The Election 2015 – A Challenge for Museums?

As one of the most unpredictable election campaigns in recent history unexpectedly lead to a single party majority Conservative government. Those of us working in the cultural sector might be worried, but would we have been better off with Labour or a centre-left coalition?


The Labour Party – What would they have done? 
For one thing they would have continued to fund free entry to national museums. However, their regional agenda also gets a mention. Their manifesto offered a vague commitment to universal free access to great art and national heritage 'in all parts of the country'. Nothing concrete or tangible is added to this promise. It leaves us to speculate what might have been. Interestingly for those of us who went through ‘Renaissance in the Regions’ years they would have required all organisations that receive arts funding to open their doors to young people. I note they were not going to encourage, or enable, but require. Would it have been the stereotypical Labour ‘money with straitjacket’ approach that hampered Renaissance funding – we will never know.

I have issues with the ‘free museums’ policy, but I will discuss that more fully later. But I can appreciate Labour’s regional agenda

The Liberal Democrat Party – After an election where the Liberal Democrats disappeared into the political wilderness, it seems laughable to examine their manifesto in relation to museums. The fact that they didn’t have a policy beyond the continued free entry to national museums means that they should not remain long in our thoughts.

Scottish National Party – The big winners on election night continue to ignore the existence of museums entirely as they did during the referendum campaign. At least Plaid Cymru pledged free entry to the National Museum of Wales.

What of the emerging fringe parties in England?

The Green Party – Their manifesto statement on museums needs noting, 

"Increase government arts funding by £500 million a year to restore the cuts made since 2010 and reinstate proper levels of funding for local authorities, helping to keep local museums, theatres, libraries and art galleries open."

On the surface it appears too good to be true. Ignoring the fact that the Green Party will have no influence at all in Parliament in cultural matters, it is too good to be true. As with much Green Party policy the question that is always in the back of your mind is ‘how are they going to pay for it?’ It is wonderfully aspirational, optimistic and naïve.

UKIP – It seems museums don’t fit into the UKIP’s idealised version England’s 'green and pleasant land' (they actually use that phrase in their manifesto). Their priorities are ‘heritage’ and ‘tourism’ but without acknowledging museums’ contribution to both concepts. A Minister of Heritage and Tourism in the cabinet is a policy aim and they will prioritise conservation over development without being too precise on how they will alter planning policy and legislation to achieve this. However, they have pledged something that has been a Historic Houses Association campaign for years. They promised to remove VAT on repairs to listed buildings. The Earl of Leicester, (former President of the HHA) came out in support of UKIP just before he died. So if you add country house heritage support to the specific UKIP policy support for pubs and ‘the great British seaside’ you have what amounts to an actual attempt to create a post-war fantasy Britain that got the short shrift it deserved from the electorate.

In the end we have ended up with a Conservative government  - what will they offer museums in the next 5 years?

The Conservative Party – The Conservative Party manifesto is very specific, but brief. In a whole paragraph related to heritage and museums they pledge to continue the road improvements around Stonehenge and continue free entry to the national museums. They see fit to mention the creation of an India gallery in Manchester through a partnership with The Manchester Museum (a University museum) and the British Museum and also a Great Exhibition for in the ‘North’.

All this adds up to a slightly surprising set of pledges. Honey pot tourist attractions and northern ‘outreach’ developments are a priority. Regional museums, independent museums, Arts Council England aren’t mentioned - worrying.

I have a problem with free museums. They establish the idea in the public’s head that you can pay to visit Stonehenge or a country house, but a museum should be free (the visitor profile to national museums is dominated by inbound tourism so a domestic audience doesn’t take that much advantage of the policy anyway.) The damage this conceptual threat does to independent and regional museums that have to charge undermines ACE’s resilience and sustainability agenda. Museums will close.

Local authorities will continue to suffer. The manifesto pledges to limit Council Tax increases, but gives no mention to improving the Revenue Support Grant. I can only foresee more cuts. Museums will close.

I could be optimistic, but unfettered conservatism has seen the attraction of ‘heritage and tourism in terms of economics and national identity, but has always had a problem with museums. I think we are in for 5 years of great challenge when we need to fight for the concept of the museum harder than ever before to ensure survival. By which I don’t just mean improved business acumen, but to actually redefine what a museum is in the first part of the Twenty-First Century.

