Welcome to the Rivers Museums. Matters of Policy podcast, this is a podcast in which we explore the museum's collections development policy,
speaking with guests from across the globe to delve into the language used and consider what really matters in this policy.
I am, yep. And today I'm speaking with Beth McDougal, who is the Families and communities officer in public engagement team at the Beth Rivers Museum.
Welcome, Beth. It's great to meet you here. It's lovely to meet you.
Could you say a little bit about the public engagement team at the museum and your function as to families and communities?
Officer of the museum? I'm Beth and I work as the families and communities officer in the public engagement department.
The public engagement department has had various names over the last five years.
I've worked in the team, so we did start off education than we were learning,
and we were learning and participation because we wrote it on our door one day.
So it was never really formal. And then we became public engagement in the last 12, 18 months or so as a team,
and that has been formalised now, although it's not necessarily recognised by all teams.
Lots of people refer to us as the education department still,
but what public engagement does is it works with all the different audiences that come into the museum spaces.
And we work mostly with formal and informal learning.
So formal is secondary and primary school audiences and then informal, which is the team that I work in,
is working with families and other communities is maybe not the right word to use.
Now is the goal of the community partnerships sort of supported across the museum, but with my support as well.
So I work with anyone from, I guess, under threes all the way up to older adults.
I've met people in their 100th year before, so is everybody in between?
That's what I do. Great.
So you have a clear overview of who's visiting the museum and would a museum is reaching out to, I would say, maybe not 100 percent clear, OK?
Certainly. I have worked with all the different audiences that we've had coming into the museum over the five years.
I've been in posts. I've met lots of different people over that time because we actually want to talk a bit about the notion,
the public and how it's used within the collection development policies document because it appears nine times in the document as it is currently,
but without a clear definition movement refers to or will it should concern?
The mission statement does discuss the sharing of knowledge amongst the widest possible public.
So it does reflect the idea that the museums are for everyone and the museum wants to reach out to everybody.
But our question is basically if we would add a definition of the public to to document how should it be defined in your view?
It's actually quite a complicated question to define the public because for me, it's a very useful and useful word.
In both instances, public means that you haven't had to specify.
And then so it could mean it's arbitrary, doesn't really mean anything.
And so it means that you're not necessarily doing targeted or thoughtful work with the communities that surround you locally or globally.
So it's problematic in that way.
But I would also say it's complicated when you do start to think about who your audiences are, because when you start to specify by its very nature,
you start to label people, categorise them to all of the things that were trying to move away from his museum.
So when you think about the collections development policy alongside your audience development fan,
then it becomes quite a tangled web of how do you think about the people that come and visit you?
And is it useful to think of people as sectioned off? Or do you want to think about people as an intersectional group?
And what does that mean when you start to drill down into who it is that you think you're trying to reach and bring into
the museum spaces or reach by going out and spending time with them in the communities where that is across the world?
I think public is a very lazy definition of who you think you're trying to reach,
and it's certainly something when you look at research and particularly public engagement research not allowed to say,
I would like to reach the public because that isn't useful, that doesn't create impact.
But actually, once you think about it from the opposite point of view, which we have done quite a lot with our initial early audience of friends,
then you get into all sorts of kind of complicated territory about how you define different people around.
You know what they bring into the museum space. We certainly think like it's really good to keep the notion open,
so it could include literally everybody and not city limits, the definition of the term.
We were just wondering that if we keep it as an open notion, but then we refer to peoples within the document,
then the way we speak about people automatically makes it, we link them to the public.
So now within the documents, many times Bridget ethnographers are mentioned as opposed to artists or indigenous communities.
So it seems like to automatically assume that the public is mostly British or mostly white, but like section three of the document mentions.
Out 14 different colonial administrators who collected objects.
But it doesn't mention any of the artists and in that sense were wondering to whom is this definition of the public gears and is there anything within
the documents we can change to make sure that the notion of public is automatically associated with this white and inclusive notion of peoples?
I think it sort of demonstrates how useful that collection development policy is
when I don't really have any notion of who's in and who's included and excluded.
But from your description of it, then I think it's that's not useful to specify for some and to exclude for others.
So by the very kind of creation of a list, then you are making an act of you decision making in that moment, aren't you?
So if you list a whole lot of white ethnographers or white collectors or whoever else is, then you are actually actively creating exclusion.
Where is I totally take your point on? If you actually leave it as publics, then you're creating space for everyone.
Although actually, are you? Because I think one of the comments you suggested was that if you don't specify,
then do you just end up with the same possibly, man, because you actually haven't made any decisions?
It's quite a tricky line to walk to me.
I think I would probably expand the list sensitively and understanding actually who it is that the museum has developed links with because I think
it's a bit disingenuous to say everyone within your understanding of publics because the museum actually cannot reach everyone at the same time.
And so we need to think about where we do need to progress the relationships in the community building aspect of the work that we do,
particularly when you're thinking about collections,
you do need to have a sensible plan because actually we're not able to reach all the people on the planet at one point.
So we do need to find out and understand who it is that we're building relationships with.
And then over time we can bring in new groups, but actually, you just cannot reach every person in the world at the same time.
It's a bit of a disingenuous statement to say publics without any kind of explanation or planning as to who you mean.
That would be a very fair acknowledgement to put in there.
Try and see which voices can be included within the documents to give a fairer overview of who has contributed to the museum collections.
Yeah, it's just understanding in a deep way who it is that you've been excluding.
Which groups have you made no special effort for?
Because I think one of the kind of challenges certainly within my role within public engagement is that the local
communities who live around Oxford aren't necessarily represented within the collections because the collections,
from my perspective, is that they have just tumbleweed and grown depending on which anthropologists or colonial
administrations or whoever is that the museum has connexions with at that point.
I think there may have been, so I don't want to be unfair times when there's been specific acquisitions or understandings.
So particularly with the kind of contemporary collecting that's been done by some of the team, I suppose I'm thinking of.
Professor Laura Pearce and Professor Clare Harris seemed to have done contemporary collecting that is specific, but ultimately,
in terms of acquisition, my understanding is it's whoever decides to offer up materials to the museum, and that's longstanding policy.
And so you get whatever is offered and that is determined quite a lot by the Connexions.
The museum has currently but also your ability to actually commission and bring in new works.
So I think it's quite complicated that as a museum of the sort of size and I suppose in some ways, like in certain circles, probably within museums,
that it's quite well known museum not to actually have an acquisition budget or up until recently have one,
because actually you're only ever able to bring into the collection things that are gifted and then that doesn't give you any ability to go.
Actually, there's a gap here. How can we demonstrate contemporary life?
So he was slightly hamstrung by that, I guess. Yes, it will shows the complexity surrounding contemporary collecting because clearly there's
a lot of work the museum efficiency to do like addressing these narrative gaps.
But of course, the museum is also bound by the reality in which it's situated, having limited space and resources.
Which also poses challenges towards making its current collections accessible in the first place.
I wanted to ask you if you could talk a little about accessibility of collections.
Only one hand to want to ask if you could name any barriers in relation to accessibility of the museum's collections.
But also, could you mention some of the areas in which the bid refers is successful in making its collections accessible?
One example life in mined is the fact that the museum is free to the public, which already lowers the threshold to visit,
let's start with issues and then move on to successes and then we can think where to go from there.
So one of the things that I remember often is that because I work very closely with
local partners and one of the partnerships I'm part of is the Windrush community.
And so I work a lot with African and African Caribbean communities living in Oxford.
We've been working together on creating opportunities to kind of highlight Windrush communities
and what they have brought to the UK in the museum spaces through self representation.
And I remember my first kind of collections recce to find out what material will be in the museum that was African Caribbean.
So I thought it's not that they had to only work with African Caribbean material,
but I wanted to see what did connect directly to their sort of experiences,
either for those people who lived within the Caribbean or locally to see what they could connect to.
And it was very, very small collection,
and it was very I think it's fair to say that it's quite underwhelming collection of things that don't really speak to
or tell you about the culture of the community without in depth understanding of what it is that you're looking at.
It doesn't speak to you directly like a lot of the objects in the museum.
And I said to one of the ladies that I work really closely with who Judi James, who runs the African Caribbean Heritage Initiative.
I'm really embarrassed about this, really, because we've got this great opportunity to work together to create self representation was
in the Pitt Rivers Museum of the the African and African Caribbean communities in Oxford.
