What kind of museum will the next generation dream of and build? How might perceptions of museums – and what museums can be – change in the next 10, 20, 100 years? Rachel Noel on the future of museums

Having worked with young people and creative learning for the past decade, naturally I believe that the experience of learning with and encountering art must be central to museums of the future. At Tate, we describe creative learning as “using artistic processes, materials, imagination, and curiosity to develop new skills, knowledge, and perspectives (which could include creativity, wellbeing or personal growth) in an open and limitless way”. But before that is possible, public perception of cultural spaces continues to be an enduring barrier that excludes so many from so much as setting foot inside in the first place, let alone having meaningful encounters or making memories.

On the question of who has the right to amazing culture, artist and urban planner Theaster Gates said that after seeing Jay-Z perform in the Brooklyn arena he helped build, he had come to believe that “all one has to do is build the space you want to rock in”. For me, future museums will be the houses that young people, and those from communities and backgrounds marginalised by society can ‘rock in’ – can see themselves in, can be their full selves in, imagine and even dream in.

Open invitation, collaboration and participation will be a part of every museum function – from collecting, to commissioning, to exhibition making, public programme making, and archiving

Perceptions of what a museum or cultural space can look like will have radically shifted – they will be seen as spaces that are as alive and as messy as our everyday lives. They will function as our homes, our corner shops, our schools, our dancefloors and our temples – equally essential for quiet contemplation or study, as creative expression, fiery debate or dancing.

They will not only represent (or consult with) young people, artists, cultural workers, communities, leaders who are from the global majority, queer, disabled or working class – but will be founded and led by us. They may look different to museums as we know them – existing outside of grand, contemporary buildings, and taking new forms within social housing, doctor’s surgeries, nightclubs, prisons, online and other public spaces. Our perception of what cultural spaces can be will have shifted – as poet and writer Abondance Matanda says in her essay of the same title: “the first galleries I knew were Black homes”.

Future art museums will be a space for expression, joy, emergence; of connections between people, ideas, projects – even artworks. They will be used as much for taking part and joining in as introspection and reflection. They will utilise their unique place in the world; as spaces that facilitate public dialogue, connection, and make visible collective consciousness. Museums of all kinds will be connected and well networked, enabling an equitable sharing of resources (and power) with each other and their communities.

Open invitation, collaboration and participation will be a part of every museum function – from collecting, to commissioning, to exhibition making, public programme making, and archiving. Institutional practices will have long moved away from internal ‘divisions’ and towards models and modes of working that best support, care for, present and invite the public to engage with art and ideas – and the most pressing issues of our time. My hope is that by embracing these practices, we can build a future where our museums reflect a more authentic, nuanced and liberated representation of our truly diverse cultural ecology.

Rachel Noel
Head of Learning Programmes & Partnerships, Tate Britain and Tate Modern

This short essay is part of the FutureMuseum Project. Museum workers based in 18 countries — including Nigeria, Guinea, Botswana, South Africa, Argentina, Colombia, Singapore, New Zealand, Denmark, and Norway — have already contributed their ideas to this ongoing free-to-access project.

Published 25 Nov 2024

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Stephen Welsh on how equity and humility can flourish when cultural institutions resist the urge to take the starring role in a co-creation project and refrain from concentrating all of their efforts on the creative outcome and its public unveiling.

You may be surprised to learn that, in addition to being a cultural practitioner, I’m also a bit of a performer. At exhibition openings, networking events and conference socials in my beloved black sequined bomber jacket, I occasionally find myself belting out a bastardised version of iconic game show host Sir Bruce Forsyth’s instantly recognisable Generation Game theme song, “Co-creation is the name of the game, and I wanna play the game with you!” I’m joking, of course. I’m a terrible ‘singer’, and I even quit Skelmersdale Players because I was chosen to perform a solo version of Wonderful Copenhagen in their production of Hans Christian Andersen.

Anyway, I digress. This piece isn’t about repeatedly undiscovered entertainment talent but rather the growing popularity of co-creation with under-served communities in the cultural sector, a practice that’s swiftly becoming a spectacle in and of itself. For as we know, there’s always the chance that something will become more superficial as it grows in popularity and scale – just like the Tories’ ‘levelling up’ agenda. So, when the spectacle of co-creation takes precedence over the more subtle and, I would argue, more substantive aspects of this work, does co-creation risk becoming one big performance?

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good performance just as much as the next culture vulture, but if it’s going to be co-created with disadvantaged groups in such a way that they get to share centre stage with the cultural institution, then institutional egos need to be dispensed with. This isn’t easy, especially when funding bodies have quite rightly emphasised engagement with people and places that’ve benefited the least from decades of investment in arts, culture and heritage, are looking to be dazzled by cultural institutions carrying out this work.

I encourage cultural institutions to engage with both the elation and exhaustion that accompanies co-creation, as well as the risk of exploitation and extraction, and resist feeling compelled to reproduce some confected ‘industry standard’

This can lead to under-served communities being portrayed in a particular light, as if they’re somehow comparable to compliant game show audiences waiting patiently to be invited to participate, “Come on down, the co-creation is right!” These communities have endured marginalisation but they are anything but passive; not only are they brimming with creativity, but as Professor Thomas McCarthy describes in his book Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development (2009) they are, “quite often more adept with the weapons of critique than their opposite numbers: the virtuosos of reflexivity in our time come disproportionately from such groups.”

As a cultural practitioner I’m a big fan of critique and reflexivity, or as Public Enemy put it on their rap album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988), not believing the hype. I encourage cultural institutions to engage with both the elation and exhaustion that accompanies co-creation, as well as the risk of exploitation and extraction, and resist feeling compelled to reproduce some confected ‘industry standard’. In my experience, thinking about co-creation in the round like this allows cultural workers – some of whom, like me, come from these under-served communities – to be more realistic and rigorous about their plans rather than stretching themselves to breaking point to create an all-singing, all-dancing show.

Being subtle and avoiding the spotlight from the outset sends a powerful message that cultural institutions and workers are serious about building genuine community connections rather than prioritising co-creation in order to gain more street cred, get the ideal photo op or start trending on social media. Equity and humility can flourish when cultural institutions resist the urge to take the starring role in a co-creation project and refrain from concentrating all of their efforts on the creative outcome and its public unveiling.

Authentic connections were what the Voices from the Edge project was aiming for. The project was developed by Ceredigion Museum curator Carrie Canham and artist and project coordinator Rose Thorn with the intention of fostering deeper understanding and strengthening relationships between the museum and Global Majority communities. Creative practitioners from Global Majority communities living in rural west Wales convened a group and came together every Sunday at either Over the Rainbow Wales, a vegetarian and vegan country retreat in Tanygroes, or Ceredigion Museum. The museum opened especially for the group, and any members with children were welcome to invite them along to the sessions as well, during which a range of artistic responses to the British Museum’s Touring Exhibition ‘For the curious and interested’ were co-created.

In my role as the project’s mentor, I was struck by just how much it resembled the way that Dr John Wright defined convening in his paper ‘The Power of Convening: Towards an Understanding of Artist-Led Collective Practice as a Convener of Place’ (2024), “… the act of convening opens a form of commons with those involved, a shared space that is not predicated on individual ownership or profit-making but on ideas and even sharing of resources that has potentially deep socio-cultural and even political value.”

