Damian Etheraads on why inclusive museums must communicate clearly, confidently, and without complacency.

Museums are for everyone. Or they should be. They are places where people go to learn, reflect, and connect with ideas that reach across time, culture, and community. At their best, museums offer a shared public space where difference is not flattened but explored with care and curiosity.

In recent years, many museums have worked hard to address historical exclusions. They have reconsidered who is represented, whose stories are told, and how those stories are framed. This has been an important and overdue shift. It has helped bring new voices into public view and created space for more honest reflection about the past.

But this work now faces sharper scrutiny. With Reform UK gaining political ground through direct attacks on equality, diversity and inclusion, it is no longer enough to say that inclusion is important. We must be able to show why it matters, how it is being done, and who it is for. Otherwise, we risk allowing others to define this work on our behalf, often in the least generous or accurate terms.

Inclusion has never meant exclusion. But that is exactly how it is being portrayed by those who oppose it.

This moment demands confidence and clarity. Museums must hold their ground. But they also need to ask harder questions about how they speak to the public, and whether that speech is landing in the way they hope.

Are we creating invitations, or drawing lines?

In some parts of the sector, inclusion has become not just a value but a professional language. Like any specialist language, it has its own terms, assumptions, and shorthand. It is often spoken with good intentions. But to visitors unfamiliar with that language, it can feel alienating.

When museums talk about decolonisation, structural power, or intersectionality, they are engaging with serious and necessary topics. But how these ideas are communicated matters just as much as the fact that they are being addressed. If visitors feel confused or talked down to, they may disengage. Not because they disagree, but because they feel shut out of the conversation.

This becomes even more important in a political climate where terms like inclusion and diversity are routinely distorted. If museum language feels insular or abstract, critics will have an easier time portraying it as elitist or ideological. And the wider public may struggle to see themselves reflected in what museums are trying to do.

This does not mean that museums should avoid difficult subjects. But it does mean they must communicate with greater care and confidence than ever before.

Not everyone who feels left out is resisting change

Museums have long struggled to connect with some audiences. People from working-class backgrounds, rural communities, younger age groups, and marginalised groups have historically been underrepresented. These are not new challenges, but they remain persistent ones.

Efforts to broaden narratives have helped address some of these gaps. But they have also created new tensions, especially when inclusion is seen to focus narrowly on identity, or to rely on concepts potentially unfamiliar to most visitors. People who do not feel a strong personal connection to these narratives may feel that museums are no longer speaking to them.

That is not the same as hostility to change. It is about feeling unsure of your place in the story.

The challenge here is not about whether museums should be more inclusive. They should. It is about whether that inclusivity feels like something shared, or something that belongs only to those who already speak the right language. If inclusion is only understood by insiders, it will not build public trust.

Lived experience is essential, but not enough on its own

The use of lived experience in shaping interpretation has brought valuable new perspectives into museum work. It has helped challenge narrow authorship and opened the door to more collaborative storytelling. It should remain part of how we work.

But lived experience must sit alongside research, curatorial skill, and public engagement. If personal identity becomes the main qualification for shaping content, museums risk turning inward. They may become mirrors for specific experiences rather than windows onto wider shared stories.

Museums are strongest when they combine multiple perspectives. They should offer both insight and invitation, holding space for reflection and difference, while remaining open to everyone who walks through the door.

Museums shape memory, and memory shapes the future

The decisions museums make, about what to collect, how to interpret, and which voices to foreground, shape how society remembers its past and imagines its future. Museums are not neutral spaces. But that does not mean they should speak from a single viewpoint.

A good museum should never make its visitors feel that there is only one correct way to think. It should offer perspectives, provoke questions, and encourage dialogue. It should allow people to explore the past in ways that feel relevant to their own lives, even when those lives are very different from the stories being told.

This includes addressing issues of race, power, colonial history, and inequality. But these must be presented in ways that are open, generous, and understandable. Jargon and ideological shorthand may feel efficient, but they often exclude the very people museums are trying to reach.

We cannot afford complacency

The current backlash against inclusion is not going away. It is a deliberate strategy, aimed at dividing public opinion and undermining trust in public institutions. Museums that cannot explain their work in clear, accessible terms will be especially vulnerable. And they will be easier targets for those seeking to cut funding, generate headlines, or provoke culture-war outrage.

But the answer is not to retreat from inclusion. It is to make the case more clearly, more confidently, and more often. Inclusion, properly understood, is not a threat to public trust. It is one of the best ways to rebuild it.

If we want museums to stay relevant, we must show that they belong to everyone. That means opening up stories, not closing them down. It means welcoming all visitors into the conversation, not just those fluent in a particular way of thinking. And it means making the case for inclusive practice as a public good, not a political stance.

Because if we lose the public, we lose the museum.

Damian Etheraads
Museum & Art Gallery Lead, Herefordshire Council

Published 6 May 2025