Museums’ community engagement schemes, austerity and practices of care in two local museum services

In recent years geographers have paid attention to the practices and spaces of care, yet museums rarely feature in this body of literature. Drawing on research conducted with two large museum services – one in England, and one in Scotland - this paper frames museums’ community engagement programmes as spaces of care. We offer insights into the practice of community engagement, and note how this is changing as a result of austerity. Our focus is on the routine, everyday caring practices of museum community engagement workers. We further detail the new and renewed strategic partnerships that have been forged as a result of cutbacks in the museum sector and beyond. We note that museums’ community engagement workers are attempting to position themselves relative to a number of other institutions and organisations at the current moment. Drawing on empirical material from the two case study sites, we suggest that museums’ community engagement programmes could be seen as fitting within a broader landscape of care, and we conceptualise their activities as expressions of progressive localism

Museums and Community Engagement: The Politics of Practice within Museum Organisations

Community engagement (CE) is a key focus of UK museum policy and practice, increasingly used as a strategy to democratise museums and position them as social agents. However, the practices of CE have not evolved far beyond what I call the ‘contributory museum’, which focuses on how communities can benefit the museum. In this thesis I propose the distributed museum as an alternative contribution to museological theory and practice, and call for a conceptual and practical reconfiguration that focuses on how museums can benefit communities. This concept arises from a deep investigation of the politics of CE practice at Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums. The research takes a unique organisational perspective, focusing on museum professionals’ perspectives to examine how CE is constructed and managed across the museum’s different departments, and highlighting varying practices, competing meanings and discourses, and the operational and cultural barriers to this work. Using a novel collaborative-ethnographic methodology, the research examines how the museum’s Outreach Team negotiates institutional barriers, and how their practices have evolved towards more collaborative ways of working with community organisations and localities. Arising from this close examination of practice, the thesis finds evidence for the distributed museum in some elements of current Outreach practice, but it is yet to be realised across the whole museum institution. It suggests that two distinctive practices make the distributed museum: care and craft. These practices are analysed drawing on the geographies of care literatures, and actor-network and assemblages theories. Critically, this thesis presents a politics of practice that works from within the logics of the museum and therefore attends to the competing demands that are currently placed on museums. I argue that if CE is reconfigured in these ways – as a practice of care and as craft – then community engagement will enable a new basis for collaborative practice with communities. The thesis ends with implications for museum policy and practice, and further research

Exploring the Potential of Creative Museum-led Activities to Support Stroke In-patient Rehabilitation and Wellbeing: A Pilot Mixed-methods Study

BACKGROUND: This paper proposes a framework for studying the potential of museum-led interventions for supporting stroke rehabilitation goals. METHODS: The intervention was based on Kirvevold et al.’s model for interventions for post-stroke wellbeing. Mixed-methods data was collected to review benefits in a pilot study, including retrospective video observations for six sessions with four patients; interviews with patients, carers and facilitators; pre-post patient assessments; and facilitator diaries. RESULTS: Systematic analysis of videos showed high levels of concentration and engagement with museum objects, low levels of social interaction, and positive or neutral mood throughout. Thematic qualitative analysis suggested patients felt engaged in meaningful activities, which lifted negative mood, provided positive distraction from the ward, and increased self-esteem, including belief in patient abilities. CONCLUSION: Further research is needed to fully establish the potential of museum-led interventions for stroke rehabilitation

Care-ful Cultural Work and Health Inequalities. What Roles for Museums? A UK Perspective

Earlierthis year,a follow-on report to the Marmot Review was published, tenyears from the original landmark review on health inequalities in England (Marmotet al. 2020).The reportis unequivocal: health inequalities are growing wider, and in some partsof the country life expectancy has stopped improving. The effects of the coronavirus pandemic will likely exacerbate these existing health inequalities further.1Coronavirus is not a“great leveler”—it will hit the most vulnerable hardest. Evidence is emerging fromONS data of inequality in COVID-19-related mortality based on existing ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities. Other research is investigating the psychological and social impact of the pandemic to identify groups at greatest risk. [Opening paragraph

Book Review: Museums, equality and social justice

First paragraph: Museums, Equality and Social Justice is a vital addition to the established and flourishing scholarship exploring the social role of museums and heritage organisations. It is unique in taking a social justice perspective to explicitly address questions of ethics, rights, diversity and equality as they apply to all aspects of museum functions, from curatorship and public programming to management, leadership and governance. The social justice standpoint is the way that museums, galleries and heritage organisations ‘acknowledge and act upon inequalities from within and outside of the cultural domain’ (p.3). Such concerns are explored over 21 chapters with contributions from scholars, practitioners, artists and activists, mainly from the UK, but also from the USA, Australia, Europe, Taiwan and Yemen. This balance in perspectives is driven by the editorial team of Richard Sandell, a scholar whose work on museums and equality has defined the wider field, and Eithne Nightingale, a practitioner with over 30 years experience in community development and museums predominantly in the UK. Their joint aim is to provide a critical resource for informing research, practice and policy and they are most successful in advancing practice

