Once we understand the background to the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK, it can be hard to know where to begin with such an important and all-encompassing area of work.

1. Where to start?

Start by thinking about yourself and having conversations with your colleagues and your community.

Examine your own identity

It will be helpful to consider your own identity and relationship to race. Depending on your background, you might find something like a White Privilege Test a helpful starting point.

There are also a number of resource lists to enable you to reflect and educate yourself further, including Museum Detox.

Consider who is affected by racism in your organisation and community

People from ethnic minority backgrounds in the UK are not a homogenous group. They, their families, friends and communities will have different lived experiences of racism. Have open conversations, make space and listen to what your colleagues and audiences have to say. Every organisation is different and will have a different starting point which will inform who they want to engage with their work to make their museum a more equal space.

Think about your local community and who lives around your museum

Does your museum represent its local community? The government published regional breakdowns of the population of England and Wales by ethnic group. Your local council may also be able to provide more granular data.

You can find data from the rest of the UK on the Scotland Census website and on the Northern Ireland census website.

The Audience Agency can provide an area profile report to help you understand your community and audience (there is a charge for this service). You can also find some free information using Audience Finder.

The Incluseum, a US non-profit that promotes ‘new ways of being a museum through dialogue, community building and collaborative practice related to inclusion in museums’ has a series of worksheets to spark conversations about who your museum is for. They are designed for a US audience, but can easily be modified for use in the UK.

The Open Up Guidebook from the Association of Independent Museums offers a more in depth approach to thinking about your audience.

It’s also worth considering how ethnicity intersects with other barriers to accessing museums using the holistic model outlined in this report by Glasgow Women’s Library. This will help you make your organisation more equitable for everyone.

Reach out to relevant groups

Once you’ve begun to understand the background to your local community, start to reach out to relevant groups and involve them in your museum. It can take time to build trust and strong working relationships, but this will be a valuable part of creating positive change in your organisation. Be prepared to listen, set clear expectations at the start of conversations and make space and time to respond to what they say.

There are many examples of museums that are already trying to reflect their communities. This was something that Leeds City Museum was praised for when it won our Family Friendly Museum Award in 2018.

The Rethinking Relationships and Building Trust project, a collaboration between the Horniman Museum and Gardens in London, Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, and World Museum Liverpool, involves heritage professionals, community members, artistic and other stakeholders to develop thinking about the museums’ African collections.

Ask for their feedback

How do your audiences and those who do not visit view your organisation? National Museums Liverpool is trying to promote dialogue about its collections, asking audiences to give them feedback about what they see on visits.

Embed in your work in your whole organisational approach

Earlier this year, the Trustees and staff of Culture& and its New Museum School Trainees called on the heritage sector to take action in its Black Lives Matter Charter. Look at your organisation’s current position in relation to this charter and start to plan your work.

The Museums Association report, Power and Privilege in the 21st Century Museum, has some helpful reflections and tools about where to start in your museum.

2. Supporting participants and colleagues

The experience of racism can have a hugely negative effect on mental health as this BBC Future Article outlines. Your colleagues and participants in your activities may have directly experienced racism or have friends and family who have. Issues you discuss as part of work on colonialism, slavery and racial injustice may be triggering. Be aware of potential triggers and sensitive to the responses of colleagues and participants.

It’s important to create safe, respectful spaces to have honest conversations about racism. Participants may feel vulnerable sharing highly personal stories or fearful about expressing their opinions. Here are some useful links on how to hold these conversations:

Taking positive action often helps to reduce anxiety and stress but can be challenging. You can find more information about racism and young people’s mental health on the Young Minds website.

If you are working with young people who feel they need more support, you can signpost them to organisations like Childline (if under 18) or The Mix. This will enable them to talk at greater length about their feelings in a supported, non-judgemental space.

3. Language

Think about the words you use when having conversations about racism. Language around race can be highly politicised and highly personal.

This blog reflects on findings from the Cabinet Office Racial Disparity Unit about the terms used to describe ethnic minorities, in particular encourage a move away from using the terms ‘BAME’ and ‘BME’. This BBC article of actors discussing the terms is also useful.

This article from Arts Inc presents a different view on language from the Cabinet Office blog and makes the valuable point that the best way to understand how to talk about someone’s racial identify is to ask them how they prefer to be described.

Kids in Museums Black Lives Matter Steering Group has chosen to follow the guidance from the Cabinet Office blog above and use the term minority ethnic group or community.

The American website Racial Equity Tools has an extensive and useful glossary, but bear in mind some words may not have exactly the same meaning in the UK.

It might seem daunting to talk to younger children about racism, slavery and colonial history. There are some useful online guides designed to support this:

There are also a range of resources about teaching Black History and colonial history online:

4. Supporting workforce diversity

Museums lag behind other art forms in terms of workforce diversity, as shown by the most recent data from Arts Council England’s regularly funded organisations. (This does not include the other three nations that make up the UK, for which it has been hard to find publicly available workforce data.)

This matters for your work with children, young people and families. A diverse workforce will strengthen your work to be a more inclusive organisation, programme more widely and attract more diverse audiences. Jerwood Arts highlights the need for diverse role models in its Toolkit for Employers. 

It’s beyond the scope of this resource to address museum recruitment, but we would like to encourage you to think about how you can support a broader range of young people to think about a career in museums.

Kids in Museums Takeover Day is an ideal opportunity to bring new groups of young people into your museum and introduce them to a wide range of museum careers. This will increase awareness of opportunities to work in museums and show that a museum career can be enjoyable and rewarding.

Once young people have had a taste of what it’s like to work in a museum, think about how you can offer work experience, traineeships, apprenticeships and opportunities for young volunteers and leaders. The Museum of London has established a good model for open access work experience and we have a guide on setting up a Youth Panel with the Museum of the Home.

If you are regularly asking young people to give their time as consultants for your programmes, consider whether to pay them for their time. There is more information about this issue in this Jerwood Arts report.

There are currently several national programmes offering traineeships to young people from groups currently underrepresented in the museum workforce. Museum Futures will train 27 young people over three years to give them the skills to pursue a career in museums and heritage, and New Museum School aims to create a vibrant passionate workforce to help diversify the audience for heritage.

Keep reading

Tags: , ,

Categories:

Audience: , ,