Voices from the Edge was one of several projects included in the Re:Collections programme, which was a collaboration between the Association of Independent Museums and the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre and Education Trust, for which I worked as a consultant. The programme was funded by the Welsh government and designed to assist museums in Wales in implementing the Culture, Heritage and Sport goals and actions from the Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan and Programme for Government.

When it comes to co-creation, we’re talking about people’s lives – their emotions, experiences and ethics – and that’s certainly no game

By viewing co-creation as part of a wider struggle to create more relevant, representative and responsive museums in Wales – which included action on anti-racism, decolonisation and inclusion – the programme and its related projects repositioned co-creation as part of an integrated approach to making and embedding change. Combining co-creation with other processes makes complete sense, especially when considering the provocations of Audre Lorde, who made it abundantly clear in her essay ‘Learning from the 1960s’ (1982), “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”

That’s the thing: when it comes to co-creation, we’re talking about people’s lives – their emotions, experiences and ethics – and that’s certainly no game. Cultural institutions and workers need to be prepared to embrace this and provided with all the necessary support to do so, or else performativity creeps in and communities can experience what Darren McGarvey describes in his book Poverty Safari (2017), “that things are not done with the community but to it.” However, taking the time to engage in co-creation in a complex and compassionate way can have a profound impact, as it did for those who were involved in Voices from the Edge.

I often wonder what course my life would’ve taken if I’d stuck it out at Skelmerdale Players; perhaps by now, I would’ve been a celebrity contestant or even a presenter on Strictly Come Dancing. I doubt I’d have ever made a decent game show host, though, because I’d be inclined to remove the pressure to overperform and achieve perfection in favour of taking a moment to pause, gain perspective and prioritise people over putting scores on the board. With that said, if this hasn’t put any talent agencies off, I’m always looking to expand my freelance portfolio, and my contact information is available on my website. But, until stardom beckons, I’m content to stick with my first love and, to paraphrase one of Sir Bruce’s many catchphrases, keeeeep co-creating!

Stephen Welsh (he/him)
Independent curator, consultant and creative producer
stxwelsh.com

Stephen Welsh is running a study day about museums and co-creation on 9th October as part of Museum Ideas 2024 in London. Find out more about The Co-created Museum study day.

Published 2 July 2024

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The International Committee of Museums and Collections of Modern and Contemporary Art (CIMAM) Award for Outstanding Museum Practice aims to highlight exemplary initiatives that catalyze structural change in museums, fostering collective learning and empowering institutions to effect change on a global scale. Suzanne Cotter, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Chair of the CIMAM Outstanding Museum Practice Award on how the projects nominated for the award invite us to not only imagine but to enact the possibilities of museums in shaping a more equitable, inclusive, and sustainable world.

In our increasingly fraught contemporary world, museums are privileged spaces of cultural exchange that can influence how people relate to each other, their communities, and the world around them, and the cultural and economic ecosystems they enable.

The seismic events of the most intense period of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 closed the doors of cultural institutions including museums around the world for extended periods. While this unprecedented disruption in the first half of our relatively new century provoked deep reflection on the purpose and value of these institutions in society, it also highlighted the fundamental need for cultural experience in people’s lives.

In response to this existential questioning of museums, CIMAM, the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art, embarked on a comprehensive survey in November 2020 of its members to answer the question “Why Museums?”, eliciting insightful reflections from museum directors and professionals. CIMAM also issued a statement in July 2020 defending the role of modern and contemporary art museums as custodians of collective memory, bastions of cultural participation, and catalysts for social cohesion, equality, and sustainable economic development in times of global crisis. CIMAM Advocates for Museums for Modern and Contemporary Art.

CIMAM inaugurated the Outstanding Museum Practice Award (OMPA) in 2021. This impetus for the award was to recognize and celebrate the role of museums and their adaptability and responsiveness in a period of intense uncertainty that was dominated by media feeds and networks of communication that relayed the bleakest of news from every corner of the globe. The Outstanding Museum Practice Award was intended as an affirmation of the work of museum professionals and of the profound social role of museums in shaping collective consciousness and fostering genuine connections with diverse publics and communities.

For the first award, which was expanded in its title to acknowledge the particular time of crisis in which we were living, Queens Museum in New York was honoured for radically recalibrating its mission and operating model to better serve its communities during the Covid-19 pandemic. This recalibration was rooted in the principles of hospitality and collective care and reflected the museum’s responsiveness to the urgency of the times. It responded to a fearless commitment to serving surrounding communities, including residents, artists, educators, and cultural producers to engender meaningful engagement and social impact.

In 2022, following several years of consultation with museum professionals around the world, ICOM, the International Council of Museums, announced its new definition of Museums during the 26th ICOM General Conference. The new definition emphasizes museums as inclusive, accessible, and community-centered institutions and underscores the social responsibility inherent in their educational, reflective, and knowledge-sharing functions.

Following this transformative redefining of the language with which to conceptually define the work of the museum, CIMAM further refined its criteria for the Outstanding Museum Practice Award with a particular focus on sustainability to address the idea of well-being in its broadest sense and to recognize the inseparability of planetary care with people and communities and their cultural and economic well-being.

In its second edition in 2022, the Outstanding Museum Practice Awards recognized museums for their commitment to the idea of the museum as a continuous and evolving practice and for their willingness to affirm alternative models to the historic and Eurocentric and colonial structures that predominated. The award-winning museums – Kokama museums, Manaos, Amazonia, Brazil, Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes “Rosa Galisteo de Rodriguez”, Santa Fe, Argentina and MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiang Mai, Thailand – were recognized for enacting mutual empowerment for the museum and the publics they seek to serve.

The most recent edition of the Award in 2023 recognized the decentralized practices of residencies embedded in indigenous communities. The project, exemplified by “CHAGRES: Nomadic Residency” in the Emberá Drúa community, deep in the Panamanian jungle along the Chagres River, created spaces for dialogue between artists and artisans, addressing contemporary artistic practices, traditional crafts, ancestral knowledge and cultural heritage. Special praise was given to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Panamá’s commitment to increasing the visibility of indigenous artists and vernacular cultures, reinforcing their transformative role in the local artistic process and in the broader cultural landscape.

After 3 years of the Outstanding Museum Practice Award, a persistent theme has emerged: the recognition of museum practices that drive real and lasting structural change, with repercussions in the cultural, economic, and socio-political contexts in which these practices are located. It is clear that decentralized perspectives on the possibilities of museums of contemporary art are providing invaluable inspiration and permission to think and operate differently.

The recognition of best practices in museums not only encourages a culture of excellence and innovation within the field but also becomes even more relevant in times of crises when resources can become even more scarce and priorities reassessed.

CIMAM’s Outstanding Museum Practice Award underscores museums’ invaluable contribution during challenging times. Equally significant has been the public acknowledgment of museum practices in different parts of the world and the amplification of their work, both locally and globally.

