8, no. 1, pp. 91–106, January 2002. DOI: 10.1080/102866302900324658. 17 ‘Home’, Happy Museum Project. http://happymuseumproject.org/ (accessed 30 July 2018). 18 ‘Valuing Diversity: The Case for Inclusive Museums’ (Museums Association, 2016). 19 R. Sandell, ‘Social Inclusion, the Museum and the Dynamics of Sectoral Change’, in Museum and Society, 1, no. 1, p. 46, 2003. 20 C. West, and C. H. F. Smith, ‘“WE ARE NOT A GOVERNMENT ­POODLE” 1: Museums and Social Inclusion under New Labour’, in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 11, no. 3, p. 276, November 2005. DOI:10.1080/ 10286630500411259.

214  Oonagh Murphy 21 E. Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and Their Visitors (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 1. 22 Ibid, p. 34. 23 R. Clare, ‘Museum Movement – From Keepers to Sharers: Evolution or Revolution?’, Museum-ID (blog), 15 November 2017. http://museum-id.com/museum-­ movement-from-keepers-to-sharers-evolution-or-revolution-by-roy-clare/. 24 G. Lewis, ‘Museums in Britain: A Historical Survey’, in J. M. Thompson, ed., Manual of Curatorship: A Guide to Museum Practice (2 Ed.) (Oxford: ­Butterworth-Heinemann, 1992), p. 25. 25 R. Ballantyne, and D. Uzzell, ‘Looking Back and Looking Forward’. 26 For context on the creation of a value framework for museums see M. L. Weinberg, and M. S. Lewis, ‘The Public Value Approach to Strategic Management’, in Museum Management and Curatorship, 24, no. 3, pp. 253–269, September 2009. DOI: 10.1080/09647770903073086. 27 K. Schubert, The Curator’s Egg. 28 R. Ballantyne, and D. Uzzell, ‘Looking Back and Looking Forward’. 29 E. Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and Their Visitors. 30 R. Sandell, ‘Social Inclusion, the Museum and the Dynamics of Sectoral Change’, in Museum and Society, 1, no. 1, pp. 45–62, 2003. 31 E. Duthie, ‘The British Museum: An Imperial Museum in a Post-Imperial World’, in Public History Review, 18, p. 12, 2011. 32 V. Cassman, N. Odegaard, and J. F. Powell, Human Remains: Guide for ­M useums and Academic Institutions (Plymouth: AltaMira, 2008). 33 V. Walsh, ‘“Tate Britain: Curating Britishness and Cultural Diversity” Tate Encounters’, in Tate Encounters, 2, 2008. www2.tate.org.uk/tate-encounters/ edition-2/TateEncounters2_VictoriaWalsh.pdf. 34 ‘MoMA | Video Games: 14 in the Collection, for Starters’. www.moma.org/ explore/inside_out/2012/11/29/video-games-14-in-the-collection-for-starters/ (accessed 30 July 2018). 35 ‘Cooper-Hewitt Announces Acquisition of Planetary Application and Source Code | Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, 27 August 2013. www.cooperhewitt.org/2013/08/27/ cooper-hewitt-announces-acquisition-of-planetary-application-­a nd-sourcecode/. 36 ‘Connecting Collections’ (Museums Association, n.d.), accessed 7 January 2018. 37 T. Fleming, Embracing the Desire Lines – Opening Up Cultural Infrastructure (Cornerhouse: TF Creative Consultancy, May 2009), p. 13. 38 Ibid, p. 20. 39 M. Mandiberg, The Social Media Reader (New York: NYU Press, 2012), p. 4. 40 D. Gauntlett, Making Is Believing: The Social Meaning of Creativity (London: Polity, 2011), p. 5. 41 L. Govier, Leaders in Co-Creation? Why and How Museums Could Develop Their Co-Creative Practice with the Public, Building on Ideas from the Performing Arts and Other Non- Museum Organisations (London: Clore Leadership, 2009). 42 Ibid., p. 4. 43 ‘Nipples at the Met’. http://nipplesatthemet.tumblr.com/?og=1 (accessed 31 July 2018). 4 4 ‘Ugly Renaissance Babies’. https://uglyrenaissancebabies.tumblr.com/?og=1 (accessed 31 July 2018). 45 ‘All Hail Damien Hirst! @ Tate Modern – Augmented Reality Art ­I ntervention – Occupy Art’. www.allhaildamienhirst.com/ (accessed 6 November 2018).

Shape of museums in digital world  215 46 Marc Garrett and 2012, ‘“All Hail Damien Hirst!” Augmented Reality Intervention @ Tate Modern’, Furtherfield, 25 June 2012. www.furtherfield.org/ all-hail-damien-hirst-augmented-reality-intervention-tate-modern/. 47 Marc Garrett and 2012. 48 J. Kidd, Museums in the New Mediascape: Transmedia, Participation, Ethics (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), p. 13. 49 G. Petri, ‘The Public Domain vs. the Museum: The Limits of Copyright and Reproductions of Two-Dimensional Works of Art’, in Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies, 12, no. 1 (28 August 2014), DOI: 10.5334/jcms.1021217. 50 S. E. Weil, Rethinking the Museum and Other Meditations (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990), p. 59. 51 ‘Museum Accreditation Standard’ (Arts Council England, 2018). 52 J. Visser, and J. Richardson, Digital Engagement In Culture, Heritage and the Arts, 2013. http://digitalengagementframework.com/digenfra3/wp-content/ uploads/2016/02/Digital_engagement_in_culture_heritage_and_the_arts.pdf. 53 ‘Digital Engagement Strategy’ (Derby Museums, 2013), http://collectionstrust. org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Derby-Museums-Digital-EngagementStrategy1.pdf. 54 ‘A Think Piece on Digital by Jane Finnis Let’s Get Real Conference’, 2014. http:// letsgetrealconference.com/2014/blog/2014/05/24/a-think-piece-on-digitalby-jane-finnis/ (accessed 30 July 2018). 55 M. Ridge, ‘Digital Participation, Engagement and Crowdsourcing in Museums – London Museums Group’, 15 August 2013. www.londonmuseumsgroup.org /2013/08/15/digital-participation-engagement-andcrowdsourcing-in-museums/. 56 For context on the emergence of new business models in a digital age see J. H. Falk, and B. Sheppard, Thriving in the Knowledge Age: New Business ­Models for Museums and Other Cultural Institutions (Lanham: Altamira Press, 2006). 57 See J. H. Falk, and L. D. Dierking, The Museum Experience (London, Routledge, 2016).

14 Material presence and virtual representation The place of the museum in a globalised world Pat Cooke Globalisation has made human inter-dependence planetary in scale and, as the election of Donald Trump in the US and the tribulations of Brexit in the UK indicate, we struggle to comprehend the impact of these dependencies on a range of local contexts, including institutional ones. Bauman writes about how, in our globalised state, ‘interhuman bonds, whether inherited or tied to the course of current interactions, are losing their former institutional protections’.1 Against the backdrop of what he calls this ‘liquid modernity’ he asks: ‘can public space be made once again a place of lasting engagement rather than casual and fleeting encounters?’2 Here, I want to explore the extent to which museums can help provide an answer to this question in terms of their capacity to negotiate the relationship between material, located expressions of identity, and globalisation’s pervasive influence on almost all aspects of cultural life in today’s world. Historically, museums have played an ambiguous role in globalisation, in that they are capable of both serving its purposes and acting as points of resistance to its influence and effects. As destinations, they have evolved as places whose purpose and meaning have been determined by their relationship to localities and national identities, but also as collection points for colonial plunder and platforms for commodity nostalgia generated by the global outputs of capitalist production. Until relatively recently, a museum’s basic unit of communication remained the material object, publicly encountered in an exhibition space. Over the past 30 years, however, communications technologies with a global reach, combined with immersive multi-media exhibition systems, have allowed museums to reconfigure their relationship with audiences through an amalgam of material and virtual forms of communication. The anchoring role of the object in museum display no longer seems secure, as it becomes a floating variable in multi-media communication. Indeed, Stephen Conn believes we have arrived at a stage where it has become possible to think of a museum without objects, even though he also recognises that the debate about how much text to include in exhibitions began early in the museum’s development, which shows that the erosion of the object’s centrality has been going on for some time.3

Place of the museum in a globalised world  217 The sheer range and variety of museums suggests a wide spectrum of possibilities, ranging from the materiality of collections and the spatial and physical qualities of the museum itself at one end, to dematerialised multi-media exhibitions and online offerings at the other. Most of today’s museums probably occupy an intermediate position in which object and technology are in tension with each other. The role of the object has become more negotiable, or more ambiguous: while continuing to command attention through its material authenticity, it can now serve as a more fluidly symbolic element within elaborate exhibition systems, and even more nebulously as an online avatar. This hybrid range of possibilities leads to three hypotheses. Firstly, because material objects have been so central to the institutional identity and curatorial practices of museums, they provide the best indicator for mapping where any given museum may lie along the spectrum of globalisation effects. Secondly, the configuration of the object within the communication systems of contemporary museums (exhibition, online archives, social media presence, etc.) can serve as an indicator of how museums envisage audiences in both their local and global dimensions. Thirdly, a ‘museum’ without a collection that presents intangible heritage by means of state-of-the art multi-media technology raises the question of whether such an institution can offer the kind of ‘institutional protection’ in the face of globalisation that Bauman thought was needed, or, indeed, represents the logic of globalisation fully realised in museum form. The contemporary museum must satisfy an audience that has both local and global dimensions. Tourists can be foreign or domestic, while global migration flows render national populations increasingly diverse. Moreover, while contemporary migration is causing hitherto largely homogeneous populations to become increasingly diverse, historic migration allows museums to tap into globalised diasporic networks. This chapter will map the range of these effects onto four museums in the city of Dublin, The National Transport Museum (NTM), the Little Museum (LM), the Chester Beatty Library (CBL), and EPIC Ireland (EI). The origins of these museums and the nature of their collections reveal different degrees of globalisation effect. Their status as city museums is also significant because it allows us to examine how urban regeneration and cultural industry policies can operate as potent drivers of globalisation processes affecting museums.

Globalisation and museums The impact of globalisation on museums became a focus of interest around the turn of the millennium. A landmark was the International Council of Museum’s (ICOM) designation of ‘Museums and Globalisation’ as the theme for International Museums Day in 2002. Bezzeg had already noted how globalisation brought a range of opportunities and threats for museums. On the one hand, the professionalisation of museum practice through the promulgation of international norms of best-practice in conservation,

218  Pat Cooke heritage protection and ethical curatorship could be seen as positive developments. On the other, the role of museums as mediators of local and national culture was prone to the homogenising effects of global consumerism. Whenever she saw an exhibition lacking in objects – ‘the most ­important specific of museology’ – and replete with spectacular exhibition technology, she perceived a direct threat to the museum as an institution and the practice of collecting the material past which lies at its heart. A museum’s best chance of countering the colonising effects of global culture, she thought, was to ground its activities even more affirmatively in its collections, convinced that their idiosyncratic nature would allow museums to affirm the diversity and plurality of cultures.4 Young, too, saw an opportunity for museums to provide a cognitive interweaving of the local, national and trans-national dimensions of contemporary identity amid the forces of globalisation. To fulfil this role, however, she argued that they would have to grapple with opposing forces of cultural homogenisation and heterogenisation; optimistically, she saw these forces being reconciled in a ‘churning flow of apparent contradictions between the local and the global, the specific and the general, the heterogenous and the homogenous’ [my italics].5 This largely benign view of globalisation’s cultural impact is not, needless to say, universally shared. Taking stock of the impact of globalisation on Irish culture, traditions and social life in 2008, sociologist Tom Inglis observed that globalisation was capable of producing real tensions – for example, the challenge of accommodating cultural diversity arising from global migration flows gave rise to anxieties that could result in more virulent assertions of national and local identity, an observation that anticipated the growth of right-wing nationalist movements in France, Germany and England in recent years.6 Though Hooper-Greenhill’s conception of the ‘post-museum’ was not centrally concerned with globalisation, it nonetheless re-articulated the museum’s role in the contemporary world in a way that implicitly embraced globalisation’s open-process potentialities. As she saw it, the museum needed to become a place in which curatorship is redefined as an inter-disciplinary practice, and expertise is pooled and shared with a wide range of stakeholders, including members of local communities, who bring group and personal memories and traditions to bear on the interpretation of collections. But she also perceived that museum ethics needed more actively to engage with the moral consequences of colonialism, and to confront the question of whether objects appropriated as colonial plunder should be ­repatriated.7 This prompted the question of whether collections could retain a central role in the kind of open-processes Hooper-Greenhill envisaged.8 Knowledge, she asserted, is ‘no longer unified and monolithic’, but ‘fragmented and multi-vocal’.9 An epistemological implication of Hooper-Greenhill’s idea of the post-museum is that the object can no longer be treated as the prime determinant of museum knowledge, as it is repositioned within a stakeholder profile that has both local and global dimensions.

Place of the museum in a globalised world  219 The post-museum’s ethos found complementary endorsement in UNESCO’s Convention on the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), which prevailed upon heritage agencies and museums to have as much regard for culture in its intangible expressions as in its tangible forms. The Convention implicitly validated the use of multi-media technology as a means of integrating the representation of intangible culture in exhibition and outreach strategies. But it also drew attention to the ambiguous role bodies like UNESCO and its subsidiary ICOM played as globalising agents in their own right. UNESCO’s Convention on intangible heritage was promulgated as an opportunity both for promoting cross-cultural dialogue and enriching the understanding of cultural diversity on a global scale. It has been pointed out, however, that UNESCO is itself a global bureaucracy founded in universalist values, whose actions may tend to impose external values that undermine local ways of dealing with the past and cultural heritage.10 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett argues that the desire to protect Indigenous cultures may be contradicted by recording, documenting and archiving processes that render them universally accessible. ‘When culture becomes the heritage of humanity’, she warns, ‘the presumption is open access’.11 The need for museums to pay increasing attention to intangible heritage is, according to Kreps, leading today’s museums to see their purpose increasingly in terms of their responsibility to people rather than to objects, collections and tangible culture.12 This emerging discourse on globalisation has brought sharply into focus the question of how to reconcile the museum’s traditional role as the keeper and presenter of tangible things with the requirement that it become a site of communication with potentially global reach. At the operational level, this becomes the question of how to balance the relationship between material collections, multi-mediated exhibitions and virtual online presence. In this respect, Pearce considers medium and message to be inseparable, arguing that collections bear a metaphorical relationship to their material sources, which is mediated through the selection process involved in bringing a collection together.13 Following this logic, Muller rejects a dichotomous choice between a museum in the traditional sense as a place where ‘real’ objects are encountered and a ‘virtual’ online world of copies that hollows out its purpose. He argues that the historical and often colonialist processes that brought objects together in collections for preservation and interpretation removed them from their authentic environments and created a virtual ‘museum order’ of abstracted or symbolic meanings. Thus the virtual representation of objects on museum websites only reflects the earlier transfer of those objects from ‘authentic’ contexts to the museum itself.14 This broadly McLuhanite view was also endorsed by Sola (1997) who considers an object’s ‘informatic aura’ to be intrinsic to its nature as a museum object, and not something that can be separated from its phenomenal presence, or from its manifestation within systems of communication.15 The impossibility of separating medium from message

220  Pat Cooke led Witcomb to embrace a wholly positive interpretation of the role that multi-media technology can play in museums today. Rather than seeing technology as threatening the traditional museum with loss of aura and institutional authority, loss of the ability to distinguish between the real and the copy, a reduction of knowledge to information, and the death of the object, she sees multi-media ­exhibitions as offering positive opportunities for increased democratisation, an opening up to popular culture, and a reduction of overweening curatorial authority.16 This concentration on the commingling of multi-media and the historic object in the exhibition space is, however, narrowly chosen ground. A more comprehensive assessment should also take into account such processes as digital archiving and the full range of social media and online resources now available to build relationships with audiences, both real and virtual. Milekic, for instance, cites two formidable challenges posed by the online presentation of museum collections: the absence of meaningful experiential interaction with virtual information, and the tendency in virtual environments to favour quantity of information over its quality.17 The substantial resources many museums nowadays invest in uploading entire collections for online ‘access’ can be questioned not only on such qualitative grounds but also in relation to whether their usefulness is primarily confined to expert and academic researchers. Misgivings of this kind led Cameron to offer a more ambivalent defence of the virtualised museum. Although she sets out to update Bauman for the digital age by asserting that the material object not only serves as an ‘alibi for the virtual’ but is ‘reclaimed through its digital counterpart’, she poses what is perhaps the most fundamental question of all: can digital simulations of material objects provide the viewer with ‘equivalent affectual experiences or is materiality a defining factor?’18 In answering it, she acknowledges that visual simulations can disrupt the connection to the object as material evidence, and clearly sees the danger posed by simulacra (copies that have no originals). She comes around to the view that digital projects have the potential to undermine the traditional role of museums as cultural repositories if they are not grounded in the authority and authenticity of originals.19 Conn also comes down on this side of the argument, placing his faith in an ‘object-based epistemology’. 20 Karp and Levine note, however, are not so sure that the tensions induced by globalised media can be resolved by asserting the object’s primacy. They write of how the tension and ambivalence inherent in globalisation leads to ‘museum frictions’; they noted how international and transnational connections had become central to museum practices by the turn of the century, ‘multiplying both potential conjunctions and potential frictions’. 21 Huyssen insists on the ethical importance of the difference between being in the presence of tangible phenomena and observing their digital ­avatars. Our efforts to imagine the past are all too easily distorted by ‘the timeless present of the all-pervasive virtual space of consumer culture’.22 Virtual

Place of the museum in a globalised world  221 representations of the past are implicated in his notion of ‘twilight memory’, – the waning of generational memories due to the passing of time and the speed of technological modernisation, so that the struggle for memory becomes a struggle against ‘high-tech amnesia’. 23 Amid the maelstrom of global mobility, he sees museums as providing ‘temporal anchoring’ by fulfilling our need for ‘auratic objects’ that transcend exchange value and exist outside the circulation of commodities. In this way the museum resists the ‘progressive dematerialisation of the world’ through interpretative technologies. But his final position is no less ambiguous than Cameron’s or Karp and Levine’s. While the materiality of museum objects seems to ‘function like a guarantee against simulation’, it is only like a guarantee, for he is compelled to acknowledge that the memory of objects ‘can never entirely escape the orbit of simulation’. 24 One of the most ontologically compelling cases for the ineluctable authority of museum objects has been made by Dudley who insists on ‘the thingness of things’. Being in the presence of a resonant museum object, unmediated by labels or other interpretative technologies, she argues, can produce a deeply moving engagement for the viewer, which remains essential to what the museum has to offer. 25 When incorporated into multi-­media displays, the object runs the danger of being reduced to a ‘grammatical mark’ or prop in an overarching narrative, dissipating its capacity to impress the viewer as ‘an object of experience, as well as an object of interpretation’.26 She celebrates the nature of the encounter between visitor and object in the museum space as sensory, emotional and pre-cognitive; the physical co-presence of viewer and object allows us to interpret the object through what she calls ‘material mind’. 27 It is important to stress that Dudley’s defence of the phenomenal nature of this encounter is not presented as an argument for a categorical rupture with digital experiences. Nevertheless, she holds out for a qualitatively meaningful distinction between the physical encounter with objects in space and engaging with their manifestation in multi-media systems and online databases. This view, of course, takes no account of the argument championed by Pearse, Muller and Sola that museum collections already embody a virtualised set of relations in the way they have been assembled, nor does it quite deal with the auratic question. The likelihood that an original object’s authority is inseparable from its auratic appeal is perhaps best summed up in a story recounted by the late Stephen Jay Gould. A group of blind people visiting the Smithsonian Institution found themselves standing under one of the iconic objects of modern American history, Charles Lindbergh’s ‘Spirit of St. Louis’, the plane in which he completed the first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927. Their guide apologised for the object’s inaccessibility, suspended high above their heads. He asked them if a scale model they could touch would serve instead. Yes, they said – but only if it was placed directly underneath the original. Gould comments that the ‘aesthetic and moral value of genuine objects can stir us so profoundly that we insist upon their

222  Pat Cooke presence even when we can have no palpable presence thereof, but only the assurance that we stand in the aura of reality’. 28 Phenomenological accounts of the institutional identity of museums under conditions of globalised modernity support an anchoring of their mission in the materiality of collections and place. Baumann cited Heidegger on memory to the effect that people only go looking for something when it is no longer in the place they expected to find it. 29 His point was that the fluid nature of contemporary experience (‘liquid modernity’) leads us to reconsider the fate and value of memory and its supporting assets. To Dudley’s evocation of the individual object’s existential value we might add, therefore, the importance of the museum as a spatial container that undertakes to hold its collections inalienably in a fixed place in perpetuity. Castells’s focus is less on the individual object than on the nature of museums as social spaces in a hyper-connected world. Writing in 2001, six years before the launch of the first smart-phone, he judged that communication technologies already portended more isolated and individualised lives. He saw the museum as having a role in disrupting this tendency by providing historical, sequential perspectives that helped to forge a shared, communal temporality. However, this conception also presented a dilemma: on the one hand, paying excessive attention to presence, particularity and locale can immure local identities within their own narrow systems of reference, thus failing to recognise their position within the global flow of culture; on the other hand, the online archiving of traditions and identities can transform collections into globally-circulating commodities (as Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Huyssens fear). The role he finally advocates for museums is an interstitial one: to become ‘communication protocols’, that is, sites that mediate between the particularity of locality and the flow of tourists, migrants and technologies that criss-cross contemporary life on a global scale.30

Globalism and the city Cultural institutions are often given a central role in creative industry strategies, especially when these translate into urban regeneration and renewal policies.31 Such policies have attracted criticism for their potential to produce cultural homogenisation on a global scale. However, Cunningham sees such arguments as overdetermined, claiming that the conceptual difficulty of defining what is meant by creative industries has resulted in strategies for urban settings that are characterised by ‘a productive ferment, rather than preordained certainty’. He rejects the idea that such strategies act as templates for reproducing generic responses on a global scale – a process in which museums might be seen to play a leading role.32 Murphy likewise argues that globalising impacts get modified and adapted as they are filtered through local traditions, languages, priorities, and decision-making processes. She situates museums as nodes of potential resistance to homogenisation in their capacity to map the local within a discourse of cultural

Place of the museum in a globalised world  223 diversity, places where globalising influences meet with local reception and local resistance.33 Levitt articulates this complex set of interactions and negotiations as a form of cultural synthesis she calls ‘cosmopolitan nationalism’. She argues that cosmopolitan values and nationalist imperatives intertwine for museums along a continuum where ‘global approaches bump into regional and national history, culture and demography’.34 However, this kind of syncretic proposition has been brought into question by contemporary movements that seek to disentangle the cosmopolitan from the national elements of increasingly globalised identities (most sharply reflected, perhaps, in the anxieties being played out through Brexit and Trumpian efforts to ‘take back control’).

