Editorial - Museums Association

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Editorial

Cultural diversity is a win-win situation
The recent deaths of actor Alan Rickman and musician David Bowie has prompted a bit of a debate about cultural diversity. Both of them came from working-class backgrounds and went on to achieve remarkable things in the arts.

Workforce and audience diversity has been a concern for museums and galleries for some time, but for many, the pace of change has been grindingly slow. With workforce diversity, progress seems to be at a standstill in some ways, with extreme competition for the few jobs available working against a broad range of people joining the sector.

Maybe it is time to go back to basics and think a little more about why it is important to have diverse workforces and audiences. Part of the problem might be that achieving greater diversity is often seen as being about reaching targets, alongside other performance indicators such as number of website, education and overseas visits, and so on. This means that the actual reasons for promoting diversity can get slightly lost.

The British screenwriter and novelist Frank Cottrell-Boyce and musician Jarvis Cocker were on the radio recently talking about cultural diversity in relation to Rickman and Bowie. They both made the point that diversity in the arts is not just important because it is fair, and the right thing to do, but because it benefits our culture and enriches all of us.

Cottrell-Boyce pointed to Charlie Chaplin, who was born into extreme poverty in 19th-century London, but later in life more or less single-handedly elevated cinema to a popular artform. Cottrell-Boyce went on to say that while innovation can come from anywhere, it often comes from the margins, from outsiders. If we close the doors to these margins, we are in danger of diminishing our entire culture.

This is not just about fetishising working-class culture. Cocker said his positive experience at art school was partly because of the broad mix of people on the course, with different classes, races and religions represented. As he said: “What makes the world a better place is when everyone is invited to the party.” Maybe that is what we should be focusing on: making sure that we invite everyone to the party.

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