This year, the CIMAM Outstanding Museum Practices Award is seeking to identify practices in museums of modern and contemporary art that demonstrate innovation, inclusivity, sustainability, and resilience. While exhibitions and one-time events are excluded from the eligibility criteria, practices may include initiatives that promote diversity and equity, foster community engagement, embrace digital technologies, address environmental concerns, and adapt to situations of crisis while continuing to fulfill their mission of preserving cultural heritage and advancing artistic discourse.

Since its inception, OMPA has remained steadfast in its mission to recognize and celebrate museum practices that embody relevance, connection, and impact, regardless of scale or resources. In nominating the work of our peers and colleagues CIMAM invites us to not only imagine but to enact the possibilities of museums in shaping a more equitable, inclusive, and sustainable world.

Suzanne Cotter
Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
Chair, CIMAM Outstanding Museum Practice Award

Published 28 June 2024

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Steve O’Connor on getting a grip on finances, pulling together a clear and coherent plan to set a path to sustainability, and building the momentum needed to return the River & Rowing Museum to the centre of the community and deliver a world-leading educational product hosting the debate on healthy rivers.

In the six months between my announcement as the new Director of the River & Rowing Museum (RRM) at the start of 2023, and taking up post in July of that year, I had the same sentence delivered to me multiple times, “River & Rowing Museum, great opportunity, big challenge.”

Whilst this may not have been the exact congratulatory message I would have hoped for, they were of course completely right. The RRM has seen a number of highs and lows over its 25-year history since its opening by Her Majesty the Queen in November 1998. The following year it won the prestigious Museum of the Year award and in 2013 it was listed in The Times Top 50 Museums in the World. Whilst these accolades are always welcome, the truth behind the scenes is that the Museum has always struggled to reach an operating breakeven position and since its inception, has wrestled with its raison d’etre; is it a Museum for Henley-on-Thames, the sport of rowing, the River Thames or can it exist for all three?

Covid obviously had a lasting and terrible effect for the whole industry, but the RRM seemed to suffer particularly badly. It had changes in its senior leadership and, after a short period of re-opening to the public, the Board of Trustees took the brave decision to close for nine months and put right all of the wrongs which had been forgotten about for so many years. In total, a £4 million project ensued which saw a raft of works completed including refitting the ageing roof, installation of a new climate control system across the galleries, conversion of real estate into an office building for tenants and a migration of the entire Museum database into the cloud to name just a few. Towards the end of this project is that point at which I was brought in to take over as Director and begin to put the Museum back on a path to sustainability.

Some may see my appointment by the Trustees as an interesting one given I don’t come from an arts or heritage background. In that respect there are elements which have been a steep learning curve, and I could have never envisaged talking about relative humidities as much as I have in the last six months! I have, however, spent the last 10 years running a charity which I founded in 2013. The skills and experience I gained in building something from nothing up to a £1m turnover charity are key to now helping get the RRM back on the front foot and to achieve the objective that has been agreed with the Board, reach operational breakeven by the March 2027.

Whilst many challenges remain, the organisation I have been handed following the reopening, now has all the building blocks in place ready for its next 25 years of growth. The first step is to make sure we have a coherent and clear strategy for the next three years. Working with all of the stakeholders groups you would imagine, we have been able to firstly get an accurate picture of the Museum’s financial position and then demonstrate a clear direction of what needs to happen in order to reach that breakeven milestone. Keeping our costs at a broadly flat base for three years will be key but the reality is that we must boost our income streams for the plan to work. We must show how we can more than triple our income levels from their current position across admissions, events, donations and retail, this is where the challenge meets the opportunity.

There are four key themes which our plan will use to help guide the trajectory over the next three years. Namely they are to return the Museum to the centre of the community, reimagine the galleries, deliver a world-leading educational product and host the debate on healthy rivers.

Our Museum has often been criticised for not feeling part of the town and being metaphorically and physically, ‘on the peripheries’. I believe that if we are to be successful, the residents of Henley-on-Thames must begin to say, “Our Museum” instead of “The Museum”. We need to ensure we have a space available for residents and businesses to use, that we engage with all of our locals schools, we design and relocate our Henley gallery to a more central part of our site and that the Museum looks to pro-actively take part in community events instead of waiting to be asked.

We have a large amount of real-estate and galleries which have been largely untouched for over a decade, in one case largely since we opened! We will begin a process of rationalising our collection following the establishment of a new collections policy aligned with the stories we are trying to tell. This will free up badly needed storage space and reduce the financial burden of caring for a collection of nearly 40,000 items. We will also begin to rejuvenate the galleries in a phased approach and, as we gain in confidence and can see the numbers moving in the right way, eventually look to redesign our three main galleries entirely, reimaging both the stories we tell and how we tell them.

At one point the RRM had a nationally renowned education offer, seeing more than 20,000 students a year. Whilst the impact of this was clear to see, the reality is that the fundraising wasn’t keeping pace with the delivery, and we are now moving to cut-our-cloth accordingly and deliver the sessions we can afford. We are effectively rebuilding our education product from the ground-up and have begun to work much more closely with SEND students. We also launched our partnership with the Rivertime Boat Trust to highlight our SEND offer which was attended by HRH The Princess Royal (not something I thought I would be doing during my second month in post!). Our education funding plans are proving successful, and we now have our eyes set on construction of an outdoor classroom to allow further expansion of the pupil numbers through the door.

Our final focus will be to host the debate on healthy rivers and, for me, this presents us with our biggest opportunity. Both the sport of rowing and the town of Helney have had advocates fighting for their space in the Museum over the years but there has rarely been anyone banging the drum for the river. I’ve found this situation particularly ironic as without the river it is entirely possible that neither Henley-on-Thames nor the sport of rowing would exist. It’s clear to me that we need to use the Museum platform to advocate for healthy rivers and waterways and allow our visitors to get a true understanding of the scale of the environmental pressure they are under, and what they can do to help. We have begun to engage with partner agencies such as the Rivers Trust and River Action UK who we hope can help us craft the narrative around this story and create a truly special gallery that can deliver the impact we seek with our visitors.

So, from a raft of challenges on arrival, I can genuinely only see opportunities. We have a grip on the finances which is allowing us to pull together and clear and coherent plan that sets our path to sustainability, launching in April 2024. We have a great team of trustees, staff and volunteers who are focussed behind our mission. After 25 years in operations, we have a large network of supporters, advocates and friends whom we will work with the reimagine how the Museum delivers its key stories. Crucially, we have begun to gain momentum and I truly believe that once we reach a sustainable position in March 2027, we will have created the foundation needed for the RRM to continue its growth for the next 25 years.

Steve O’Connor – Director of the River & Rowing Museum, Henley-on-Thames

Published 11 March 2024

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The increasing intersection between art restitution and human rights includes potential new avenues that may be used to commence restitution claims — Eleni Polycarpou (partner), Camilla Gambarini (special counsel), and Grace Finnigan (trainee) at leading law firm Withersworldwide on why a broadening of the definition of “culture” lends itself towards a human rights framework of restitution

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In international law, the definition of “culture” has shifted in recent years towards a broader concept of “cultural heritage”. The rationale is to move beyond tangible assets, such as objects, buildings and sites, towards intangible ones, recognising how traditions, beliefs and practices form a crucial part of individuals and communities’ cultural identities. The broadening of this definition lends itself towards a human rights framework of restitution of a wide variety of art that can be deemed part of a State or community’s cultural heritage.