Tourism Tourism is not only a major driver of cultural industry strategies and policies but, given its global reach, a structural component in identity-­formation for both travellers and natives alike. As Gonzales stresses, ‘existential intangible heritage does not mean traveling with one’s own culture to visit that of others, but travelling in order to incorporate distant cultures within one’s own personal cosmopolitan identity’.35 Horne as far back as 1984 was struck by the ‘universality of the tourist experience’, prompting him to invoke the trans-European migration patterns of medieval pilgrims as a metaphor for latter-day secular tourists, using guide-books as ‘devotional texts’ and moving from one iconic tourist site to the next in a ‘ceremonial agenda’.36 By 2010, the extraordinary growth in popularity of medieval pilgrim routes as tourism experiences, most notably those converging on ­Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain, suggested that the term ‘pilgrim’ was less a metaphor than a descriptor of the tourism experience. Gonzales et al. note the correlation between religious and secular motives in the popularity of the route to Compostella, whose renaming as ‘St. James’s Way’ has been central to its rebranding as an experiential tourism product.37 Given the embodied, physical nature of travel, the tourist/pilgrim experience can be seen as correlating with Dudley’s space and place-bound encounter with the museum object and with Huyssen’s and others emphasis on the object’s ineluctable aura. The two processes converge in the desire to witness or experience iconic objects in iconic spaces, of which perhaps the most eloquent example is the hordes of people who queue daily to see the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. Just as the pilgrim may get to linger for only a few moments as part of a devotional queue streaming past a holy reliquary, so the secular tourist gains analogous consolation from the fleeting ‘being there’ with the one and only Mona Lisa, dimly smiling at them from her bullet-proof monstrance. To conclude this introductory discussion, those who wish to carve out a role for the museum in the face of ‘liquid modernity’ must deal not only with the pervasiveness of globalisation itself, but with a growing expectation

224  Pat Cooke that museums will provide multi-media exhibitions and an online presence to serve a global audience. At the same time, being in the material presence of objects remains both a qualitatively distinctive form of experience and an ethically important source of authentication in the face of a world increasingly saturated with digital simulacra. The same logic also applies to the institutions that house them: places where the physical and social act of visitation affirms our need to disentangle reality from representation, and to negotiate, by means of travelling and visitation, the relationship between the personal, local and global dimensions of identity.

Four Dublin Museums Four Dublin museums have been chosen for their capacity to illuminate a complex variety of ways in which globalisation is manifested through museums in the contemporary world. Firstly, a brief description of each museum. The National Transport Museum (NTM) was set up in 1949 by a group of voluntary enthusiasts to preserve three Dublin trams. It has since built up a collection of over 170 historic vehicles, 100 of which are on display at the museum site in Howth, County Dublin. The museum’s website states that ‘serious space limitations and the need to house every vehicle result in having to display the exhibits more closely than is desirable’, which indicates a cluttered, object-intensive style of exhibition. The museum employs virtually no interpretative technologies, apart from text labels. A rudimentary website provides basic information about the museum and includes an appeal for more volunteers to get involved. A voluntary workforce of 13 has carried out every task necessary to manage and present the collection.38 The Little Museum of Dublin (LM) is the brainchild of the ­entrepreneurial Trevor White, formerly a restaurant critic and publisher of the Dubliner magazine. That publication’s demise in 2011 prompted him to seek out a new project to celebrate and promote the city. He came up with the idea of branding Dublin as ‘The City of a Thousand Welcomes’, which involved inviting fellow-Dubliners to give voluntary guided tours of the city. When over 1,000 people signed up within three months, it prompted him to start a museum as a base for the guided tour operation. Dipping once again into the pool of civic pride and generosity, he invited the people of Dublin to help create the museum by donating things that would showcase the social, political and cultural history of the city. After six months of collecting, the LM opened in 2011 with an exhibition that drew upon a base collection of 400 brought objects. Visitors to the museum are free to wander round on their own or may take a tour given by one of the voluntary guides. The museum’s goal is to be a place that appeals equally to locals and tourists.39 It frequently achieves top-rating as a Dublin tourism venue on TripAdvisor, which White regards as the main online tool for adjusting their services in the light of visitor feedback.40 Otherwise, the museum has a rudimentary webpage with basic information.41 Three years after opening, the museum

Place of the museum in a globalised world  225 won an ‘Emerging Entrepreneur’ award and two years later, a Europa ­Nostra award for cultural heritage.42 The Chester Beatty Library (CBL) owes its origins to the arrival in Ireland in 1950 of a wealthy American, Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, bearing with him one of the finest collections of eastern and oriental manuscripts in private hands. Beatty’s career as a collector had begun just before the first age of globalisation was shattered by the First World War. From the beginning of the twentieth century, his travels as a globe-trotting mining engineer allowed him to exercise his growing enthusiasm as a collector of fine art objects. By 1914 he already owned a superb collection of Chinese snuff bottles. His collecting interests then broadened to include Japanese decorative arts, oriental rugs and Arabic manuscripts.43 When he decided to relocate from London to Dublin in 1950, he took this prized collection with him. Recognising its world-class importance, the Irish government moved swiftly to woo Beatty and secure the collection for Dublin. The CBL opened in 1953 as a private concern funded by Beatty, but by 1957 he had set up a private foundation with a board of trustees to run the Library on behalf of the Irish nation. The Library was designated one of Ireland’s nine National Cultural Institutions in 1997, and now receives over 80% of its funding from government. EPIC Ireland (EI), like the LM’s, is rooted in cultural entrepreneurialism. The historic docklands building in which it is housed was purchased in 2013 by Neville Isdell, an Irishman and former CEO of Coca Cola, who throughout his career lived and worked in 11 countries. He envisioned EI as a vehicle to tell the story of Irish emigration through the centuries and to celebrate the Irish diaspora around the world. It opened under the title ‘EPIC Ireland – the journey of a people’ in May 2016. Its mission is articulated in consciously global terms: ‘to reflect the past, and to invite visitors from across the globe to discover heretofore unknown connections’.44 It also houses the Irish Family History Centre, which helps visitors to search for their Irish ancestors. EI offers an immersive, interactive multi-media experience, using cutting-edge technology to tell its stories. While some loan objects are used throughout the exhibition, EI has no material collections or active collecting policy.

Discussion Of the four museums, the NTM and EI could be said to occupy opposite positions on the spectrum of globalisation effects. The NTM uses hardly any interpretative technology and, though it has a Facebook page, its webpage provides only basic information. Its object-intensive display is dictated by the nature of the collection. Vehicles are experiential, haptic ­phenomena: a digital image of a double-decker bus will never be a substitute for climbing upstairs in one. Its exhibition style is the cluttered presentation of ­objects left largely to speak for themselves, reminiscent of the layout of the ­nineteenth-century museum.

226  Pat Cooke A transport museum illuminates some of the complex ways in which the local and the global play out within a historical framework. Most of the vehicles on show in the NTM are imports – commodities produced by an industry that has been globalised since the 1910s.45 The chances of one transport museum’s holdings bearing a generic resemblance to those of another somewhere else in the world are therefore high. Yet the global origins of such collections act as no impediment to their attraction for primarily native audiences, as the museum does not rate highly among Dublin’s attractions for foreign tourists. For the Irish visitor to the NTM, a British-made Leyland bus is invested with uniquely indigenous living memories associated with Dublin in ‘the rare oul times’. Overall, the NTM may be posited as a paradox of globalisation: a museum whose intensely local appeal is grounded in a collection of objects whose origins lie in the global reach of capitalist commodity production, but which is nevertheless capable of evoking memories and feelings of nostalgia as powerful as any wholly indigenous group of objects. In contrast, EI is a capital-intensive, state-of-the-art, multi-media production with no collection of original objects. Its subject is intrinsically global: the Irish diaspora. It tells the story of the historical spread and impact of the Irish people around the world, using interactive technologies to provide an immersive visitor experience. EI entered negotiations early in 2017 for accreditation under the Museum Standards Programme for Ireland. A crucial factor in determining that it met the definition of a museum was the 2007 revision of ICOM’s definition of a museum to embrace intangible heritage. The revised definition describes a museum as a place that ‘communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment’.46 However, the decision to change the name of the venue to include the word ‘museum’ had been taken only a few months after it opened, based on initial feedback from exiting visitors and TripAdvisor. This revealed that visitors were consistently using the word ‘museum’ to describe and recommend the experience. Thus, after operating briefly under the name ‘EPIC Ireland – the journey of a people’, it was rebranded as ‘EPIC – the Irish Emigration Museum’. This suggests that contemporary visitors may no longer expect the museum experience to revolve primarily, or indeed at all, around the encounter with original objects, and may be quite happy to equate a multi-­ media experience in an exhibition space as meeting their idea of what a museum visit entails. The implication is that the public idea of what constitutes a ‘museum’ is becoming increasingly untethered from its historic, object-based identity, which raises some profound questions around the mission of museums as public institutions. EI has yet to develop a policy for archiving the intangible content of its exhibits and experiences, so that a question remains over its claim to be a museum conforming to the ICOM definition. While sustainability is

Place of the museum in a globalised world  227 an issue for small traditional museums like the LM and NTM, capital-­ intensive enterprises like the EI face this challenge in a different and perhaps more immediate way, given the vulnerability of digital technologies to obsolescence, hacking and viral corruption. The palpable transience of such technologically over-determined facilities suggests that they may lack the inertial durability and locational grounding that the presence of material collections gives to museums in the traditional sense. The CBL’s collection bears some analogy to the NTMs, insofar as its globally-­sourced contents were imported by Beatty when he settled in ­I reland in the 1950s. However, whereas cars, buses and lorries readily find a place in the memories and affections of local populations, an exotic collection of precious manuscripts and prints in inscrutable scripts and languages do not find purchase in the native imagination quite so readily. Unsurprisingly therefore, while the Library always attracted the interest of international academic experts, the Irish public largely ignored it ­during the decades it was housed in a building in a Dublin suburb. However, a decisive moment of revitalisation came with the Library’s transfer to a new city-centre location in the mid-1990s, a move that coincided with the economic boom of the Celtic Tiger years and the profound demographic changes that followed. In a little under 20 years, the country was transformed from being an ­almost completely homogeneous island nation into a diverse, multicultural society in which one-eighth of the population is now foreign-born. These changes offered the Library a new audience that could relate to its culturally-diverse holdings and gave it a revised mission in which the collection was deployed to acknowledge, celebrate and inform Ireland’s emergence as a multi-­cultural society. The Library articulates its mission in consciously global terms. It sees itself as ‘the pre-eminent Irish institution promoting the appreciation and understanding of world cultures’. This global mission has several layers. Firstly, it seeks to engage an audience comprising both native and international visitors. Secondly, it aspires to carve out a distinctive role as a national institution by reaching out to the ‘culturally diverse communities in Ireland’. Thirdly, it is keen to exploit the ‘global appeal’ of its collections, and to act as a research library for scholars from all over the world. Fourthly, it sees itself as a ‘soft power’ institution, projecting a role for Ireland in cultural diplomacy by seeking to ‘foster relations between Ireland and the peoples whose cultures are represented in the collections’. These outward-­ looking priorities explain the Library’s strong commitment to developing its international profile, in pursuit of which it is making a concerted effort to develop its digital resources and social media.47 It recently appointed a head of digital operations (a first for an Irish national institution) and has three other members of staff dedicated full-time to digital operations. Its objective is to have the 30,000 objects in the collection fully digitised and available online.48 Thus the substantial commitment of resources to its online presence bears an organic relationship to its core collection of historic

228  Pat Cooke objects, insofar as it reflects both that collection’s global origins and its newly-discovered relevance to global themes of cultural diversity as now reflected in the composition of the Irish population. The Library is also well-networked internationally. The director, Fionnuala Croke, is currently (2018) the chair of the Asia Europe Museums Association. She was recently a main contributor to an ASEF publication entitled Cities: Living Labs for Culture, which showcased 27 examples of policy and practice drawing on the experiences of over forty cities in Asia and Europe. In her contribution she highlighted the Library’s role in international cultural diplomacy and how ‘by using its collections to make cultural and societal links between diverse communities’ it had become ‘a trusted gathering place for the newer members of Irish society’.49 Cultural institutions that wish to connect the celebration of distinctive national or ethnic identities with their global diasporas (like EI), or that possess world-class collections relating to other cultures that resonate with immigrant communities now settled in Ireland (like the CBL), align with government policies that seek to leverage soft power projections of a country’s image for global recognition and impact. A recent strategy statement by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (2015) states that ‘Irish culture is a global commons, recognised and followed by people who may have no other connection to Ireland’.50 Three of the museums see their identities as grounded in their material collections and exhibitions, augmented by widely-varying levels of commitment to exhibition and online technology. Though the CBL has wholeheartedly embraced digitisation of its collections, it remains committed to exhibiting its holdings in low-key traditional displays that make minimal use of interpretative technologies. The Director regards motivating visitors to come see the collections as central to its promotion and communications strategy.51 The LM presents a miscellany of its donated objects in a pleasing clutter on walls and in cabinets (echoing the format of the NTM in this respect). The director sees this material as central to the process by which the city is interpreted to tourists and natives by the museum’s team of guides.52 But in all other respects it remains a low-tech operation with a comparatively limited online presence. The LM and the NTM remind us that the barriers to entry for setting up a museum are low. An individual or group can start a museum by putting together a small collection of artefacts, finding a modest building to house and display it, and advertising its hours of opening. Most of the world’s voluntary museums are founded in this way. Developing a strong online presence and building international networks require significant inputs of professional skills and capital resources. The CBL can operate at this level because of its status as a publicly-funded national institution, whose mission aligns with the country’s policies for global soft-power projection. EI’s start-up impact is due substantially to the initiative, drive and financial commitment of its entrepreneurial founder, who has spent his life on a

Place of the museum in a globalised world  229 global stage and who wishes to tell a story about Ireland that resonates with his global perspective. Yet EI’s global networks as a cultural institution are much thinner than CBL’s, and some doubt remains over its institutional sustainability as a museum. Indeed, the history of such facilities over recent decades in Ireland is not propitious. ‘Celtworld’ the first such multi-media experience, opened in Tramore in 1992 and closed in 1995. ‘Ceol’, an immersive celebration of Irish traditional dancing, opened in 1999 and closed around 2009. A multi-media exhibition at the National 1798 Centre in Enniscorthy opened in 1998 but, from October 2018, visitors were being directed to Enniscorthy Castle Museum, which has served as the Wexford County Museum since 1962.53 As the case of the NTM shows, poorly capitalised museums with minimal online presence can possess locally-sourced collections with significant global resonance. The LM’s mission to occupy a space of welcome between the tourist and the city impels it to produce a program of temporary exhibitions that reveal a consciousness of forces that transcend a provincial or introverted reading of the city’s history. The museum’s website lists 16 temporary exhibitions to date. At least six of these frame Dublin’s identity through its historical connections with a global world. Two have been about globe-trotting Irishmen (Lafcadio Hearn, who ended up as the principal western interpreter of Japanese culture in the nineteenth century, and Brendan Bracken who was Churchill’s private secretary during World War Two). It has also shown ingenuity in exploiting global brands and diasporic Irish connections to fund its operations. For instance, the global drinks company Diagio (composed of the Latin word ‘dia’, meaning day, and the Greek root ‘geo’, meaning world) sponsored its ‘Guinness and the War’ exhibition in 2015. It has also received support from the Ireland Funds, a philanthropic organisation funded through members of the Irish Diaspora. The LM’s determination to assert a strongly materialised sense of place is embodied in a collection that draws directly on donations from Dubliners, with the city’s citizens in their role as guides acting as its primary interpreters for native and foreign visitors alike. In this sense, it appears to conform to Castell’s ethic of the museum as a ‘communication protocol’, that is, a site that intermediates between a grounded sense of locality and a networked world by means of which a sustaining stream of pilgrim-tourists is brought to its doors. The fact that it receives some funding from the government via the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, from local government via Dublin City Council, and from the Irish tourism board (Failte Ireland) in recognition of its tourism potential, reveals its alignment with national and city-level cultural industry policies. In this respect, the object-­ based, idiosyncratic nature of the museum tends to support Cunningham and Murphy’s contention that – at least in the case of museums that cleave to historically authentic collections as the basis of their interaction with visitors – cultural industry policies can result in a ‘productive ferment’, in which the homogenising tendencies of such policies tend to get filtered

230  Pat Cooke in the process of local adaptation. Moreover, the museum’s idiosyncrasy arises from its distinctive commitment to having its exhibitions interpreted to the public by Dubliners, which conforms with Castell’s call for museums to become social spaces in a hyper-connected world. Museums may no longer be exclusively dependent on auratic objects for their survival, but for most of them material collections remain central to their identity and ethical purpose. For this reason, objects are also essential to any role they might play as ‘communication protocols’, negotiating the relationship between the local and global dimensions of contemporary cultural identities. Multi-media and online technologies are not fundamentally inimical to these objectives, but there exists a tension between the ineluctable phenomenality of objects and the tendency of contemporary technology to untether us from sources of authenticity and meaning in the material world. By occupying an intermediate role that negotiates the relationship between material presences and virtualised representations of cultures and identities, museums can offer a very contemporary form of public value: an assurance that activities at the virtual end of the spectrum are constrained from floating entirely free into a cyber-world of simulacra because they are validated by the presence of real things in actual places. If this reading has merit, it also suggests that a museum based exclusively on intangible heritage and offering only a multi-mediated or online encounter with historical or scientific data would, as hypothesised at the outset, represent the logic of ‘fluid modernity’ realised through the form of the museum.

Notes 1 Z. Bauman, Does Ethics Have a Chance In a World of Consumers? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), p. 17. 2 Ibid., p. 28. 3 S. Conn, Do Museums Still Need Objects? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), pp. 22, 25. 4 M. Bezzeg, ‘The Influence of Globalisation on Museology’, in International Journal of Heritage Studies, 5, no.1, pp. 1; 17–19, 1999. 5 L. Young, ‘Globalisation, Culture and Museums: A Review of Theory’, in ­International Journal of Heritage Studies, 5, no. 1, p. 9, 1999. 6 T. Inglis, Global Ireland (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 71–72. 7 E. Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture (­London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 153–262. 8 S. Keene, review of Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture by E. Hooper-Greenhill, in Material Religion, 1, no. 2, p. 282, 2005. 9 Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture, p. 152. 10 C. Bortoletto, ‘Globalising Intangible Cultural Heritage?’, in S. Labadi and C. Long, eds., Heritage and globalisation (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 97–98. 11 Cited in C. Kreps, ‘Indigenous Curation, Museums, and Intangible Cultural Heritage’, in L. Smith and N. Akagawa, eds., Intangible Heritage (London: Routledge, 2009), p. 204. 12 Ibid, p. 202.

