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.
Hi chip ABC. Here we continue the conversation with Dr. Laura Fundable Colfer, who's director of the Privacy Museum.
This episode focuses on contemporary as well as future museum practise,
and changing policy change sometimes happens very, very slowly, very gradually.
I think, especially for communities, are continuing to experience the whole, you know,
sort of hurt and pain and loss of having objects that belong elsewhere or that have
a cultural significance elsewhere and have a cultural role to play in ceremonies.
For us to then sort of see I am really trying is just not good enough.
And I think that is where it sometimes can be quite frustrating, even though I know how much our team is doing,
and many of them go way beyond what you could expect from just a professional engagement.
This is for for most of our staff, this is not just a job, they're doing this because they want to be part of that process of change.
They want to be sort of part of a process of redress.
But we all need to also sort of think, OK, this is going to be like, it's a bit, yeah,
I think someone described it as a as a cruise ship where if you want to turn a cruise ship once it's turned,
it really will have to go a different direction. But for it to turn, it needs to turn completely.
And I think that is what museums. Hopefully we can shift it.
I don't know if there's a real decolonial to really not being an institution anymore.
Also causes hurt is a possibility. Maybe not in this generation.
Maybe your generation. We definitely hope so. But indeed, there are many complexities that make it extremely difficult to completely colonise.
But we few, as you said, that the staff has taken on a very proactive attitude to towards this immense project.
So you mentioned your spare and Sea Pro Change Pro reaching out to indigenous communities
and that the staff is doing work that goes beyond what's normally expected of a job.
But when reading the CDP, it feels this proactive ness is sometimes lacking.
Section four, for instance, states something about doing acquisition when relevant opportunities arise.
To what extent do you feel museums should take the lead and reach out to communities rather than almost wait for such opportunities to arise?
Yeah, I think absolutely that is no longer a reflection of our practise.
Clearly, there are things that sort of organically grow the fact that, you know, of all those indigenous leaders who came, there were five of them.
One of them, which was some, well, just immediately followed up and said, I'm going to talk to the elders.
I need for you to do x y z. Just put four point.
That was sort of organically that that relationship became a really important one and is helping to transform the way that we work.
But I think around transparency about what is here, how do we work?
And absolutely, that's where the document obviously needs to change to reflect what we're actually doing.
So it's our responsibility is to reach out. Our responsibility is to also listen and learn.
Our responsibility is to be held accountable for what's in here, not to sort of wallow in white guilt or white shame,
but actually to say yes, that comes with it does come with a sense of remorse.
It comes also with a responsibility to be part of actioning redress.
Listening, learning. Seeing how can we undo some of that harm for the Rivers Museum,
which is maybe a bit different from other places because of the way that we display things, there's different layers to that responsibility.
Right. So on the one hand, we need to make sure that are the stories that we're telling to the half a million people who come and visit us from across
the globe each year don't continue to repeat stereotypical images and sort of wording that is actually really problematic,
which is still has a sort of bit of social evolution is a colloquial social evolution ism in it.
All of that we need to sort of do in-house. We need to reach out to communities both locally and globally around.
How do we give new meanings to these collections and how do some of these collections?
Not all of them, because for example, with the Maasai, it's quite clear up there.
There's five objects in particular of the 188 that are really problematic, they should not be here.
That is why we need a spiritual guide and stop where we needed to bring in epistemology.
From the my side to actually start understanding the history of these objects and how they came into the museum from the epistemology of the mass,
so it's a very different sort of way of treating knowledge and which historical data do we use?
Museums are very focussed on what is in our archive, and that is truth.
We need to move away from that. And I think that's certainly also needs to be in a new policy where we're going to say local knowledge.
This knowledge is as important in your documentation of why objects need to be taught.
So yes, I think that that certainly will not be reflected in the current GDP, but it should be in our next CDP.
There's that work I know.
Yep, you've also been looking into our web pages and a lot of our micro sites, which have lots of really problematic language in them, too.
2018, I think I wrote the labelling mothers project as a sort of set up to then be able to find some funding for it.
And then we were lucky enough to have Marine to apply for that post.
And she sort of, you know, took it to an incredibly detailed, you know, level of scoping the problem.
We now our other states that we can start thinking about how do we undo those issues?
Some of it might be that we mostly need to, you know, use some of these cases as tools for education to actually point out,
Look, this is really problematic, but you're probably doing it in your own thinking, in your own mindset.
Still, today, this, you know, can cause quite a bit of cognitive dissonance.
People sort of like, Ooh, this is problematic. Why is it problematic when I use the word, you know, modern or.
And I think that is going to be a really crucial way that this museum can function for a while.
The other thing that we need to build into the museum is more of the reverse.
So this whole idea that we're universal museums that are bringing together universal ways of being and is based on the fiction, right?
Because there is no one universal way of being. And I think that is where, you know, Arturo Escobar's Lori facility is a really useful concept.
I think for a museum like ours, if we can, instead of pretending that there's a universal museum, say no.
Actually, this is a pluribus with many ways of being many ways of no.
