The traditional view of a museum is that it is a neutral space striving for objectivity in its interpretation of its collections.
But attitudes are slowly changing, and doors are opening to new practices, with museums more willing to show where they stand on issues that affect society.
“We have invented this myth that the public sees us as neutral and safe to prevent us getting into controversy,” says David Fleming, the director of National Museums Liverpool (NML).
At NML’s core, says Fleming, is its role as a socially responsible group of museums. And this means having an opinion on social injustices that affect the community as well as campaigning on human rights issues.
To this end, NML has set up an international network of museums concerned with having a voice in addressing human rights abuses. The Federation of International Human Rights Museums (FIHRM) had its inaugural conference last autumn in Liverpool.
Museums are not only concerned with their own voice on social issues, but also encourage the public to take action. However, Richard Sandell, the head of the school of museums studies at University of Leicester, points out that although museums are increasingly progressive places, there is still anxiety about taking a particular standpoint.
He says campaigning or activism can be a museum being explicit about where it stands on an issue, but it can also be a more subtle embrace of a cause by showing that, for instance, human rights underpin everything the museum does.
Birthe Müller was the director of Red Cross Sweden’s House of Humanity centre in Malmö, which was closed last year because of funding cuts. For her, campaigning means “participating in the dialogue of society”. She sees museums as particularly relevant to this because they can use their connections with the past to highlight contemporary events.
Müller gives the example of the House of Humanity project looking at the white bus operation, a humanitarian mission led by the Swedish Red Cross to Germany in 1945. Along with the Danish government, the mission used white buses with a red-cross emblem to rescue thousands of former concentration camp inmates.
One of the white buses became part of the centre’s collection, and visitors, while sitting in the bus, learned about its history and were then asked what they have done to show their courage and responsibility.
The House of Humanity also used an exhibition about contemporary immigration to look at how Swedish refugees were fleeing to the US because of famine 150 years ago.
Müller says: “If you know what happened 150 years ago, it’s not difficult to understand why there are refugees in the world today.”
All campaigns, says Müller, should follow three steps. First, they should be based on fact; second, they should show their relevance to what is happening in society today; third, and most importantly, they should empower people to make a change. “Most museums I visit do the first two very well,” she says.
A two-year project led by the British Library, London, and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, and involving 60 museums and archives across England, fulfilled the latter part of Müller’s campaign model.
Campaign! Make an Impact, which ended in March, was created thought the Strategic Commissioning programme, which is funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Education.
The aim was to inspire young people into active citizenship, and involved museums and archives partnering local schools.
The project involved the participants examining historical campaigning material linked to the collections of the museum or archive; choosing a theme to campaign on that was linked to something in their community that impassioned them; and finally focusing on developing their own “creative campaign” around a particular theme.
Jane Avison, the head of learning at Hull Museums and one of the architects of the national project, says the term “creative element” was used to show young people that campaigning doesn’t have to be negative and violent to get a message across. Instead, the young people were encouraged to use poetry, film and other art forms.
This approach shows that museums are anxious about being seen as supporting some forms of protest. “We wouldn’t want the museum to be seen to be encouraging rioting in the streets,” Avison says. “Writing a poem and sending it to the council leader is a better way of being heard.”
Hull Museums used its collections to look at campaigns against child labour. The project involved 13-14 year-old pupils from Endeavour High School taking part in mock trials in a Victorian courtroom. This helped them to investigate the social conditions of the time.
The pupils then chose to campaign on restorative practice as a way to prevent conflict. Within the school there are problems of violence and discrimination, says Avison, which is also reflected in the wider community.
All the Endeavour pupils involved in the project were trained in “restorative circle” methods where discussion is used to diffuse situations, and listening skills are employed to understand diverse viewpoints. Problems at the school have significantly decreased, according to Avison.
The pupils wanted to spread the message to the whole city and created two films and a photographic exhibition that were shown around Hull. The young people also demonstrated the restorative circle practice to the audiences.
Avison says literacy levels have increased as a result of the project, the young people have shown increased confidence and many want to pursue GCSE history.
“The project has proved it can raise aspirations and give a voice to young people,” Avison says. The model has now been embedded in Hull’s core work and it is being marketed as a new buy-in service to schools.
Most museums and galleries use the content of their collections to guide the type of campaigns that they develop. But in some places, people’s needs have taken precedence over the museum’s objects.
In the south-east African country of Malawi, the group of five nationally-funded museums tackle problems such as HIV/Aids and poverty because staff feel it is the right thing to do. Michael Gondwe, the curator-education coordinator at the Museums of Malawi, told Museums Journal: “You can’t turn a blind eye to what is happening at the very basic level.”