Place of the museum in a globalised world  231 13 S. Pearce, ‘Collecting as Medium and Message’, in E. Hooper-Greenhill, ed., Museum, Media, Message (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 17. 14 K. Muller, ‘Museums and Virtuality’, in Curator, 45, no. 1, p. 24, 2002. See also ‘Museums and the Challenges of the 21st Century’. https://futuremuseums. wordpress.com/2008/09/25/museums-and-the-challenges-of-the-21st-centurypaper-by-dr-klaus-muller/ (accessed 14 October, 2017). 15 T. Sola, ‘Making the Total Museum Possible’, in R. Parry, ed., Museums in a Digital Age (London: Routledge, 2009), p. 424. 16 A. Witcomb, ‘The Materiality of Virtual Technologies: A New Approach to Thinking about the Impact of Multimedia in Museums’, in F. Cameron and S. Kenderine, eds., Theorising Digital Cultural Heritage (Massachusets: MIT Press, 2007), p. 35. 17 S. Milekic, ‘Toward Tangible Virtualities: Tangialities’, in ibid, p. 369. 18 F. Cameron, ‘Beyond the Cult of the Replicant: Museums and Historical ­Digital Objects—Traditional Concerns, New Discourses’, in ibid, pp. 57–58. 19 Ibid, pp. 60–61. 20 S. Conn, Do Museums Need Objects?, p. 7. 21 C. A. Kratz, and I. Karp, ‘Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations’, in C. Rassool and B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, eds., Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/global Transformations (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 2. 22 A. Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 2003), p. 10. 23 A. Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 5–7. 24 Ibid, pp. 33–34. 25 S. H. Dudley, ed., Museum Objects: Experiencing the Properties of Things (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 2–3. 26 Ibid, p. 6. 27 Ibid, p. 8. 28 S. Jay Gould, I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning In Natural History (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 48. 29 Z. Bauman, Does Ethics Have a Chance?, p. 180. 30 M. Castells, ‘Museums in the Information Era: Cultural Connectors of Time and Space’; Keynote Address (ICOM 2001). http://archives.icom.museum/­ pdf/E_news2001/p4_2001-3.pdf (accessed 25 October, 2017). 31 C. Grodach, and A. Loukaitou-Sideris, ‘Cultural Development Strategies and Urban Revitalisation’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 13, no. 4, p. 350, 2007. 32 S. Cunningham, ‘Trojan Horse or Rorschach Blot? Creative Industries Discourse Around the World’, in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 15, no. 4, p. 375, 2009. 33 B. Murphy, ‘Museums, Globalisation and Cultural Diversity’, in International Journal of Heritage Studies, 5, no. 1, pp. 46–47, 1999. 34 P. Levitt, Artifacts and Allegiances: How Museums Put the Nation and the World on Display (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), pp. 3–4; 8. 35 M. Vidal Gonzalez, ‘Intangible Heritage Tourism and Identity’, in Tourism Management, 29, pp. 807–808, 2008. 36 D. Horne, The Great Museum (Verso: London, 1984), pp. 4; 10–11. 37 R. C. Lois-González, and X. M. Santos, ‘Tourists and Pilgrims on Their Way to Santiago. Motives, Caminos and Final Destinations’, in Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 13, no. 2, p. 161, 2015. 38 NTM website. www.nationaltransportmuseum.org/about.html (accessed 23 October, 2017).

232  Pat Cooke 39 ‘Little Museum of Dublin has big ambitions’, Irish Times, 22 October, 2011. 40 Interview with Trevor White, Director of the Little Museum, Irish Times, 23 October, 2017. 41 NTM website. www.littlemuseum.ie/ (accessed 23 October, 2017). 42 ‘Welcome ambassadors take to the streets of Dublin’, Irish Times, 15 March, 2011. 43 B. P. Kennedy, Sir Alfred Chester Beatty and Ireland, 1950–68 (Dublin: Glendale, 1998), pp. 26–32. 4 4 EI website. http://epicchq.com/about-epic-irish-emigration-museum/ (accessed 16 October, 2017). 45 It is worth noting in this context that Henry Ford, the son of Irish emigrants, established a tractor production plant in Cork in 1919, which was converted to a car assembly plant in the 1930s. See www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/ articles/when-ford-motors-came-cork (accessed: 20 July, 2018). 46 See ICOM website. http://archives.icom.museum/definition.html (accessed 16 October, 2017). 47 CBL website. www.cbl.ie/About-Us/The-Chester-Beatty-Library.aspx (accessed 20 October, 2017). 48 Interview with Fionnuala Croke, Director of the CBL, 23 October 2017. 49 F. Croke, ‘What Role for Cultural Institutions In Shaping Creative Cities?’, in Cities: Living Labs for Culture? S. Mangano and A. Sekhar, eds., (Singapore: ASEF, 2016), pp. 34–37. 50 The Global Island: Ireland’s Foreign Policy for a Changing World (Dublin: Government of Ireland: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2015), p. 25. 51 Interview with Fionnuala Croke, Director of the CBL, 23 October 2017. 52 Interview with Trevor White, Director of the Little Museum, 23 October 2017. 53 For closure of the 1798 Centre, see: http://1798centre.ie/plan-my-visit (accessed 22 October, 2018).

15 Curating democratic and civic engagement Anwar Tlili

Introduction This chapter examines how democracy can manifest itself in the work of museums (henceforth also used to include art galleries), and how the forms of democratic engagement unique to them sit within the organisational culture of the UK museum. However, to undertake such an inquiry one must recognise the existence of several practical, sometimes overlapping, concerns. Firstly, there is the policy itself, which in many instances involves a market-driven social turn within the organisational culture of museums, arguably manifest across practice, management and even scholarship over the last 20 years. Such transformation has meant that the work of museums has been submitted to norms and priorities external to the museum field, including pedagogical, cultural and even social policy ends. Furthermore, such an expansion of the roles and operational remit expected of museums has brought about extensive re-evaluations, while a managerialist mode of governance that regulates and steers museum work, assessing it against largely numerical and quantitative targets and criteria, is now firmly in place. Against this backdrop of change and flux, this chapter poses questions concerning these new configurations – the assemblage of the social turn, the blurring of the specifically museographic content in museum work, and the managerialist ethos – and re-examines the museum as a potential ‘worksite of democracy’. To help establish as full a critique as possible this chapter also aims to conceptualise the extent to which museums can contribute to experimental and alternative forms of democratic and civic engagement. And it proceeds from the core question of what type of relationship could exist between the museum and the idea of democracy; such a question acquires a particular and timely salience in light of the ‘participatory’ turn in UK arts organisations in recent years, and some museums have been trying to adopt the principles of public participation and co-creation. This chapter proceeds, therefore, from some reflections about how the concept of democracy tends to be understood and used within museums, and how museum democracy tends to be construed and enacted in museum work. Analysis

234  Anwar Tlili will specifically focus on four interrelated dimensions, namely, access, the politics of representation, participation, and the overarching notion of cultural policy.

The practice and norm of democracy Amid the ever increasing confusion surrounding the word ‘democracy’, accentuated by current forms of political populism that cannot be explained as derailments but are integral to what democracy can engender in practice, the question of what the museum – and the forms of museology and museography that inform it – can offer, acquires a very special significance. This crisis in democracy coincides with growing attempts on the part of museums to ‘curate’ some relevance to democracy, pursued explicitly and consciously, and not just as an incidentally desirable by-product of mainstream museum programming. The word ‘democracy’, Agamben reminds us, is burdened with an inherent ambiguity which may be seen as the source of the current diverse and contrasting semantic and ideological meanings to which the word has been harnessed. ‘Of what do we speak when we speak of democracy?’ asks Agamben, before highlighting the structural ambiguity of the term: ‘it might mean one of two different things: a way of constituting the body politic (in which case we are talking about public law), or a technique of governing (in which case our horizon is that of administrative practice)’.1 In other words, democracy can refer to a mode of governing and managing the population, as well as a norm of public life (a meta norm that subsumes other core norms such as popular sovereignty and self-governance). Indeed, overlapping with this ambiguity, and complicating it further, is its use as an empirical description of certain arrangements of government defined in juridical and institutional terms (formally codified procedures of voting and decision-making), in addition to its normative reference to the values that in principle make democracy a desirable form of public life. The practical logic of political life, on the other hand, can strip it down to a simple method of organising competition among and selecting from the political elites in any given society, as Schumpeter observed from early in the twentieth century. 2 Like many slippery and ideologically loaded words, the description and the norm are all too often conflated and collapsed into each other, often intentionally: a mode of exercising power that derives its legitimacy from democratic language and principles. With the deficit in substantive democracy, there is now a growing recognition that liberal representative democracy, as practice and as normative framework for governance, is in a critical state.3 For instance, the biggest challenge now facing us is that democracy has been largely reduced to voting at the expense of reasoned and effective public deliberation. Even the electoral aspect of democracy is widely recognised to be in crisis, partly because voters are positioned as self-interested consumers and statistical/

Curating democratic and civic engagement  235 demographic targets. Political legitimacy for what comes under the name of the democratic form of the state has been largely reduced to the vote and territorial representation in the process. The electoral game, taken on its own terms, as well as the political configurations that it is capable of producing and supporting, remain largely ‘over-determined’ by – primarily – capitalist economics and corporate interests4 (the case of – as it were – the structural impossibility of Bernie Sanders’ electoral success in the 2016 US elections is a good case in point). However, it is the normative content of democracy that we ought to be concerned with, and we might begin by asking ourselves to what extent can museums tap into the inexhaustible and durable normative core of democracy to creatively design and stage forms of doing democracy that are not reducible to techniques of population management and ‘the manufacturing of consensus’ and political legitimacy? There has been a great deal of debate on the intersection of culture and democracy, and how culture and the arts  – in their various organisational manifestations and embodiments  – can intersect with democracy, and the prospects for a democracy that is specific to culture and the arts. 5 It has also been noted that what has been described as the ‘cultural turn’ in politics associated with the rise of identity politics, displacing more ‘traditional’ forms of political identification along the lines of class divisions, lends a more critical place for culture and the arts in the political scene, with art becoming a more recognisable form of political expression and ‘doing’ identity.6

Democracy and museums – path crossings The museum, in its diverse and conflicting conceptions and practices, does not readily lend itself to democratic ends; the museum and democracy are not ‘natural bedfellows’, despite the fact that the museum is a public thing and could be seen as part of an alternative practice of civil society, the public space that sits independently between the state (including party politics) and the economy, where the citizenry can engage in alternative modes of political involvement and association.7 This is due not so much to an anti-­democratic institutional culture in museums, as it is to do with the structural traits and features of the museum’s organisational identity and the divergent and unrelated historical trajectories of the museum and the idea and practice of democracy. In historical terms one might argue that they have developed separately and, perhaps, even indifferently to each other, with their paths crossing – at least in terms of the intentions of some ­nineteenth-century politicians and policymakers – when governmental power made ‘democratic’ concessions by extending the suffrage to a much wider demographic field (including working class men). It was at this moment of democracy in its inchoate modern figure as essentially a mode of population management and legitimation of power that the museum, along with a suite of other educational and cultural institutions, were seen

236  Anwar Tlili as potentially good instruments of civilising the masses who would – so the argument went – be governing the country through their demographic weight within the majoritarian system. Thus, the educational project that museums were recruited into was essentially about the moral rescue of the lower classes. In that sense, the early intersection between existing democracy and the museum is steeped in irony: the interface between the two, in terms of the policy’s ultimate objective and rationale, was hardly about democracy, hardly about museum education and the curatorial input that would go into it; it was essentially an attempt to tame the souls of the working classes; this is reinforced by the parallel push for professionalisation of museum work, in line with a broader trend for emerging occupations in the nineteenth century to stake their claims to professional autonomy and mark their own exclusive professional territory.8 O’Neill suggests that the late nineteenth-century museum departed from what was by then a well-established educational mission embraced by British museums which had withdrawn into a curatorial formalism that caused the educational function to go by the board.9 Perhaps this move away from education was necessitated by both the push for the ‘professional project’10 and professional autonomy of museum work, and releasing the museum from the governmental expectation of taming the voting masses when it turned out that voting working class men were not as subversive as was alarmingly predicted.

Democracy in museums: the current practice It is now commonplace to see elitism as what the contemporary museum should seek to depart from and define itself against. Elitism is the negative attribute that has been consistently attached to what is regarded as ‘the traditional museum’, and with it are bracketed other associated image liabilities for museums, such as the representation of dominant culture and exclusion of minority cultures. ‘Elitism’ is now rather freely and loosely used as a stigmatising label to quickly dismiss and condemn anything within museums that aims to either challenge the audience or to offer some learning points that do not necessarily link to, or vindicate, the audiences’ prior knowledge and experiences. Elitism, so the criticism goes, both excludes and – when it tries to include – ends up patronising through the knowledge/truth and presumed didactic methods that go with its transmission. Closely related to elitism is the didacticism label that describes museum work as offering a cognitive content that can challenge the comfortable beliefs predicated of audience communities, based on what is now an orthodox and populist doctrine of constructivism as the only legitimate mode of mediating and pedagogising the contents of museum knowledge (you need to build around what the members of the audience already know and experience).11 It is not difficult to detect how this well-meaning and putatively empowering and democratic approach can easily slip into the patronising position that it is meant to break with.

Curating democratic and civic engagement  237 It is against this negative backdrop of elitism and – if the excluded non-­ visitors manage to turn up – its concomitant didacticism that the first layer of museum democratic practice can be understood. The premise is that elitism is essentially undemocratic, a form of cultural aristocracy that negates the cultural right of the majority of citizens to participate in the museum; undoing museum elitism (and its concomitant didacticism) is thus assumed to be about doing democracy in and through museums. Widening access, or democratising access as it is sometimes referred to, serves as an antidote to the extent that it presumably neutralises the effects of elitism through the barriers and exclusions that support it. These barriers can take on different forms, ranging from cultural barriers (inaccessible/didactic content) to financial (the entrance fee), among others.12 While rethinking the museum and museum practice through the imperative of reducing barriers, or rather – more realistically – negotiating with some of these barriers, is admirable for the socially responsive museum, it is not entirely clear how it serves democracy in the wider sense of the term. Even if we were to take at face value access as an aspect of museum democracy, it is important to note that widening access – financial, physical, intellectual, affective – is all too often difficult to disentangle from marketing considerations and the need for museums to be seen as providing not just for the select few, but to justify its public support and attract funders who will be drawn by high visitor figures. However, it is all too easy to adopt a purist cultural and humanist mission angle from which to criticise the (abstract) museum for compromising itself; museums also live in the real world of instrumentalism and cultural economics and must therefore survive by negotiating within these systemic demands. What is not as plausible is the argument that the widening access agenda is part of museum’s way of doing and re-energising democracy through alternative forms of participation grounded in the specificity of museum work. Despite some advances achieved as a result of the conscious push for widening access, access – at its best and when it is not the PR face for a scramble for visitor numbers, especially from ‘untraditional’ visitors – can at best be seen as a facilitator and a precondition for museum democracy.

Democracy as politics of display/representation The second variation on how democracy is framed within museum practice revolves around what can be generically described as the politics of representation/display that recognises and celebrates diversity, generally assumed to be all that which did not qualify for inclusion in ‘the traditional museum’, or had been (mis)represented through the prisms of dominant ideologies and devaluations of social and cultural groups.13 Breaking with the monocultural dominant group, the museum is now converted into an institution that involves, derives from, reflects and/or speaks to diversity, i.e. the diverse social and cultural groups in particular whose historical outlooks, cultural resources and constitutive narratives are in some way

238  Anwar Tlili consigned to historical silence, exclusion or suppression. What is more, this is coupled with a curatorial-educational pursuit that places right at the centre the visitors, and in particular the non-visiting sections of the public – mainly the local demographic landscape – who correlate with a particular socio-economic and cultural group. Whether this trend developed out of a new museological philosophy championed and enacted by a generation of post-1968 museum workers who sought to translate the egalitarian and art-activist spirit of the 1960s in the context of what came to be known as the community arts movement,14 or whether it was prompted by the marketing needs of museums to widen the demographic base of their visitors and users, is not entirely clear. It may be that in order to attract non-traditional visitors, as well as ­responding to the market-driven approach to museum management reinforced by New ­Labour’s social inclusion policies, that there are several imperatives at play.15 In any case, from the early 1990s onwards, the idea of proactively speaking to and for ‘local communities’ and oppressed social groups emerged (although in the broader arts world this was predated by two decades or so wherein the emergence of community arts projects flourished);16 some documented successes of attracting ‘non-traditional’ audiences have also been noted, especially by local museums located in ethnically and culturally diverse areas, due to the new approach to museology and the attempt to represent the particularities of the local social and cultural groups.17 In recent years there has been a proliferation of museum programs themed around various social and cultural groups whose identities had been and/ or still are generally devalued, excluded and discriminated against. For example, in 2017 there was a series of LGBTQ-themed exhibitions to mark the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act that decriminalised male homosexuality in England and Wales, most notable of which were: The British Museum’s Love, Desire, Identity: Exploring LGBTQ Histories, putting LGBTQ histories (emphasis on the plural) in a long historical perspective stretching from ancient civilisations to the present day, anchored in invaluable objects telling stories of sexual difference facilitated by helpful and accessible explanation and interpretation; Tate Britain’s Queer British Art 1861–1967, starting with the year the death penalty was outlawed for ‘sodomy’ and ending with the year of Sexual Offences Act, occupying eight separately themed rooms (starting with the ‘Coded Desires’ focussed on gay artistic creation in Victorian Britain and ending with the ‘Francis Bacon and David Hockney’ themed room); and the exhibition staged by the British Library in its museum capacity titled Gay UK: Love, Law & Liberty, covering LGBT history in the UK in multimedia documentary style from 1895 (the year of the trial of Oscar Wilde) to the present. And there have been many museum programs designed in the same spirit in relation to race and ethnicity, gender, disability and religion, with a view to achieving a number of museological, political and ethical ends: rectifying misrepresentations; challenging stereotypes and negative perceptions; going

Curating democratic and civic engagement  239 some way towards fostering a feeling of empowerment, however limited, among the social and cultural groups thus represented; and fostering an affective attachment to and feeling of identification with the institution of the museum by creating a degree of local and group-specific relevance. Of course, not all such programs are designed with all these aims in mind, or in any case were able to achieve these effects, but it is important to take these aims into account to regulate and drive museological practice targeting the politics and ethics of representation and fostering a critical practice18 and engagement that can have a transferrable democratic value. It should also be noted that the most common form of this museology targets communities and – especially in the case of smaller museums – ‘local communities’, i.e. social and cultural groups with a significant demographic presence locally, defined mainly by race or ethnicity, including religion. And it is particularly in relation to work with ‘communities’ that this approach can run into some difficulties and dilemmas, and throw into question the democratic import of the recognitional identitarian politics that it is premised on. This new politics of display – putting right misrepresentations of the ­oppressed – is not as straightforward as it might seem, nor without its ­potential ethical and political dilemmas and conundrums. For example, there is the problem of the potential unintended effects and receptions that can range from reducing the identities being represented to victimhood status (evoking affective reactions of sympathy and rage more than anything else); turning tragic and traumatic events and the injustices that go with them into aesthetic or museographic materials, or a spectacle for the non-­ victims; and/or serving as a form of unexamined therapeutic experience for the victims or for people who identify with them in the present. I am by no means suggesting that these – as it were – counter-representation efforts are bound to be fraught with contradictions and negative unintended effects but, rather, that these questions often remain unattended to, and might actually work against the intended democratic and empowerment values being championed by the museum. In some clearly problematic versions of museum practice in this respect, this new politics of display/representation, however well-meaning it might be, could get caught up in questionable forms of relating to the communities it seeks to represent, underpinned by a clumsy cultural relativism and an unconditional celebration of cultural difference that can loop back into the patronising institutional position that the museum sought to take a critical distance from. The problem essentially lies in the fact that the museum can end up uncritically affirming and celebrating local community identities, reinforcing and endorsing communitarianism and its founding beliefs and practices of uniformity and homogeneity, without doing enough to simultaneously challenge some of the ethnocentric and conservative beliefs, nor highlighting the diversity internal to the community. Understandably, the museum is more likely than not to try to steer clear of questioning the presumed homogeneity of community identities by highlighting an internal

240  Anwar Tlili diversity that undermines the very notion and self-concept of the community to be represented. In other words, museum work would then be bound to endorse community ‘consensus’ and avoid the representation of intra-­ communal dissensus,19 as a precondition for the collaborative work of representation to go ahead, and due to the nervous attitude most m ­ useums would approach these questions with. Fortunately, not all attempts to work with communities follow this model. In some cases, critical museological philosophy comes up against the (largely) inherently conservative and self-centred ethos of the community, especially when the museum has to rely on ‘community organisations’ to represent the community and make a self-validating input into the ­museum representation. The tensions and conflicts are most clearly exemplified in Shantanawi’s reflective account of his experience as curator at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam for a 2003 exhibition titled Urban Islam, 20 co-curated with Deniz Ünsal and Marijke Besselink, one of a great number of exhibitions on Islam-related themes across Europe in the wake of 9/11, in response to public debates as well as alarm about Islam and Muslims in Europe. This exhibition is remarkable for its bold attempt to embrace and represent dissensus to the disgruntlement of some sections of the participating community members that took part in the focus groups for the consultation that informed the exhibition. It was successful in being both democratic and inclusive in a substantive way, representing a spectrum of different modes and shades of attachment and non-attachment to multiple versions of Islam, including Muslims who identify as completely secular, a minority unthinkable – or maybe unrepresentable – within the common negative perceptions about Muslims and, equally important, within standard collective self-conceptions among Muslims. This of course could well further ‘alienate’ large sections of Muslims and reinforce their non-visiting attitude (hence the potential tension between access oriented towards increasing non-traditional visitor numbers and a museology true to an ethic of democratic engagement that does not shy away from dissensus). 21 By capturing contradictions in community-sourced outlooks and experiences – both common public perceptions of Islam in Dutch society as well as standard self-conceptions of Muslims— it has made a worthy contribution to both broader democratic debate about a topical issue, a genuinely democratic critique of hardened and comfortable opinions and self-opinions (i.e. consensus and what Plato calls doxa, which he sees as a major flawed component of Athenian democracy), and a creative engagement with the topic through a museographic composition that offered learning points through a pedagogy that paid little respect for the audience’s prior knowledge (on both sides), in contrast to constructivist museology.