But actually, we don't have this wealth of collections that I thought we'd have, and Junie very sensibly pointed to me where,
you know, like a lot of West African objects and things, they're actually like how our heritages have moved around.
Those cultures still exist for us. We may have been displaced people, but ultimately those things came with us.
So we look at a lot of the West African collections. But it was just a moment where I recognised that as the collections have grown,
it hasn't been necessarily thinking about how he might connect the collections back to people or
create opportunities for those collections to speak to the people who are actually able to visit us.
So it is a positive light when you're were around access to collections like it is really positive that the database is online,
that it is globally accessible.
But actually, when we as a public engagement department are trying to create opportunities and connexions with our local communities,
it can be a really difficult space to be in because actually, it's like, Oh right,
we haven't sought to collect any of the things that your communities have made.
Like, what are we saying to those communities, basically when we haven't collected anything?
I mean, on the kind of flip side of that, actually, you know, a lot of the material has been brought into the museum and problematic ways.
So maybe in some ways it's not always great to have lots of somebody else's things in the museum.
But when you're trying to kind of create opportunities for self-representation and you cannot find them, it makes me think,
what does that say to the people that live in our communities about how much we value them as people,
that we aren't seeing the value of representing them within the museum space?
And when we are so quixotic and excited about like, Wow, yeah,
we've got everything from nearly every country in the world, like there's only two places in the world.
We haven't got something for them. And then you're like, All right, but we've got this.
Well, what does this say about this community is not celebratory.
A lot of the objects that we have, if any of us looked at them like, I think we'd have to be honest and say, well, what?
We would choose to bring into the museum space to represent our communities oftentimes.
So yeah, you want to do justice to self representation, but also feel narrative gaps within the museum?
Yeah, yeah. And it just and that's the thing. We have lots of things from all over the world, tens of thousands of objects.
But when it comes to your community, haven't really got anything that's of interest.
And actually, that's a real opportunity to work with those local communities say, like what is missing?
Where is that gap in the collection? Like, how can we commission something? Who would you commission?
And that deficit at the moment can be moved into opportunity,
but it's just thinking about how you work with the communities that you're trying to represent,
as opposed to just being a bit like if you were going shopping, like choosing something for yourself, you want to think with people.
And that's what I really like about the way that the museum has moved under
the time that the law has been imposed is that it's so much more productive,
it's so much more collaborative.
And I feel like the collections department actually does a lot of this work now, but it's just not reflected in the policy documents yet.
It's something we've noticed recently. Like the curators we talk to, they're actually doing way more than what's currently listed within the policy.
It would be great to upgrades, including all the works have been doing over the past years because it's just not reflected yet.
Yeah, and that's it's like it's an unfair reflection of like the hard work that goes into creating Connexions and working with global communities.
I think one of our gaps in the way that we think about how we collect,
potentially if we were actually creating targeted collecting through the contemporary collecting,
what's happening now is about thinking about who the local communities are that we want to work with to like, acknowledge that.
They exist within Oxfordshire and then bringing them into the conversation around what we collect,
so I know that Birmingham Museums has done some amazing work with local communities saying to them
like actually the Pakistani community is not properly representative or the Somali community,
whichever communities that live around them, let's start having a conversation.
Let's include other people he wants in those cultures thinking what might be a good set of things to kind of share from let's actively
commission from the communities living in the UK so that you actually see that transfer of power and money into the local community.
So it's just thinking differently about how things are collected.
And I think it's so often because we think as a museum, so we've got so many things, there's no space that we can't continue to collect,
like there's no display space that we can't change the collections we haven't got to.
There's so many barriers, so many things that get into our heads as museum professionals about what we can't do that actually.
Sometimes it's probably a lot more simple than we're making.
It's probably just actually having a conversation with a group to actually explain and and talk through and think together.
You know, it doesn't always have to result in like a massive shift or change.
It can be a small thing, but it makes a massive difference to how the museum could be viewed or used by the people that live around us,
as well as the global communities that represent.
I think that also ties in with, for example, entering a restitution process, which is often seen as a loss on the side of the museum.
But it's actually also again in terms of getting a relationship.
And also, of course, it's a gain in terms of moral responsibility,
but it's actually also you're starting a relationship with communities, which can be very fruitful.
