Vox pop | How would you define a museum?

“A museum isn’t a building, it’s a community. It is not about objects, but stories. It’s about people coming together, sharing ideas and forging connections. It’s also about being useful. The East End Women’s Museum delivers in the community. We facilitate local women and girls to step into their power, and aim to smash gender stereotypes. Through our work, hundreds more women’s voices have been heard. Inequality has been challenged. Some folk feel less limited by their gender. That is a museum to me.”

“Culture Perth and Kinross has partnered with the Cateran Ecomuseum, the museum without walls in Blairgowrie, to deliver a new hub for it in Alyth Museum. It is a co-curated and community-focused project and what I believe museums should be about today. A museum listens to and responds to the needs of the communities it serves, and provides a space for people to connect with, and be inspired by, the primary source – or even just to be.”

“A museum means many things to different people. For some, it is a place where they don’t belong, are not represented and, when they are, it is not their narrative. Museums have been colonial structures that exhibit the loot of the empire, but this can be changed. Now is the time for museums to 
be anti-racist spaces. Museum professionals can change the narrative, listen and learn from the communities, reveal the full truth and present the untold stories. Imagine a space for truth and healing that we call a museum.”