Democracy as participation Often overlapping with the pursuit of democracy through alternative representation is a degree of participation on the part of members of the group

Curating democratic and civic engagement  241 to be represented, as is clear in the case of designing and curating Urban Islam. The last three decades have witnessed so much change in museum practice, museum thinking and museum policy that many ‘turns’ had to be invented conceptually to try to keep pace with the various transformations. In addition to the educational, communicative and social turns, there has also been what has been theorised – as well as critiqued – as a ‘participatory’ turn in arts organisations in the UK:22 a conscious attempt to depart from the image and function of purveyors of artefacts and performances for aesthetic judgment and appreciation, and towards a modus operandi that is driven by the principles and aims of public participation and even co-creation. This in turn, coupled with ‘the educational turn’23 that paved the way for it, opens up a space for the arts to contribute to a distinctive mode of democratic and civic engagement that is arts-based, fashioned out of artistic resources and affordances, thereby making a contribution to what McGuigan calls the cultural public sphere as a distinctive player in civil society. 24 A core premise underpinning this approach is that cultural organisations have a significant potential in informing the cultural public sphere, and can help address the ‘democratic deficit’ of existing forms of liberal-representative democracy by cultural means. Participation and co-creation are now the new ‘buzzwords’ in museum discourse, replacing to a great extent the dominant policy-driven discourse of access and social inclusion that marked the previous decade. This is now embedded in cultural policies, exemplified most clearly in the Heritage ­Lottery Fund’s funding policy that has made it a requirement for funding applications to incorporate an element of participation in the proposed projects. In a key policy document 25 the Heritage Lottery Fund defines a spectrum of possible participatory activities: namely, ‘Informing’; ‘Consulting’; ‘Deciding together; ‘Acting together’; and ‘Supporting others to take the lead’. The first two aspects of participation – informing and consulting – are defined as ‘important first steps in any project’ which ‘are, however, passive ways to involve people and your project will not fully meet our Participation aim if it only includes this type of activity’.26 They are necessary but insufficient steps, and thus the emphasis is clearly on the other three, described as ‘more substantial participation’, involving community input into decision-making, conception and delivery of the project. This constitutes a strong incentive for museums to tailor proposed projects to this ­vision of co-creative participation which, it should be noted, focuses more on the process of community involvement than the merits – aesthetic and educational – of the projects’ outcomes; a co-creation that is more concerned about the ‘co’ of community involvement than the ‘creation’ in co-creation. With such policy and funding incentive in place, and in a sector now shaped by formidable cuts to public funding streams for the arts sector over the last few years, it is all too understandable that museums, the smaller ones in particular, will seek to fit into this norm of what constitutes participation and how it should somehow be invented in any project, irrespective

242  Anwar Tlili of museological and even educational considerations. The ultimate aim, as prescribed by policy at least, seems to be more about a form of social work targeted at groups – or rather their representatives – defined as communities. This is echoed in the DCMS’s 2016 ‘Culture White Paper’ where ‘community cohesion’, a term that had all but disappeared from political discourse since New Labour was in government, re-emerges as a central plank in DCMS’s vision of the value of culture: ‘cultural participation can contribute to social relationships, community cohesion, and/or make communities feel safer and stronger’. 27 The substantive content of experiments with co-creation and participation in arts organisations and museums remains open to debate; it has come under close scrutiny that has highlighted mixed results, and has for the most part leaned towards a sceptical view of the extent to which participation and co-creation have lived up to their name.28 In fact, museum participation as a desirable brand has been used so liberally to describe (and validate) a wide range of public involvements that it could now mean anything from consultation with representatives of local groups about exhibition planning, putting on exhibition locally sourced objects, giving the opportunity to visitors to leave some comments and impressions on the exhibition and/or taking part in interactive exhibits, to social gatherings organised in the physical space of the museum. Hence the semantic move to use co-creation, co-curation or co-production instead to emphasise the claim to the existence of a substantial element of participatory input into the defining core of what museums do. Participation in museum work thus covers a whole spectrum of variations, depending on the degree and type of participation as well as the profile of the participants. Some participatory museum work tries to span as much as possible of the gamut of different forms and degrees of participation. Perhaps the most citable example in this respect is the conception and construction of The Information Age Gallery at the Science Museum in London which is unique in the sense that it is now part of the permanent exhibition, occupying the largest gallery space in the Museum, unlike the typical short-term HLFfunded projects. The Gallery set out to bring the Science Museum up to date, as it were, with the spirit of the age (replacing the history of shipping theme in the same space), through more than 800 objects that map and indeed celebrate the history and present of information and communications technologies, anchored in six themed areas: The Cable, The Telephone Exchange, Broadcast, The Constellation, The Cell and The Web. It is a multi-modal piece of museum work, combining traditional object displays, digital configurations and interactive and immersive environments in addition to dialogue events and a learning space attached to it. The London Science Museum boasts a long and pioneering history in experimenting with participatory approaches in public engagement with ­science, including through its dedicated space for dialogue and public debate around science-related issues known as the Dana Centre; this is also

Curating democratic and civic engagement  243 facilitated by the already established everyday relevance of science and the readily available public concerns that it can tap into (e.g. public and political debates about GM crops, cloning, mad cow disease and the MMR vaccine in the early 2000s), although any science museum will have to grapple with public perceptions of the intimidating aura of science as an esoteric field, the preserve of a handful of geniuses. Against this background, participatory approaches in the Information Age Gallery have included a series of consultations with a wide range of diverse groups, user- and audience-­ informed creation of some aspects of the gallery through objects and stories of how ordinary lives have been transformed by information technologies as The Gallery set out to tell a multi-voiced rounded story. However, again this is a case of tapping into a massive amount of pre-existing interest and everyday materials and activities that can be contributed by ‘non-expert’ participants, especially young people whose lives are saturated by information technologies and thus can offer exhibition material that can be framed as ‘co-creative’ and ‘user-generated’, including the stories of people whose lives have been transformed by technologies in diverse and multiple ways. It is also worth noting that participation here seems to operate in a technical and relational way, though it is less evident what the democratic or civic engagement import of this form of participation might be. In fact, this is typical of many participatory projects, even in the arts where the aim of participation is, for example, a disorientating sensory experience on the part of the participants whose immersion plays a constitutive part in the work (e.g. the site-specific installations by Lee Bul’s 2018 Labyrinth of ­Infinity Mirros: Via Negativa II at the Hayward Gallery, or by Michelangelo Pistoletto in 2011 at the Serpentine in London, titled The Mirror of Judgement). The political (and democratising) impetus and effect of such participatory experiences (e.g. fostering an alternative relation to time and space and social relations in opposition to dominant patterns of such experiences shaped by the imperatives of an alienating capitalist society and politics), contrary to what many of their creators affirm and hope (including Lee Bul and Michelangelo Pistoletto), is rather far-fetched and – at best – upstaged by intense and uncanny sensory experiences that are, on those terms, enjoyable and engaging. Another major strand of museum work that can lay some claim to participation and engagement beyond the traditional model of museum spectatorship comes under the category of protest or activist art. Common to the various forms of this type of museum work is the attempt to turn museum work into immersive political statements against inequalities, injustices and dominant ideologies and values. The museum scene has recently witnessed a proliferation of such protest-oriented museological work. Against the backdrop of resurgent conservatism, neo-liberal policies and the democratic deficit, they are generally aimed at unmasking dominant ideologies as well as political mobilisation by museological means. Some of the most notable examples include a series of exhibitions at White Chapel Gallery:

244  Anwar Tlili the 2018 This is How We Bite Our Tongue by Elmgreen and Dragset in protest against gentrification; The Spirit of Utopia in 2013 based on works by a group of architects, artists and designers producing a hybrid exhibition with some participatory aspects, all underpinned by a critique of current socio-economic conditions; and Peter Liversidge’s 2015 Notes on Protesting, involving participatory input from children drawn from a local school voicing their age-related protest by means of videos and placards that went on display. Using the museum as a form of dissent that seeks to engage museum participants and have them involved in their socio-political position as citizens in an unjust and unequal social, political and economic arrangement can embody a constructive and active civil society role for the museum in the public sphere. However, although siding with the oppressed and the disenfranchised, this approach can easily slip into an advocatory didactic mode of museology that works against the critical intent to redistribute the power balance between the museum and its participants. As far as the configuration of democracy is concerned, the question could just as easily be about the participation and co-creation of what? The core defining premise of participation/co-creation, or its assumed precondition of possibility, is the idea that creation – more precisely creativity – is not the attribute and preserve of the elite (or the elitist creators within the institution). Although participation/co-creation draws its inspiration from a range of rich and nuanced practical and theoretical sources, much of the current practice (as well as the discourses surrounding it) appears to be caught up in a great deal of blurriness and/or oversimplification of what constitutes participation/co-creation and – more importantly – sound examples of it. The current standard conception – at least in terms of the norm – and practice of participation/co-creation seems to have been inspired by interpretations of some valuable and creative avant-garde thinking/practice, including the work of the post-68 community arts movement; the experimental participatory theatre developed and theorised by Augusto Boal, 29 first used as an actual form of political activism under the dictatorship in Brazil in the 1960s and 70s;30 aesthetic tenets associated with Situationism;31 and more recently the theoretical work of Rancière32 and the ‘relational aesthetics’ approach developed by Bourriaud.33 In contrast, some advocacy of participation/co-creation seems to be built categorically against the creative, aesthetic and even educational values that have developed out of the work of ‘traditional’ artistic and curatorial work. It is essentially and in principle about undermining the distinction – and the pedagogical distance – ­between creative producer and visitor/spectator. There is an element of an anti-professional ethos hovering around the idea of participation and co-creation, at least in terms of the way it has been articulated in some advocacy literature,34 that tends to be equated with the democratisation of the museum, couched in the attractive idiom of empowerment: shifting the balance of power from the expert/curator/artist of the old regime to the now empowered non-expert who can be creative just by being who they already are. For example, Leadbeater in a key advocacy text

Curating democratic and civic engagement  245 in the co-creation literature lauds what he calls the emerging participatory avant-garde and sees co-creation as an anti-establishment movement that is ushering a new age and mode of artistic practice that will over time generate ‘a folk culture in which authorship is shared and cumulative rather than individualistic’, and where – echoing Bourriaud – the conversation and dialogic interaction generated through the process of co-creation, and widened and supported through digital communication, become part of the artwork. The ‘cultural populism’35 that participation/co-creation and its advocacy can slide into occurs when it is framed and conceived in neat opposition to the recognised arts field – the figure of the artist and the institution that supports and validates their art – as a simple repository of the aesthetic values and luxuries of the dominant classes, and to replace the arts with an anthropological understanding of cultures linked to discrete social groups united – in effect – by their non-belonging in the arts field and its audiences. The forms of participation discussed above aim to feed directly into what museums do by virtue of their organisational identity, i.e. the museographic work of museums, or what in any case aspires to generate museographic value in some co-creative mode. There is yet another distinct mode of participation that is focussed around public input and participation in the governance procedures of the museum as an organisational entity. In its ideal-typical form this is about power sharing and co-ownership of the m ­ useum, and about the museum ceding some of its symbolic and institutional power of decision-making and priority setting through public involvement in its governance as a micro polity. Museum democracy through participation in this sense can be framed as a means of redistributing the power resource and agency vested by default in the museum management, and more broadly as one of the means of reconciliation between the ­museum and its publics.36

Museum as a site and agent of cultural democracy The instances of museum practice that seek to intersect with and connect to democracy can be seen as manifestations of the broader framework of cultural democracy. The term needs to be handled with caution and used tentatively as it has been invested with a wide range of values, meanings, and polemical stances that do not sit comfortably with one another. The situation of ‘cultural democracy’ is in many ways analogous to social justice, which is used as an unassailable ideological icon to legitimate whatever one’s political vision or program is. At one end of the spectrum we find a conception of cultural democracy that simply equates it with what used to be widely referred to as access and social inclusion, 37 with more pronounced emphasis on everyday creativity as being of equal value and validity compared to established arts. At the other end stands a view of cultural democracy that is much more radical, identifying the access and social inclusion policies as well as mainstream multiculturalism as the problem and the obstacle, not the response, to a substantive democratising

246  Anwar Tlili of culture. This is exemplified most clearly by the Cultural Policy Collective whose conception of cultural democracy proceeds from a radical critique of the top-down influence from both the state and its allied neo-liberal market on culture and the arts to put forward an alternative vision for cultural democracy. Composed of a group of artists, curators, educators and cultural workers in Scotland, they challenged the established policy of social inclusion in 2004 when the latter dominated policy and practice in culture and the arts, especially within the museum scene. Their manifesto for cultural democracy makes no attempt to mince its words in its critique of social inclusion as a policy diversion from genuine cultural democracy: ‘Our experience of social inclusion programs has been one of fundamental tokenism, not least in the way they recruit willing representatives from targeted zones without considering the non-participation of far wider sections of their population’. They pulled no punches, including with the largely consensual tenets of multiculturalism that are often equated with the notion and practice of cultural democracy: Ethnic festivals are often devoid of the very qualities that make a good festival. Drawing on a policy that seeks to contain cultural difference, they are narrowly focused and sanitised. In part because of the bureaucratic frameworks that generate them, community ethnic events tend to be dominated by the preferences of the first generation gerontocracy whose memory is often supportive of romantic and conservative cultural values […] Multiculturalism becomes a deceptive notion when structural inequalities, nationally and globally, continue to generate divided societies.38 What is most interesting about the Cultural Collective’s position on cultural democracy, despite the polemical tone that dominates this document, is its view of cultural democracy as a citizenship right as well as an integral part of any attempt to address the wider current ‘democratic deficit’: The extension of democracy is a vital political task, not least so that the whole gamut of state and commercial manipulation may be countered by an informed, popular will […] Social inclusion’s efforts to manufacture a false consensus can only bolster the strength of anti-­democratic forces. Against this questionable form of democratization, our arguments for cultural democracy emphasize people’s rights to public space and the public sector as domains of democratic expression.

Conclusion Compared to other aspects of museum work and the role of museums in society, there has been relatively little attention – I would argue – paid to

Curating democratic and civic engagement  247 the  potential of museums in democracy and in the interconnections between museums and democracy. The discussion of the relation between the museum and democracy has been rather cursory, and caught up a mix of some unhelpful indistinctions, the overblown (and populist) language of empowerment and inclusion predicated on the post-social turn museum, the prevalence of advocacy in both policy and some academic discourse where the word ‘democracy’ is enlisted among those feel-good words that can foster the idea that museums are for the people and not the elitist temples they used to be. In this respect the policy and public force of democracy as an attribute of the reformed museum is as strong and as consensual as ‘community’, ‘inclusion’ and ‘access’. To that extent, there is a sense in which democracy, much like the other feel-good consensual emblems just mentioned, has been used in an ideological capacity in the discourses about museums: to regulate and steer a regime of governance for museums (and culture as a whole) and – when used by museum practitioners and ­advocates – as part of a professional ideology that seeks to play up the extent and remit of the museum’s positive contributions to society at large. What complicates the situation is that there are several layers to museum democracy that need to be distinguished, but which tend to be collapsed into one another. There is first a dimension of museum democracy that is internal to what the museum is and does, internal to museum work and the politics of display and visibility that the museum is necessarily caught up in, as well as its governance mechanisms (what has been described in this chapter under the four headings of access, politics of display/representation, participation and museum governance). On a different level, we need to distinguish another more subtle and more challenging aspect to what a democratic museum could do: targeting the dimension of democracy – ­implied in the second sense of cultural democracy noted above – to make a disruptive input into public life by contributing to democracy at large. Access, display/representation, participation/co-creation and museum governance, I would argue, whilst they can to varying degrees enact and foster a democratic ethos in what the museum does, how it does it and how it operates as an organisational entity, remain museum-facing, so to speak; they can all be described – when they are at their best – as contributing to endogamous democracy within the museum and for the museum. What museums are also capable of doing is to make an input into democracy at large by developing and experimenting – creatively using their unique museographic resources – with forms of exogamous democracy, forms of democratic engagement focussed around facilitating and supporting the deliberative, associative and critical tools that people can acquire through their museum encounters. The problem with the current mainstream conception of cultural democracy is that it functions as a normative and conceptual framework that takes a facile politics of recognition as the defining and ultimate horizon of democracy in museums, and reduces democracy in museums to a

248  Anwar Tlili celebration of pre-established ‘identities’ and local cultures. Whilst there has been a culturalist turn in all regions of public discourse, it is ironical that culture is now widely used exclusively in its anthropological definition, to mean anything except the arts. Rather, culture is now widely used to refer either to whatever is predicated of a given community or framed in the language (and policy) of the ‘creative and cultural industries’, due to a mix of populist, instrumentalist and communitarian conceptions of culture. This contrasts with the angle adopted in this chapter: that democracy is an affirmative and creative form of politics that has nothing to do with the expression of pre-formed aggregate and established identities, or the simple expression of interests, whether related to territorial or cultural groups. The democratic arrangement is one that never dictates and pre-determines its norms in final terms, and thus remains open to renewal and creative experimentation. This is a conception of democracy as creative action, and the arts world, including the museum, stands in a strong position to make a positive contribution towards the cultivation of these alternative forms of democratic and civic engagement. More than ever before, the museum can serve as a countervailing force – definitely a force for good, with no apologies or self-defeating obsessions about a patronising elitism. But more than that, the museum can also serve as a unique public space that confronts and facilitates an encounter with complex issues, hardened dogmas (of right and left), probe issues and conundrums, challenge the imagination and understanding, in contrast to the ephemeral flippancy and disastrous shallowness of the vast majority of what circulates in electronic media. The politics of recognition cannot be seen as an aspect of democracy in an unproblematic way. What Badiou calls ‘communitarian expressiveness’, when applied to the museum, should be seen as no more than a culturalist attempt on the part of the museum to operate within the safe and uncreative bounds of celebrating cultures and identities, and in effect arguably not responding to its professional responsibility.39 The recognition of difference is essentially uncreative; it re-enacts and manifests what already is (or rather is assumed to be), while an openended and democratic process is one of becoming, including becoming in ways that are not prescribed in advance by an identity script, whether related to individual or group. The challenge – and the more substantive value both culturally and politically – lies in stimulating and facilitating experiences and encounters of becoming.

Notes 1 G. Agamben, ‘Introductory Note on the Concept of Democracy’, in A. Allen, ed., Democracy in What State? (New York: Columbia, 2012), p. 1. 2 J. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (London: Routledge, 1942/2003). 3 See A. Badiou, Metapolitics (London: Verso, 2006); Joseph Rowntree Trust, The State of British Democracy (York: Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust with

Curating democratic and civic engagement  249 ICM, 2007); J. Rancière, Hatred of Democracy (London: Verso, 2007); R. E. Goodin, Innovating Democracy: Democratic Theory and Practice After the Deliberative Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 4 W. S. Sheldon, Democracy Incorporated Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 5 J. McGuigan, Culture and the Public Sphere (Routledge: London, 1996). See also J. Bau Graves, Cultural Democracy: The Arts, Community, and the Public Purpose (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004). F. Evans, Public Art and the Fragility of Democracy: An Essay in Political Aesthetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018). 6 A. M. Melzer, J. Weinberger, and R. M. Zinman, Democracy and the Arts (New York: Cornell University Press, 1999). 7 G. Baker, Civil Society & Democratic Theory (London: Routledge, 2002). 8 H. Perkin, The Rise of the Professional Society since 1880 (London: Routledge, 2002). 9 M. O’Neill, ‘Museums, Professionalism and Democracy’, in Cultural Trends, 17, no. 4, pp. 289–307, 2008. DOI: 10.1080/09548960802615422. 10 M. S. Larson, The Rise of Professionalism: Monopolies of Competence and Sheltered Markets (New Jersey: Transaction, 2012). 11 G. E. Hein, Learning in the Museum (London: Routledge, 1998); E. Hooper-­ Greenhill, Museums & Education (London: Routledge, 2007); R. Jeffery-Clay Kodi, ‘Constructivism in Museums: How Museums Create Meaningful Learning Environments’, in The Journal of Museum Education, 23, no. 1, pp. 3–7, 1998. www.jstor.org/stable/40479108. 12 See the typology of barriers in J. Dodd, and R. Sandell, eds., Including Museums: Perspectives on Museums, Galleries and Social Inclusion (Leicester: University of Leicester, 2001). https://lra.le.ac.uk/bitstream/2381/34/1/Including% 20museums.pdf. 13 S. Macdonald, ed., The Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture ­(London: Routledge, 1998). 14 A. Jeffers, and G. Moriarty, eds., Culture, Democracy and the Right to Make Art: The British Community Arts Movement (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). 15 B. C. Seagram, L. H. Patten, and C. W. Lockett, ‘Audience Research and Exhibit Development: A Framework’, in Museum Management and Curatorship, 12, pp. 29–41, 1993. 16 A. Jeffers, and G. Moriarty, op cit. 17 E. Hooper-Greenhill, ed., The Educational Role of the Museum (London and New York: Routledge, 1994). 18 J. Marstine, Critical Practice: Artists, Museums, Ethics (London & New York: Routledge, 2017). 19 In a passage that resonates with the current way in which communities are formed and their boundaries policed, Weber highlights how tensions, conflicts and even coercions should be seen as significant dimensions of virtually all social relationships. M. Weber, Economy and Society, Volume I., ed., G. Roth and C. Wittich (New York: Bedminster, 1978 [1922]). 20 M. Shatanawi, ‘Engaging Islam: Working with Muslim Communities in a Multicultural Society’, in Curator, 55, no. 1, pp. 65–79, 2012. 21 B. Lynch, ‘Collaboration, Contestation, and Creative Conflict: On the Efficacy of Museum/Community Partnerships’, in J. Marstine, ed., Redefining Museum Ethics (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 146–163. 22 C. Bishop, Artificial Hells. Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso, 2012); L. Jancovich, The Participation Myth, in International Journal of Cultural Policy, 23, no. 1, pp. 107–121, 2017. DOI: 10.1080/10286632.2015.1027698. L. Jancovich, ‘Great Art for Everyone?

