How do we acknowledge the role of colonialism in the power structures, knowledge creation and practices of museums?
At its simplest, decolonising museums is about challenging settler occupancy of land, institutions and legal structures. At one end, decolonisation entails tearing down statues and violent revolution. At the other extreme it’s just about inserting “more stories”, being diverse and recognising our unconscious bias.
You need to decide what decolonising means. It should include the anti-racist action but it goes further. Often it’s about trade relationships and power – where is it and how is it manifest in decision making?
Ideally you need to be taking long (and often costly) overhauls into why museums exist.
This article explores how museum professionals around the world are tackling decolonisation.
Toyin Agbetu, an academic, community educator, founder of the Pan-African group Ligali, and Grenfell activist, says: “Labelling needs to be honest, and pass the litmus test of being approved by a politically aware member or consultative community group linked to where the artefact/text originated. Ideally, they should have a role in the authoring of such texts.
“Gatekeeping can only be addressed by changing employment policies to attract and incorporate people (at educational and senior management level) who are committed to decolonising practices and curatorial practices capable of making the institution uncomfortable about how new transgressive projects could transform their identity.”
In South Africa, Bonita Bennett, the director of the District Six Museum in Cape Town, says: “This is in an area that experienced wholesale violent and fast removal of the ‘coloured’ populations to make way for white homes in central Cape Town.
“There was a time when [the museum team] were extremely challenged by the difficulties of finding the resources to remain afloat, where the multiple and linked challenges of being a memorial museum – a place of healing and hope, a space for intergenerational conversations and education, archiving, research, as well as for tourism – sometimes come up against each other.”
How can museums change the way they engage to talk to audiences about their history and colonial links?
“I immersed myself in uncovering the best vehicle for supporting the purpose and values for that community,” says Bennett. “Restitution and reclamation were always at the centre of the project.
"The bottom line is that the early founders of the museum were themselves members of the community, and their needs were not ‘hijacked’ – they were astute at listening, at interpreting what the people of District Six wanted, allowing them agency and legacy.
“The [District Six] community story is one of resilience and persistence; it is also one of pain and deep wounds. Being ‘authentic’ is one way to describe it – being alert to the gamut of experiences, responses and legacies associated with loss of home.
"We constantly endeavour not to speak for people and this has stood us in good stead for gaining respect and authority within the District Six community. Instead, we see ourselves as creating a space for people to express themselves, their anxieties, their wishes and desires for the future.
“With all their complexities, their diverse and sometimes contradictory positions borne out of having survived racial engineering, District Six Museum provides that context for people to make sense of what it has meant to live under Apartheid.”
Ligali says: “Some people would say that you need to make the economic case proving that change would be more effective. I say that’s nonsense. We’ve been there with arguments for eradicating gender and ethnic gaps in pay, and it doesn’t work, unless you have mandatory audits that publicly expose wrongdoing on an annual basis.
“You just need to make and prove the moral case to those in authority or, better yet, accept or create a post making ‘us’ the authority.”

Ollie Douglas, the social history collections curator at the Museum of English Rural Life (Merl) in Reading, says: “The spaces, programming, and marketing that museums do are all predicated on the desire to attract particular audiences.
“To attract a more diverse set of visitors and users, museums need to work in tandem with representatives of those demographics to create spaces, facilities, promotional campaigns, and relevant opportunities that will serve to draw those people in.
“We all fall foul of the need for rapid decisions and to quickly flesh out forthcoming events programmes but there is definitely a need for us to involve those audiences from the start rather than second-guessing what they might want or need.”
Can professional networks help to overcome certain unequal power structures?

