Partnerships Lisburn Museum

Yours, Mine and Ours (YMO) was a research partnership led by Collette Brownlee, education services officer at the Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum, and Aisling O’Boyle, director at the Centre for Language Education Research, Queen’s University Belfast (QUB).

The research focus was to establish sustainable collaborative relationships with local migrant communities to explore cultural inclusion, belonging and placemaking. Like all community engagement projects at Lisburn Museum, the aim was to widen understanding of the value of cultural learning through local museums, with the added focus of developing an Impact Toolkit that would encourage other local museums to evaluate this core work that is largely undervalued.

The partnership was awarded a research grant in June 2023 as part of the second round of the Centre for Cultural Value’s Collaborate programme. The fund supported innovative new partnerships between cultural sector practitioners and academics to investigate underexplored questions around cultural value.

The YMO project offered non-user migrant communities in the Lisburn and Castlereagh area an opportunity to become involved in their local museum. Providing an authentic welcome and bespoke programme was integral to encouraging a sense of wellbeing, addressing feelings of isolation and exclusion and examining views on placemaking.

Lisburn Museum’s community engagement projects aim to address demographics and issues not currently reflected in its archives and collection. Researching modern migrant experiences was designed to locate, engage and learn from migrant newcomers to the Lisburn and Castlereagh area in order to include their voice in Lisburn Museum’s programming by:

• Illustrating the social role of Lisburn Museum to a new demographic.
• Collaborating with QUB as Lisburn Museum’s academic partner to develop more cohesive data collection and presentations.
• Building the new relationship with QUB to assist Lisburn Museum in contributing more cohesively to the establishment of a local museum research agenda.
• Creating an Impact Toolkit not to replace end-of-project reports, key performance indicators or other statistical measurements required of local museums, but to convey the value, processes and cultural impacts of museum learning on YMO participants and on the museum institution.

Part of the YMO project involved groups of people coming together in the museum to create their own artefacts. Some of the YMO artefacts now form part of Lisburn Museum’s permanent collection. This was achieved by working with a community textile artist. Creations included clay representations, print-making and paintings which reflected national identity, home or participants’ migrant journey.

Not all creative pieces became part of the museum’s collection, as some participants wanted to take them home. This was also a positive outcome, as ‘make and take’ encouraged conversations to continue beyond the museum contact sessions.

The aim of the YMO project was to set a path for the formation of long-lasting relationships between museums and local community groups to enable cultural inclusion and belonging. Contact has continued beyond the project with participants and a celebratory event was hosted by QUB.

Lisburn Museum has translated its permanent gallery guides into several languages, a welcome banner in 20 languages will be displayed at the main entrance, and a commitment has been made to hold a Welcome Day as part of the museum’s annual calendar of events.

Participants connected with events, objects and exhibitions in multiple ways: including collecting their views on what is, ‘yours’, ‘mine’ or ‘ours’ in terms of museum objects, exhibitions and programmes. This reinforces Lisburn Museum’s promotion of cultural learning as multi-layered, often with varying cultural contexts.

YMO introduced Lisburn Museum to new audiences and enabled the collection of untold human stories through objects that not only reflect the past and present but contribute to its archives for the learning and enjoyment of present and future generations. Lisburn Museum hopes to further develop work with the local migrant community.

A PDF copy of the Impact Toolkit is available from emma.breadon@lisburncastlereagh.gov.uk.

Emma Breadon is assistant education officer (acting) at Lisburn Museum.

Image: Designs for screen prints are chosen by Syrian and Afghan participants at an artist session at Lisburn Museum