250  Anwar Tlili

23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

Engagement and Participation Policy In the Arts’, in Cultural Trends, 20, no. 3–4, pp. 271–279. DOI: 10.1080/09548963.2011.589708. P. O’Neill, and M. Wilson, eds., Curating and the Educational Turn (Amsterdam: De Appel, 2010). J. McGuigan, Culture and the Public Sphere (London: Routledge, 1996). Heritage Lottery Fund, ‘Thinking about … Community Participation’, 2010. www.hlf.org.uk/community-participation. Heritage Lottery Fund, Our Heritage, Application Procedure, 5. DCMS, ‘Culture White Paper’, 2016, 15. https://assets.publishing.service.gov. uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/510798/DCMS_ The_Culture_White_Paper__3_.pdf. M. Miessen, The Nightmare of Participation (Crossbench Praxis as a Mode of Criticality) (New York: Sternberg, 2010); N. Morse, M. Macpherson, and S. Robinson, ‘Developing Dialogue In Co-produced Exhibitions: Between Rhetoric, Intentions and Realities’, in Museum Management and Curatorship, 28, no. 1, pp. 91–106, 2013. DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2012.754632; J. Harvie, ‘Democracy and Neoliberalism in Art’s Social Turn and Roger Hiorns’s Seizure’, in Performance Research, 16, no. 2, pp. 113–123, 2011. DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2011.578842; B. Lynch, Whose Cake Is It Anyway? A Collaborative Investigation Into Engagement and Participation In Twelve Museums and Galleries in the UK (The Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2011). http:// ourmuseum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Whose-cake-is-it-anyway-report.pdf. A. Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed (London: Pluto, 1979). It should be noted, however, that there are some uneasy analogies between theatre and the museum as distinct cultural forms with their unique resources that shape the range of possibilities for participation. T. McDonough, Guy Debord and the Situationist International (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997). J. Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics (London: Continuum, 2004); The Emancipated Spectator (London: Verso, 2011). N. Bourriaud Relational Aesthetics (Paris: Les Presses du Réel, 1998). C. Leadbeater The Art of with (Manchester: Cornerhouse, 2009). J. McGuigan, Cultural Populism (London: Routledge, 1992). J. Marstine, op. cit. 64 Million Artists with Arts Council England, Cultural Democracy in Practice (September 2018). www.artscouncil.org.uk/publication/cultural-democracypractice. Ibid., pp. 28–29. A. Badiou, Polemics (London: Verso, 2006), pp. 133–148.

Selected Bibliography

Adams, D., and Goldbard, A., ‘Cultural democracy: Introduction to an idea’, Webster’s World of Cultural Democracy. www.wwcd.org/cd2.html Agamben, G. ‘Introductory note on the concept of democracy’, in A. Allen, ed., Democracy in What State? (New York: Columbia, 2012). Alfrey, J., and Putnam, T., The Industrial Heritage: Managing Resources and Uses (London: Routledge, 1992). All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing, ‘Creative health: The arts for health and wellbeing’, 2017, www.artshealthandwellbeing.org.uk/ appg-inquiry Alston, A. ‘Audience participation and neoliberal value: Risk, agency and responsibility in immersive theatre’, Performance Research, 18, no. 2 (2013), DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2013.807177 Ames, Michael. ‘How to decorate a house: The renegotiation of cultural representation at the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology’, in Peers, L. and A. Brown, eds., Museums and Source Communities: A Routledge Reader (London: Routledge, 2003), 171–180. Ander, E., Thomson, L., and Chatterjee, H. J. ‘Culture’s place in well-being: Measuring museum well-being interventions’, in R. Coles and Z. Millman, eds., Landscape, Well-being and Environment (London: Routledge, 2013). Ander, E., Thomson, L., Lanceley, A., Menon, U., Blair, K., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Using museum objects to improve wellbeing in psychiatric and rehabilitation patients’, British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 76, no. 5 (2013). DOI: 10.4276/030802213X1367927504264 Ander, E., Thomson, L., Lanceley, A., Menon, U., Noble, G., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Generic wellbeing outcomes: Towards a conceptual framework for wellbeing outcomes in museums’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 26, no. 3 (2011). DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2011.585798 Ander, E., Thomson, L., Lanceley, A., Menon, U., Noble, G., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Heritage, health and wellbeing: Assessing the impact of a heritage focused intervention on health and wellbeing’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 19, no. 3 (2013). DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2011.651740 Anderson, B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso Books, 1991). Appadurai, A., Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). Ashley-Smith, J., Umney, N., and Ford, D., ‘Let’s be honest—Realistic environmental parameters for loaned objects’, Studies in Conservation, 39 (1994), 28–31.

252  Selected Bibliography Ashworth, G., ‘Heritage, identity and places: For tourists and host communities’, in S. Singh, L. India, D. J. Timothy, R. K. Dowling, E. Cowan, eds., Tourism in Destination Communities (London: Cabi, 2003), 79–99. Ashworth, G. J., and Graham, B., eds., Senses of Place: Senses of Time (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). Ashworth, G. J., and Kavaratzis, M. eds., Towards Effective Place Brand Management: Branding European Cities and Regions (Cheltenham: Edward ­Elgar, 2010). Ashworth, G. J., and Tunbridge, J. E., ‘Old cities, new pasts: Heritage planning in selected cities of Central Europe’, in Geojournal, 49 (1999), 105–116. Badiou, A., Metapolitics (London: Verso, 2006). Badiou, A., Polemics (London: Verso, 2006). Baker, D., ‘Churches and cathedrals’, in G. Chitty and D. Baker, eds., Managing Historic Sites and Buildings: Reconciling Presentation and Preservation (­London: Routledge, 1999). Baker, G., Civil Society & Democratic Theory (London: Routledge, 2002). Barad, K., Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007). Barton, J., Hine, R., and Pretty, J., ‘The health benefits of walking in greenspaces of high natural and heritage value’, Journal of Integrative Environmental Science, 6, no. 4 (2009), 261–278. Batsleer, J., ‘Voices from an edge. Unsettling the practices of youth voice and participation: Arts-based practice in The Blue Room, Manchester’, Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 19, no. 3, (2011). DOI: 10.1080/14681366.2011.607842 Bau Graves, J., Cultural Democracy: The Arts, Community, and the Public Purpose (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004). Belfiore, E., ‘Defensive instrumentalism’ and the legacy of new labour’s cultural policies’, Cultural Trends, 21, no. 2 (June 1, 2012), 103–111. DOI:  10.1080/ 09548963.2012.674750 Belfiore, E., and Bennett, O., The Social Impact of the Arts: An Intellectual History (New York: Springer, 2008). Bennett, T., The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995). Bennett, O., and Belfiore, E., The Social Impact of the Arts; An Intellectual History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008). Best, L., ‘Museums involving communities: Authentic connections’, in P. Bienkowski, ed., No Longer Us and Them: How to Change Into a Participatory Museum and Gallery (London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2016, 2018). Bishop, C., Artificial Hells. Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London: Verso, 2012). Blamey, A., and Mackenzie, M., ‘Theories of change and realistic evaluation: Peas in a pod or apples and oranges?’, Evaluation, 13, no. 4 (2007), 439–455. Boal, A., Theatre of the Oppressed (London: Pluto, 1979). Bourriaud, N., Relational Aesthetics (Paris: Les Presses du Réel, 1998). Brett, D., The Construction of Heritage (Cork: Cork University Press, 1996). Briggs, A., Victorian Cities (London: Penguin, [1963] 1990). Brinkerhoff, J. M., Partnership for International Development: Rhetoric or Results? (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2202). Brint, S., In the Age of Experts: The Changing Role of the Professions in Public Life (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1996).

Selected Bibliography  253 British Museum, ‘About us’. https://britishmuseum.org/about_us/management/ about_us.aspx Bryant, L. R., The Democracy of Objects (Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press, 2011). Burns, D., Systemic Action Research: A Strategy for Whole System Change ­(Bristol: Policy Press, 2007). Burt, R., ‘Industrial relations in the British non-ferrous mining industry in the nineteenth century’, in Labour History Review, 12 (1984–85). Bygren, O., Johansson, L., Boinkum, S-E., Konlaan, B., Grjibovski, A. J. M., Wilkinson, A. V., and Sjöström, M., ‘Attending cultural events and cancer mortality: A Swedish cohort study’, Arts & Health, 1, no. 1 (2009), 64–73. Bygren, L. O., Konlaan, B. B., and Johansson, S.-E., ‘Attendance at cultural events, Reading books or periodicals, and making music or singing in a choir as determinants for survival: Swedish interview survey of living conditions’, BMJ, 313 (1996), 1577–1580. Byrne, D., ‘Heritage as social action’, in G. Fairclough, R. Harrison, J. H. Jameson, and J. Schofield, eds., The Heritage Reader (London: Routledge, 2008). Callon, M., ‘What does it mean to say that economics is performative?’ CSI Working Papers Series, 005, 2006. Cameron, F. R., ‘Object-oriented democracies: Conceptualising museum collections in networks’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 23, no. 3 (2008). Camic, P., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Museums and art galleries as partners for public health interventions’, Perspectives in Public Health, 133 (2013). DOI: 10.1177/1757913912468523 Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Museums and art galleries as settings for public health interventions’, in S. Clift and P. Camic, eds., Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health, and Wellbeing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Chatterjee, H. J., Touch in Museums: Policy and Practice in Object Handling ­(Oxford: Berg, 2008). Chatterjee, H. J., Camic, P. M., Lockyer, B., and Thomson, L. J., ‘Non-clinical community interventions: A systematised review of social prescribing schemes’, Arts & Health (2017). DOI: 10.1080/17533015.2017.1334002 Chatterjee, H. J., and Hannan, L., Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Leaning in Higher Education (Oxford: Routledge, 2015). Chatterjee, H. J., and Noble, G., Museums, Health and Wellbeing (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013). Chatterjee, H. J., and Noble, G., Museums, Health and Wellbeing (London: ­Routledge, 2013). Chatterjee, H. J., Polley, M., and Clayton, G., ‘Social prescribing: Community-­ based referrals in public health’, Perspectives in Public Health, 138, no. 1 (2017), 18–19. Chatterjee, H. J., and Thomson, L., ‘Museums and social prescribing’, in H.  L.  ­Robertson ed., The Caring Museum: New Models of Engagement with Ageing (Edinburgh: Museums Etc, 2015). Che, D., ‘Developing a heritage tourism attraction in a working salt mine’, in M. V. Conlin and L. Jolliffe, eds., Mining Heritage and Tourism: A Global Synthesis (London: Routledge, 2011). Clavir, M., ‘Reflections on changes in museums and the conservation of collections from indigenous peoples’, Journal of the American Institute for Conservation, 2, no. 2 (2013).

254  Selected Bibliography Coafee, J., ‘Towards next-generation Urban resilience in planning practice: From securitization to integrated place making’, Planning Practice & Research, 28, no. 3 (2013). Colomb, C., ‘Unpacking new labour’s “Urban Renaissance” agenda: Towards a socially sustainable reurbanization of British cities’, Planning, Practice & Research, 22, no. 1 (2007). Contu, A., and Girei, E., ‘NGOs management and the value of “partnerships” for equality in international development: What’s in a name?’, Human Relations, 67, no. 2 (2014). Cooke, B., and Kothari, U. eds., Participation: The New Tyranny (Chicago: ­University of Chicago, 2001). Cornwall, A., Democratising Engagement: What the UK Can Learn from International Experience (London: Demos, 2008). Cornwall, A., and Coelho, S., eds., Spaces for Change? The Politics of Participation in New Democratic Arenas (London: Zed Books, 2006). Cremin, K., Benson, M., and Lawson, J., ‘Heritage as a living stream: Distributed decision-making and leadership at Bede’s World’, 2015. http://heritagedecisions. leeds.ac.uk/phase-2-research/heritage-as-a-living-stream/ Crossick, G., and Kaszynska, P., Understanding the Value of Arts & Culture (Swindon: Arts and Humanities Research Council, 2016). Csikszentmihalyi, M., ‘The flow experience and its significance for human psychology’, in M. Csikszentmihalyi, M., eds., Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 15–35. Cuno, J., Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). Dahl, R. A., After the Revolution? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). Dasgupta, P., and Serageldin, I., Social Capital; a Multifaceted Perspective (­Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2000). Davies, S. M., ‘The co-production of temporary museum exhibitions’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 25, no. 3 (2010). DCMS, ‘Culture White Paper’, 2016, 15, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/510798/DCMS_The_ Culture_White_Paper__3_.pdf Desmarais, S., Bedford, L., and Chatterjee, H. J., Museums as Spaces for Wellbeing: A Second Report from the National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing (London, 2018). www.museumsandwellbeingalliance. wordpress.com Dodd, J., ‘The socially purposeful museum’, Museologica Brunensia, 4, no. 2 (2015), 28–31. Dodd, J., and Jones, C., Mind, Body, Spirit: How Museums Impact Health and Wellbeing Report (Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG), University of Leicester, June 1, 2014), https://lra.le.ac.uk/handle/2381/31690 Dodd, J., and Sandell, R., Including Museums: Perspectives on Museums, Galleries and Social Inclusion (Leicester: University of Leicester, 2001). Dos Santos, T., ‘The structure of dependence’, American Economic Review, 60, no. 2 (1970). Downey, A., ‘Towards a politics of (relational) aesthetics’, Third Text, 21, no. 3 (2007). DOI: 10.1080/09528820701360534

Selected Bibliography  255 Downing, A., ‘The “Sheffield Outrages”: Violence, class and trade unionism, 1850–70’, Social History, 38, no. 2 (2013). Dryzek, J., Democracy in Capitalist Times: Ideals, Limits and Struggles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). Evans, F., Public Art and the Fragility of Democracy: An Essay in Political Aesthetics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018). Fáilte Ireland Food and Drink Strategy 2018–2023 (2018). Fancourt, D., and Steptoe, A., ‘Cultural engagement predicts changes in cognitive function in older adults over a 10 year period: Findings from the English longitudinal study of ageing’, Nature-Scientific Report, 8 (2018), 10226. Featherstone D., et al., ‘Progressive localism and the construction of political alternatives’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37, no. 2 (April 1, 2012), 177. www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/publications/the-place-ofkindness/ Firth, R., ‘Magnitudes and values in Kula exchange’, in J. W. Leach, and E. Leach, eds., The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Fleming, D., ‘A question of perception’, Museums Journal, 99, no. 4 (1999), 29–31. Fleming, D., ‘The politics of social inclusion’, in J. Dodd and R. Sandell, eds., Including Museums: Perspectives on Museums, Galleries and Social Inclusion (Leicester: Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, University of Leicester, 2001), 16–19. Fleming, D., ‘Positioning the museum for social inclusion’, in R. Sandell, ed., Museums, Society, Inequality (London: Routledge, 2002), 213–224. Fouseki, K., ‘Community voices, curatorial choices: Community consultation for the 1807 exhibitions’, Museum and Society, 8, no. 3 (2010). Fraser, N., ‘Reframing justice in a globalizing world’, New Left Review, 36 (2005). Fraser, N., and Honneth, A., Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-­ Philosophical Exchange (London: Verso, 2003). Friedli, L., Jackson, C., Abernethy, H., and Stansfield, J., Social Prescribing for Mental Health – A guide to Commissioning and Delivery (Lancashire Care Services Improvement Partnership, 2009). www.centreforwelfarereform.org/­ library/by-az/social-prescribing-for-mental-health.html Frumkin, H., Bratman, G. N., Breslow, S. J. et al., ‘Nature contact and human health: A research agenda’, Environmental Health Perspectives (2017). DOI: 10.1289/EHP1663 Fujiwara, D., Kudrna, L., Cornwall, T., Laffan, K., and Dolan, P., Further Analysis to Value the Health and Educational Benefits of Sport and Culture (London: DCMS, 2015). Geoghegan, H., ‘Museum geography: Exploring museums, collections and museum practice in the UK’, Geography Compass, 4, no. 10 (20100, 1462–1476. Gilmore, A., ‘The park and the commons: Vernacular spaces for everyday participation and cultural value’, Cultural Trends, 26, no. 1 (2017). DOI:  10.1080/ 09548963.2017.1274358 Glasgow Life, ‘About us’. www.glasgowlife.org.uk/about-us Golding, V., and Modest, W., eds., Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections and Collaboration (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). Goodin, R. E., ‘Enfranchising all affected interests, and its alternatives’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 35, no. 1 (2007).

256  Selected Bibliography Goodin, R. E., Innovating Democracy: Democratic Theory and Practice After the Deliberative Turn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Graham, H., ‘The “co” in co-production: Museums, community participation and Science and Technology studies’, Science Museum Group Journal, 5 (2018). Graham, H., ‘Horizontality: Tactical politics for participation and museums’, in B.  Onciul, M. L. Stefano, and S. Hawke, eds., Engaging Heritage: Engaging Communities (Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2017), 83–84. Graham, H., and Vergunst, J., Heritage as Community Research Legacies of Co-Production (Bristol: Policy Press, 2019). Gramsci, A, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence and ­Wishart, 1971). Gray, C., ‘Structure, agency and museum policies’, Museum and Society, 14, no. 1 (2017), 116–130. Griffiths, S., and Edwards, B., ‘Welsh megaliths in 3D’, British Archaeology, 138 (2014). Gunder-Frank, A., Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (London: Monthly Review Press, 1967). Gurian, E. H., Civilizing the Museum: The Collected Writings of Elaine Heumann Gurian (London: Routledge, 2006). Gurian, E. H. Institutional Trauma: Major Change in Museums and Its Effect on Staff (Washington, DC: American Association of Museums, 1995). Guttentag, D. A., ‘The possible negative impacts of volunteer tourism’, International Journal of Tourism Research, 11 (2009). Hanlon, P., and Carlisle, S., ‘Do we face a third revolution in human history? If so, how will Public Health respond?’, Journal of Public Health, 30, no. 4 (2008). Hanlon, P., Carlilse, S., Hannah, M., and Lyon, A., The Future of Public Health (Maidenhead: Open University, 2012). Harvie, J., ‘Democracy and neoliberalism in art’s social turn and Roger Hiorns’s Seizure’, Performance Research, 16, no. 2 (2011). DOI:  10.1080/13528165. 2011.578842 Hein, G. E., Learning in the Museum (London: Routledge, 1998). Henderson, J., ‘Reflections on the psychological basis for suboptimal environmental practices in conservation’, Journal of the Institute of Conservation, 41, no. 1 (2018). Hill, K., Culture and Class in English Public Museums, 1850–1914 (London: ­Ashgate, 2005). Hodnett, D., The Metal Mines of West Cork (Penryn: Trevithick, 2012). Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., and Layton, J. B., ‘Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review’, in PLOS Medicine (2010). https://journals.plos. org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316 Hooper-Greenhill, E. ed., The Educational Role of the Museum (London: ­Routledge, 1994). Hooper-Greenhill, E., Museums & Education (London: Routledge, 2007). https://drcd.gov.ie/about/rural/action-plan-rural-development/ ICOM, ‘Museum definition’, http://archives.icom.museum/definition.html Isaac, R. K., and Budryte-Ausiejiene, L., ‘Interpreting the emotions of visitors: A study of visitor comment books at the Grūtas Park Museum, Lithuania’, Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 33 (2015).