You know, even when I like talk to my family or my parents, particularly around restitution and returns, they totally understand it.
And, you know, my family have been very thoughtful about why returns might happen.
But then sometimes it's like, Well, if they want it, they can just come and get it. And it's like, Well, that's not what the process is about.
It's about kind of creating these spaces for new relationships based on an equity, and it doesn't even need to be equal.
Sometimes I think as in the communities that these things have come from, they should be in control.
It's great that the museum gets an opportunity to be within that negotiation, but ultimately, sometimes I don't think we necessarily have that right.
We might have sort of quote unquote ownership of that object legally right now, but actually some of those things we never had right over,
we should never have had rights over them when we work with the Maasai communities from Tanzania and Kenya.
We are really very lucky that that openness and that warmth and that fostering of
collaboration co-production is there because actually they don't need to do that.
That choice of relationship building really changes the conversation around the restitution and returns because you get to know each other as people.
And that and that changes the stories that happen in the museum because it's not about one person's narrative anymore,
it's about coming together and thinking what our shared communities like.
If you think about the museum as a community space, as a community hall,
if that's the principle we create from then we're all of the community together.
Having these ideas and conversations, we own the museum and the community anymore.
Maybe that's a bit too, I don't know utopian, but I think thinking about ourselves as a space community to do things like
with by and for then changes the way that you build things like collections,
department policies. Earlier, you were mentioning about problems to enter the database collection.
And I was wondering, like in these new relations,
you can literally you have two conversations with people about how we can reduce the thresholds of entering these collections,
whether it's online or within the museum. And could you say a bit more about a database system?
I should note that the database is what it is, and it's having a lot of work done on it.
So I'm hoping that it's going to become like epic basically in what's able to achieve.
But I would say as someone that is a trained museum professional who did do collections work, I find the database almost inaccessible.
As an online tool, you actually need to know so much about how people organise collections to actually find what you're looking for,
because some of the searches that you put in are so broad that either you get
thousands of records or is not quite the right terminology that you might have used.
I think that you need to have quite a sophisticated understanding of a database, even for the online one,
never mind the kind of internal database to actually get to the objects that you're really looking for.
And then what I find striking and this is obviously like a.
You know, it is the way that things are being collected and it is what the people of the time,
you know, the predominantly white communities collected these things.
So it was of interest to note isn't what I would like to know about the collections that are held.
So as someone who works a lot around narrative and storytelling and talking to families about the things that we look after,
it's very frustrating to use the database because that narrative isn't there.
And I think that's even more frustrating if you are a person that those things have belonged to or from a community, that those things belong to,
that you actually need to work out how somebody in a museum might have written
about the object that you know in one way and they think about in another way.
So it almost becomes slightly obsolete. Having an online database, it's almost like window dressing.
It's like, Oh, look like we're so accessible because we are online and not every museum does that.
And it's like, yes, it is a step on the steps, but it's actually not.
It's another thing that feels slightly disingenuous is saying that you have online collections when actually you need a very sophisticated knowledge,
often to actually find what you're looking for. And when you look at databases from other collections, you get the images.
So you're already creating another level of access through just being able to search through images as opposed to search through terms.
You've got that additional way of recognising the things that have come from your community,
even if they might be listed under the English terminology for your thing that you can suddenly start to go,
Oh yes, I recognise that that's from my community.
And then that starts to help build that picture view of the things that are contained within the museum.
Online databases can be a wonderful thing, but I think we shouldn't pretend that's making us accessible to people because
it's for a very small subset of people who understand how to research databases.
Yeah, I think in one of the policies within the document, it also mentions the museum as one of the best documented collections.
But that idea of best documented and also documented in a specific way,
as you were mentioning or any hints at some sort of systematic extraction of objects from other communities,
which is not necessarily something to be proud of. Yeah, and that's the complicated thing, isn't it?
I find as a museum professional, we have in effect hoarded other people's things for who.
And then when you look at some of the documentation, it's looked like the actual function or use for something has totally been lost because
the person that collected it didn't think about how the community might talk about it,
like the documentation is just not there.
And also like, you know, when you think about collections backlogs, I mean, soon as you get into any length of backlog,
then the actual texture and understanding and the stories that that object tells start
to kind of fade away from it because you haven't got that first person connexion.