This post is by Neville Stankley, Principal Lecturer in Heritage Management at Nottingham Trent University, Partnership Liaison Officer for EMMS and key practitioner for the region. 

Museums during war and peace: Places of protection and destruction

There are many museum exhibitions now that focus on war - depicting how nations, groups and individuals are affected by conflict, how they have remembered the devastation and how they have commemorated these events. However, over the past few weeks while one heritage site has been attacked another has reopened after 12 years - both during the current conflict in Iraq. It is intended here to examine how museums have been affected and how they have reacted to wartime circumstances by concentrating on WWI, WWII and current struggles. It can be argued that museums have played four roles during wartime conditions; they have been subjected to lootings and damage, they have been forced to close to safeguard their collections, but museums have also produced ‘patriotic exhibitions’ to inspire the nation and consequently exhibited works that have alienated other people.

With the outbreak of WWI ‘the very purpose and worth of museums in society [was] tested and met a response as diverse as the institutions themselves’. Gaynor Kavanagh has suggested that ‘some museums [in Britain] were able to adapt and support the war effort through ‘‘patriotic exhibitions’ and educational work’. These exhibitions were created to inspire men to enlist while encouraging those left at home to work towards victory. However, national museums closed during this period, which is highlighted by Kavanagh who expresses that ‘this was not done through concern for the safety of collections, but as a political gesture, a public example of economy during wartime’. Therefore, museums during WWI were to some extent connected to the war effort because their exhibitions encouraged the nation to believe in itself and closures symbolised how museums helped support the troubled economy at the time.

If we consider WWII with particular focus on museums in Nazi Germany the story of how museums are affected and react during war takes a different route. The Nazis created exhibitions that were only open to visits by ‘high-ranking SS officials’, which displayed the ideology that the Aryan race was superior to the Jewish race. These exhibitions were ‘arranged by the staff and presenting a selection of exquisite material objects owned by those murdered in the camps at that very time’. Sabine Offe, continues to state that ‘the staff – the Jewish archivists, librarians, architects, and art-historians were themselves deported one by one’. Similar to the examples of the WWI exhibitions they were designed to evoke nationalism however they did this by force by expelling or deporting Jewish people, who had up until the rise of the Nazis, considered themselves and were considered by others to be German nationals. Also as well as creating exhibitions that were influenced by the party’s beliefs the Nazis were ‘systematic campaign[s] to loot and plunder art from Jews and others in the occupied countries’. As previously stated museums are places of ‘salvage’ but during conflicts they also become places of conflict where the protection of their collections are threatened.

Debates were raised a few weeks ago at the British Museum which was ‘turned into a temporary court’ that discussed ‘the alleged illegal trading of an ancient Libyan statue valued at £1.5m’. As current conflicts in Iraq and Syria continue there is a growing necessity to protect museum’s collections. This has been emphasised by the need for an international conference at the V&A on the 14th April entitled ‘Culture in Conflict’. The main questions that have been asked are ‘what is the role of museums? Can we support people from these countries, whilst ensuring our own protection?’ Peter Stone, the chairman of the UK National Committee of the Blue Shield, has also raised the issue that advocates for the protection of cultural heritage in conflict zones. Evidently museums that are currently facing conflict are struggling to protect their cultural heritage. However, the museums as well as an international audience have concluded that they have a responsibility to act – lessons have been learnt after WWI and WWII but it has proved difficult to create a complete plan to protect museum objects during conflicts. On the other hand, there has been greater attention given to the looting of museums through heightened media coverage.

This post was written by Amy Williams. Amy is currently undertaking an internship at Culture Syndicates and studying for her MA in Holocaust and Related Studies at Nottingham Trent University. She is blogging about her experiences with Culture Syndicates on their Linked In page: http://linkd.in/1Mqo46v

Managed Wilderness: Reintroducing Extinct Species into Britain

Reintroduction is defined as ‘restoring a species to parts of its natural range from which it has been lost.’ There is currently a large body of thought that suggests that species extinct in Britain for many years should be reintroduced. There is currently a push towards reintroducing species such as Bear, Lynx, Wolves, Wild Boar and Beavers back into Britain. It can certainly be argued that these species are largely extinct in Britain as a result of human intervention and meddling.

