Future developments
The report Buried in the Footnotes makes the following observations about museum staff in general:
'Their inability to mount more adventurous displays of material relating to disabled people is largely the result of three factors – uncertainty, lack of confidence and fear of criticism.' (13)
Although relatively more confidence has been gained in terms of the use of collections amongst and for BME and LGBT people over the years, more needs to be done on the disability front. A confident knowledge-base can then inform a robust strategy which can be operationalised across all departments and personnel in a manner whereby work and progress made is properly logged and recorded for development in the future.
Collections must be periodically revisited, researched and developed to meet the needs of London’s diverse populations and interests. Five cardinal rules apply for the relevance of collections to diverse populations:
- Find the material evidence (which may well already reside in the collections);
- Identify the gaps by centrally pooling the research themes and areas of further enquiry which can then be used to formulate a programme of activities and inform a policy of pro-active collecting to fill in these gaps,
- Research the evidence through wherever possible consultancy and community expertise, sharing research papers within and outside the museum, making more links with community-based organisations, heritage/history institutions and researchers and educational courses;
- Display and interpret the material using a wide range of approaches, consultancy and community groups;
- And investigate the impact by recording it for future work. Digitisation is a relatively easy and inexpensive recording method with which to develop future work.
Identifying gaps is critical to a strategy of pro-active collecting. Early instances of materials to do with sexuality, especially before the 1980s, are particularly scarce in the museum’s collections as is contextual information and materials to do with disability before the late twentieth century. Some of these gaps may involve a relatively simple matter of revisiting and reevaluating the material already present but this can only be done in the presence of sustained and thorough research.
Questions about and examples of different races/ethnicities as they pertain to Roman and earlier times are also pertinent areas to investigate and represent more fully. The Photography and the Paintings, Prints and Drawings collection offers opportunities for further documentation, research and creative projects, where an eye to accounting for representations of diverse identities would be hugely beneficial.
An example that stands out is the Patrick Smith collection, and photographs collected by the Museum in Docklands’ team of London’s communities in the 1980s for which there is as yet little context or analysis in terms of diversity.
Even if the material is not available, we can begin to think about how alternative interpretations and perspectives on historical events and objects could be provided by bringing in a range of cultural experts. These could be projects to reinterpret or rethink objects by working with those communities which the objects have associations with.
There are several items in the ‘World City’ gallery at the Museum of London which could be reconceived with such input. For example, a nineteenth century photograph of a gathering of Chinese people to honour their dead entitled ‘Strange Rites in the East London Cemetery’ by S Begg in 1909 would benefit from more specific cultural context, rather than being placed in a box bringing disparate ‘other’ cultures together in an ‘immigration display’.
Contentious terms should be italicised or placed in inverted commas. Some critics have concerns about ‘immigration’ itself for the way it has been co-opted by those who think migrants should always remain ‘outsiders’.
Collections can be used in several ways both in and out of the museum space. The Museum of London has initiated some successful projects to push the museum walls outwards into everyday spaces such as shopping malls and public squares, work which is only to be further encouraged. This could be by way of:
- Educational handling resources
- Replica artefacts or copies of archive materials and images
- Website exhibitions and links
- Collaborative works with other artists and community groups.
Even if in-house space is limited, inventive ways of utilising it efficiently could provide for more exhibition or displays created by communities. Museum staff can take the role of ‘training’ individuals and equipping them with the skills they need to create their own, perhaps travelling, exhibitions. A dedicated display could be made for object(s) chosen, interpreted or recontextualised by community experts on a revolving basis. For instance, a children’s book, 'Prince Leeboo of the Pelew Islands' from 1820-24, shows early imagery of black people in fiction.
The item could generate interest across generations, raise issues about representations of non-white people in nineteenth century Britain, and could also be interpreted by young children from diverse backgrounds through labels and accompanying texts or soundbytes. The report, Revisiting Collections, provides a useful means of categorising interpretations. They include (14):
- Intellectual responses to the objects: These were contributions or expressions of interest in the context of the objects, establishing them within a particular tradition or movement and finding new links with other objects, people, events, places or cultures.
- Cross-cultural or associative responses: These were contributions which focused on common themes and uses for the objects, enabling respondents to identify points of familiarity to their own lives.
- Narrative responses to the objects: These were stories, family traditions or imaginary contexts which were inspired by the objects, based on individuals’ own experiences or imaginations.
- Instinctive responses : These were reactions to the physical presence and form of the objects; their form, texture, design or function.
The Museum of London has amassed excellent oral history records. The next step is to directly integrate such research with responses to and uses of collections with such a framework for interpretation. These can then be translated by those communities and be made available in a variety of languages for other audiences, either in the display, separate leaflets/sheets or on audio.
Oral history can be a very empowering activity and is extremely useful in diversity work as it can address gaps in the history of particular communities. Current work at the Museum with refugee communities in London is providing invaluable life stories for the oral history archives. Such records can also create wonderful opportunities for inter-generational work, enabling younger generations from diverse backgrounds brought up in London to learn about their history and heritage.
We are at a time when post-war first generation individuals are reaching their twilight years. To preserve their memories is of crucial benefit to one and all. We often hear about the ‘swinging sixties’ but generally it’s presented as a very white decade, giving the lie to the biographies of thousands of migrants form the former colonies who had settled here. What kind of music did they listen to - the Beatles, Rolling Stones, gramophone records brought over from the South? What kind of leisure pursuits did they have?
Such questions were addressed with respect to African Caribbeans as part of the Windrush exhibition in the 1990s at the Museum of London, but could be broadened to include the Chinese and South Asian diasporas. These questions have also been pursued by the ‘Moving Here’ website exhibition (15). A record of such histories in an oral archive, if need be in the mother tongue, can retain the textures of people’s memories in ways which the written word doesn’t necessarily fully capture.
Other projects could include working with culturally diverse communities to produce guides, information leaflets and testimonies about objects in their first language. Audio tours could be customised to cater for specific interests and histories, and could be made available in more than one language. This circumvents the problem of moving objects around for a particular story, to ones that move the spectator round to find particular stories. Public computer terminals could be further updated with search engines that allow easier access to such themes, debates, and questions about the collections.
See essay pages: