Description
“Museum-iD magazine has energy. Like a great museum, it wakes me up, tells me stuff I didn’t know and surprises me. I feel better-informed and more hopeful for the future of museums after reading an issue” — Sara Wajid, Co-CEO, Birmingham Museum Trust
Museum-ID 2024 Edition
In a time of growing inequality, social and economic injustice, environmental emergency, and perpetual political crisis, we want to play our part in reimagining museums as ethical, people centred organisations. It means building trust in co-creation, fostering and honouring equal partnerships, embedding empathy and inclusive practice, and taking a stand against the myth of neutrality. It means handing things back and handing over control. Depending on who you talk to this approach is often either branded brave and radical or dangerous and foolhardy. Really it is simply human decency, respect and social justice in action. For museums to be meaningful they need to progress ethically and with integrity. Now is the time to build a more equitable and hopeful future for museums.
Contents:
Build the House They Rock In
What kind of museum will the next generation dream of and build? How might perceptions of museums – and what museums can be – change in the next 10, 20, 100 years? Rachel Noel on the future of museums
Civic Museums: places for innovation and community
As Local Authority-funded museums face cuts, Tony Butler explains the threat facing the UK’s civic museums and why their continued existence is vital
The Co-creation Game: does museum co-creation risk becoming performance?
Stephen Welsh on how equity can flourish when cultural institutions resist the urge to take the starring role in a co-creation project and refrain from concentrating all of their efforts on the creative outcome and its public unveiling
Making a Postcolonial Museum
Iheanyichukwu Onwuegbucha and Will Rea on curating the museum at the John Randle Centre for Yoruba Culture and History in Lagos, Nigeria. The development is a striking addition to Africa’s commitment to conserving its cultural heritage. It marks a definite shift in thinking through the appropriate forms of museology for a continent that has long been hidebound by national museums developed during the peak of colonial impact. The openness of the design, the use of sound and the development of particular design elements – not least the use of colour – are all very deliberate attempts to rethink the idea of the museum in Africa.
Social Impact, Creativity and Material Culture
How can museum collections be relevant for d/Deaf researchers and BSL users today? Tara Panesar on the creative collaboration that led to the Science Museum Group’s involvement in the Scottish Sensory Centre’s BSL Glossary Project
How Museums Can Shape a More Equitable and Sustainable World
Suzanne Cotter on how the projects nominated for the Outstanding Museum Practice Award invite us to not only imagine but to enact the possibilities of museums in shaping a more equitable, inclusive, and sustainable world
Collecting the Present: Discussing Ethical Contemporary Collecting Work
Ellie Miles on how museums can navigate the ethics of contemporary collecting, ensuring that the people involved are treated with care, sensitivity, and respect
Change and Momentum in Museums: Turning Challenge into Opportunity
Steve O’Connor on getting a grip on finances, pulling together a clear and coherent plan to set a path to sustainability, and building the momentum needed to return the River & Rowing Museum to the centre of the community and deliver world-leading education about healthy rivers
Human Rights and Cultural Heritage: New Avenues to Resolve Restitution Claims?
The increasing intersection between art restitution and human rights law includes potential new avenues that may be used to commence restitution claims. Eleni Polycarpou, Camilla Gambarini, and Grace Finnigan
on why a broadening of the definition of “culture” lends itself towards a human rights framework of restitution