It is in this context that States and local communities have started to consider restitution claims of objects that are part of their cultural heritage. For example, indigenous peoples in Canada have called for the Vatican Museum to return their ceremonial masks, headdresses and wampum belts, integral to their ancestral cultural practices.[1] Nigeria has called for the return of artefacts looted by British troops from Benin City as being part of Nigeria’s history, religion and values.[2] Moreover, in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia has looted Ukraine’s Scythian gold, which holds immense historical and symbolic significance.[3]

These cases exemplify the increasing intersection between art restitution and human rights, including potential new avenues that may be used to commence restitution claims of objects part of the cultural heritage of a country or population.[4]

The right to cultural heritage in international human rights instruments and jurisprudence

The right to culture and cultural heritage is explicitly protected in several human rights instruments, including Article 27 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 15.1.a of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, elaborated on in General Comment No. 21, and Article 27 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In addition, several UNESCO Conventions protect these rights, including Article 5 of the 2001 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity; the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage; and the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

The 1950 European Convention on Human Rights (the “ECHR”) does not explicitly acknowledge cultural heritage rights. However, there is a limited number of cases brought before the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) showing the intersection between cultural heritage and art restitution claims. Individuals may bring these claims against States upon the exhaustion of local remedies. The ECHR also provides for a State-State dispute resolution mechanism.

In Beyeler v Italy,[5] a Swiss national brought a claim for breach of property rights against Italy because he had bought a Van Gogh painting from a merchant, but the Italian Ministry of Culture had a legal right of pre-emption, which it exercised by paying the original sale price as a compensation. The ECtHR found that Italy breached the ECHR, specifically the right to property, because there had been an unreasonable delay of more than five years of the Ministry’s rights of pre-emption.[6] However, the ECtHR did not order to restitute the painting to the individual because the State taking measures to facilitate wide public access to the Van Gogh painting was a “legitimate aim for the purposes of protecting a country’s cultural and artistic heritage“.[7] The case of Debelianovi v Bulgaria[8] followed a similar fact pattern, whereby the applicant sought an order for the return of land which once belonged to their father that had been expropriated by the Ministry to build what became regarded as the most important historic and ethnographical museum in the local town. The ECtHR found a violation of the right to property despite noting that this was a legitimate aim in the context of the protection of a country’s cultural heritage.[9]

Cultural heritage and indigenous peoples

Claims for art restitution frequently come from indigenous communities. The 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights to Indigenous Peoples explicitly protects their cultural rights in Articles 11, 12 and 31. For example, the Constitutional Court of Colombia has relied on it in a case concerning 122 pieces of treasure belonging to the Quimbaya indigenous peoples.[10] The Quimbayan treasure was gifted to the President of Spain in 1892 by the President of Columbia, without consultation with indigenous peoples. The Constitutional Court of Colombia recognised the spiritual value and historical awareness within the Quimbayan treasure and, by way of reference to the indigenous people’s cultural rights protected by the 2007 Declaration, declared the act of donation of the treasure to Spain illegal, thus requiring immediate restitution.[11] Spain have challenged this judgement, and whilst the legal battle continues the treasure still resides in a Spanish museum.

Cultural heritage and international criminal law

Finally, in times of armed conflict, cultural heritage may also intersect with international criminal law.  The following instruments are relevant, namely: as set out the in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict; the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court; and the 2003 Declaration Concerning the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage. As such, intentional targeting of cultural heritage is a serious crime.[12]

In the 2006 case of Prosecutor v Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi[13] the International Criminal Court prosecuted for the first time the destruction of cultural heritage as a war crime, under Article 8(2)(iv) of the 1998 Rome Statute. Mr Al Mahdi pleaded guilty to intentionally destroying mausoleums of saints and mosques in Timbuktu, which were historic buildings frequently visited by the local people and an integral part of their religious lives.[14]

Conclusion

Although there is not a one size fits all approach to restitution claims, the above examples show some of the creative ways to advance restitution claims with a cultural heritage angle outside national courts or before national courts relying on international human rights treaties. Not all human rights instruments provide for a dispute resolution provision or direct access for individuals to commence claims against States. The right of individuals or communities to access domestic or international fora must be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Authors:
Eleni Polycarpou (partner), Camilla Gambarini (special counsel), Grace Finnigan (trainee), Withersworldwide

Published 17 January 2024

References

[1] N. Winfield. ‘Pope voices willingness to return Indigenous loot, artifacts’, The Independent (30 April 2023), available at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/pope-francis-ap-vatican-canada-hungary-b2329906.html (last accessed 4 August 2023).

[2] Sherwood. ‘London museum returns looted Benin City artefacts to Nigeria’, The Guardian (28 November 2022), available at https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/nov/28/London-museum-returns-looted-benin-city-artefacts-to-nigeriaL (last accessed 4 August 2023).

[3] C Mullins, ‘Ukraine’s heritage is under direct attack: why Russia is looting the country’s museums’, The Guardian (27 May 2022), available at https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/may/27/ukraine-russia-looting-museums (last accessed 4 August 2023); K. Akinsha. ‘Scythian gold is at the heart of Russia’s identity war’, The Art Newspaper (19 January 2023), available at https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2023/01/19/scythian-gold-is-at-the-heart-of-russias-identity-war. (last accessed 4 August 2023).

[4] ‘Cultural rights: An empowering agenda. Report of the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights’, United Nations, para 10. A/HRC/49/54 (22 March 2022)

[5] Beyeler v Italy, 33202/96 (ECtHR, 5 January 2000); Beyeler v Italy, 33202/96 (No.2) (ECtHR, 28 May 2002).

[6] Beyeler v Italy, 33202/96 (ECtHR, 5 January 2000), para 107.

[7] Beyeler v Italy, 33202/96 (ECtHR, 5 January 2000), para 112.

[8] Debelianovi v Bulgaria, 61951/00 (ECtHR, 29 March 2007).

[9] Debelianovi v Bulgaria, 61951/00 (ECtHR, 29 March 2007), para 54.

[10] Constitutional Court of Colombia, Plenary Chamber, Judgment SU-649-17 (19 October 2017).

[11] Constitutional Court of Colombia, Plenary Chamber, Judgment SU-649-17 (19 October 2017), para 10.5.5.

[12] ‘Policy on Cultural Heritage’, International Criminal Court, para 6. (June 2021), available https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/itemsDocuments/20210614-otp-policy-cultural-heritage-eng.pdf (last accessed 1 August 2023).

[13] Prosecutor v Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, ICC-01/12-01/15 (ICC, 27 September 2016).

[14] Prosecutor v Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, ICC-01/12-01/15 (ICC, 27 September 2016), para 34.