The way in which these species are planned to be restored in Britain is through rigorous land management and tight, procedural conditions to be made by people.  If we intend to reintroduce these species into Britain’s wilderness, the first serious question to ask is what we mean by ‘wilderness’. As a result of National Parks, Special Sites of Scientific Interest and many more, there is a distinct absence of any land that is unmanaged.  There could therefore be a case for being against reintroduction of species into Britain because we would be putting species under the supervision of environmental managers, heritage consultants etc. after human intervention was what led to their demise in the first place.

There is, however a body of thought that completely vindicates the work of environmental managers and heritage consultants; the wild and all its contents can be seen as internally valuable sources of intangible heritage which desperately need preserving and managing.  Reintroducing species would mean a huge advance in tourism and a boost to the heritage and environmental industry. Species being reinstated in the UK could nurture one’s own cultural heritage and sense of British identity, species seen as alien and feared by the UK can once again become part of its custom.

Managing wilderness is important, although it may be managed, the nature and intangible meaning within it is unmanaged and important to everyone who belongs to Britain. 

This is the first of hopefully more pieces in which I communicate the importance of natural heritage management and human-environment interactions and how relevant managing landscapes and wildlife is within the heritage industry. I am currently studying for an MA in Museum and Heritage Management at Nottingham Trent University. I am also a Heritage Assistant with Culture Syndicates. During my studies and experience with Culture Syndicates I have started to learn that natural heritage is a subject that people within the industry rarely address. The following set of blogs aim to show just how important and applicable natural heritage management is to all those who work within the heritage industry and indeed anyone who feels a part of Britain.  

Further resources:

http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/Books/bid985.htm 

fhttp://etd.lib.umt.edu/theses/available/etd-01082010-111911/unrestricted/Dunn_Chris_Thesis.pdf

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2014/jul/21/infrastructure-bill-stopping-reintroduction-wildlife-uk

http://www.northumberlandnationalpark.org.uk/parklive/hottopics/reintroducingextinctspecies

http://www.snh.gov.uk/protecting-scotlands-nature/reintroducing-native-species/nsrf/

This post was written by Andrew Taylor, an NTU Masters student in Museum and Heritage Management and a Culture Syndicates Heritage Assistant.

Are we remembering to forget or are we keeping memory alive?

Recently there has been an increased focus directed towards how Britain remembers the Holocaust - emphasised by David Cameron’s launch of the Holocaust Commission. The pledge is that ‘the commission will work to ensure Britain has a permanent memorial to the Holocaust and educational resources for future generations’. As Andrew Pearce puts it - within the ‘last quarter of the twentieth century’ the remembrance of the Holocaust has undergone ‘a profound transformation in Britain’. However, Britain’s Holocaust consciousness is more complex than first thought because teaching aims within schools and within exhibitions, such as the Imperial War Museum, have adopted a national master narrative that limits our ability to ask difficult questions.

The focus at a recent conference “Between Obsession, Routine, and Contestation: Remembering the Holocaust in Europe today” revealed how some publications have suggested that ‘the Germans have had enough of Hitler and the Holocaust’. Harold Welzer has stated that, “Hitler can be forgotten”. While Ulrike Jureit has illustrated that ‘the Holocaust Memorial was more of the 1968 generation’s pathological identification with Jewish victims than of anything else’. There seems to be a contrast between Germany and Britain: is one forgetting while another is keeping memory alive? However, this question is too simplistic because Britain as well as other countries up until the 1970s experienced, as Barbie Zelizer points out, the ‘period of amnesia’. This period saw an increased interest in survivor’s memories that had largely been previously ignored. When we discuss remembering to forget it could be that through the creation of many memorials to the Holocaust we have grown to think more in-depth about their purpose and who is doing the remembering and on behalf of what group?

The next questions to consider are - will the current debates within Germany affect Britain and will Britain’s new energy to memorialise and educate impact upon Germany? Here we will consider the affect of transnational memory on these two countries, especially with regard to Britain. Today, survivor’s memories are now at the forefront of memory because we are able to watch them recount in documentary films, read their memoires and listen to them speak at events, which are produced in many countries. But with regard to memorialisation of the Holocaust has Germany reached a moment of fatigue? As previously stated there are numerous memorials in Germany but very few in Britain, although one memorial that is visible in Britain is the memorial to the Kindertransport in Liverpool Street, London. This memorial is physically imprinted onto Britain’s consciousness because it is outside a busy train station but is increasingly having a mental impact due to the national curriculum, the Holocaust commission and through the work of Beth Shalom, The National Holocaust Centre and Museum.