And that's where contemporary collecting is so exciting.
We have an opportunity now to think really carefully about the things that come into the museum
and to work really closely to commission that sort of self-determine what stories are framed,
that thing that's come into the museum collection and they have a choice in whether they want to work with the museum or have their things collected.
So it's just a whole different way of shifting the power within how collections
are brought into museums and thinking about that sort of sense of equity,
as well as just having stuff in a museum.
Do you know whether it's possible to if you know the local name of an objects or the way it's known by the community?
If you only know that not the English translation, is it possible to find it in the database?
So I've worked with a chap from Zimbabwe, Tebo, and we were sat at my computer and I was like, Well, that's the colonial name for that object.
And you can see that the way that the British have done it is just like because they're being lazy about how to say the local name,
because actually, they're thinking, Oh, well, I can't get my tongue around that, so I'll just put the name in effect.
And so he'd be like, Well, this is actually really problematic and offensive that the way that it's recorded in the database
compounds the colonial aspects of the collecting because there's not even the right local name for this,
because it's been entered or written down by a white British colonial officer as opposed to a Zimbabwean speaking Shona.
So he knows the names, but he wouldn't be able to search that because it doesn't exist.
And because this is why you need to have a really wide range of people that you're working with within
the museum and communities that you're working with so that you actually get these things right.
And so that that person who speaks Shona can type in the Shona name and find it.
One of the things with the Pitt rivers is that there is so many hundreds of peoples represented in the museum and so many hundreds of things there is.
This is going to take a really long time to get the right names for the communities within the database,
as much as actually then start to have the languages represented within the database.
So yeah, you would have to ask a collections specialist. But from my working with local communities living in Oxford, we have.
Really struggled when looking for things in the database by their local name. OK, thanks.
I think that's why I also do projects like what you were mentioning with the
Maasai is so important to just get that knowledge there about the collections,
like one of the things around access is something that I think is specific to public engagement is that access for whom is
something that we think about a lot because actually it's not access for the local communities that we work with very often.
So it's who's able to actually access things. What does access look like?
Is it like just seeing things on display or is that being able to be with the objects in the research base?
Or is that being able to handle the objects or to play the objects? What is it?
We mean when we say making collections accessible, right?
Because I don't think seeing an image on a database makes the collection accessible.
I don't think seeing an object on display necessarily makes things accessible,
and it's where that decision making comes in about who it is that gets to actually be with their cultural objects, which can be incredibly important.
And then who is it that actually then gets to handle those things? And then who is it that actually gets to use those things performative, Lee?
What I find frustrating is that I understand the need to keep things in perpetuity.
But actually, do we? What is that for? Like why? Why do we need to keep everything forever?
Like with photographs, they're going to disappear. We're probably only have the digital one sometime in the future.
That digital collection is going to stop being available to us. Things are already iterative and changing.
So do we actually need to worry that, you know, every single object within the collections is kept at whatever way it came into the collection?
Or actually, are we doing so much more meaningful and impactful work if we actually create space for people to play
lacrosse with a lacrosse stick that's come into the museum or to have the ceremony with that thing,
it's like, why do we see ourselves as the key decision makers in that?
Because actually, shouldn't we be asking the communities they belong to and saying, actually,
if you feel like it's the right thing to do and you've thought about it with the communities or the coaches that you are at this moment representing,
then that's your decision is community that shouldn't be the museum's decision.
So I'm very keen that we move to a position where things can be handled and performed and celebrated with so many objects.
Ritual life sometimes doesn't dictated to be permanent.
Quite often, its function is to be impermanence.
And if we're putting it in a museum as if it were to be preserved, then we don't do justice to the ritual life.
We're not really teaching people about different knowledge systems because we're just misrepresenting the objects.
Yeah, exactly.
Sometimes it's incredibly damaging that these things are still on display in museums when they should have been allowed to go back to the Earth.
But it's also like, what harm is there in enabling somebody to use a lacrosse stick to do a pickup, for example?
Which is what Joe, whose capture did when he came over to the museum,
is that he had a moment where he could do that when Piers used to work with Haida communities.
They had to touch and they had to perform with those objects because they were so
central to their knowledge systems that it was wrong to stand in the way of that.
