Conflict and Complement: An Exploration of the Discourses Informing the Concept of the Socially Inclusive Museum in Contemporary Britain

Abstract This paper argues that there are a number of competing discourses informing debates about the idea of the ‘socially inclusive museum’ in Britain today. It identifies three major discourses present from the 19th century to the present day—the governmental, the representational, and the economic—and explores the relationships between them. It is proposed that recognition of the respective ideological and historical contexts of these different discourses will help us to understand some of the recent confusion and disagreement over the nature and merits of the ‘socially inclusive museum’. The article concludes by proposing some issues for future research. Keywords: BritainSocial InclusionMuseumsMuseology Notes The Institute of Ideas grew out of the ashes of the now defunct publication Living Marxism which was bankrupted in July 2000 by a successful libel action brought against it by the British television company ITN. CitationPallister et al., ‘Life after Living Marxism: Fighting for Freedom—To Offend, Outrage, and Question Everything.’ CitationAppleton, Museums for the People? CitationAppleton, ‘Social Inclusion: A Sustainable Illusion?,’ 9–15 (9). CitationAppleton, Museums for the People?, 22. CitationFleming, ‘Positioning the Museum for Social Inclusion,’ 224. Fleming moved to be director of the National Museums Liverpool in 2001. CitationSilver, ‘Reconceptualizing Social Disadvantage: Three Paradigms of Social Exclusion,’ 57–80. CitationSilver, ‘Reconceptualizing Social Disadvantage,’ 60. Ibid., 61. Public rhetoric must, of course, be read cautiously as it is always framed in relation to political agendas and intended audiences. This is particularly true when the topic is subject to such a high level of advocacy as is the case with social inclusion and cultural policy. See CitationBelfiore, ‘Art as a Means of Alleviating Social Exclusion: Does it Really Work? A Critique of Instrumental Cultural Policies and Social Impact Studies in the UK,’ 91–106; CitationSelwood, ‘Measuring Culture.’ This account is confined to Britain and Europe because of constraints of space and specialism and should not be taken to imply that social inclusion is not equally present as a concept in other parts of the world. CitationMacdonald, ‘Theorizing Museums: Introduction,’ 1–2. CitationSilver, ‘Reconceptualizing Social Disadvantage,’ 66–69. CitationRodgers et al., Social Exclusion: Rhetoric, Reality, Responses; CitationAtkinson, ‘Citizenship and the Struggle against Social Exclusion in the Context of Welfare State Transition’; CitationSocial Exclusion Unit, Bringing Britain Together: A National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal; CitationSocial Exclusion Unit, A New Commitment to Neighbourhood Renewal: National Strategy Action Plan; CitationSocial Exclusion Unit, Preventing Social Exclusion: Report by the Social Exclusion Unit. CitationHooper‐Greenhill et al., Museums and Social Inclusion: The GLLAM Report; CitationDepartment for Culture, Media and Sport, Policy Action Team 10: A Report to the Social Exclusion Unit, Arts and Sport; CitationDepartment for Culture, Media and Sport, Centres for Social Change: Museums, Galleries and Archives for All; CitationDepartment for Culture, Media and Sport, Libraries, Museum, Galleries and Archives for All: Co‐operating across the Sectors to Tackle Social Exclusion; CitationDepartment for Culture, Media and Sport, Building on PAT 10; CitationNational Assembly for Wales, Creative Future: A Cultural Strategy for Wales; CitationQuality, Efficiency and Standards Unit, Making it Count: The Contribution of Culture and Sport to Social Inclusion; CitationScottish Executive, Creating our Future, Minding our Past. CitationDodd et al., A Catalyst for Change: The Social Impact of the Open Museum; CitationFindlay and Crowley, Making Histories; CitationSandell, Museums, Society, Inequality; CitationDe Groote, Reaching Out; CitationMatarasso, ‘Opening up the China Cabinet: Museums, Inclusion and Contemporary Society’; CitationAppleton, ‘Social Inclusion: A Sustainable Illusion?’ CitationBelfiore, ‘Art as a Means of Alleviating Social Exclusion’; CitationAppleton, Museums for the People?; CitationSelwood, ‘Measuring Culture’; CitationMerli, ‘Evaluating the Social Impact of Participation in Arts Activities: A Critical Review of Francois Matarasso’s Use or Ornament?,’ 107–18; CitationNewman and McLean, ‘Heritage Builds Communities: The Application of Heritage Resources to the Problems of Social Exclusion,’ 143–53. ‘Social exclusion is a shorthand term for what can happen when people or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown.’ Social Exclusion Unit, www.socialexclusionunit.gov.uk/, 12 July 2003. See CitationBennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics; CitationBoswell and Evans, Representing the Nation: A Reader: Histories, Heritage, and Museums. CitationHunter, Culture and Government: The Emergence of Literary Education, xi. See CitationDuncan, Civilising Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums. CitationJordan and Weedon, Cultural Politics in the Postmodern World, 39; CitationArnold, Culture and Anarchy. CitationBennett, The Birth of the Museum; CitationDuncan, Civilising Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums; CitationPrior, ‘The High Within and the Low Without: The Social Production of Aesthetic Space in the National Gallery of Scotland, 1859–1870,’ 1–26; CitationAltick, ‘National Monuments,’ 240–57. CitationBennett, The Birth of the Museum; see also Prior, ‘The High Within and the Low Without.’ CitationBennett, The Birth of the Museum, 22–23. CitationYanni is sceptical of taking this coercive view of cultural institutions too far and points out that visitors have never come into the museum as empty, passive vessels waiting to be filled. CitationYanni, Nature’s Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display, 9; Trodd similarly questions Bennett’s Foucauldian position as insufficiently attentive to the conflicting forces existing within individual museum contexts. CitationTrodd, ‘The Discipline of Pleasure; or, How Art History Looks at the Art Museum,’ 17–29.; Barnett, too, calls into question both the reading and the use of Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power which he sees as underpinning recent cultural‐policy studies. CitationBarnett, ‘Culture, Government and Spatiality: Reassessing the “Foucault effect” in Cultural‐policy Studies,’ 369–97. The concept of disciplinary power comes from CitationMichel Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. See CitationBennett, The Birth of the Museum, for application of the concept of disciplinary power to museums. My own usage of the term ‘governmental’ to describe a specific discourse within the development of museum policy acknowledges Bennett’s use of the term but should be read for the most part as relating to the actions of actual governments and government‐related policy makers. CitationJordan and Weedon, Cultural Politics in the Postmodern World, 2. CitationSilver, ‘Reconceptualizing Social Disadvantage,’ 67. CitationBennett, ‘Cultural Policy in the UK—Collapsing Rationales and the End of a Tradition,’ 200–16 (213). CitationLabour Party, Create the Future: A Strategy for Cultural Policy, Arts, and the Creative Economy; Leading Britain into the Future, 3. CitationSmith, Creative Britain. Ibid., 37. CitationAtkinson, ‘Citizenship and the Struggle against Social Exclusion in the Context of Welfare State Transition,’ 10. CitationBelfiore, ‘Art as a Means of Alleviating Social Exclusion,’ 104. UNESCO, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ‘Article 27 (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits,’ 1948, www.un.org/Overview/rights.html, 18 August 2003. Interestingly, this link between citizenship and social inclusion is much stronger and more apparent in Scotland and Scottish cultural policy where it is explicitly framed within a discourse of social justice; cf. Social Justice Branch of the Scottish Executive, www.scotland.gov.uk/socialjustice/ssin/htmpapers/ssin01.htm, 18 August 2003. CitationSilver, ‘Reconceptualizing Social Disadvantage,’ 67. CitationAnderson, A Common Wealth: Museums and Learning in the United Kingdom: A Report to the