‘While countries around the globe are moving the Holocaust to the centre of their historical and memorial consciousness’, Britain has an opportunity to ask questions that have previously been too taboo to ask or considered too complex to address within schools and museums. However, Beth Shalom’s exhibitions are making us think about topics that have previously adopted the national narrative in a new way. It is important to keep this memory alive – the topic of the 2015 Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain – but we have to ask more challenging questions. For example, if we consider the Kindertransport how do we reflect upon Britain’s role as both a rescuer and a bystander? How do we ‘commemorate’ the perpetrator – we remember their crimes – but how do we represent this in a museum exhibition and in a memorial? 

This post was written by Amy Williams. Amy is currently undertaking an internship at Culture Syndicates and studying for her MA in Holocaust and Related Studies at Nottingham Trent University. She is blogging about her experiences with Culture Syndicates on their Linked In page: http://linkd.in/1Mqo46v

Midlands Tweet Up: cross-regional networking tackles some big questions (and cake!)

The second in what (we hope) will be an ongoing series of regional tweet ups hosted by the Museums Association was held this month in Birmingham.

Since the new group of MA reps was appointed last year, we have made a conscious effort to find new ways of bringing people who work in museums together. It is clear that we can all benefit from the opportunity to meet other people in the same situation as us, who face the same issues as us, and to share our experiences. We aren’t all lucky enough to have the opportunity to attend formal network meetings in office hours, and it can be refreshing to get that opportunity in a setting that isn’t quite so formal. This is particularly true for those that work in small museums, or are volunteers.

Our first tweet up at the Old Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham in October was a great success. It was held in one of Nottingham’s most significant historic buildings, and we were kindly offered tours of the medieval caves under the building. But even considering this, it was still basically an evening meeting in a pub, and it was great to have that experience with people who are so keen to talk about the possibilities that come with working in our sector.

It was suggested that we hold the next event in Birmingham. While it is obviously out of our region, it would be a great opportunity to meet our counterparts in the west midlands, at a time when the call for papers for the 2015 MA conference in Birmingham was open. In any case, the opportunity to meet new people working close to our region was a welcome one. 

I met countless new people, who worked in a variety of roles in museums of completely different sizes and aims. It was great and refreshing to speak with volunteers, directors, curators and freelancers, all on the same level about the issues we all face as organisations: How do we react to funding cuts? Are front of house staff treated fairly? What happens when we run out of storage space? How much cake is too much?

These are (mostly) unanswerable questions, and we all have different angles to address them. But I found speaking about them with new people to be a great way of getting a more rounded feel for the spirit in the sector, and that can only help me do my own job better.

This post was written by Simon Brown, Artefact Loans Officer at Nottingham City Museums and Galleries and the East Midlands member representative for the Museums Association. He manages the 11,000 strong Access Artefacts handling collection, based at Wollaton Park.

He graduated from NTU in 2004 with a BA in Heritage Studies with Human Geography, and has since gone on to work in various roles for Nottingham City Museums and Galleries and Nottingham Contemporary, including as a museum assistant, curator and documentation assistant. He is currently studying for the AMA.

Euphemisms, talking statues and new perspectives: Simon Brown reflects on the MA Conference 2014

The annual Museums Association conference was held at the start of October, which this year was held in Cardiff for the first time since 1997. The event is always an excellent melting pot of discussion on the issues that have surrounded the sector for the previous 12 months, many of them especially relevant to our region.

Many of the sessions were concerned with sustainability in the sector in the context of the (often euphemistically phrased) ‘current funding climate’. David Fleming, Director of National Museums Liverpool, spoke powerfully about how NML are still working to deliver ambitious projects in this situation, including the excellent dementia friendly programme House of Memories. Many small museums in our region are also eligible to apply for funding from programmes such as the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Arts Council’s Museum Resilience Fund, which both had representatives at the conference.

There were many inspiring case studies, not least from the excellent Talking Statues project in London and Manchester. Plaques have been mounted on 15 statues across both cities, with QR codes and other methods, which allow users to hear the statue speaking to them on their smartphone. (How many people would love to hear the words of Robin Hood or Brian Clough in Nottingham?)