Instead of using its collections, which comprise natural history and archaeology, the museum addresses local cultural practices that affect the health of the community. Workshops are held with school pupils and their parents to highlight how cultural practices such as circumcision or polygamy can lead to infection. Programmes are run on how weaving and pottery can help combat poverty.
Whether museums accept a role of social responsibility or attempt to be neutral, they will have to engage with society if they want to remain relevant. NML’s Fleming believes that engaging with non-governmental organisations is a powerful way of getting a message across and also gives visitors a means to take action.
Survival International campaigns on behalf of some of the world’s indigenous peoples. Its advocacy director, Jonathan Mazower, told Museums Journal: “A museum that fails to reflect the society in which it is immersed is not only irresponsible but ends up giving a misleading impression.”
Mazower goes further: “If a museum exhibition has done its job properly, I would hope people could learn that the people behind the artefacts are in need of help. Then I think most people would want to help.”
Felicity Heywood is a social and cultural journalist
The Florence Nightingale Museum in London supported 150 young people (12-13 year olds) from a local secondary school from September 2009 to summer 2010 to find their campaigning voice as part of the British Library and Museums, Libraries and Archives Council’s Campaign! Make an Impact programme.
Using its collection of Florence Nightingale-led campaigns on health reform, the museum encouraged the pupils to make comparisons with modern-day campaigns, investigate the role of the media in influencing and guiding public opinion and to look at the importance of holding those in power to account.
The pupils were given freedom to choose what campaign they would lead on. They chose to campaign on the right to vote at 16 years old.
Katie Edwards, the learning and access manager at the museum, says: “Initially, the young people had the view of ‘Who’s going to listen to us?’”
But the pupils were empowered through fundraising, writing a song, making a film, making T-shirts and posters, and liaising with the media. Edwards says this had an impact “on their confidence and belief that their ideas are important – that they have a role to play in their community”.
One young person who took part in the Florence Nightingale Museum project was impressed. “It’s important, isn’t it, to take action in our community?” she says. “There is no point sitting around moaning unless I am prepared to get involved in my community.”
The Florence Nightingale Museum and 20 of the participants have since set up a youth forum that meets quarterly and helps the museum devise campaigns for young people.
www.bl.uk/campaign
www.florence-nightingale.co.uk
But attitudes are slowly changing, and doors are opening to new practices, with museums more willing to show where they stand on issues that affect society.
“We have invented this myth that the public sees us as neutral and safe to prevent us getting into controversy,” says David Fleming, the director of National Museums Liverpool (NML).
At NML’s core, says Fleming, is its role as a socially responsible group of museums. And this means having an opinion on social injustices that affect the community as well as campaigning on human rights issues.
To this end, NML has set up an international network of museums concerned with having a voice in addressing human rights abuses. The Federation of International Human Rights Museums (FIHRM) had its inaugural conference last autumn in Liverpool.
Museums are not only concerned with their own voice on social issues, but also encourage the public to take action. However, Richard Sandell, the head of the school of museums studies at University of Leicester, points out that although museums are increasingly progressive places, there is still anxiety about taking a particular standpoint.
He says campaigning or activism can be a museum being explicit about where it stands on an issue, but it can also be a more subtle embrace of a cause by showing that, for instance, human rights underpin everything the museum does.
Birthe Müller was the director of Red Cross Sweden’s House of Humanity centre in Malmö, which was closed last year because of funding cuts. For her, campaigning means “participating in the dialogue of society”. She sees museums as particularly relevant to this because they can use their connections with the past to highlight contemporary events.
Müller gives the example of the House of Humanity project looking at the white bus operation, a humanitarian mission led by the Swedish Red Cross to Germany in 1945. Along with the Danish government, the mission used white buses with a red-cross emblem to rescue thousands of former concentration camp inmates.
One of the white buses became part of the centre’s collection, and visitors, while sitting in the bus, learned about its history and were then asked what they have done to show their courage and responsibility.
The House of Humanity also used an exhibition about contemporary immigration to look at how Swedish refugees were fleeing to the US because of famine 150 years ago.
Müller says: “If you know what happened 150 years ago, it’s not difficult to understand why there are refugees in the world today.”
All campaigns, says Müller, should follow three steps. First, they should be based on fact; second, they should show their relevance to what is happening in society today; third, and most importantly, they should empower people to make a change. “Most museums I visit do the first two very well,” she says.
A two-year project led by the British Library, London, and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, and involving 60 museums and archives across England, fulfilled the latter part of Müller’s campaign model.