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Boubacar Diallo, Head of Collection and Inventory Department at the National Museum of Guinea, on decolonizing the Museum in Africa

What is the future of the museum in Africa? Knowing where we come from allows us to project ourselves into the future. In 1992, the former Malian President Alpha Oumar Konaré, then president of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), said that: “[…], we must kill, I say kill, the Western model of museums in Africa […] ”. Since this famous speech by President Alpha Oumar Konaré, many museum initiatives have been implemented. I especially want to mention the MSD program (Museums at the Service of Development) designed and implemented by the African heritage school EPA based in Benin.

I took this example because it is one of the programmes that has enabled several museums in French-speaking African countries to renew their permanent exhibitions, including the National Museum of Guinea where I work, and to connect them with the public, schoolchildren, and young people in the hope of seeing them return and become loyal visitors. Did it pay off? This question remains because museums still do not attract and interest many of the communities concerned.

“The future African museum will be connected with local communities through participatory and collaborative projects… a place of consultation, cooperation, innovation and interaction”

Today, African museum professionals still have questions about an African model of museums. What often comes up is to decolonize our museums — that the future African museum will be a decolonized museum. But what is a decolonized museum in Africa?

Recently, thanks to the MuseumsFutures Africa project designed and implemented by the Goethe-Institut in six museums on the continent, including our own, we are on the way to finding answers to this question. The reflections that we lead, based on our own local realities, lead us to see that the future African museum will be a museum connected with local communities through participatory and collaborative projects. The future museum will be a place of consultation, cooperation, innovation and interaction with all majority and minority elements of the community.

The future museum will be a place where we not only jointly develop projects for the collection, acquisition works of art, preserve works of art, value intangible heritage, but also co-design and set-up exhibitions.

I would like to add that our future museum will be hyper connected. It will use new technologies to interact with audiences who are becoming more and more virtual, in particular young people. It will be a virtual place of consultation for innovation and positive change, of information exchange and discussion between professionals and local communities, and of awareness of the evils and defects that beset our societies of today and tomorrow. It will be a platform for exchanges and debates on the future challenges of the African continent and of the constantly changing world.

Our future museum will be built on the basis of diversity, consultation, and the defence of the rights and interests of all parts of local society.

Boubacar Diallo, Head of Collection and Inventory Department, National Museum of Guinea

This short essay is part of the FutureMuseum Project. Museum workers based in 18 countries — including Nigeria, Guinea, Botswana, South Africa, Argentina, Colombia, Singapore, New Zealand, Denmark, and Norway — have already contributed their ideas to this ongoing free-to-access project.

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Miranda Millward and Thomas Procter-Legg on what happens when you enable young people to curate their own spaces. With Co-curate they did exactly that by working with senior museum staff and children with SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) to create a museum-grade exhibition space within their school. The project is the most recent part of a longstanding collaboration that champions the lives of children with SEND, challenges opinions and positions cultural work within relationship centred methodologies

Since 2016 the University of Oxford Gardens Libraries and Museums (GLAM) has been working in partnership with the Iffley Academy, a nearby academy in Oxford, part of The Gallery Trust, a community of special schools. The Iffley Academy is a school for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), primarily cognition and learning difficulties, communication and interaction difficulties and social, emotional, and mental health needs. All students have an Education and Healthcare Plan, and the school is in the top 4% nationally for students in receipt of Pupil Premium (additional funding provided to schools to improve the attainment of disadvantaged children). It is these young people who are central to our work.

The story of the early years of this partnership was previously published in Museum-iD magazine – Building Trust in Co-production: Equal Partnerships for Social Justice – and summarised what we had learnt in our first four years. It told the story of how we developed a sustainable, equitable and co-produced partnership which emphasises Social Justice outcomes (Procter-Legg & Millward, 2020). In October 2022, whilst speaking at the Museums Ideas 2022 conference, our final words touched on notions of what a democratic and inclusive society looks like and how all people can be visible within cultural spaces. This article provides an update on how the partnership has evolved and considers our work within the framework of The Constituent Museum (Byrne, Morgan, Paynter, Serdio, & Zeleznik, 2018), in which the authors explored what would happen if museums made relationships central to their work and regarded the museum audience as an active agent of the constituent body.

At its most basic level, democracy can be defined as the practice or principles of social equality. We argue that we are not fully functioning as a democratic society if we do not have all types of people visible and engaged within our cultural spaces. In short, cultural organisations and their audiences should reflect the make-up of the society within which they exist; this is our mutually agreed goal.

“Within our partnership we have consistently held onto a values-based approach. People matter, strong relationships are key, co-production is vital, and we are bespoke by default”

If we accept the above, that cultural organisations should be democratic and therefore inclusive, we should also accept that their audiences should be regarded as their constituency. A constituency is broadly defined as a group likely to support a particular person, place, organisation or set of values; the group will have shared interests or opinions as part of something bigger than the individual. However, as outlined in The Constituent Museum, these constituencies are ‘fluid’, ‘mutable’ and ‘protean’. By their very nature they adapt, change, and show versatility. This is their expected norm. In return, therefore, our cultural organisations need to be able to respond in a similar way. This poses a significant challenge when we consider the institutional and structural norms of large and long-established organisations.

Within our partnership we have consistently held onto a values-based approach. People matter, strong relationships are key, co-production is vital, and we are bespoke by default. The ideas of democracy are built into the partnership via values that permeate more widely than the museum sector. The Iffley Academy was the first school in the UK to become a restorative organisation (Procter-Legg, 2022) and the core values of restorative work underpin our interactions with young people and throughout our organisation.

In summer 2022 we began a new strand of partnership work with our Co-Curate programme. Co-curate situates a museum-grade specimen case at the heart of the school. The case hosts a series of co-curated exhibitions of loaned objects from GLAM. Students and the GLAM collections staff, curators and learning teams work together to co-produce each exhibition, taking significant risks whilst bringing valuable items on loan from GLAM into the busy school environment. Co-curate seeks to allow Iffley Academy students to curate exhibitions for their school community in a way that enables their own ideas and agendas to emerge. The curation, collections care and loan agreements have the same high standards that GLAM consistently aspires to, but the selected objects and interpretation should very much reflect the ideas and key messages the students want to convey to their school community or their ‘constituency’. This programme embeds values of reciprocity, activation, structures, and negotiation, all of which are set out as essential elements within the notion of the Constituent Museum (Byrne et al., 2018, p. 9). The following article illustrates these ideas in practical terms.

Reciprocity
Relationships sit at the centre of our work. If people are supported by strong relationships, they can challenge themselves to try new things; to take risks and to enable powerful and enduring change to happen. This is embodied in the restorative work happening at The Iffley Academy, where individuals matter and where everyone has a unique and valued perspective. These strategies are not about financial gain, advantage, or profit of one side over another; they are of mutual benefit for all involved. They are collaborative strategies, and this is co-labour, where all partners must have a shared vision and demonstrate a clear understanding of each other and the worlds within which they exist. Our Co-curate programme is a model of what reciprocity can look like. It is co-produced and involves all participants in active learning and dialogue. The exhibitions developed through the project evolve thanks to co-labour and a series of exchanges that are based on acts of ‘trust, friendship, kindness and sharing’ (Byrne et al., 2018, p. 9).