The show was stolen though by Mat Fraser, who gave a powerful keynote performance of his show Cabinet of Curiosities: how Disability was kept in a box. Fraser was commissioned by the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries at the University of Leicester to create a performance that reflected how disability is portrayed in museums. He used a soundtrack including Daft Punk, objects from the collections of National Museums Wales, and his own rapping and crooning skills to put a new perspective on a subject that has long been neglected in the sector.

He challenged us all to find and reassess one object in our collections from the perspective of its relevance to disability. That’s not difficult is it?

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This post was written by Simon Brown, Artefact Loans Officer at Nottingham City Museums and Galleries and the East Midlands member representative for the Museums Association.. He manages the 11,000 strong Access Artefacts handling collection, based at Wollaton Park. 

He graduated from NTU in 2004 with a BA in Heritage Studies with Human Geography, and has since gone on to work in various roles for Nottingham City Museums and Galleries and Nottingham Contemporary, including as a museum assistant, curator and documentation assistant. He is currently studying for the AMA.

Useful links:

MA website: http://www.museumsassociation.org/conference/cardiff-2014-archive

House of Memories at National Museums Liverpool: www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/learning/projects/house-of-memories/

Esmée Fairbairn Foundation: http://esmeefairbairn.org.uk/

Arts Council’s Museum Resilience Fund: http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/apply-funding/apply-for-funding/museum-resilience-fund-2015-18/

Talking statues: http://www.talkingstatues.co.uk/

Mat Fraser: http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/museumstudies/rcmg/projects/cabinet-of-curiosities

                        http://youtu.be/aje8aQfee1U

"Some museums like their culture dead and stuffed ...

This quote by Richard Kurin (2004) refers to the continuing focus of many museums on the exhibiting of physical objects, ignoring intangible cultural heritage (ICH), that is living heritage "embodied in people rather than in inanimate objects", and so includes customs, music, dance, performing arts, festivals, and traditional craftsmanship. The safeguarding of ICH by museums has been a theme in the past for International Museum Day and ICOM's General Conference, and this has translated into practice at many museums, especially in Asia and the Pacific. 

The term 'intangible cultural heritage' may not have caught on in museums in England, but that does not mean that they have no understanding of it. Its simply been expressed in different ways, using different terminology.  It also demands considerable imagination of museum professionals, and often more technology than the display of physical museum objects. 

Many English museums have successfully navigated the shift away from object led presentation, including the Towner gallery in Eastbourne. At the end of 2012, in conjunction with the Museum of British Folklore, it saw a two day festival of folk including performances by mummers, handbell ringers, sea shanty singers and morris dancers.  It also enabled children to make Punkie Night turnip lanterns and gingerbread men, and adults to make a hoodening horse. This led Cllr Carolyn Heaps to say that “This is set to be one of our busiest weekends of the year …” (Towner Gallery 2012)

                                 (c) Museum of British Folklore

Kurin (2004) has said that, "Museums are generally poor institutions for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage - the only problem is that there is probably no better institution to do so." So, for museums to engage in intangible heritage and embrace a more people-centred museology they have to include:

- Working with communities to preserve cultural knowledge and traditions,

- Empowering voices and narratives of different people,

- Rethinking meanings of collections (tangible and intangible),

- Using new media to document and communicate intangible heritage, and

- Creating spaces for the performance of intangible heritage

 (Alivizatou 2011)

  

Suggested reading: 

Alivizatou, M.  (2011)  The Role of Museums in Safeguarding ICH (Available at:  http://www.sac.or.th/databases/ichlearningresources/images/Lecture14-Eng-Summary_AD.pdf)

Alivizatou, M. (2012)  Intangible Heritage and the Museum.  New Perspectives on Cultural Preservation. Left Coast Press.

Jackson, A and Kidd, J. (2011)  Performing Heritage. Research, Practice and Innovation in Museum Theatre and Live Interpretation. Manchester University Press

Kurin, R. (2004)  Museums and Intangible Heritage:

Culture Dead or Alive?  ICOM News No.4 (Available at http://icom.museum/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/ICOM_News/2004-4/ENG/p7_2004-4.pdf)

This post was written by Suzy Brunyee, who will be undertaking her PhD on the Future of Intangible Cultural Heritage in the UK (its Challenges and Opportunities) at Nottingham Trent University from October 2014. She has begun to document and share her research on Britain's fascinating traditions and museums' uses of these online at http://www.intangibleheritageblog.com/