Fitzwilliam Museum - Museums Association
Join
Join
  1. Funding
  2. Mindsets + Missions for Museums and Science Centres of the Future
  3. Case studies
  4. Fitzwilliam Museum

Fitzwilliam Museum

FUTURE/POWER

Project goals:  

  • To provide the forum and opportunities for young people to develop their critical thinking, researching and communication through new entry points into cultural opportunities
  • Professional development and engagement with the development of the collective facilitates the growth of international mindsets, plural perspectives, critical capacities, inclusive strategies, formal training (redefining how we identify talent and hierarchies of cultural production)
  • To improve strategic and long-term working relationships between the museum, creative and cultural collaborators, lived experience practitioners, and education sectors for the benefit of children and young people

FUTURE/POWER is primarily a partnership between the Fitzwilliam Museum, the principal museum of the University of Cambridge, and a rural east of England secondary school. The project is creating co-research opportunities to explore the legacies of enslavement in response to the Fitzwilliam’s exhibition Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance, triangulating youth voice, life in rural England and narratives of empire.

‘Taster days’ were provided to local young people which led to the forging of an in-school youth collective comprising 12 volunteers. Time is being dedicated to developing the all-important intra-collective dynamic, and the museum team is consciously reflecting on how responsibilities within the project are successfully delegated to the collective.  

Several other partnerships are also key to success: work with teachers to provide professional development offerings is underway, and a steering group has been formed with Black-led organisation Museum X, stakeholders, and other critical friends.

The Fitzwilliam team is aware of the key learning taking place around how roles and relationships are established between these various groups, which will help improve strategic and long-term relationship development between the museum and partners. Already their new relationship with a church at the heart of local Black heritage is showing overspill into the wider community.

The help of creative practitioners has been enlisted to help develop innovative methods for exploring ideas – including a DJ, a poet, a zine-maker and a filmmaker. The goal is to culminate with a student-led live performance and e-publication devised by the youth collective who represent the citizens of the future.

Advertisement