Selected Bibliography  257 Jancovich, L., ‘Great art for everyone? Engagement and participation policy in the arts’, Cultural Trends, 20, no. 3–4 (2011). DOI: 10.1080/09548963. 2011.589708 Jancovich, L., ‘The participation myth’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 23, no. 1 (2017). DOI: 10.1080/10286632.2015.1027698 Janes, R. R., and Sandell, R., eds., Museum Activism (London: Routledge, 2018). Jeffers, A., and Moriarty, G. eds., Culture, Democracy and the Right to Make Art: The British Community Arts Movement (London: Bloomsbury, 2017). Jeffery-Clay Kodi, R., ‘Constructivism in museums: How museums create meaningful learning environments’, The Journal of Museum Education, 23, no. 1 (1998). Jenkins, T., Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended Up in Museums – And Why They Should Stay There (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Johnson, M., Ideas of Landscape (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007). Johansson, S. E., Konlaan, B. B., and Bygren, L. O. ‘Sustaining habits of attending cultural events and maintenance of health: A longitudinal study’, Health Promotion International, 16 (2001), 229–234. Jones, S., Expressive Lives (London: Demos, 2009). Jones, P., and Evans, J., Urban Regeneration in the UK (London: Sage, 2013). Joseph Rowntree Trust, The State of British Democracy (York: Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust with ICM, 2007). Jung, Y., and Rowson Love, A., ‘Systems thinking and museum ecosystem’, in Y. Jung, and A. Rowson Love, eds., Systems Thinking in Museums: Theory and Practice (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017). Kadoyama, M., Museums Involving Communities, Authentic Connections ­(London: Routledge 2018). Kahane, A., Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change (San ­Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2010). Karl, R., Roberts, J., Wilson, A., Möller, K., Miles, H. C., Edwards, B., Tiddeman, B., Labross, F., and Latrobe-Bateman, E., ‘Picture this! Community-Led production of alternative views of the heritage of Gwynedd’, Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage, 1, no. 1 (2014). Karl, R., and Waddington, K., Characterising the Double Ringwork Enclosures of Gwynedd: Meillionydd. Excavations, July 2011. Preliminary Report (Bangor Studies in Archaeology, 6, 2011). Karl, R. et al., Archäologische Interessen der Österreichischen Bevölkerung, ­Bangor Studies in Archaeology, 8, (Bangor: Bangor University School of History, Welsh History & Archaeology, 2014). Keating, M., The City that Refused to Die. Glasgow: The Politics of Urban Regeneration (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988). Killarney Tourism Economic Impact Review, 2018. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B., ‘World heritage and economics’, in Karp, I. et al., eds., Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006). Klinenberg, E., Palaces for the People: How To Build a More Equal and United Society (London: Bodley Head, 2018). Knudsen, L. V., ‘Participation at work in the museum’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 31, no. 2 (2016). DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2016.1146916

258  Selected Bibliography Lackoi, K., Patsou, M., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Museums for health and wellbeing. A preliminary report’. (2016). https://museumsandwellbeingalliance.wordpress.com/ Lanceley, A., Noble, G., Johnson, M., Balogun, N., Chatterjee, H. J., and ­Menon, U. ‘Investigating the therapeutic potential of a heritage-object focused intervention: A qualitative study’, Journal of Health Psychology, 17, no. 6 (2011). DOI: 10.1177/1359105311426625 Larson, M. S., The Rise of Professionalism: Monopolies of Competence and Sheltered Markets (New Jersey: Transaction, 2012). Leadbeater, C., The Art of With (Manchester: Cornerhouse, 2009). Leslie, D., ‘Urban regeneration and Glasgow’s galleries with particular reference to the Burrell collection’, in G. Richards, ed., Cultural Attractions and European Tourism (Wallingford: CABI, 2001). Love, N. S., and Mattern, M., eds., Doing Democracy: Activist Art and Cultural Politics (New York: SUNY, 2013). Luker, D., Cornish Methodism, Revivalism, and Popular Belief, 1780–1870 ­(Unpublished D. Phil Thesis, University of Oxford, 1987). Lynch, F., A Guide to Ancient and Historic Wales: Gwynedd (Cardiff: CADW, 1995). Lynch, B., ‘Collaboration, contestation, and creative conflict: On the efficacy of museum/community partnerships’, in J. Marstine, ed., Redefining Museum ­Ethics (London: Routledge, 2011). Lynch, B., ‘Custom-made reflective practice: Can museums realise their capabilities in helping others realise theirs?’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 26, no. 5 (2011). Lynch, B., ‘Disturbing the peace: Museums, democracy and conflict avoidance’, in D. Walters, D. Leven, and P. Davis, eds., Heritage and Peacebuilding (Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer Press, 2017). Lynch, B., ‘The gate in the wall: Beyond happiness-making in museums’, in B. ­Onciul, M. L. Stefano, and S. Hawke, Engaging Heritage, Engaging Communities (Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer Press, 2017). Lynch, B., ‘Migrants, museums and tackling the legacies of prejudice’, C. Johnson and P. Bevlander, eds., Museums in a Time of Migration: Re-thinking Museums’ Roles, Representations, Collections, and Collaborations (Stockholm: Nordic Academic Press, 2017). Lynch, B., Our Museum: A Five-Year Perspective from a Critical Friend (The Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2014). http://api.ning.com/files/HQSy6kXC6MrE3kr4K52cDLUFOI2Dxek8LOcATLX*BgljrdNhnG5MycQ5-­SzhvO945Hqgpcgq*bNK QulMi9ki1qiZ0Ah8oUU/PHFOurMuseumAfiveyearperspective.pdf Lynch, B., Whose Cake Is It Anyway? (London: Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2011). www.phf.org.uk/publications/whose-cake-anyway/ Lynch, B., ‘Whose cake is it anyway? A collaborative investigation into engagement and participation in twelve museums and galleries in the UK’. The Paul Hamlyn Foundation, 2011, http://ourmuseum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Whose-cakeis-it-anyway-report.pdf Lynch, B., and Alberti, S., ‘Legacies of prejudice: Racism, coproduction and radical trust in the museum’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 25, no 1 (2010). MacDonald, S., ed., The Companion to Museum Studies (London: Blackwell, 2007). MacDonald, S., ed., The Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture (London: Routledge, 1998).

Selected Bibliography  259 MacIntyre, A., Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the ­Virtues (London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). MacLeod, F., ed., Out There: The Open Museum: Pushing the Boundaries of ­M useums’ Potential (Glasgow: Glasgow Life, 2010). Marmot, M., The Health Gap; The Challenge of an Unequal World (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 32–33. Marstine, J., Critical Practice: Artists, Museums, Ethics (London: Routledge, 2017). Mason, R., ‘Conflict and complement: An exploration of the discourses informing the concept of the socially inclusive museum in contemporary Britain’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 10, no. 1 (2004), 49–73. DOI: 10.1080/ 1352725032000194240 Mason, M., ‘The philosophy and politics of partnership’, Norrag News: The New Politics of Partnership: Peril or Promise?, 41 (2008). Matarasso, F., Use or Ornament? The Social Impact of Participation in the Arts (London: Comedia, 1997). Mauss, M., The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies (­London: Coehn & West, [1954] 1969). May, T., The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism (Pennslvannia: Pennsylvania State University Press: 1994). McCall, V., ‘Social policy and cultural services: A study of Scottish border museums as implementers of social inclusion’, Social Policy and Society, 8, no. 03 (July 2009), 319–331. McDonnell, J., ‘Reimagining the role of art in the relationship between democracy and education’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 46, no. 1 (2014). DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2011.00802.x McDonough, T., Guy Debord and the Situationist International (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997). McGuigan, J., Cultural Populism (London: Routledge, 1992). McGuigan, J., Culture and the Public Sphere (Routledge: London, 1996). Melzer, A. M., Weinberger, J., and Zinman, R. M., Democracy and the Arts (New York: Cornell, 1999). Merriman, N., ‘Museum collections and sustainability’, Cultural Trends, 17 no. 1 (2008). Message, K., The Disobedient Museum (London: Routledge, 2018). Message, K., Museums and Social Activism: Engaged Protest (London: Routledge, 2014). Miessen, M., The Nightmare of Participation (Crossbench Praxis as a Mode of Criticality) (New York: Sternberg, 2010). Miles, A., and Ebrey, J., ‘The village in the city: Participation and cultural value on the urban periphery’, Cultural Trends, 26, no. 1 (2017). DOI:  10.1080/ 09548963.2017.1274360 Miles, A., and Gibson, L., ‘Everyday participation and cultural value’, Cultural Trends, 25, no. 3 (2016). DOI: 10.1080/09548963.2016.1204043 Mol, A., ‘Ontological politics. A word and some questions’, in J. Law and J. ­Hassard, eds., Actor Network Theory and After (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002). Morris, J. H., ‘The man engine house, mountain mine, Allihies, Co. Cork: A pictorial record of conservation works in 2003’, Journal of the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland, 3 (2003).

260  Selected Bibliography Morse, N., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Museums, health and wellbeing research: Co-­ developing a new observational method for people with dementia in hospital contexts’, Perspectives in Public Health (2017). DOI: 10.1177/1757913917737588 Morse, N., Macpherson, M., and Robinson, S., ‘Developing dialogue in youth-led exhibitions: Between rhetoric, intentions and realities’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 28, no. 1 (2013), 91–106. Morse, N., and Munro, E., ‘Museums’ community engagement schemes, austerity and practices of care in two local museum services’, Social & Cultural Geography, 16. Online First 2015. DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2015.1089583 Morse, N., Thomson, L. J., Z. Brown, and H. J. Chatterjee, ‘Effects of creative museum outreach sessions on measures of confidence, sociability and well-being for mental health and addiction recovery service-users’, Arts & Health, 7, no. 3 (2015), 231–246, DOI: 10.1080/17533015.2015.1061570 Mouffe, C., Agonistics: Thinking the World Politically (London: Verso Books, 2013). Mouffe, C., The Democratic Paradox (London, Verso. 2000). Mouffe, C., ‘Democratic politics and conflict: An agonistic approach’, Política común, 9 (2016). DOI: 10.3998/pc.12322227.0009.011 Mouffe, C., ‘Institutions as sites of agonistic intervention’, in Pascal Gielen, P., ed., Institutional Attitudes: Instituting Art in a Flat World (Amsterdam: Antennnae, 2013). Mouffe, C., On the Political (London, New York, 2015). Mouffe, C., The Return of the Political (London, Verso, 1993). Muller, J. Z., The Tyranny of Metrics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018). Museum Management and Curatorship, 33, no. 5. DOI: 10.1080/09647775. 2018.1515598 Museums Association, ‘Museums change lives’. www.museumsassociation.org/ museums-change-lives Museums Association, Museums 2020 Discussion Paper (London: Museums ­Association, 2012). Museums Association, Museums in the UK 2017 Report (London: Museums ­Association 2017). Museums Association, Valuing Diversity: The Case for Inclusive Museums, 2016. www.museumsassociation.org/download?id=1194934 Nayeri, D., ‘The ungrateful refugee: We have no debt to repay’, The Guardian, 4 April 2017. Newman, I., Reclaiming Local Democracy: A Progressive Future for Local Government (Bristol: Policy Press, 2014). Newman, A., and McLean, F., ‘The impact of museums upon identity’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 12, no. 1 (2006), 49–68. Newman, A., and McLean, F., ‘Presumption, policy and practice: The use of museums and galleries as agents of social inclusion in Great Britain’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 10, no. 2 (2004), 167–181. Nightingale, E., and Mahal, C., ‘The heart of the matter: Integrating equality and diversity into the policy and practice of museums and galleries’, in R. Sandell and E. Nightingale, eds., Museums, Equality, and Social Justice (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2012), 13–37.

Selected Bibliography  261 Noble, G., and Chatterjee, H., Museums, Health and Well-Being (London: Ashgate, 2013). Nussbaum, M., Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach (­Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). Nyamu-Musembi, C., and Cornwall, A., ‘What is the rights-based approach all about? Perspectives from international development agencies’, IDS Working ­Paper no. 234, Institute for Development Studies, Brighton, 2004. O’Brien, D. M., Beara: A Journey through History (Castletownbere: Beara Historical Society, 1991). O’Brien, D., Cultural Policy: Management, Value and Modernity in the Creative Industries (London: Routledge, 2013). O’Brien, A., The Politics of Tourism Development: Booms and Busts in Ireland (Palgrave: Basingstoke, 2011). O’Connell, M., ‘“What a pity at the very source of wealth!” Strikes and Emigration, Berehaven mining district, 1861–1900’, Saothar, 34 (2009), 7–18. Ó Gráda, C., Ireland’s Great Famine: An Overview (UCD Centre for Economic Research, November, 2004). O’Neill, M., ‘Cultural attendance and public mental health - from research to practice’, Journal of Public Mental Health, 9, no. 4 (2010), 22–29. O’Neill, M., Keynote (Museums Association Conference and Exhibition 2012). https://vimeo.com/54351262 O’Neill, M. ‘Museums, professionalism and democracy’, Cultural Trends, 17, no. 4 (2008). DOI: 10.1080/09548960802615422 O’Neill, P., and Wilson, M., eds., Curating and the Educational Turn (Amsterdam: De Appel, 2010). Paddon, H., Thomson, L., Lanceley, A., Menon, U., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Mixed methods evaluation of wellbeing benefits derived from a heritage-in-health intervention with hospital patients’, Arts & Health: An International Journal for Research, Policy and Practice, 6, no. 1 (2014). DOI: 10.1080/17533015.2013.800987 Patman, C., Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). Peate, C. I., Amgueddfeydd Gwerin Folk Museums (Cardiff: Cardiff University Wales, 1948). Pendlebury, J., Townshend, T., and Gilroy, R., ‘The conservation of English cultural built heritage: A force for social inclusion?’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 10, no. 1 (2004), 11–32. Perkin, H., The Rise of the Professional Society since 1880 (London: Routledge, 2002). Pheng Cheah, ‘Resisting the humanitarianization of the world: Towards an ethics of giving’. Unpublished lecture delivered at Birkbeck College, London, 2014. Polley, M., Fleming, J., Anfilogoff, T., et al., Making Sense of Social Prescribing, 2017. www.westminster.ac.uk/patient-outcomes-in-health-research-group/ projects/social-prescribing-network/ Poovey, M., ‘The liberal civil subject and the social in eighteenth-century British moral philosophy’, Public Culture, 14, no. 1 (2002), 125–145. Popay, J., Thomas, C., Williams, G., Bennett, S., Gatrell, A., Bostock,L., ‘A proper place to live: Health inequalities, agency and the normative dimensions of space’, Social Science & Medicine, 57, no. 1 (2003), 55–69.

262  Selected Bibliography Porter, B. W., ‘Heritage tourism: Conflicting identities in the modern world’, in B. Graham and P. Howard, eds., The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008). Prentice, R., Tourism and Heritage Attractions (Routledge: London, 1993). Rancière, J., The Emancipated Spectator (London: Verso, 2011). Rancière, J., Hatred of Democracy (London: Verso, 2007). Rancière, J., The Politics of Aesthetics (London: Continuum, 2004). Resource, Renaissance in the Regions: A New Vision for England’s Museums, 2001. www.museumsassociation.org/download?id=12190 Rex, B., ‘Exploring relations to documents and documentary infrastructures: The case of museum management after austerity’, Museum and Society, 16, no. 2 (July 30, 2018), 187–200. Robertson, I. J. M., Heritage from Below (London: Routledge, 2016). Rogers, J. E., ed., The Art of Grief: The Use of Expressive Arts In a Grief Support Group (London: Routledge, 2011). Rojek, C., Ways of Escape (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993). Rojek, C., and Urry, J., Touring Cultures: Transformations of Travel and Theory (London: Routledge, 1997). Rosenberg, J., and Peck, D. L., ‘Individual reactions and social responses to massive loss of life’, Handbook of Death and Dying, 1 (2003). Rosenthal, M., ‘This green unpleasant land: landscape and contemporary Britain’, in J. Malpas, ed., The Place of Landscape: Concepts, Contexts, Studies ­(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011). Salazar, N. B., ‘Building a culture of peace through tourism: Reflexive and analytical notes and queries’, Universitas Humanística, 62, no. 2 (2006), 319–336. Sandell, R., ‘Museums and the combating of social inequality: Roles, responsibilities, resistance’, in R. Sandell, ed., Museums, Society, Inequality (London: Routledge, 2002), 3–24. Sandell, R., ‘Museums as agents of social inclusion’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 17, no. 4 (1998), 401–418. DOI: 10.1080/09647779800401704 Sandell, R., Museums, Moralities and Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2017). Sandell, R., ‘Social inclusion, the museum and the dynamics of sectoral change’, Museum and Society, 1, no. 1 (2003), 45–62. Sandell, R., and Nightingale, E., Museums, Equality and Social Justice (London: Routledge, 2012). Sangiovanni, A., ‘Normative political theory: A flight from reality?’, in D. Bell, ed., Political Thought and International Relations: Variations on a Realist Theme (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Saward, M., The Terms of Democracy (Oxford: Polity Press, 1998). Schatzki, T. R., et al., The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (London: ­Routledge, 2001). Schumpeter, J., Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (London: Routledge, [1942] 2003). Seabrook, J., ‘The doctrine of “humanitarianism” is not as benign as you might think’, The Guardian, 8 September, 2014. Seagram, B. C., Patten, L. H., and Lockett, C. W. ‘Audience research and exhibit development: A framework’, Museum Management and Curatorship, 12 (1993), 29–41.

Selected Bibliography  263 Seaman, P., McNeice, V., Yates, G., and McLean, J., Resilience for Public Health: Supporting Transformation In People and Communities (Glasgow: Glasgow Centre for Population Health, 2014). Sen, A., The Idea of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). Shatanawi, M., ‘Engaging Islam: Working with muslim communities in a multicultural society’, Curator, 55, no. 1 (2012), 65–79. Sheldon, W. S., Democracy Incorporated Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2008). Silverman, L. H., The Social Work of Museums (London: Routledge, 2010). Simon, N., The Art of Relevance, 2016. www.artofrelevance.org/read-online/ Simon, N., The Participatory Museum (US online version. 2010). www.­ participatorymuseum.org/ Smith, G., Power Beyond the Ballot: 57 Democratic Innovations from Around the World (London: The Power Inquiry, 2005). Smith, L., The Uses of Heritage (London: Routledge, 2006). Social Marketing Gateway, Sport and Cultural Participation in Glasgow (­Glasgow: Social Marketing Gateway, 2014). Solway, R., Camic, P. M., Thomson, L., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Material objects and psychological theory in arts and health: A conceptual literature review’, Arts & Health: An International Journal of Research, Policy and Practice, 7, no. 3 (2015). DOI: 10.1080/17533015.2014.998010 Solway, R., Thomson, L. J., Camic, P. M., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Museum object handling in older adult mental health inpatient care’, International Journal of Mental Health Promotion, 17, no. 4 (2015), 201–214. DOI:  10.1080/ 14623730.2015.1035520 Spivak, G., The Spivak Reader, D. Landry and G. MacLean, eds. (London: Routledge, 1996). Stevenson, D., ‘What’s the problem again? The problematisation of cultural participation in Scottish cultural policy’, Cultural Trends, 22, no. 2 (2013), DOI: 10.1080/ 09548963.2013.783172 Stevenson, D., Balling, G., and Kann-Rasmussen, N., ‘Cultural participation in Europe: Shared problem or shared problematisation?’, International Journal of Cultural Policy, 23, no. 1 (2017). DOI: 10.1080/10286632.2015.1043290 Stohl, C., and Cheney, G., ‘Participatory processes/paradoxical practices’, Management Communication Quarterly, 14, no. 3 (2001), 349–407. Straughn, C., and Gardner, H., ‘Good work in museums today… and tomorrow’, in ­ outledge, J. Marstine, ed., Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics (London: R 2011), 41–53. Taggart, F., Thorpe, S., and Wilson, L., eds., The Regeneration through Heritage Handbook: How to Use a Redundant Historic Building as a Catalyst for Change in Your Community (Chichester: The Prince’s Regeneration Trust, 2006). Tait, S., ‘Viewpoint: Can museums be a potent force in social and urban regeneration?’, (September 2008, Joseph Rowntree Foundation). www.jrf.org.uk/sites/ default/files/jrf/migrated/files/2262.pdf Tallon, A., Urban Regeneration in the UK (London: Routledge, 2010). Taylor, M., ‘Nonparticipation or different styles of participation? Alternative interpretations from Taking Part’, Cultural Trends, 25, no. 3 (2016). DOI: 10.1080/ 09548963.2016.1204051