Campaign! Make an Impact, which ended in March, was created thought the Strategic Commissioning programme, which is funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Education.
The aim was to inspire young people into active citizenship, and involved museums and archives partnering local schools.
The project involved the participants examining historical campaigning material linked to the collections of the museum or archive; choosing a theme to campaign on that was linked to something in their community that impassioned them; and finally focusing on developing their own “creative campaign” around a particular theme.
Jane Avison, the head of learning at Hull Museums and one of the architects of the national project, says the term “creative element” was used to show young people that campaigning doesn’t have to be negative and violent to get a message across. Instead, the young people were encouraged to use poetry, film and other art forms.
This approach shows that museums are anxious about being seen as supporting some forms of protest. “We wouldn’t want the museum to be seen to be encouraging rioting in the streets,” Avison says. “Writing a poem and sending it to the council leader is a better way of being heard.”
Hull Museums used its collections to look at campaigns against child labour. The project involved 13-14 year-old pupils from Endeavour High School taking part in mock trials in a Victorian courtroom. This helped them to investigate the social conditions of the time.
The pupils then chose to campaign on restorative practice as a way to prevent conflict. Within the school there are problems of violence and discrimination, says Avison, which is also reflected in the wider community.
All the Endeavour pupils involved in the project were trained in “restorative circle” methods where discussion is used to diffuse situations, and listening skills are employed to understand diverse viewpoints. Problems at the school have significantly decreased, according to Avison.
The pupils wanted to spread the message to the whole city and created two films and a photographic exhibition that were shown around Hull. The young people also demonstrated the restorative circle practice to the audiences.
Avison says literacy levels have increased as a result of the project, the young people have shown increased confidence and many want to pursue GCSE history.
“The project has proved it can raise aspirations and give a voice to young people,” Avison says. The model has now been embedded in Hull’s core work and it is being marketed as a new buy-in service to schools.
Most museums and galleries use the content of their collections to guide the type of campaigns that they develop. But in some places, people’s needs have taken precedence over the museum’s objects.
In the south-east African country of Malawi, the group of five nationally-funded museums tackle problems such as HIV/Aids and poverty because staff feel it is the right thing to do. Michael Gondwe, the curator-education coordinator at the Museums of Malawi, told Museums Journal: “You can’t turn a blind eye to what is happening at the very basic level.”
Instead of using its collections, which comprise natural history and archaeology, the museum addresses local cultural practices that affect the health of the community. Workshops are held with school pupils and their parents to highlight how cultural practices such as circumcision or polygamy can lead to infection. Programmes are run on how weaving and pottery can help combat poverty.
Whether museums accept a role of social responsibility or attempt to be neutral, they will have to engage with society if they want to remain relevant. NML’s Fleming believes that engaging with non-governmental organisations is a powerful way of getting a message across and also gives visitors a means to take action.
Survival International campaigns on behalf of some of the world’s indigenous peoples. Its advocacy director, Jonathan Mazower, told Museums Journal: “A museum that fails to reflect the society in which it is immersed is not only irresponsible but ends up giving a misleading impression.”
Mazower goes further: “If a museum exhibition has done its job properly, I would hope people could learn that the people behind the artefacts are in need of help. Then I think most people would want to help.”
Felicity Heywood is a social and cultural journalist
Community action: there’s no point sitting around moaning
The Florence Nightingale Museum in London supported 150 young people (12-13 year olds) from a local secondary school from September 2009 to summer 2010 to find their campaigning voice as part of the British Library and Museums, Libraries and Archives Council’s Campaign! Make an Impact programme.
Using its collection of Florence Nightingale-led campaigns on health reform, the museum encouraged the pupils to make comparisons with modern-day campaigns, investigate the role of the media in influencing and guiding public opinion and to look at the importance of holding those in power to account.
The pupils were given freedom to choose what campaign they would lead on. They chose to campaign on the right to vote at 16 years old.
Katie Edwards, the learning and access manager at the museum, says: “Initially, the young people had the view of ‘Who’s going to listen to us?’”
But the pupils were empowered through fundraising, writing a song, making a film, making T-shirts and posters, and liaising with the media. Edwards says this had an impact “on their confidence and belief that their ideas are important – that they have a role to play in their community”.
One young person who took part in the Florence Nightingale Museum project was impressed. “It’s important, isn’t it, to take action in our community?” she says. “There is no point sitting around moaning unless I am prepared to get involved in my community.”
The Florence Nightingale Museum and 20 of the participants have since set up a youth forum that meets quarterly and helps the museum devise campaigns for young people.
www.bl.uk/campaign
www.florence-nightingale.co.uk