Care, repair, and the future social relevance of museums

This intervention reflects on examples of UK museum and gallery outreach and engagement activity that took place during the COVID-19 lockdown. This included creative packs sent to people who were shielding, online sessions for mental health service users, and phone services for isolated older adults, part of a range of efforts to continue connections while buildings were closed. Though seemingly limited in scale or impact, I argue that it is in these small acts of care that we might find the renewed relevance of the museum. Drawing on theoretical work on repair (notably Steven J. Jackson), the essay outlines a future social role of museums founded on “care thinking” and oriented towards the communal work of repair.</p

Patterns of accountability: an organizational approach to community engagement in museums

This paper considers the divergent and often contradictory registers of ‘community engagement’ in contemporary UK museum practice. The paper draws on an organizational study of a large local authority museum service and focuses on how community engagement is constructed across a range of museum professionals who use it for different purposes and outcomes. I argue that different departments make sense of community engagement through four patterns of accountability, each with complimentary and divergent logics reflecting a wider range of museum functions, demands and pressures. The tensions that arise are discussed. In the final part, the notion of ‘relational accountability’ (Moncrieffe 2011) is introduced to re-settle these divergent logics in order to argue for community engagement work that is grounded in a relational practice. The paper contributes to further theoretical and practical engagement with the work of participation in museums by bringing forward an organizational view to highlight the ways in which museum practice is mediated within organizational frames

Becoming a Change-Maker in Museums: Experiences, Opportunities and Challenges - Reflections on the Museums Association's Transformers Workforce Development Initiative.

The idea that museums and art galleries can have a social impact is now central to contemporary discussion about the museum sector. Many museum professionals are looking at how they might advance ‘socially-engaged practice’ within their institutions and how they might enable more participatory approaches to address issues of diversity, access and representation. As this area of practice grows, the keys questions that animate the cultural sector are: What are the processes of organisational transformation? How does this work lead to sustained impact in museums? And who leads change? This last question is the starting point for this report. It considers the experience of ‘change-makers’ in museums and art galleries and the current barriers and challenges they face. It focuses on mid-career museum professionals who took part in the UK Museums Association’s (MA) workforce initiative, Transformers: Radical change in the Museum. As a first study into personal experiences of change-makers, this report raises some important challenges for the UK museum sector.<br

Museums, health and wellbeing research: co-developing a new observational method for people with dementia in hospital contexts.

AIMS: The aim of this article is to present a new observational tool for assessing the impacts of museum object handling for people with moderate-to-severe dementia in hospital settings, focusing on wellbeing, social interaction, level of engagement and agitation. This article presents a four-step approach to collaboration towards co-developing the tool, which involved a range of academics, museums professionals, and health and social care partners, and describes the process of integrating multiple perspectives towards common research methodologies. METHODS: The research team organised a series of meetings and workshops with museum and healthcare partners to identify commonly used assessments and their perspectives on the objectives and possible outcomes of museum object handling activities. These were integrated with findings from a review of current conceptualisations of engagement in people with dementia (PWD) to produce a fit-for-purpose video evaluation method of the health and wellbeing impacts of the museum object handling programmes. RESULTS: This article presents the Museum Engagement Observation Tool for use in hospital settings for people with moderate-to-severe dementia. CONCLUSION: This article suggests that collaborative approaches can inform the development of future methods for creative health research and evaluation initiatives and to support this, it outlines the process of development of a new observational tool for people with dementia

Art, Nature and Mental Health: Assessing the biopsychosocial effects of a ‘creative green prescription’ museum programme involving horticulture, artmaking and collections

Aims: To assess the biopsychosocial effects of participation in a unique, combined arts- and nature-based museum intervention, involving engagement with horticulture, artmaking and museum collections, on adult mental health service users. Methods: Adult mental health service users (total n = 46 across two phases) with an average age of 53 were referred through social prescribing by community partners (mental health nurse and via a day centre for disadvantaged and vulnerable adults) to a 10-week ‘creative green prescription’ programme held in Whitworth Park and the Whitworth Art Gallery. The study used an exploratory sequential mixed methods design comprising two phases – Phase 1 (September to December 2016): qualitative research investigating the views of participants ( n = 26) through semi-structured interviews and diaries and Phase 2 (February to April 2018): quantitative research informed by Phase 1 analysing psychological wellbeing data from participants ( n = 20) who completed the UCL Museum Wellbeing Measure pre–post programme. Results: Inductive thematic analysis of Phase 1 interview data revealed increased feelings of wellbeing brought about by improved self-esteem, decreased social isolation and the formation of communities of practice. Statistical analysis of pre–post quantitative measures in Phase 2 found a highly significant increase in psychological wellbeing. Conclusion: Creative green prescription programmes, using a combination of arts- and nature-based activities, present distinct synergistic benefits that have the potential to make a significant impact on the psychosocial wellbeing of adult mental health service users. Museums with parks and gardens should consider integrating programmes of outdoor and indoor collections-inspired creative activities permitting combined engagement with nature, art and wellbeing