“Relationships sit at the centre of our work. If people are supported by strong relationships, they can challenge themselves to try new things; to take risks and to enable powerful and enduring change to happen”

The first Co-curate exhibition ‘Curious about Calculation’ focussed on mathematical objects from the History of Science Museum’s (HSM) collection and sought to make links between the collections and the everyday maths equipment and apparatus the students use in school. The whole project saw exchanges of ideas and information as well as students taking part in hands-on object-based learning from the HSM collection. HSM’s director Dr Silke Ackermann fully engaged with the new curatorial approach, which was co-developed between The Iffley Academy and HSM. This new curatorial approach was conceived in this way to avoid the feeling of the museum imposing their own aesthetics and values onto the Iffley Academy audience within their own space. Dr Ackermann embraced the opportunity to form new relationships and share her time, working with the students throughout the project. She engaged with students whilst at the museum and visited them at their school. Her presence as a museum leader within this programme demonstrates both the museum’s investment in sharing power and a commitment to inclusivity.

From these small roots, the voices of young people with SEND are being heard at an ever-growing volume. A direct output of this first Co-curate exhibition was the idea that Iffley Academy students should be involved in the consultation for Vision 2024, an ambitious capital project and new vision for the History of Science Museum that will result in the physical transformation of the museum. The students will now be central to the redesign of the museum. Their voices are opinion forming, and their contribution means they will have an impact on Oxford’s built environment through centring the needs of students with SEND in the considerations of this capital project. This is true agency, developed from new relationships and co-labour.

Activation
Real world, real-life situations are catalysts for social change. Just like any student, students with SEND need to engage with real-life experiences, outside of their schools, to build confidence and understanding of the wider world. Our previous article looked at the importance of building social capital within the museum space; our belief is that Co-curate goes further, allowing students to take greater ownership and providing a lens which requires museum professionals to acknowledge the special school community (their constituency) more fully. Students in this instance are not passive recipients of pre-identified content; they are active agents in the process. This curatorial activity can be seen as a form of activism because the authority of the museum is ceded to the students. The students feel empowered and enabled by the range of constituent activities, and their actions go on to have a significant impact and influence on adults.

The above influence is discussed in the work of Paolo Freire, specifically in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1996). Freire suggests that we do not thrive as a society where there is a ‘banker model’ of knowledge and learning, where learners are ‘piggy banks’ being filled with pre-determined knowledge. Conversely, he suggests that the learner should be the co-constructor of knowledge in a changing and fluid world and that knowledge should be based in reality rather than theoretical frameworks. These learners are constituent and active in their learning; this approach impacts all parties, not just the young people.

The first Co-curate project with the History of Science Museum was followed by a project with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (OUMNH). Students partnered with learning and exhibition design staff from the museum (OUMNH) to co-produce an exhibition demonstrating how crucial insects are in our world and how several processes required by humans rely on insects, such as pollination. Co-curate display case now features the ‘Incredible Insects’ exhibition, which opened in January 2023.

Within this project students were encouraged to think about not only what they might enjoy, in terms of an exhibition narrative but in addition what their wider school community might be interested in finding out about. This type of thinking looked to develop their understanding of constituency and encouraged students to understand their work in the context of others. Perhaps most interestingly senior staff at the school had no idea what the exhibition would look like and/or influence over the outcome. These school-based exhibition spaces belong to the students, and are designed to provide for a wider audience, including those who are normally seen to hold power and influence.

Structures
Both museums and schools have their own set physical structures, which have accepted norms and expectations. Co-curate, however, challenges these norms by placing the museum case within the school. By being located outside its normal physical location, the new context allows for different meanings to take place. The students themselves enable further divergence from the norm – by letting their own ideas and agendas develop, they pass these new meanings on to their peers and the wider school community. The labels and text panels in the exhibition are the students’ own words – what they want to say about their exhibition, to their audience. These words, are elicited by a range of person-centred strategies. Students do not write the labels per se but their words emerge through facilitated dialogue and discussion empowering students to be active and negotiate the narrative of their exhibition.

Here we disrupt the banker model of giving the students pre-determined content to fill their ‘piggy banks’. Instead, we encourage the students to co-construct knowledge within their own fluid worlds. This knowledge is then put into a real-life exhibition. Students are encouraged to be both the constituents of the original museum and a constituency of their own. By blurring the lines between the physical structures of the school and the museum we create a wider and more inclusive space. This space includes everyone, i.e. support staff, the administration team, site manager and catering staff, as well as governors, parents, and carers. Perhaps most striking, staff wanted to bring their friends and families into the school to view the exhibition. This work, therefore, increases and diversifies new audiences in a way in which we could not have envisaged at the beginning of the process.

Negotiation
Throughout the partnership, co-constructive work has allowed us to continually shape, form and redefine relationships of power. Most importantly, the ideas and voices of young people are continually championed within our work. These young people are often marginalised by their additional needs, so the power dynamic has needed to shift even further to allow their voices to be authentic and for these voices to be heard by those adults who hold power. This process can be described as ‘commoning’. ‘Commoning’ refers to initiatives that share resources among a community of users who determine of their own volition the rules of management or use. The resources can be (and often are) enriched via mutual collaboration. Commoning also includes a range of collaborative and participatory practices (Commoning Europe, 2021) therefore the Co-curate programme is an example of both negotiation and commoning.

“Throughout the partnership, co-constructive work has allowed us to continually shape, form and redefine relationships of power. Most importantly, the ideas and voices of young people are continually championed within our work”

Perhaps a neat way to fully demonstrate the constituent nature of Co-curate is that once the ‘Incredible Insects’ exhibition has completed its time at the school, it will then be exhibited at OUMNH in their Community Case. The OUMNH Community Case is situated on the ground floor of the museum near the visitor entrance. The students’ curation will become a part of the regular visitor experience at the museum during the busy summer months. Normalising such interventions within the main museum experience allows many new audience members or constituents to see it. The act of OUMNH showcasing the curatorial work of Iffley Academy students – their constituents – demonstrates elements of all four areas of the Constituent Museum: Reciprocity, Activation, Negotiation and Structures.

Next steps
Within the Co-curate programme the museum has ceded its power, shared its knowledge and resources with the students. The students, in turn, have shared the physical space of the school, their ideas and their own realities with their wider community, the museum and its staff. Perhaps the most exciting part is the fact whilst we can report on what we have achieved – neither of us knows what will happen next. What we do know, however, is that this project continues to be values-led and that relationships will be prerequisites for everything we do. Moreover, the work of others is highly influential and the ideas found in the work of Byrne et al. (2018) and Cottam (2018) will continue to challenge our assumptions. Ultimately, however, the rotational, iterative nature of this project has the power to influence opinions. This is significant, as together we can challenge attitudes and raise the understanding of senior staff to a point where our work can bring about a real shift in power dynamics of whose contributions are reflected in the cultural space.