“At the moment, it seems like change may end up being a slow process, hidebound to the timescales of museum professionals who are representative of a more diverse set of backgrounds, and the time it takes for them to work their way up to more senior positions,” says Douglas.
“But if we as a sector become less protectionist and fixated on museum studies course qualifications or people who fit a particular mould then there’s ample scope for people entering the profession at higher rungs in the hierarchy.
“If our networks are more open to conversations with other complimentary sectors – universities, science engagement, charities, marketing, schools, to name but a few – then perhaps we might become more open to recruiting from outside the traditional bounds,” says Douglas. “In other words, networks need to cross boundaries.”
Agbetu says: “For meaningful change to occur requires the use of progressive and transgressive actions by a collaboration of formal and informal organisations. It’s hard for formal bodies to break free of ‘groupthink’ or push boundaries, especially when they’re fearful of the impact on their employment status.”
Decolonising applies to museums of all shapes and sizes – even where the collection doesn’t have an immediate or obvious link to colonialism.
“At the Museum of English Rural Life, in the 15,000 or so words of gallery text in our displays, we mention the rest of the world in only a handful of places and don’t mention imperialism at all,” says Douglas.
“If our visitors are to understand the micro-historical and local stories we present to them in true context then these need to be set against a backdrop of global linkages, trading networks, food systems, craft stories, and colonial relationships.
“Perhaps even more importantly, we also need to do more to link the ‘local’ at the English end of these threads to the ‘local’ at the overseas end, beginning to use the one to highlight people’s lives in the other.
“And by highlighting other people’s lives and histories in this way we will hopefully begin to challenge the inadvertent ‘othering’ of those who lived under colonial rule, and to break down the divisions between so-called indigenous or ethno histories and local or social histories.
“They are all, after all, just histories of people of equal significance, equal importance, and equal heritage value.”
How can museums undertake successful community engagement?
“Listening with sensitivity, with a firm belief and reliance on oral records, is key,” says Bennett from District Six Museum. “Just because it isn’t in an official government record doesn’t make it wrong.”
“Internally, we work hard at retaining our strong connections with youth. This keeps us open to different points of view. Being comfortable with critique and being challenged, helps.
“Our programmes with elders and youth always start with contextualisation of where they are at present, sharing what their current issues are and how they think they have been impacted by them. It includes mapping to the historical time periods which had an impact on their way of thinking about other groups of people; on their own self-identification.
“We have a high level of commitment to keeping an eye on the world, and issues that have relevance for our work and our communities. Making the links apparent forms part of our ongoing methodology. In addition, many organisations, institutions and individuals have become aware of the museum’s work over time and bring issues that are relevant to them, to us for support and possible partnership.
“Where possible we form collaborations around projects, and at other times we express our support in ‘lighter’ ways as through press releases and statements.”
When cataloguing and archiving – redefining or re-cataloguing processes – what are the key things to remember?
“We should always have in our minds the fact that cataloguing processes are inherently classificatory and essentially extensions of a problematic model of enlightenment learning and knowledge production,” says Douglas at Merl.
“We need to develop far more powerful browse-able pathways into collections, centred more on themes that resonate and connect to audiences, stakeholders and users outside institutions than those within.
“More open use of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and other resources accessible worldwide are key to this, as well as developing new digital pathways that are less reliant on formal classificatory structures and search terms. This latter activity will necessitate collaborative working and potentially crowdsourcing of some kind.
“Catalogues and databases are always incomplete. The research we need to undertake in order to render them less partial and less biased is absolutely vital. However, it is time-consuming, complex and potentially very costly.
“One example from the Museum of English Rural Life is an English-made basket shown as part of a Crafts for the Colonies exhibition in Sierra Leone in 1954. To understand this object fully and to find out why, where and for what purpose it was shown in this display would probably necessitate travel to Sierra Leone or at least building up a robust network of contact and liaison with colleagues and peers from there.
“Even building the contacts would be time-consuming so we need funding and resourcing structures that serve to support relevant programmes of research and research development.”
How can museums engage audiences with the “returning stolen items” debate?

Agbetu says: “This issue can only be addressed practically if the institution starts from the position that it is the custodian of an illicitly-acquired artefact and it is seeking to form partnerships with the legitimate owners.

“This could result in them sharing ‘custody’ of the item, agreeing a community sanctioned long-term loan or being forced to return it. It requires a level of moral integrity and willingness to brave a political storm that sadly the senior management and/or trustees of most institutions cower away from to their shame.”

Danny Chivers, from the activist group BP or not BP?, says: “Since 2012, we have been creating performances without permission in arts institutions that are sponsored by oil companies. Our main underlying mission is to push the culture sector to stop promoting the fossil fuel industry.

“Along the way we have been honoured to work with communities around the world who are affected by, and standing up against, the destructive practices of the fossil fuel industry. Many of those communities have also been devastated by European colonialism and are calling for the return of stolen artefacts from UK museums.

“Through this work we have realised it is the same elite decision-makers at the top of museums who are refusing to return stolen artefacts who are also doing deals with oil companies. Trying to make these connections is a core part of our values as a group.

“This is why, over the last year we have organised several creative protest events – two Stolen Goods Tours and a mass museum takeover called No War No Warming – that link these issues together, working together with people from affected communities to challenge colonial museum practices and oil sponsorship at the same time.”

“With regard to creating disobedient performances and creative actions, we’ve written articles that give some general advice on the topic. The Stolen Goods Tours are a bit different though, as they were very much driven by our relationship with Rodney Kelly, an indigenous Australian campaigner who is calling for the British Museum to return his ancestor’s shield that was violently stolen by James Cook on his arrival in Australia in 1770.

“Rodney led both our Stolen Goods Tours and has been a key driving force behind these events.

“If you are planning to organise similar events, even if you yourselves are not part of a community that is directly affected by these issues, then a first step is to connect with and build a relationship with the people who are. We are happy to give advice to anyone who's planning a similar event – just drop us an email on info@bp-or-not-bp.org.”

Thembi Mutch is a freelance journalist and academic. This toolkit was developed by her in association with other members of Museum Detox