HorizontalMuseums

Group for Education in Museums ConferenceUniversity of Leeds

Keynote 4th September 2013

Helen GrahamCentre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and

HeritageUniversity of Leeds

PartnershipParticipation

Co-curationCo-Creation

1.2.

20133.

4.

5.

1. Hopper-Greenhill et al (2000) Museums and Social Inclusion: THE GLLAM Report. See http://bit.ly/14pcVLU2. Dodd et al (2002) A Catalyst for Change: The Social Impact of the Open Museum. See http://bit.ly/1dNyY8g3. Nina Simon (2010) The Participatory Museum. See http://www.participatorymuseum.org/4. The Happy Museum project. See http://www.happymuseumproject.org/5. Paul Hamlyn Trust, Our Museum project, see http://ourmuseum.ning.com/

2000

1. 3.

2.4.

Optimism!

1. Museum Association (2013) ‘Museums Change Lives’ . See http://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-change-lives2. Healthy Attendance: The Impact of Cultural Engagement and Sports Participation on Health and Satisfaction with life in Scotland 2013 http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2013/08/99563. Jonathan Jones (2010) ‘Museum funding cuts: A danger to democracy’, Guardian Unlimited.4. Richard Sandell and Eithnie Nightingale (2012) Museums, Equality and Social Justice. London Routledge.

Critique!

1. Bernadette Lynch (2010) Whose Cake is it Anyway?’ Paul Hamlyn Foundation.2. Laurajane Smith and Emma Wateron (2010) Heritage, Communities and Archaeology. Duckworth.

Equal partnership

Sharing authority

Sustainable relationships

Contributors not just audience

Museum values personal contributions to collections but sees this as a transfer of ownership from the individual to the museum

Museum wants to work with individuals and groups to co-curate but key interpretative decision remain with the museum

In depth work with small groups of people being celebrated by the museum but also worried about – are we including enough people or the right people?

How should decisions about heritage be made?: Co-designing a research project

AHRC Connected Communities Programme, Co-Design Development GrantThe funding was broken into two phases. In Phase 1 (February-May 2013) we designed the research. Phase 2 begins in July 2013 and runs for 12 months.

http://codesignheritage.wordpress.com/

Martin Bashforth, York’s Alternative History and Radical HistorianMike Benson, Director, Bede’s World Tim Boon, Head of Research and Public History, Science Museum Karen Brookfield, Deputy Director, Strategy, Heritage Lottery Fund Peter Brown, Director, York Civic Trust Danny Callaghan, Independent Consultant and Co-ordinator for Prescot Townscape Heritage Initiative: ‘Building Stories’ and ‘The Potteries Tile Trail’ (HLF All Our Stories).Richard Courtney, University of LeicesterAlex Hale, Royal Commission of Ancient and Historic Monuments ScotlandPaddy Hodgkiss, Riccall Community ArchiveRebecca Madgin, University of LeicesterPaul Manners, Director, National Co-ordinating Centre for Public EngagementJennifer Timothy, Senior Building Conservation Officer, Leicester City CouncilRachael Turner, MadLab and ‘The Ghosts of St Pauls’ project (HLF All Our Stories)

Co-DesignResearch Team

Blocks

Sticking points

What makes decision making about heritage hard?

Fringe workshop: Power and Freedom of Self in Museums?4th September, 6.30-7.30St George’s Room, University HouseUniversity of Leeds

Mike Benson and Kathy Cremin, Bede’s World

Mike and Kathy will share their approaches to creating museums where people are free to lead at every level. They will reflect on ways of working with volunteers and partners collaboratively developed at Ryedale Folk Museum and Bede’s World which draw on tried-and-tested cooperative models, founded on giving space for individual autonomy and action.

Museum values personal contributions to collections but seeing this as a transfer of ownership from the individual to the museum

Museum wants to work with individuals and groups to co-curate but key interpretative decision remain with the museum

In depth work with small groups of people being celebrated by the museum but also worried about – are we including enough people or the right people?

Critique!Museums appropriate people’s personal histories

Museums take control behind people’s backs

Museums dismiss individual people’s contributions

Museum values personal contributions to collections but seeing this as a transfer of ownership from the individual to the museum

Museum wants to work with individuals and groups to co-curate but key interpretative decision remain with the museum

In depth work with small groups of people being celebrated by the museum but also worried about – are we including enough people or the right people?

The museum needs to ask individuals to sign copyright forms to ensure the institution can make the oral histories can make items available to everyone

Museums draw on professional standards to ensure high quality and accessible visitor-focused exhibitions

Museums asks if they are working fairly, equally and inclusively with the range of individuals and groups in their local area.

Sticking

point

A meta-

?

‘on behalf of…’

‘the people’‘demos/democracy’

Voting

Elected representatives

Delegated authority

(As visitors)

‘Represent all’‘Be accessible to all’

Museum

‘the people’‘demos/democracy’

Voting

Elected representatives

Delegated authority

(As visitors)

‘Represent all’‘Be accessible to all’

Museum

Community development / action research

Alterglobalisation movement / Occupy

1.

2.

3.

4.

1. Alison Gilchrist (2009) The Well-Connected Community. Bristol: Policy Press.2. Danny Burns (2007) Systemic Action Research: A Strategy for Whole Systems Change. Bristol: Policy Press.3. Marianne Maeckelbergh (2009) The Will of the Many: How the Alterglobalisation Movement is Changing the Face of

Democracy. London: Pluto, p. 1084. David Graeber (2013) The Democracy Project: A history, A crisis, A movement. New York: Spiegel & Grau

1. See the museum from the outside (…the museum isn’t the centre of the

world)

THE MUSEUM

THE MUSEUM

2. There is no such things as ‘everybody’

(…but there are people and all sorts of relationships and networks)

THE MUSEUM

NEW NODE

3. The ends don’t justify the means(…and the means really matter)

4. It’s about how decisions are made not (only) who makes them

5. The dangers of networking (or why we need the two types of horizontal practices)

6. (Maybe) the future can take care of itself

New forms of democracy

Inequality

Outsourcing

Volunteers not paid staff

Equality?

Diversity?

Activism

‘People’ / ‘power’

Keep in touch with the ‘how should decisions about heritage be

made project?’Blog:

http://codesignheritage.wordpress.com/

JISC Mailing list: http://bit.ly/YWWnXP

Email: h.graham@leeds.ac.uk