264  Selected Bibliography Taylor, P., Davies, L., Wells, P., Gilbertson, J., and Tayleur, W., A Review of the Social Impacts of Culture and Sport (London: DCMS, 2015). https://assets.­ publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_ data/file/416279/A_review_of_the_Social_Impacts_of_Culture_and_Sport.pdf The Bulletin of the Association for Industrial Archaeology, no. 162 (Autumn 2012). The Essentials: Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 (Welsh ­G overnment: 2015). Ther, P., Europe since 1989: A History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018). Thompson, D. F. ‘Representing future generations: Political presentism and democratic trusteeship’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 13, no. 1 (2010), 17–37. Thomson, L., Ander, E., Lanceley, A., Menon, U., Noble, G., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Enhancing Cancer patient well-being with a non-pharmacological, heritage-­ focused Intervention’, Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 44, no. 5 (2012). DOI: 10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2011.10.026 Thomson, L. J., Camic, P. M., and Chatterjee, H. J., Social Prescribing: A Review of Community Referral Schemes (London: University College London, 2015). https://culturehealthresearch.wordpress.com/museums-on-prescription/ Thomson, L., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Assessing well-being outcomes for arts and heritage activities: Development of a Museum Well-being Measures Toolkit’, Journal of Applied Arts & Health, 5, no. 1 (2014), 29–50. DOI: 10.1386/ jaah.5.1.29_1 Thomson, L., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Measuring the impact of museum activities on wellbeing: Developing the Museum Wellbeing Measures Toolkit’, Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship, 30, no. 1 (2015): 44–62. DOI: 10.1080/ 09647775.2015.1008390 Thomson, L. J., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Wellbeing with objects: Evaluating a museum object handling intervention for older adults in healthcare settings’, Journal of Applied Gerontology, 29 (2014), 155–179. DOI: 10.1177/ 0733464814558267 Thomson, L. J., Lockyer, B., Camic, P. M., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Effects of a museum-based social prescription intervention on quantitative measures of psychological wellbeing in older adults’, Perspectives in Public Health (2017). DOI: 10.1177/1757913917737563 Thrift, N., Non-representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect (London: Routledge, 2008). Timothy, D., Cultural Heritage and Tourism: An Introduction (Bristol: Channel View, 2011). Tlili, A., ‘Behind the policy mantra of the inclusive museum: Receptions of social exclusion and inclusion in museums and science centres’, Cultural Sociology, 2, no. 1 (2008), 123–147. Tlili, A., ‘Managing performance in publicly funded museums in England: Effects, resistances and revisions’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20, no. 2 (2014). DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2012.737354 Todd, C., Camic, P. M., Lockyer, B., Thomson, L. J., and Chatterjee, H. J., ‘Museum programs for socially isolated older adults: Understanding what works’, Health & Place (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2017.08.005

Selected Bibliography  265 Tomlinson, F., ‘Idealistic and pragmatic versions of the discourse of partnership’, Organization Studies, 26, no. 8 (2005), 1169–1188. Tuhiwai Smith, L., Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 1999). Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums ‘About us’. https://twmuseums.org.uk/ about/about-us Vail, J., and Hollands, R., ‘Creative democracy and the arts: The participatory democracy of the Amber collective’, Cultural Sociology, 7, no. 3 (2013). DOI: 10.1177/1749975513480958 Van den Dries, M., ‘Community archaeology in the netherlands’, Journal of ­C ommunity Archaeology & Heritage, 1 (2014), 1. Veal, D., et al., Museums on Prescription: A Guide to Working with Older Adults (London: UCL, 2017). https://culturehealthresearch.wordpress.com/ museums-on-prescription/ Vergo, P., The New Museology (London: Reaktion Books, 1989). Waddington, K., Excavations at Meillionydd 2010: Characterising the Double Ringwork Enclosures on the Llŷn Peninsula (Bangor Studies in Archaeology, 2010), 2. Waddington, K., and Karl, R., The Meillionydd Project: Characterising the Double Ringwork Enclosures in Gwynedd. Preliminary Excavation Report (Bangor Studies in Archaeology, 2010), 4. Wallach, J. R., The Platonic Political Art: A Study of Critical Reason and Democracy (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania University Press, 2001). Walsh, D., McCartney, G., Collins, C., Taulbut, M., and Batty, G. D., History, Politics and Vulnerability: Explaining Excess Mortality in Scotland and Glasgow (Glasgow: Glasgow Centre for Population Health, 2016). www.gcph.co.uk/ assets/0000/5988/Excess_mortality_final_report_with_appendices.pdf Warwick Commission, Enriching Britain: Culture, Creativity and Growth (­Warwick: University of Warwick, 2015). Waterfield, G., The People’s Galleries: Art Museums and Exhibitions in Britain, 1800–1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). Waterton, E., and Watson, S., eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Heritage Research (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015). Webber, J., Hinds, J., and Camic, P. M., ‘The well-being of allotment gardeners: A mixed methodological study’, Ecopsychology, 7, no. 1 (2015), 20–28. DOI: 10.1089/eco.2014.0058 Whelan, F. G., ‘Democratic theory and the boundary problem’, in Nomos XXV: Liberal Democracy, ed. J. R. Pennock and J. W. Chapman (New York: New York University Press, 1983). White, M., Arts Development in Community Health: A Social Tonic (Oxford: Radcliffe, 2009), 53. Wilkinson R., and K. Pickett, The Inner Level (London: Allen Lane, 2018). Williams, R., ‘Culture and Society (1958)’, in J. McGuigan, ed., Raymond Williams on Culture and Society Essential Writing, (London: Parthian, 2014). Williams, R. ‘Foreword’, The Long Revolution: New Edition (London: Parthian, 2011). Williams, R., Keywords (London: Fontana Press, [1976], 1988). Wilkinson, R., and Pickett, K., The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Well-being (London: Allen Lane, 2018).

266  Selected Bibliography Wilkinson, R., and Pickett, K., The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better for Everyone (London: Penguin, 2009). Woodthorpe, K., ‘Using bereavement theory to understand memorialising behaviour’, in Bereavement Care, 30, no. 2 (2011), 29–32. Worsley, L., A Very British Murder: The Story of a National Obsession (London: Random House, 2013). www.chg.gov.ie/app/uploads/1970/01/charter_for_rural_ireland-1.pdf Wyschogrod, E., An Ethics of Remembering: History, Heterology and the Nameless Others (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998). Yrstad, V., and Schofield, J., ‘Remembering Høyblokka: The government building in Oslo, Norway – Confronting a contemporary heritage dilemma’, in The ­Historic Environment: Policy & Practice, 6, no. 1 (2015), 58–73. Zuidervaart, L. Art in Public: Politics, Economics, and a Democratic Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. access: community-based assets 114; to cultural resources 52, 68, 245, 247; digital 163; dispersed decision-making 22; elite and democratic 2, 237; to heritage 167; museum claims 80, 82–3, 86, 88, 89, 91; online 220; and participation 11; research methodologies 42; rights to people 11, 67; sources of funding 53; for visitors 212 accountability 3, 7, 12, 17–18, 22, 29, 39, 68 action 21, 23, 91, 125, 188, 196, 198, 248 activism 18, 19, 21, 26, 27, 131, 244 Agamben, G. 234 agonism 36, 37, 45n9 Alfrey, J. 177 All Hail Damien Hirst 210 Allihies Copper Mining Museum 170 Allihies Parish Co-Operative Society 176 Allihies project 176–7 All Party Parliamentary Group for Arts, Health and Wellbeing 64n39, 64n40, 121–2, 128 American Alliance of Museum’s thinking 133 Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum of Wales 2011 31, 139; challenges 77–8; complete organisational commitment 67; cultural agency case study 67, 68, 76–7; cultural democracy 66–8; cultural inclusivity case study 67, 73–5; cultural participation case

study 67–8, 75–6; cultural rights 67; framing change, case studies 72–3; funders and sponsors 70; grant-making organisations 73; inspiring people, changing lives 71, 72; long-term organisational change 69; national context 69–70; partnership agreements 74–5; Penderfyniad Pwy? Who decides? 75–6, 78; social responsibility 66–7; vision in 2017 69; vision objectives 70–1; volunteering at 74; Wallich curators 75–6 Amsterdam Museum 186 Ancoats Art Museum 125 Anderson, Margaret 40, 43, 195 Anderson, Rachel 148 Annwyl, Sara 140 anti-elitism 237 Appadurai, A. 9 Art and Natural Sciences collections 71 Art Galleries and Health Committees 98 arts and health landscape 113 Arts Council England (ACE) 30, 211 Arts Council funding 55, 57 Asia Europe Museums Association 228 aspiration, concept of 11 asset-based approach 118 Association for Industrial Archaeology (AIA) 181 Athenian democracy 240 Auckland War Memorial Museum, New Zealand 206 audience theory 80, 147, 197 austerity: health and wellbeing in 51–4; localism 52

268 Index auto-ethnographic record 9 award winning project 116 Baker, David 179 Ballantyne, R. 207 Barad, Karen 88 Barbara Hepworth Gallery 159 Bauman, Z. 216, 220 Beaney House of Art & Knowledge, Canterbury 53, 115 Beatty, Alfred Chester 225 Bede’s World Museum (BWM) 17, 20, 90–1; exhibition 26 Beeching Reports (1963–5) 154 Belfiore, E. 4 Benjamin, Walter 9 Bennett, Tony 82, 84 Benson, Mike 7, 8, 90 Besselink, Marijke 240 Bezzeg, M. 217 Bhaskar, Michael 145, 146 Big Pit National Coal Museum 71 The Big Society 52 Birmingham Museum Trust’s Creative Carers programme 53 The Birth of the Museum 82 Blackfoot Confederacy 41 Black, Graham 7, 153, 161 Black Minority Ethnic (BME) 50 Blair, Tony 206 Block, Peter 135 Bloom, P. 198–9 BM see British Museum (BM) Boal, Augusto 244 Booth, Eric 17 Bourriaud, N. 244 ‘Bowling Alone’ charting 133 Brideshead Revisited 177 Brinkerhoff, Jennifer 38 Brint, Steven 83 British Museum (BM) 31, 80, 207; Australia Show 25; exhibition 26 Brooklyn Museum 9 Burkin, Julia 157–8, 158, 160 Burns, Danny 89 Burrell Collection 97, 101 BWM see Bede’s World Museum (BWM) Calgary’s Glenbow Museum 40 Cameron, David 6 Camic, P.M. 120 Caminches Mine 171

Campaign for Learning in Museums and Galleries (CLMG) 54 capitalism 2, 6, 98, 192 care and empathy 192 care leavers 46n31 care-taker 148 care-taking curator 149–50 ‘Carne y Arena’ (Flesh and Sand) 195 ‘Celtworld’ 229 Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CMFT) 128 ‘ceremonial agenda’ 223 change in museums 3–5; ‘legal rational’ instruments of government policy 3 Chatterjee, Helen 5, 115 The Cheese and the Worms (Ginzberg) 193 Chester Beatty Library (CBL) 217, 225, 227, 228; role in international cultural diplomacy 228 Chomskyian analysis 11 Cinema Museum, London 115 citizen-based approach 129 citizen rights, notion of 37 citizenship 5, 37, 85, 108, 126, 188, 199, 200, 246 City Improvement Trust 100 city marketing agencies, emergence of 174 city resilience strategy 96 civic engagement 126, 233 civic imagination 134; arts, health and social movements 131–2; care and compassion 134–5; Greater Manchester revolution 127–8; institutional lens 128–31; museums of future 132–4 Clare, Roy 206 Clock Tower War Memorial 154 Clore Fellowship Programme 17 Coalfields Regeneration Trust 168 Coalville: All Saints Primary School 166; community 162; Covered Market 159; ‘greater Coalville’ 153 Coalville Family of Schools 165, 166 Coalville Headteachers Annual Conference 158 Coalville Heritage Society 157, 159, 165 Coalville Heritage Strategy 161–6; Action Plan 162–3; building relationships with schools 165–6;

Index  269 Churches and Chapels Heritage Trail 163–4; co-ordination 163; dynamic program of events 163; monitoring and evaluation 166; NWLDC 162, 163; Palitoy 100 164; Snibston Colliery Headstocks and Pithead Buildings 164–5; strong digital and social media 163; SWOT analysis 162 ‘Coalville History Day’ 163 Coalville Miners’ Gala 163, 166 Coalville Project 156–8 Coalville Timeline 158, 160–1 co-curation 37, 138, 242 Coles, Alec 56 collaboration: curatorial process 144–5; and partnerships 12; between staff and well-known local activists 34 collaborative reflective practice 37 collection-building 144 collections 80, 208; based activities 120; CBL’s 227; of precious manuscripts 227 ‘collective intelligence pool’ 208, 209 Colomb, Claire 173 Comedia 4 commercialism 2 ‘communicate or die’ 203–7 communication protocols 222, 229–30 communication technologies 216, 222 communitarian expressiveness 248 communitarianism 68, 239 community 7; arts 3; assets 112, 115, 117–19; based organisations 114; based tourism initiative 180; cohesion 242; consensus 240; development 3; engagement 7; identities 239–40; involvement 241; organisations 240; partners 37; public health interventions 114; working 122 Community Liaison Group 165 Conn, S. 216, 220 conservation 80, 83, 86–8; fixed and non-renewable resource 86–7; non-representational participatory ontology 87–8; relational ontology 88; social-material act 87 Conservative/Liberal-Democrat coalition 51 constructivism 87–8; doctrine of 236; educational theory 10 contemporary migration 191, 217 Contu, Alessia 36 conversation in museums 86–8

Cooke, Pat 9 co-operation, history of 24 co-option 8–9, 37 co-ownership 40, 245 Coplan, Amy 198 copper 170–2, 176, 181–2 Copper Mining Museum 7, 174 Cornish-Irish relations 185n40 Cornish Methodism 173 Cornwall, Andrea 36 ‘cosmopolitan nationalism’ 223 ‘Cottonopolis’ 125 Cramp, Rosemary 29 Crawford, Robert 98 ‘creative and cultural industries’ 248 Creative Health 128 Creative Health Inquiry Report 113, 117 Cremin, Kathy 7, 8, 29, 90 Croke, Fionnuala 228 Crossick, G. 3, 4, 10, 13 cultural agency 67, 68, 72, 76–7 ‘cultural blackspot’ 29 Cultural Commissioning Programme 64n35 cultural communities 66 cultural democracy 12, 66, 245–6 cultural encounters 115–16 cultural engagement 4, 113, 121 cultural inclusivity 67, 72, 73–5, 77 cultural institutions 228–9 culturally diverse communities, in Ireland 227 cultural participation 67–8, 72, 75–7 Cultural Policy Collective 11 cultural populism 245 cultural regeneration program 100 cultural rights 66–9, 72–3, 78 cultural wellbeing 120–1 culture: democratisation of 3; value of 4, 205; and values of museums 17 Cunningham, S. 222 curating democratic and civic engagement: cultural democracy 245–6; current practice 236–7; display/representation 237–40; and museums 235–6; as participation 240–5; practice and norm of democracy 234–5 curatorial authority, re-appreciation of 7 curatorial process: decision-making process 149; educational turn

270 Index 149; funding and evaluating 146; individual testimony 150; participation and collaboration 144–5; professional approach 149 curatorial projects 138 curatorship 139, 149 Curry, Tony 130 cuts to museum sector: damage of 63n28; impact of 55 Dana Centre 242 Dana, John Cotton 9, 203, 205 Danish Welfare Museum 39, 42, 43, 46n39 decision-making process 18–19, 21, 91, 142, 212, 245; dispersed 22; in museums 21; power 139 deep-level cognitive processing 121 dehumanisation 196 ‘deindustrial revolution’ 95 Demir, Nilüfer 192 democracy 80; co-creation 241; community 7; current practice 236–7; display/representation 237–40; and museums 235–6; as participation 240–5; practice and norm of 234–5 ‘democratic deficit’ 241 democratic politics, theory of 36 democratic theory 82–4, 83, 84 democratisation process 11, 12, 43, 212–13 Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) 50 51, 56, 63n24; 2016 ‘Culture White Paper’ 242; funded museums 4–5 Department for Health 64n34 Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht 176 Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 228 Department of Rural and Community Development 175 Derby Museum 211 devolution 68–9, 129, 131, 135 ‘devotional texts’ 223 Dibbits, Taco 211 Dicks, Bella 177 digital avatars 220 digital developments 9 The Digital Engagement Framework 211 digital literacy 212 digital operations 227 digital technologies 211, 227

digital utopianism 9 digital world: centrality of visitor 206–7; communicate or die 203–5; communicating (not dying) 207–8; international standards and partnerships 204; museum practice in participatory environment 211–12; story of change 205–6; towards porous institution 208–11 Discovery Museum 155, 157, 164 display/representation 138, 199, 237– 40, 247; community arts movement 238; ‘the traditional museum’ 237 ‘distant suffering’ 197, 198, 199 diversity 22–3 documentation 106, 118 Dornan, Duncan 5, 8 Dougherty, Dale 208 Dragset 244 Dryzek, John 43, 44 Dublin Museums, Four 224–5; Chester Beatty Library (CBL) 225; EPIC Ireland (EI) 225; Little Museum of Dublin (LM) 224–5; National Transport Museum (NTM) 224 Dudley, S.H. 221 Eastern District Police Buildings in Bridgeton 99 ecological resilience 23 economic rationalist approach 205 The Economist 1, 3, 4, 9, 14n7; ‘transformed beyond recognition’ analysis 4 ecotherapies 119–20 educational psychology 3 Eliot, T.S. 142, 143 elitism 11, 209, 236–7, 248 Elmgreen 244 ‘Emerging Entrepreneur’ award 225 emotional touch 121 empathy 198; deficit 198; value of 188 ‘Empathy Museum’ 198 empowerment 22, 37, 239 ‘empowerment-lite’ 37 engagement, museums: benefits 113–14 Engel, Friedrich 125 English Heritage 160 English Longitudinal Study of Ageing 113 English Museums Civic Network 133 Enlightenment 133, 204 Enniscorthy Castle Museum 229 EPIC Ireland (EI) 217, 225, 226

Index  271 ‘EPIC – the Irish Emigration Museum’ 226 ‘ethnoscapes’ 9 Europa Nostra award 225 European Capital of Culture 97 European Solidarity Centre (ECS) 132 Evans, J. 173 ‘everyday solidarity’ 132 ‘everything gardens’ 23 Ewart, James Cabot 209 exercise on prescription 119–20, 120 exhibitions 80, 138, 199; content 144; development 75–6; gallery presentation 141; illegal migration 187; in museum 147; and online technology 228; visitors emotional responses 10; at Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester Art Gallery 39 Fairburn, Esme 30 Family Festival 183 ‘Famous Fifty’ project 160, 165 Fascism 189 ‘Fifty Fantastic Females’ 160 Fifty Good Men and True (Kendrick) 159 Finnis, Jane 211–12 First World War 159 Firth, Raymond 35 Fleming, David 55 Fleming, Tom 208 Flemming, David 206 ‘fluid modernity’ 230 Food Heroes 158 Foresight Report 117 Forster, E.M. 190, 194 Fostering Empathy in Museums 198 Foucauldian approach to policy research 49 Fox, Matt 164 freedom of self 22 free state-funded education 8 Friedli, L. 115 ‘Friends of Snibston’ 156 ‘fulfilment centre’ 155 funding, economic impact of 205 Future Heroes 158 future, museums of 132–4 Galeano, Eduardo 33 Gale, Trevor 49 Garden Festivals 173 Gardner, H. 69

General Practice Forward View 114 German Historical Museum 186 Germano Celant 196 The Gift 35 Gilbert, Gustave 10 Ginzberg, Carlo 193 Girei, Emmanuela 36 Glasgow 31; civic museum service 5; economic inequality 96; experience of inequalities 97; experience of poverty 96; health education and prevention building 96–7; health profile, improved knowledge 96–7; 1901 International Exhibition 99; museums (see Glasgow Museums (GM)); public health perspective 95–7; Ruskin Society 98; ‘workshop of the world’ 98 Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH) 21, 95–6; Arts and Humanities Research Council 105; city’s health inequalities 97; ‘Glasgow: health in a changing city’ 97; and Glasgow Life 106–7; Understanding Glasgow 96 Glasgow City Council 96, 109n4 Glasgow Corporation: City Industrial Museum 98; Municipal Art Gallery 98 Glasgow Life 92n3 Glasgow Museums (GM) 5, 95; cultural institutions 108; culture of civic republicanism 98; democratisation 101; and GCPH, collaboration between 105; as health promoting organisation 106–7; municipal socialism 97; museum-public health partnership 102; and public health 98–102, 104–5; and public health, shared vision of 107–8; questioning museum paradigm 102–3; questioning public health paradigm 103–4; ‘regeneration led culture’ 97; twenty-first century public health 105; universalist approaches 106 Glenbow Museum 41 globalisation: Irish culture 218; and museums 217–22; open-process potentialities 218; urban regeneration and renewal policies 222 GM see Glasgow Museums (GM) Gokcigdem, Elif 198 Golding, V. 7 Goodin, Robert E. 83