Thomas Procter-Legg, Head Teacher, The Iffley Academy; and Miranda Millward, Arts Engagement Officer, Oxford University’s Gardens, Libraries and Museums

References

Byrne, J., Morgan, E., Paynter, N., Serdio, A. S. d., & Zeleznik, A. (2018). The Constituent Museum: Constellations of Knowledge, Politics and Mediation: A Generator of Social Change: Valiz.
Commoning Europe. (2021). Rediscovering the Commons as the foundation of Europe. Retrieved from https://commoning.eu
Cottam, H. (2018). Radical Help: How we can remake the relationships between us and revolutionise the welfare state: Virago.
Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin.
Procter-Legg, T. (2022). Practitioner Perspectives on a Restorative Community: An Inductive Evaluative Study of Conceptual, Pedagogical, and Routine Practice. Laws, 11 (1):4. doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/laws11010004
Procter-Legg, T., & Millward, M. (2020). Building Trust in Co-production: Equal Partnerships for Social Justice. Museum-iD. Retrieved from https://museum-id.com/building-trust-in-co-production-equal-partnerships-for-social-justice/

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Veronica Ferrari on how museums and cultural institutions can navigate the complex path of finding partnerships which are ethically sound, financially viable, and fit for purpose

Controversies around museums’ corporate sponsorships are in the spotlight again after last month the British Museum announced its new ‘World of Stonehenge’ exhibition was being sponsored by BP.

This comes subsequent to an investigation by Channel 4 News in February 2022 which uncovered that the museum was being secretly advised by 30 business leaders from large corporations, including the oil giant. While it insisted the members, known as the Chairman’s Advisory Group (CAG) were attending in a personal capacity, the integrity and transparency of this practice was heavily criticised by campaign groups and activists. A few weeks ago National Portrait Gallery and Scottish Ballet confirmed they were no longer being sponsored by BP.

Historically it has been very common for major cultural institutions to receive funding from large corporates — the likes of Shell, Equinor, Adani as well as BP have been frequent headline sponsors of our much-loved cultural institutions. There have also been other controversial philanthropic partnerships — The Sackler Trust is just one example which springs to mind. We recently outlined the history and landscapes of these connections in our article ‘The ethics of sponsorship’.

As the public taste for these partnerships become less and less favourable, it’s worth considering how the world of art, culture and heritage can navigate this complex path of finding partnerships which are ethically sound, financially viable and fit for purpose.

Manifestos should not be considered a PR opportunity
Instead they should be robust and guide institutions in all aspects of their operations.

The Museums Association’s Code of Ethics defines ethical standards for cultural institutions and focuses on the need to make sound ethical judgements in all areas of work in order to maintain public trust. Principle three on institutional integrity invites institutions to “…seek support from organisations whose ethical values are consistent with those of the museum”. As attention focuses around the climate crisis, museums have been publishing environmental goals and net-zero pledges which would seemingly make any connections to the oil industry ethically questionable.

Institutions which have made the mistake of proclaiming green credentials, and then not necessarily committed to them, have come across fierce resistance – as those familiar with the ongoing Shell and the Science Centre debacle will attest.

Where institutions have conducted due diligence and arguably stood by their principles has resulted in a lot less backlash, as the National History Museum in London recently found out after it was quizzed by activists, declaring:

“We have done no consulting work for the oil and gas industry since 2017. We apply a code of ethics and undertake due diligence when making decisions on potential and existing relationships.”

What does the evidence tell us?
While finding a more ethical match might be everyone’s intention, the issue facing Development and Corporate Gifting teams is, who fits the profile of being ethical and has adequate funds?

Institutions have struggled to survive over the past two years and most are feeling pressured to find any support possible in order to carry on. Being selective of whose money they accept might feel like a luxury they can’t afford right now.

A recent study by Leeds University Business School surveyed tourists and found that they may be more willing to welcome corporate sponsorship in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic; an indicative litmus test which sponsorship professionals can take on board.

An interesting solution emerged from the research and from previous studies — smaller companies are considered the best fit for private funding for museums as they are seen as more authentic, supportive and actively involved in the partnerships.

Kew Royal Botanic Gardens is an example of an institution taking this direction. While it still includes global media brands Bloomberg and Sky News among its corporate sponsors, it has also partnered with several eco and organic small businesses including chocolate company Montezuma, organic baby clothes brand Frugi and eco-heating technology, Daikin UK. Kew had at one point been sponsored by Tullow Oil.

Due diligence as a match making tool
The Code also instructs institutions to “exercise due diligence in understanding the ethical standards of commercial partners with a view to maintaining public trust and integrity in all museum activities.”

An essential intelligence tool when considering partnerships – whether they be sponsorships or mergers and acquisitions — is due diligence. It’s used to assess the risks and possible reputational damage that could come from a potential deal. But in the world of arts and culture where most institutions are now publishing manifestos, declaring their values and making environmental and social pledges, due diligence can do more than give the ‘all clear’; it can confirm whether a prospective sponsor aligns with the museum’s ethical values.

What is it that makes a good relationship? Trust, accountability and common ground. With these things in mind — in addition to the learnings from high profile splits — maybe the way forward for professionals in this sector to find stable sponsorships with longevity, revenue and appeal, is to first take a step back.

Veronica Ferrari
Head of Insight at InsightX

Published 21 March 2022

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Lorna Robinson and David Gimson on building a museum into the fabric of a busy, diverse secondary school in east Oxford

“Did an ancient Greek person really hold this? Wow!” Early on in our journey to create a museum throughout a busy comprehensive school, an eleven year old boy said this as he gasped in wonder, while holding a fifth century BC tetradrachm in his hand. The simple yet intense joy of holding an object that has been made and held by people from the past is something that everyone feels, whatever their background, level of education and particular abilities might be. It creates a powerful sense of connection and stirs imagination.

These experiences usually take place in visits to museums and historical sites, but could a school itself not also be a museum, a place where experiences of this sort happen daily in lessons, and are built into the fabric of the school, in corridors, classrooms and central spaces?

This was our goal as we started on the uphill task of creating a museum throughout the site of Cheney School, a large, diverse secondary school in east Oxford. We had begun with a small collection of ancient Greek and Roman artefacts, acquired through donations from running a classics education charity, The Iris Project, for more than a decade. Over time, this collection grew, largely through donations from universities, museums and individuals.

We applied for our Working towards Accreditation status from the Arts Council in May 2015. It took until March 2020, a week before the first national lockdown, to be awarded full Museum Accreditation. In those years, we learned more than we could ever have imagined about the challenges of turning a school site into a museum experience.

Growing Displays and Collections
In the past six years since we started on the path towards Accreditation, we have created displays across the site. In the school library, several cabinets can be found, with artefacts grouped according to themes chosen by sixth form students. Cabinets containing objects connected to categories ranging from Science and Medicine, Design and Technology, and Trade and Economy, to Maths and Computing, War and Weaponry and the History of Headington can be explored.

Just outside the main reception, there are cabinets themed on Protest and Power. Artefacts from the Women’s Suffrage, Black Lives Matter and Abolition Movements can be viewed by everyone who comes into the school. Each cabinet has a set of signs with QR codes which lead to individual pages on our Rumble Museum site where students, staff, and visitors can find out more. Some of these items have voice-overs recorded by experts especially for the museum.

In the school canteen, we have large boards which introduce the long and fascinating history of the school, and we are creating displays of old uniforms, school books, and other items donated to us by alumni. We have been running oral history afternoons, where students meet visitors, record the stories they bring, and photograph objects they have brought. These events are very rewarding for both the people bringing their stories, and the students hearing the stories and meeting visitors with experiences to share.