Department of National Heritage, 1–2. CitationAnderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. CitationLang and Wilkinson, Social Inclusion Fact Sheet, 2. CitationYoung, ‘Rethinking Heritage: Cultural Policy and Inclusion,’ 204. Moreover, this conflation of social inclusion with New Labour is not entirely accurate. As Selwood has shown, the initial impetus for social inclusion within museums comes from the Conservative government’s term of office and changes it implemented to the arm’s length principle of funding dating from at least 1996. CitationSelwood, ‘Measuring Culture,’ 5. CitationDepartment for Culture, Media and Sport, Museums for the Many, www.culture.gov.uk/global/publications/, 6. CitationMcClellan, Art and its Publics: Museum Studies at the Millennium; CitationDuncan, Civilising Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums; Prior, ‘The High Within and the Low Without.’ CitationMcClellan, Art and its Publics. Although the question of who actually visited and how they were treated within these spaces is itself a complex issue. Writing about post‐revolution France, McClellan notes that: ‘ “The lowest classes of the community” did come to the Louvre in significant numbers, as foreign visitors were quick to note, but their physical appearance and inability to respond appropriately to the high art on view made them conspicuous. Even Republican journals told jokes at their expense, inaugurating a long tradition of satirising the uninitiated, and revealing the true bourgeois underpinnings of the museum (and the Revolution itself).’ CitationMcClellan, Art and its Publics, 5. CitationBennett, The Birth of the Museum, 64. This is obviously still the case with certain types of museums—for example, the V CitationDavis, Ecomuseums: A Sense of Place; CitationStoklund, ‘Folk Life Research: Between History and Anthropology.’ A 75th Anniversary Lecture Delivered at the Welsh Folk Museum, St Fagans. CitationMason, ‘Towards a Poststructuralist and Postmodern Museology.’ CitationMatarasso, ‘To Save the City: The Function of Art in Contemporary Europe sic Society,’ 2. Although it must be noted that Eliot maintained a fairly hegemonic view whereby England remained the dominant partner surrounded by the satellite cultures of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. CitationT. S. Eliot, Notes towards a Definition of Culture, 59. CitationSandell, Museums, Society, Inequality, 20. CitationFindlay and Crowley, Making Histories, 6. CitationJordan and Weedon, Cultural Politics in the Postmodern World, 6–8. See CitationLewis, Art, Culture CitationSandell, Museums, Society, Inequality; CitationMacdonald and Fyfe, Theorizing Museums; CitationKarp and Lavine, Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display; CitationStam, ‘The Informed Muse: The Implications of “the New Museology” for Museum Practice,’ 267–83; CitationHarrison, ‘Ideas of Museums in the 1990s,’ 160–76. CitationWeil, ‘From Being about Something to Being for Somebody: The Ongoing Transformation of the American Museum,’ 229–58. See CitationStam, ‘The Informed Muse,’ for a discussion of how theory has impacted upon practice. CitationFleming, Sandell, Museums, Society, Inequality, 215. CitationDavis, ‘Altered Images,’ 22–25 (22). Fleming, ‘Foreword,’ in CitationFindlay and Crowley, Making Histories, 4. CitationDodd et al., A Catalyst for Change. Ibid., 26, although see CitationSelwood, ‘Measuring Culture,’ for a discussion of the problems of evaluating social inclusion in museums. CitationDe Groote, Reaching Out, 77. It is important to note that while such comments are common in reports arising from such projects, Newman cautions against accepting them at face value: ‘when projects are evaluated, two significant flaws emerge. Firstly, the reason for the evaluation is often advocacy, to support further funding applications not to understand the processes involved. Secondly, the methodology is often flawed as it depends on direct questioning. Asking a participant if a particular initiative increased their personal development is very likely to elicit a positive answer. A more appropriate way of determining the effect of exhibitions or museum and gallery initiatives is to record interviews with participants and analyse the resulting narrative.’ CitationNewman, ‘Feelgood Factor,’ 29–31 (29). CitationDavis, Ecomuseums, 9. Ibid., 9. As Witcomb has written, museums do not reflect their communities so much as ‘… actually produce the very notion of community and culture.’ CitationWitcomb, Re‐imagining the Museum: Beyond the Mausoleum, 80. See also CitationDicks, Heritage, Place and Community. For a discussion of issues of representation and museums, see CitationLidchi, ‘The Poetics and Politics of Exhibiting other Cultures,’ 151–222. CitationJordan and Weedon, Cultural Politics in the Postmodern World, 28. CitationCommission on the Future of Multi‐ethnic Britain, The Future of Multi‐ethnic Britain: The Parekh Report, 3. See also CitationJoppke and Lukes for a discussion of the mosaic model of multiculturalism employed in the Parekh report. CitationJoppke and Lukes, Multicultural Questions. CitationResource, ‘Cultural Diversity Statement: Issues and Action Plan for Resource.’ The Museums Association has started to do this with the introduction of Positive Action Traineeships (PATs) which actively recruits new staff from ethnic minority groups and simultaneously funds them to undertake postgraduate Museum Studies programmes. This scheme is in place, for example, at the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies, University of Newcastle. CitationResource, ‘Cultural Diversity Statement.’ CitationBarnard, ‘“Macpherson‐style” Diversity Report and Audit for London Museums,’ 5. CitationCoombes, Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture and Popular Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England. See, for example, the report commissioned by the MGC into attitudes of different ethnic groups towards museums—CitationDesai and Thomas, Cultural Diversity: Attitudes of Ethnic Minority Populations towards Museums and Galleries. Report prepared for Museums and Galleries Commission by BRMB International. CitationNightingale, ‘Colour Blind,’ 31–33. CitationSilver, ‘Reconceptualizing Social Disadvantage,’ 68. For example, BEN, the Black Environment Network or AMBH, the Archives and Museums of Black Heritage. For reports on the race riots of 2001 see BBC on‐line archive at www.//news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/1703432.stm, 18 June 2003. CitationHarris, ‘Cultured into Crisis: The Arts Council of Great Britain,’ 177–91. See also CitationSelwood, ‘Measuring Culture.’ Museums in this respect have seen compliance with governmental interest in social inclusion as a means of increasing their potential ­revenue. CitationHarris, ‘Cultured into Crisis’; CitationSelwood, ‘Measuring Culture’; CitationBelfiore, ‘Art as a Means of Alleviating Social Exclusion.’ CitationSelwood, ‘Measuring Culture,’ 4. CitationJ. McGuigan, ‘From State to Market,’ 51–67. CitationBennett, ‘Cultural Policy in the UK,’ 206. Ibid., 207. CitationSelwood, ‘Measuring Culture,’ 5. CitationDepartment for Culture, Media and Sport, Comprehensive Spending Review: A New Approach to Investment in Culture, 4. CitationSelwood, ‘Measuring Culture,’ 7. Although it is worth noting that New Labour’s policies are themselves not consistently applied or understood across all sectors. As Newman notes: ‘Resource may stress the socially inclusive role of museums but the Social Exclusion Unit itself seems less convinced of their potential.’ CitationNewman, ‘Feelgood Factor.’ CitationAppleton, Museums for the People?, 15. CitationFalk and Dierking, The Museum Experience; CitationFalk and Dierking, Learning from Museums: ­Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning; CitationHooper‐Greenhill, Museums and their ­Visitors. CitationBelfiore, ‘Art as a Means of Alleviating Social Exclusion,’ 104. CitationNewman, ‘Feelgood Factor.’ Those museums with good education and lifelong learning/audience development programmes have long recognised this issue. For a useful discussion of the continuing relevance of Bourdieu’s ideas of cultural capital, see CitationMcGuigan, ‘From State to Market,’ 30–50. Quoted in Matarasso, ‘Opening up the China Cabinet,’ 3. CitationLang and Wilkinson, Social Inclusion Fact Sheet, 1.