Many stories, many voices, therefore, who should tell those stories?
Let's make sure that that's how we can unlock the museum as a place that can actually be a place where those stories are being told.
That means that we need to start acquisition positioning differently. And I think that is where the acquisition indifferently means more equitable.
And that's where, you know, Marenco is really trialling that.
And I think to me, that's how policy works or practise and public policy go hand in hand.
That's because I'm a bit of a pragmatist when Marenco sort of is trying something, seeing whether it can work and then immediately sees, OK.
These are all the barriers to do it differently.
We need to identify those barriers and then make sure that we invite them differently into a new policy,
differently into a new practise of making payments, for example.
And that's where I must say that would have been easier in the Netherlands because we were
an independent institution that could make its own sort of make its own regulations,
all models of how we were going to pay being part of a huge, huge university.
That is always being watched constantly also. So there's a lot of processes in place around H.R., around payments, around finance,
etc. That can be quite difficult and that's why we just need to live with imperfection.
And I know that that's not great, but it is a reality where I need to sort of say, OK, we can be really harsh about all of these things,
or we can say we're going to live with imperfection and acknowledge that it's imperfect but still strive to do better.
I think that's what we're really aiming to do with this podcast series is come up with some suggestions for change in an ideal way.
In a utopian world. We would do this, this, this and it be so easy and it be wonderful.
Then coming up with maybe some practical suggestions as well that are more realistic as you've spoken about the kind of the
powers that be in terms of accreditation and the university working in such a large organisation like the University of Oxford.
In the mission statement, it talks about the University of Oxford starchy.
Just briefly tell us what that is and who is in charge of the statue and when does it change so that every museum has statutes?
If we want to change those, it's a legal process and we need to go through legal trajectory.
The university statutes say that's when you would need to go to different parts of the university to get those changed.
Very different from policy, different from strategies or strategy.
We're quite independent in establishing our strategy. Obviously, our board of visitors was a sort of board of governance.
They're not really. Because Oxford has its own structures.
But I do report to our board of visitors,
they usually say yes or no to changes to strategy policy and how they would sort of be able to confirm those if it's something more significant.
If it's a bigger policy document that, for example, that's what happens with the procedures for return of cultural objects through claimants.
If it would have just been a bit reversed, museum policy is just a board of visitors that needs to agree.
But this was the other museum directors when I sort of finished our version that we actually also want to adopt this document.
But then we needed to have quite a bit of conversations about how would it be affects the body and for example, who have, you know,
I don't know, 12 million or more materials in their collections, the Ashmolean with a million, the natural history with, you know, 3.4 million.
So we have to put in some conversations, and I'm really pleased that that went well.
So that is a next step that then needs to go to the proctors.
It then also went to a general purposes committee G.P.S., where it was then pulled in and took another year before we could bring it back to GBC.
And then we went to council and then gets published. And Congregation, which is all the professors of the University of Oxford,
could comment on a policy document if they don't agree to say I made a return request.
If we have said yes, we want to. Some one professor or a couple of professors from the university could still say, No, we don't agree.
We object. Worst case scenario would go to a congregation. Congregation is sort of in the Shelden in theatre.
It's a really big theatre where all professors and come in there and then you might need to go in a debate to argue your case.
It's a very democratic structure, actually. Oxford, quite exceptionally democratic.
It's the same in Cambridge. And that's when in the end, the V-C, the vice chancellor, agrees for statues.
I think that would be a different process, but I haven't gone through that process, so I can't really give a lot of information.
I must say in the beginning, when I joined 2068 2016, it felt like I was sort of playing 3D chess, but blindfold it without knowing the rules.
Having come not from a university museum, not from the UK,
but from a sort of Dutch where the national museums are their independent museums, they have a lot more say themselves.
And then also starting to see the panorama of this 14 national museums in the UK, there's about 400 university museums,
of which 100 have a public side to their museum and we have about 800 something independent and or civic museums,
which are actually owned by the city and its citizens.
Even though a lot of focus in the press always goes to the Nationals,
there's only 14 national museums and there's more than a thousand other museums in the UK.
The amount of visitors we have are similar to what the National Museum would get.
The funding, however, is 10 times 100 times less.
We just need to be quite realistic what we can do for the statutes of the museum to change.
We did make a change to our board of visitors recently, so it is certainly possible, but it's less something that I find hugely urgent.
What I'd be worried about is, is it going to be a bit of a red herring?
Is it the best place where I'm going to spend my time?
And I think that for me, it would be let's make sure the strategy is in place that make sure our comms are in place.
Let's make sure our practise is in place and then we rewrite our policy.
And then if we are really saying, you know, these statutes, they really are obstructing us from being able to do our strategy,
we would need to go into changing them and also maybe to sort of ensure longer activity.
We want to make sure that there's no racist practises embedded in our statutes.
So you have all these museums, all of those who have designated collections and who want to have accreditation is a specific kind of
museum again that are sort of acknowledged and go through processes around having all of the documentation,
safeguarding access. You know, all of that. We sign up to a sort of broader spectrum of elements of work.