Why do we, as a museum,
make a decision to stand in the way of people actually having an opportunity to be with things that come from their communities?
And so is not just where those objects should no longer exist, it's where there are things in the collections that actually need to be handled,
need to be performed with, need to be used in order for them to continue to have the life that they should have done.
If we're misrepresenting an object in this way,
then we're not really providing access to the to the objects because we're just providing access to maybe a western interpretation of the objects.
If I liken it to think of an example, but you know, if I, I guess, have my coffee cup here and it's like, I've got this coffee cup,
but like I can handle it because I have the power in this relationship and I can probably drink coffee out of it.
But if you come into my house, into my music, I'm like, I'm not going to let you handle that,
and you're certainly not going to be allowed to drink coffee unless the power sits with me in that moment that I can make that decision.
And actually, that's not great for you if you've come into my space, my home, into my community centre or my museum.
For me to say, Oh no, I think I know better in this moment than you do about this thing where actually you were like, Oh,
I thought you'd invited me in to access the things that belong to my community and I understand culturally and what you've done.
You know, you've invited me for a cup of coffee and what you've done is, let me see you drink coffee.
It's just like, I don't. That's the power dynamic that I just don't think should exist.
Great examples. Are there any final things you want to maybe say about successes of the museum in terms of accessibility,
or more like legal barriers to changing things regarding accessibility?
I think there has been so much positive about the pit, and I hesitate to say yes.
I've thought about some of the challenges today and we've discussed those,
but actually the way in which we are as a team thinking about more complicated.
Did issue for museums. It is radical and a meeting with a small because maybe we need to think about it a lot earlier as a sector and a profession,
but actually like the fact that we're taking it on, that we are confident enough in ourselves that we're actually putting ourselves
into spaces where people within our sector think that we're going wrong,
that we're going to follow, that we won't cover this or whether we're going to send everything back or we're going to, you know,
all of this hyperbole that gets used around around what we're trying to do is museum and
we keep doing it and we keep thinking about it and we keep consulting and collaborating,
co-producing. And in the end, I think we will be vindicated,
and I'm really pleased to work somewhere that has the confidence to know that this is the right
thing for us to be doing right now and for not to be listening to the naysayers and saying,
Oh, actually, no, we tried that and it didn't work and look at the design of that that we've had, you know, happen to us because of that.
Although the way that we talked about that, actually,
we stand by the kind of conversations that we're creating and that makes it a really exciting, positive place to be.
And I think, you know, collections teams are in a really like tricky place in terms of what they do because
the whole purpose of a museum often has been to keep things for perpetuity.
And as soon as you start to think about who has access to museum collections and what their access actually means,
then you're changing a lot of what the core purpose of museums were in the past.
And so it is a really daunting space to be. But actually, I think that it's very exciting what the Petrov's has achieved so far.
And, you know, five years in, that's probably the time when a lot of museum professionals will be looking for the next thing.
But actually, like, I'm really excited about the long term and seeing it through and seeing what we are able to achieve together.
I think one of the things I would say is that there's a lot to learn from each
of the departments that maybe has started to happen in terms of collaboration.
And you know, I think there's lots that we, as public engagement teams have learnt from collections.
And I think there's a lot that the collections teams can learn from public engagement in
thinking about how to make collections work for people rather than people who have collections.
People first collection second, and it's not because I want to be radical or create riot or whatever,
but I actually think if you start with people, then you can have the conversations about how the collections are looked after.
And actually, you probably find that a lot of people are really wanting to keep things safe or looked after,
but it doesn't mean it has to be in the museum space. And if it is in a museum space, then we know better what people's wishes are.
And so if you think about the museum as people first collection, second,
that opens up a whole new way in which you think about what the purpose of a museum is.
If you're caring for people, you're basically automatically caring for their objects.
Yeah, that's a it's a much more sink's way of saying, Yeah, no, that's great.
With that show, we wrap it up. That is cool. Overall, I will hopefully see you in person.
Have a good evening. Thanks so much. That was the Rivers Museum's Matters of Policy podcast produced by Darcy Woodhouse.
Yet boom maker man Alexis Barriere and Bhogle Sound Music by Jack Forcett voiceover Baiju
who let a special thank you to Muranga Thomas from Oslo and the Knowledge Exchange.