Opening up the Museum

NCK:S VÅRKONFERENSEN 2015 1 Opening Up the Museum Janice Lane Director of Learning, Exhibitions & Digital Media Amgueddfa Cymru/National Museum Wales Abstract: Amgueddfa Cymru’s strategic focus for the next five years is to establish St Fagans National History Museum as a gateway to Wales’s cultural heritage, in a £21.5 million Heritage Lottery Funded development project. In delivering, this we are embedding cultural participation, programming and interpretation as strategic areas within the redevelopment. The overarching goal for St Fagans is to achieve a culture change in sKills development and working practices in the Museum and to set new standards in bilingual interpretation. As part of the redevelopment, we have consulted with over two hundred external organisations, and are now worKing with nine participatory forums which guide the redevelopment and inform gallery design, gallery content and activity programmes. We are also using this model of collaborative worKing to inform and shape our worK across the wider organisation. In this article, I will draw on examples from my ten years in Glasgow Museums of developing diverse audiences and broadening cultural participation while also giving examples of the different ways we are worKing at Amgueddfa Cymru with communities and partners to open up our museums, so that we are worKing with people proactively and co-productively. Alongside this, I will chart the journey we are on in our strategic approach to extending opportunities for cultural participation for children and families experiencing poverty. I will also talK about how this is making us change as in order to be a participatory museum, we have to open up ourselves and our museums to different ways of doing, thinking and worKing. Introduction: Some provocations “It is probably not excessive to suggest that the profound feeling of unworthiness (and of incompetence) which haunts the least cultivated visitors as if they were overcome with respect when confronted with the sacred universe of legitimate culture, contributes in no small way to keeping them away from museums.” 1 This is a damning observation made over 20 years ago. How far has this sentiment of ‘exclusive’ and ‘legitimate’ culture changed over the last 25 years? Do museums challenge exclusive forms of cultural representation through the way we work? Do museums taKe part in the relationships and issues that our local and global communities care about? How good are museums at questioning how they are organised in terms of how this defines who their audiences – or communities are? Management consultant Margaret Wheatley, who studies organisations, the systems they create and how this affects the behaviour and abilities of the people within them, claims: “there is no 1 Bourdieu, P., Darbel, A., Schnapper, D. (1991) The Love of Art: European Art Museums and their NCK Ett lärande genom kulturarv sedan 2005 NCK:S VÅRKONFERENSEN 2015 2 power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” 2 Wheatley, after examining how within organisations control (or power) is confused with order, i.e. if we control how something is done we have the power, argues that this does not always create the most effective approach or outcome, and underlines the significance of relationships to develop better organisations and networKs. Museums are organisations. Museums have an essential role to play in contemporary life and in society. The most innovative and creative cities and societies worldwide are built on strong cultural foundations. In the UK, as a result of five years of austerity measures, many of our communities face severe threats of a Kind they have not experienced for decades, if at all. UK museums also face the most serious challenges we have Known in our 125-year history. Our communities need us to stand with them, and rise to these challenges as a core public service. Individuals and communities are under stress and every museum has a part to play in improving lives, creating better places and helping to advance society. As public expenditure continues to be cut, it is more important than ever to strengthen our strong sense of social purpose and open up all aspects of our museums to achieve this. Likewise, we need to learn how to open up that control and explore different approaches to achieve a goal, particularly by learning to looK beyond our controlling systems for other approaches, experience, Knowledge, and sKills that can lead to creative solutions. This will put a different lens on what we are doing and potentially bring into focus alternative views. We need to question how good museums are doing that and explore different systems in the way we worK and we construct and order our museums and our collections. We have to get better at opening up our control to include our diverse communities, not just in terms of visitors – but also in how we choose our staff. In this paper, I will start with a brief overview of the national context we are worKing in and the museums that maKe up Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales. I will then outline the participation agenda we are setting ourselves in response to public need and in terms of our responsibility as a national public body to be accountable to social and government agendas in Wales. I will also explore how this is maKing us change: to be a participatory museum, we have to open up ourselves and our museums to different ways of doing, thinking and worKing. Secondly, I will discuss one area of worK that is the vanguard for how we are developing and which is informing our approach nationally. This is the major redevelopment of St Fagans National History Museum. I’ll explain the philosophy guiding our way of worKing to transform the museum and the challenges we are facing in doing this worK ethically and effectively, using one specific case study around volunteering. Thirdly, I will discuss the journey we are on in our strategic approach to extending opportunities for cultural participation for children and families experiencing poverty across Wales by worKing with Welsh Government and other partners. Overview: I have worKed in large city museum services for most of my career (in Brighton and Hove, in the South East of England, and more recently in Glasgow, Scotland) that have strong local and regional accountability, and commitment to engagement and social agency. In Glasgow, the city’s cultural institutions have been held accountable as core public services for decades. They actively contribute to tacKling some of the endemic social and economic problems of exclusion, poor educational 2 Wheatley, M., (2002) Turning to one another. NCK Ett lärande genom kulturarv sedan 2005 NCK:S VÅRKONFERENSEN 2015 3 attainment, low sKills and other consequences of poverty – and have been a significant factor in the successful re-emergence of Glasgow as a now thriving, culturally vibrant and internationally renowned post-industrial city. For many other museums in the UK (most of which are under threat as a result of public sector cuts), their relationship with their communities is their most powerful way of defending themselves. I now worK in a national museum that has a clearly stated commitment to participation and engagement. Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales is accountable to the Welsh Government for contributing to the betterment of the country - it is written into our remit letter. WorKing at a national level in a country with significant social and economic problems, under a relatively young devolved government, has thrown up major challenges for us organisationally. Within this article I will share the lessons we are learning as we try to develop as an open and national participatory museum. National Context: Wales is a small nation – the third smallest in the UK after England and Scotland. It accounts for less than 5% of the UK population. It has devolved powers for health, culture, and education. Devolution is starting to have an impact: it is allowing Wales to maKe some decisions about the type of society it wants to be. Wales faces very difficult challenges nationally. In terms of geography, it has large rural areas with high unemployment. The highest population density is in SE Wales, where the capital city Cardiff and other largest Welsh cities, Newport and Swansea are as well the former mining Valleys. It is a post-industrial nation and, as such, is still trying to develop new economies and regenerate communities who have suffered greatly since the 1970s and 1980s. There is now only one operational commercial coal mine in the country. Wales faces huge challenges with health, employability and sKills and poor educational attainment, with one in three children living in poverty (many of these in worKing households – not worK-less ones). Two of our major challenges are the low investment into the country as well as the poor infrastructures and transport, which contribute to inequalities of opportunity for participation and development. The 2011 census showed that approximately 19% of the population overall are welsh speaKing,3 with the percentage of native Welsh speaKers being higher in north Wales whereas in some areas it is just under 50%. In terms of population, approximately 5% of the population comes from BME bacKground – approx. 2% of these from long standing BME communities (largely in SE Wales who have been established there for decades). Wales now has two ‘Cities of Sanctuary’4 - Swansea and Cardiff - so it actively welcomes new communities. Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales: Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales is a Registered Charity and were established by Royal Charter in 1907. We are a Welsh Government Sponsored Body and an Independent Research Organisation, with seven National Museums across Wales and a National Collections Centre, employing just over 600 people.

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