272 Index Gould, Stephen Jay 221–2 Govier, L. 209 Graham, Helen 12 Greater Manchester 126, 136n9; revolution 127–8 Greater Manchester Ageing Hub 129 Greater Manchester Population Health Plan 127, 131 Great Irish Famine 170 Green Gyms 112, 119–20 green wellbeing 118, 119 Gregson, Michele 151n10 Gurian, Elaine 67 GVA (Gross Value Added) 96 Gweithdy 76 Hamlyn, Paul 73 Happy Museum project 53, 54, 205 Harrison, Rodney 186, 187 health and communities 5–8 Health and Social Care Act of 2012 52–3 health and wellbeing 118; arts and culture 112; in austerity 51–4; austerity localism 52; Coalition and Conservative government 52; contexts of cultural commissioning and social prescribing 53; Culture White Paper in 2016 52; local health inequalities 60; localism and decentralisation agendas 52; role of museums in improving 113; at TWAM 57–9 health, partnership for: Green Gyms, ecotherapy, exercise on prescription 119–20; museums as public health assets 115–16; museums on prescription 116–17; natural, or green, wellbeing 119; synergies between cultural and natural wellbeing 120–1; synergies between museums and other community assets 117–19 Healthy Walks 119 Heeley, John 174 hegemonic power, Gramsci’s notion of 33 ‘Hello Heritage’ festival 163 heritage: agencies and museums 219; apprentices 19–20, 23; care and empathy 192; collectivity and sameness 194–5; communicating through individuals 193–4; difficult heritage 200; distant suffering 200;

empathy, suffering subject and us 197–200; Flesh and Sand 195–7; Harrison’s definition 199; memory and migrations 188–9; and museum offerings 184n18; ‘Only connect’ 189–91; resources 18; systemic action research 91–2 Heritage groups 158 Heritage Heroes 158 Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) 135, 156, 164, 241 Heritage Trails 163 Hero Project CIC 158–60; ‘Famous Fifty’ exhibition 159; Newbridge High School 158 Hewison, Robert 177 Highlander Research and Education Centre 22 ‘high-tech amnesia’ 221 Hinds, J. 120 historiography 197 HM Government 64n31, 64n34 Hodnett, Diane 182 Hokusai, Katsushika 121 Holburne Museum, Bath 115 Hooper-Greenhill 7, 206, 207, 218 hope, concept of 11 Horsfall, Thomas Coglan 125, 126 horticultural wellbeing program 120 Horton, Myles 22, 25 Hudson, Alistair 39, 41 Human Development Index in 1990, creation of 6 Human Henge project 120 humanitarianism, doctrine of 44n1 human rights 80 humans, Aristotle’s definition of 6 Huyssen, A. 220, 223 identity-formation 223 identity politics, rise of 235 idle women 148 The Ignorant Schoolteacher 147, 150 ‘imagined communities’ 9 imperialist collection policies 208 ‘indebtedness engineering’ 35 individualism 2, 6 industrial heritage 177–8 Industrial Heritage Association 178 Industrial Heritage Year 178 industrialisation 178 Industrial Revolution 173, 174 inequalities 21; city’s health 97; economic 96; experience of 97;

Index  273 health 65n53; local health 60; in mainstream museum 85; social 78n1 Information Age Gallery 242, 243 infrastructure 49, 56, 57, 104, 108, 128, 133, 175 Inglis, Tom 218 injustice 11, 38, 97, 100, 239, 243 innovative museum programs 118 institutional cultures 11, 108, 235 institutionalised childhood 42–3 International Council of Museums (ICOM) 80, 92n2, 217, 219, 226 international industrial heritage 171 International Museums Day 217 Investors in People 77 Ireland Fund 176 Ireland, population of 183n1 Irish Fisheries Board 176 Irish Labour Party 174 Isdell, Neville 225 Islam 240; in Dutch society 240 Isolation and older men: Understanding the challenge and developing new services 130 Jacotot, Jacques 147 Janes, Robert 40 Jewish Museum Berlin 186 John Wesley, campaigns of 172 Jones, P. 173 Journeys with The Waste Land 141, 142, 144, 148 Jung, Yuha 89 Kaszynska, P. 4, 10 Kealogue Mine 172 Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum 99, 100–1 Kelvin Road Mantelpiece 140 Kemal 193–4 Kendrick, Michael 159 Keynesian consensus 2 Killarney National Park 170 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 219 knowledge: contingent and non-contingent 83–4 Krznaric, R. 198 Labour Movement 98 Lakoff, George 10 landscapes of care 59 Lane, Janice 7, 12 De Lanerolle, Ayisha 142 Lang, T. 132

Lanz, Francesca 9, 10, 11 Law, John 87 Lawson, John 90 Leadbeater, C. 244–5 Lecky, W.E.H 10 Leicestershire Coal Industry Welfare Trust Fund (LCIWTF) 166 Leicestershire County Council (LCC) 152 Leicestershire Museum, Arts and Record Service 155 Leicestershire Museums Service 155–6 Leicestershire Record Office and Ashby Arts Festival 159 Levitas, Ruth 52 Levitt, P. 223 liberal representative democracy 234, 241 Life, Love, Death and Art Machismo 130 Lindbergh, Charles 221 ‘liquid modernity’ 216, 222, 223 Little Museum (LM) 217, 224–5 Live Action Role Play participants 19 Liversidge, Peter 244 ‘living history’ approach 180 Local Area Agreement 56 Localism Act (2011) 52 local needs, responding to 61, 118, 119 London Science Museum 242 London’s Hackney Museum 41 ‘Long Lane’ 153 ‘Lost Childhoods’ 196 Lottery Fund’s funding policy 241 Love, Ann Rowson 89 Lowenthal, David 177 Luker, David 172 Lynch, Bernadette 12, 24, 28, 85 MA see Museum Association (MA) McAleese, Mary 170 MacDonald, Sally 40 McGuigan, J. 241 MacIntyre, A. 6 McLuhanite 219 Made In Roath 140, 144 MAH Abbott Square 133 Manchester 95; ambitious citywide program 5; Museum of Science and Industry 40 Manchester Art Gallery 39, 129 Manchester Institute for Arts, Health & Social Change 131 Manchester Jewish Museum 129

274 Index Manchester Men’s Health 130 Manchester Museum 129, 134, 200n2 Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust 53 Manifesto for Museums, 2012 194 Marmot, Michael 103–4 Marmot Review 115 Massey, Doreen 195 mass victimhood 192 Matarasso, Francois 104 material collections 219 material presence and virtual representation: Four Dublin Museums 224–5; globalisation and museums 217–22; globalism and the city 222–3; tourism 223–4 Mauss, Marcel 35 Measuring the Value of Culture report (2010) 205 mechanical reproduction 9 mediascapes 2 medical-care models 129 medical training programs 128 memory and migrations: contemporary migrations 191; ‘Italy of Migrations (1861–2011)’ 188; less emigrants, more immigrants 188–9; permanent exhibition 188 Menocchio 193 mental wellbeing 117 Merriman, Nick 86 Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff) 10 Methodist mining community 181 Methodist revivals of 1799 and 1814 172 Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York 209 Michael Dwyer Festival 183 Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA) 39 Midgely, Mary 10 migration museums 186 Milekic, S. 220 Millennium Celebrations Project 176 Mine, Dooneen 171 miners’ strike (1984–5) 166 mixed methods approach 4 MLA Strategic Programmes 17 modernised museums 4 modernism 143 modernist collection 141 Modest, W. 7 modus operandi 241 Mol, Annemarie 87, 88

Mona Lisa 223 Montreal Holocaust Museum 196 moral community 199 More and Better program 72 Morse, N. 11, 12 Mortimer, Christine 28 Mouffe, Chantal 35 Mountain Mine 172 Muller, J.Z. 219 multiculturalism 246 multi-media: exhibitions 216–17, 219, 224, 229; and online technologies 230 Murphy, Oonagh 8, 9, 222 museology and community, Beara Peninsula: developing industrial heritage 175–9; Miner’s Chapel 179–83; mining and methodism 171–3; urban and rural regeneration 173–5 museum: buildings and management 18; capacity 20; concept of 204; definition of 226; democracy 247; frictions 220; funders 17; governance 247; in health 48; hegemony 36; illegal migration 187; policy 26, 241; practice 206, 241; professionalism 21; programs 238–9; quality displays 164; rethinking 237; staff 19; thinking 241 Museum Access Zones 85 Museum Association (MA) 54–5, 63n27, 64n41, 64n43, 65n44, 65n45, 208; campaigns 31, 60 museum claims 80; access 80, 83, 91; conservation 80, 83, 86–8, 91; depth and extent of involvement 84–6, 88–91; everyone and future generations 91; insatiability of claims 83; representation logics 80, 82–4, 91; scale of impact 80, 83, 84–6, 88–91 Museum Detox 43 The Museum of Amazing Coincidences 140 Museum of Art and History, in Santa Cruz 85 Museum of Science and Industry 129 Museum of the History of Immigration in Catalonia in Barcelona 186 Museum Passports 117 ‘Museums and Globalisation’ 217 Museums and Their Visitors (Hooper-Greenhill) 206

Index  275 Museums as Spaces for Wellbeing (Desmarais, Bedford and Chatterjee) 118, 122 Museums Change Lives 54, 61 Museums for the Many 50 Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) 50 ‘Museums on Prescription’ scheme 115, 117 Museum Standards Programme for Ireland 226 Myths We Live By (Midgely) 10 Namatjira, Albert 26 National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing 53, 55 National Coal Museum see Big Pit National Coal Museum National Cultural Institutions 225 National Football Museum 129 National Galleries of Scotland 101 National Gallery in London 99 National Health Service Funding 205 The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Welsh Government 76 National Museum Cardiff 71 National Museum in Edinburgh 101 National Museum of Wales see Amgueddfa Cymru–National Museum of Wales 2011 National Museums Liverpool 31 National Slate Museum 71 National Social Prescribing Network 116 National Transport Museum (NTM) 217, 224 National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) 166 National Wool Museum 71 natural wellbeing 119, 120–1 nature-based interventions 119 Neighbourhood Development Corporation 133 Neukollen Museum 200n8 Newark Museum 203, 211 new business models 215n56 Newcastle City Council 57 New Gorbals Hall 99 New Labour 206, 242; cultural policy 48, 49; period 50; public investment in culture 52; social inclusion policies 238; vision 206 The New Museology (Vergo) 2, 12–13, 13n4

New Public Management 3 NHS, advent of 95 Noble, G. 115 ‘non-expert’ participants 243 ‘non-representation theory’ 81 Nora, Pierre 193 North East Council for Addictions (NECA) 58 North-West Leicestershire District Council (NWLDC) 156, 157–8, 160, 161 Notes on Protesting (Liversidge) 244 Nussbaum, Martha 6 object: based epistemology 220; configuration of 217; focussed processes 68; ‘institutional protection’ 217; -intensive display 225; material 217; and technology 217 O’Boyle, Cis 148 O’Brien, D. 205 O’Connell, Michael 182 Office for National Statistics report (2015) 116 O’Neill, M. 5, 8, 85, 236 ‘one model fits all’ approach 116 ‘one nation’ politics 98 online technology 228 ‘on prescription’ programs 112 Open Museum review 107 Orbán, Viktor 196 ordinary people, lives of 10 O'Reilly, Tim 208 organisational culture 233, 235 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 6 othering, processes of 11 Our Museum 44, 72, 74, 78, 85, 106 Outreach team 56 Oxford University Museums 115 Pamuk, Orhan: museological thinking 194; Museum of Innocence 193 ‘paradigm-shifting’ inclusiveness 101 Parkin, Sarah 23 Parkinson, Clive 132 parochialism 195 participation 37; claims 80; and co-creation 241, 242, 244, 247; critiques of 88–91; and engagement 243; power imbalances of 211; projects 243

276 Index participative and collaborative projects: curare: to take care 148–50; curating and curating 144–6; individual as collaborator and participant 146–8; working with people 139–44 participatory museums 77; core, concept of 85–6; critiques of 80–1, 84–6; depth and extent of involvement 85, 86, 89–90; inequalities in mainstream museum 85; organisation’s leadership 81; parallel action 90; to politics and knowledge 92; representational tradition 81; scale of impact tendency 85, 86, 90 partnerships 12, 23, 27, 116, 118; breakdown of partnership relations 36; challenging and expanding 38–43; co-creation/co-curation 37; community partners 37; co-option 37; decision-making and mutual influence 38; franchise, scope and authenticity 44; as ‘friendly enemies’ 35–6; individuals transformation and policy change 42; international partners 33; long-term partnership project 40–1; Midland’s museum 35, 43; MIMA 39; museum/ cultural institutions 34; negotiated (and re-negotiated) partnership 43; not friends, nor beneficiaries 43–4; ‘nothing about us, without us’ – an international rally 36–8; and participation 38–9, 40, 42; peer-learning partnerships 33; post-partnership state of affairs 34; project’s aftermath 34; relationship with co-curators 34–5; research-asactivism 42; revisiting of strategies 43; rights-based partnership practices 39–40; role of beneficiary and carer 37; and self-determination 41; staff and well-known local activists, collaboration between 34; true partnership 40; UK partners 33; unequal power structures 38; Whose Cake is it Anyway? report 37, 44; working 119, 161 part tourism 174–5 Paton, James 98 Paul Hamlyn Foundation (PHF) 28, 44, 72, 74, 106–7; Our Museum Programme 17, 25, 28; research program 24

Paul Hamlyn Our Museum project 85 Peate, Iorwerth 76 pedagogy of feeling 195, 200 The People’s Galleries: Art Museums and Exhibitions in Britain, 1800–1914 9 People’s Garden 133 People’s History Museum 129 People’s Palace museum 98, 99, 100 Peterloo Massacre (1819) 125 Phillips, Mark Salber 197, 198 photo-journalism 192 physical health improvements 120 Pickett, K. 108 Platinum Programme 59 policy genealogy: campaigns of Museums Association 49; driven settlements 60; and funding incentive 241; role of culture and culture’s relationship 49; socially engaged work 48; socially excluded groups 48; socially purposeful work 48, 49; socially responsible museum 48; TWAM 50 political activism 244 political legitimacy 235 political liberalism 98 political processes 36 poorly capitalised museums 229 Poovey, Mary 87 ‘pop-up’ and one-off temporary project 139 portraits of individuals 192; Alan Kurdi, Syrian refugee 192 ‘post-industrial’ 105 post-museum 218 power sharing 245 prescription program 116–17 prescription schemes 115 Price Waterhouse Cooper 153 professionalisation of museum practice 217 ‘professional project’ 236 protest-oriented museological work 243 psychological wellbeing 117 public funding cuts 55 public health assets 115–16 Public Health Team 128 publicly-funded culture 2 publicly-funded museums 85 publicly-funded national institution 228 public participation and co-creation 233 purposes of museums: kind of value 2

Index  277 Putnam, Robert 133, 177 Puxley, John 171, 181 Quakerism 24 racisms 189 radicalism 125 Rancière, Jacques 146–8 Rasmussen, Jacob Knage 39 Ravenstone History Society 163 Rayner, G. 132 Recovering Identities through Culture and Heritage programmes (RICH) 59 re-engineering and constructing museums 18 reformist museum practice 9 refugeeism 199 refugees trust 187 The Regeneration through Heritage Handbook 176 regional workshops 26 Reign of Gold 210 relational aesthetics 244 relationship-building 26 relationship resilience 23 The Relevant Museum (Simon) 40–1 Renaissance funded museums 51 Renaissance report 206 representational logics: collections, displays and audiences 81; direct democracy 81; epistemic representation 80; political representation 80 research funding 128 Research Group 142–4 Richardson, J. 211 Ridge, Mia 212 ‘rights-based approach to partnership-working’ 12 rights-based museums 39–40 Robinson, Frank 156 Rosebery, Lord 99 Rouse, John 131 Royal Collection 99 Roy, Arundhati 35 Ruskin, John 121 Russell, James Burn 98 Ryedale Folk Museum (RFM) 17, 24–5, 28, 90; learning program 19; radical social change 25 St Fagans National Museum of History 68, 70–1; re-developing 76 ‘St. James’s Way’ 223

Salford Museum and Art Gallery 129 Salvini, Matteo 196 Sandahl, J. 3, 11 Sandell, R. 207 Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History 196 Saward, Michael 83 Schubert, K. 204, 207 Schumpeter, J. 234 Scottish Burden of Disease Study (2015) 103 Scottish Government 96 Scott, Trish 142 Seabrook, J. 33 Seaman, P. 5, 8 ‘semi-fictionalised ethnography’ 195 Sen, Amartya 6 Sensing Culture group 53 Sexual Offences Act 238 SF-12 Health Survey 120 short-lived ‘Big Society’ initiative (Cameron) 6 ‘show and tell’ approach 138 Simon, Nina 40, 76, 85 Singer, Peter 10 Situationism 244 Smed, Sarah 42 Smith, Adam 10 Smith, George 159 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai 35 Smithsonian Institution 80 ‘Snibston & Coalville Preservation Group’ 165 Snibston Discovery Museum 155–6, 162, 167; demolished, 2016 152 Snibston No. 2 166 ‘social actors’ engagement 49 social agency, concept of 54, 55, 60, 67, 78n1 social bonds 6, 120, 121 social capital 6–7, 115 social cohesion 3, 142–3 social equity 21, 22 social exclusion 48, 50, 173 social inclusion 3, 8, 21, 245–6; and diversity 59; in ‘golden age,’ 1997– 2010 50–1 social isolation 104, 113, 116, 117, 178 social justice 12, 25, 38, 42, 54, 80, 245 social media 160, 163, 196–8, 203, 208, 209, 211, 217, 220, 227 social museum: accepting feedback and reflection 24–6; equity, diversity and freedom of self 22–3; shared

278 Index decision-making 21–2; vision, mission and values 21–2 social prescribing 5, 114, 116, 122 social relationships 249n19 social responsibility 66–7 social role of museums 112, 133; health and wellbeing 51–4, 57–9; Museums Association 54–5; policy genealogy of museums 48–50; Renaissance 2008 review 59–60; social inclusion in the ‘golden age’ (1997–2010) 50–1; TWAM, evolving practice and partnerships 55–7 ‘social trustee professionalism’ 83 social unrest 125 Sola, T. 219 Spalding, Julian 100 spectacular exhibition technology 218 Spivak, Gayatri 37 staff, museum: self-reflection 11; training 128 Stage 2 Gallery development 30 Stanton, Paul 28 Stenson, William 154 Stephenson, George 154 Stoney, George 182 storytelling 210–11 Strategy in 2022, re-writing of 166–7 Straughn, C. 69 street exhibition 160 striving, concept of 11 sustainability 54, 118 Swannington Heritage Trust 157 SWOT analysis 162 systemic action inquiry/research 81–2, 89, 91–2 systems thinking 88–9 Tate Britain (Art-based Information Prescription) 115 technological innovation 2, 212 technological modernisation 221 Thatcher, Margaret 6, 173, 205 The Conservation Volunteers (TCV) 120 The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith) 10 Thiel, Tamiko 209 ‘thinking team’ of internal and external researchers 24 ‘Third Party’ independent approach 165 Thomas, Julia 140 3D Printing 203 Timothy, Dallen 178

Tlilli, Anwar 11, 12 Tollcross Museum 100 Tooby, M. 9, 13 tourism 155, 161, 166, 170–1, 174, 175–80, 183, 223–4, 229 tourist/pilgrim experience 223 Toys gallery 152 Trade Union Congress 125 traditional/elitist/excellence model 2 ‘traditional’ museum 9 tradition and modernity 8–9 tragedy 10, 155, 192, 198 transport museum 226 TripAdvisor 224, 226 Trump, Donald 196, 216 trustees 24, 28, 71, 74, 77, 78, 83, 225 Tusa, John 27 ‘twilight memory’, notion of 221 Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM) 31, 65n51; Centres for Social Change 55; evolving practice and partnerships at 55–7; health and wellbeing at 57–9; Renaissance in the Regions 50–1 Ugly Renaissance Babies 209, 210 UK Museum Associations 59, 80; context of austerity 61; ‘Museum Change Lives’ advocacy document 82 UK’s Museum of Homelessness 40 UNESCO’s Convention 219 Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) 166 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 196 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 66 University of Glasgow 96 University Public Engagement Symposium 159 Ünsal, Deniz 240 UN Sustainability Development Goals 135 Urban Islam 240, 241 ‘useful’ museum 203 Uzzell, D. 207 Vergo, P. 2 virtual online presence 219 virtual reality (VR) 187, 195 visitors 23; and citizens 10–13; focussed practice 207; generated participatory practices 209 Visser, J. 211

Index  279 De Waal, Edmund 141 Wajid, Sara 43 The Wallich 78 Warburton, Stuart 7, 153, 161 Ward, David 141 Ward, Esme 5, 8 War Memorial Clock Tower 165 War of Independence 182 Warwick Commission 4, 15n22 Warwick, Rhona 141 Waterfield, G. 9 Watson, Sheila 191 Webber, J. 120 web-programming models 208–9 Web 2.0 208, 209, 211; technologies 203 Welfare State, expansion of 95 wellbeing 80; program development 119 Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 68, 69–70, 71 Wellbeing programme 59 Wesleyan Methodists 173 West Cork Food Trail 171 Western museum 34 Western values of rationality, truth and beauty 2

Wexford County Museum 229 White Chapel Gallery 243 Whitehead, C. 9, 10, 11 White, M. 104, 132 Whitwick Collieries 154, 166 Whitwick Historical Group 157 Whitworth 130; Art Gallery 39, 128, 129; Gallery in Manchester’s Art Garden 120; partnership 53 Wilber’s integrative model 105 Wild Atlantic Way (WAW) 175 Wildgoose, Deana 157–8, 160 Wilkinson, R. 108 Williams, Raymond 7, 12, 69 Winch, Emma 41 Witcomb, Andrea 191 ‘worksite of democracy’ 233 World Health Organisation 129 worship, place of 179–80 Wright, Patrick 177 Wright, Peter 12 xenophobia 189 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) 133; Fellows Program 133 Young, L. 218