Inside the Curriculum
One of the most exciting recent projects we have worked on has been a collaboration with David Hibbert and the Weald School. Together we have created a collection of objects from the History of Medicine, designed to support the GCSE History unit. As well as a striking display of original items at Cheney itself, we have created a set of replica items, which have been loaned to the Weald. Both schools have been piloting the use of objects within this unit, and exploring their ability to create a sense of period and to aid ‘world-building’.

We were recently given a beautiful collection of items from Africa, and we are working with a local expert, Natty Mark Samuels, to create a set of learning resources around these objects for use in the curriculum. The National Lottery Heritage Fund is generously funding this project.

Looking Ahead
These have been a few examples of the many projects and displays we have been creating. In the coming years, we hope to continue growing our collection and displays, and to ensure that every student who joins the school has the opportunity to explore a wide range of objects as part of their lessons across subject areas.

There are many ways of using these displays and objects that we have yet to discover, and we are very excited to continue this journey of building a museum into the fabric of a busy, diverse state school.

Find out more on the Rumble Museum website.

Dr Lorna Robinson
Founder and Director, The Rumble Museum

Mr David Gimson
Museum Lead, Cheney School

Published 12 January 2022

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Amanda Gore on how museums, cultural institutions and public engagement initiatives can play a critical role on the journey to global climate consciousness

The way we feed ourselves, build our homes and cities and generate energy is impacting life on earth in a way that is not sustainable. We need urgent global action in order to protect future generations and the biodiversity around us that is under threat from the age of the Anthropocene. But when it comes to the climate crisis, the image in many people’s minds is of melting ice caps and rising sea levels. While this can be alarming, it is also far away and disconnected to our daily lives.

Greta Thunberg, the impressive poster child of climate activism, has inspired millions of young people the world over to engage with this state of emergency. But whilst most are aware of, and often concerned by, the climate crisis, the vast majority of young people still don’t know how to make change on a day-to-day level, or understand the impending implications in any real depth. For others, the enormity of what’s at stake can often feel paralysing and anxiety-inducing, too big to feel like they have any part to play. Fundamentally, the challenge is that climate change is not something that appears to directly connect to their lives today – it’s rare that environmental issues are ever described in ways that truly chime with their own. Without the tools to connect the dots how can we expect them to make any significant behavioural changes?

The older generation are similarly excluded from the climate emergency dialogue. Whilst millennials march and boomers buy electric cars, often the young, the old, and those who have less money sit outside of the middle-aged, middle class collective handwringing. It’s not that the climate crisis doesn’t affect everyone. Or that it’s only those that shop in Waitrose that care. It’s just that the media and institutions that engage on the topic tend to orientate to those already evidently engaged, and sometimes speak down to these other audiences, or worse, exclude them.

“Museums, cultural institutions and public engagement initiatives are critical players on the journey to global climate consciousness. They hold the key to wider public knowledge and debate, helping the public to understand and connect with the big issues of our time”

Museums, cultural institutions and public engagement initiatives are critical players on the journey to global climate consciousness. They hold the key to wider public knowledge and debate, helping the public to understand and connect with the big issues of our time. As museums ask the question ‘how can we make an impact and give our visitors the agency to make a difference to our planet?’, it is important to think about how to build a tangible connection to contemporary lives and personal experience for all audiences, as well as how to reach and resonate with those who are not already walking through the door.

Earlier this year we worked alongside Natural History Museum curators to make the complex content of their new Anthropocene exhibition, Our Broken Planet, relevant for a new audience of teenagers and young adults. Inserting tangible objects and interventions that question and interrogate the artefacts on display and link them to daily habits and routines, we created an experience that invites audiences to consider their own role in the changing world and to make active, positive choices to improve their relationship with the planet. From a gooey chocolate cake iced with questions of modern slavery, innocently displayed beside images of plantations, to an interactive recipe builder where visitors can design their perfect future menu, we added touchpoints that provided an everyday lens to the specimens preserved in the museum’s vast collection.

The exhibition also invites visitors to make their mark in the space, and places their thoughts and suggestions for behaviour change directly alongside those of the museum’s scientists – giving a voice to a young audience with limited power in the big systemic issues and empowering them to become more conscious consumers. The success of this exhibition can be measured not just on the impressive visitor numbers (over 300,000 so far), but also on the positive agency it is creating, as witnessed by the many in-exhibition selfies found on social media and the thousands of suggestions lining the walls.

We know, however, that many of the solutions and conversations around climate action focus on choices and actions that are only accessible to those with the privilege and autonomy to prioritise sustainability. As one senior Science Centre Professional said in response to our recent enquiry: ‘How can we ask low income and excluded audiences to come to our cultural spaces and make climate pledges when we barely have a relationship with them, and they aren’t able to have agency in their own lives, let alone those of a collective planet?’

“Cultural institutions are an integral part of the public sphere, and hold the key to community connection and action. Museums need to listen and respond to the needs of their local communities…actively encourage their participation in creating a future environment that is inclusive, radical and accessible, fostering new bonds between different community groups”

Connecting to these audiences requires breaking down the walls of our cultural spaces, and bringing narratives that chime with their lives to the places they live. Cultural institutions are an integral part of the public sphere, and hold the key to community connection and action. In order to hold space for excluded and minoritised audiences, a symbiotic relationship with them must be cultivated. To develop this dynamic, not only will institutions and museums need to listen and respond to the needs of their local communities, but also actively encourage their participation in creating a future environment that is inclusive, radical and accessible, fostering new bonds between different community groups.

Food, for example, is a great connector across society. Everyone eats, just as everyone is part of the climate crisis. Yet most people don’t realise that reducing our meat consumption is the single biggest way that each of us can lessen our impact on the planet.

Traveling around the UK this summer, our pop-up exhibition called Meat Your Persona was created to raise awareness about the environmental and health impact of individual food choices, whilst also gaining valuable insight into the country’s eating behaviours. Created in collaboration with academics at the University of Oxford, it was designed to break down a complex global problem of rising greenhouse gases into a personal and non-judgemental discussion of what is on your plate – through the mechanism of a personality quiz.

From Blackpool to Redcar, the bright yellow horsebox appeared in shopping centres and city centres across the country and engaged over 100,000 people, from bricklayers to body builders, teenagers to octogenarians. Enabling each person to lead their own journey through the content, the process of the personality quiz asked questions of the audience, each of which revealed a bite-sized piece of information. And the many people who showed an interest in reducing their meat consumption were given guidance on how to actually do that – from easy and affordable recipes, to simple steps that they could take the next day.

Not everyone is going to be a Greta, but everyone is part of the climate crisis. Everyone should be included in the conversation, and working harder to reach those less connected to it by finding what resonates and meeting them on their terms is crucial if we want to move forwards together. Cultural institutions are uniquely placed to do this and it is exciting to be working with partners in this area to start bringing about the changes that are needed.

Amanda Gore
Director, The Liminal Space

The Liminal Space

Published 6 January 2022

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