The Arts Council is important around accreditation, and accreditation is important to get any funding.
The most funders will ask Are you an accredited museum and is your collection designated a sort of designation of the collections,
which I don't think you've looked into very much yet,
but that very much also will have the sort of narrative of most important, unique, historic, important names being named, etc.
So again, that is something that you might have to look up to for accreditation.
The Arts Council, if you look at their new strategy and their new vision documents, are very much exactly in line with what we want to do.
There's a whole range of people in the Arts Council that we work with quite closely.
They would be keen. To look at where does that communication actually?
Where is it hindering people to actually be able to focus on change?
Where can we support? So in that sense, I think that, yes, there are things that might still be quite focussed on preservation of care.
On the other hand, I know that our conservation team is hugely focussed on cultural care,
is hugely focussed on ensuring that their conservation goes hand in hand with reaching out to communities working closely with communities.
And I think that one could say that that's where also an icon.
You know, obviously there's a discussion around the definition which showcases that much like in society,
there's a division in the leadership of museums.
For some, museum directors are explicitly and very vocally saying new direction is working together with is, you know, polyphony.
I think it's it's called there, but is more sort of like, you know,
blue reversal and it's about equity and access and ensuring that everybody's reach.
We are, you know, places that are essentially human,
while others very much like the idea of sort of the old definition where we are mostly a place with four walls
where collections are being kept and where this sort of power to decide what should be considered heritage,
let's say, or museum acting is decided by the museum.
And I think that is not necessarily how people themselves would self-identify, but I think that is sort of what we're, you know,
we're seeing these divisions in society around should the players of England take the knee and
really clearly demonstrate that they want a society that is anti-racist or should they not?
And I think that is where, on the one hand, people say it's just a gesture, but if it's just a gesture, you wouldn't object.
So I think that is where those kind of divisions that we're seeing everywhere around us and we seeing it in the way that people vote,
there's real divisions and they also exist in the museums.
But I think that if we look at accreditation, their vision statements,
if we and their new strategies and sort of documents like the Let's Create document the same for the Heritage Lottery Fund,
we see that their major documents that can enable transformation, they can enable change.
They're not the ones who are going to obstruct it. That's not how I see the Arts Council.
We do want to bring up one more question on the Arts Council because in their accreditation guidance documents,
they write that they want to help guide museums to do the right thing and make sure museums manage their collections properly during the CDP workshop.
We did you raise this question asking what this system properly actually mean?
And it made us wonder what if the nationally recognised standards said museums are set to follow artefacts floats?
To what extent is Typekit reverse involved in questioning those standards?
And how does it make sure not to just simply presuppose them?
Yeah, yeah. Not just sort of abiding by them. So one I think the Arts Council can be a council that is actually helping to drive change.
I have been part of Arts Council working groups to think about strategy and to think about, especially around repatriation.
Another important organisation, there is a museum association that also plays a really important role.
They're very proactive in enabling change in the UK.
A big driver for change is the Arts Council.
They are at an arm's length body of the government, so they do get their funding from the government.
So there is a sort of, you know, difficult, tight rope.
Let's say that they need to walk to ensure that there's still sort of ensuring
that the government feels they're still reflecting what the people feel.
But if we read the let's create document, it's cleared up.
They're all about access up. They're all about more voices in museums up.
They're all about ensuring that communities are involved.
Actually also give more access to using objects and not just keeping them in this sort of preservation frame that is quite limiting.
So I think that there's a lot of possibility there. I see a lot of possibility.
Also, Kate Bellamy, who's the director for museums in the Arts Council, is very open to those conversations.
We work with our local sort of representative of the Arts Council, Michael Cook, who I don't think he'd mind me saying he has roots in Jamaica.
He's very proactive also in thinking with us on how can we make things happen?
So I personally feel that the Arts Council so far has been, on the one hand,
a driver for change in the UK in museums to change towards more diverse staffing,
a change towards ensuring that there's openness around collections and accountability responsibility.
And now, obviously, the Arts Council is also helping with draughting some guidance around restitution.
I was part of the steering group, but I haven't heard for a really long time now, so I'm not sure where that is.
I think it's coming soon. Yeah. So I don't know if I should be concerned that I've not heard anything.
But no, but I do know that they've really sort of been a driver for change and demanding
for institutions to actually be accountable and ensuring that all communities.
Yes. So especially from deprived backgrounds, are actually being involved in the museum.
So that's how I see. That's great as it offers a lot of possibilities in terms of making changes within the document.
If the Arts Council is already driving this change and actually advocating for these changes,
then there doesn't seem to be that many barriers towards implementing those changes within the document.
Yes, I think so, too. And that's where, you know, as I said when we met in the workshop,
I do invite you guys to be part of that rewriting of of the document because it's so useful
and so important to have those critical faults sort of being mirrored others and say,
this is what you're actually saying. Isn't that? Is that really what you want to see?
And, you know, usually it's not. So I think that's where it's really quite important.
Obviously, we know the power and the importance of, you know, sort of the words that we use, the language that we use,
the way that we phrase things and what ends up makes, you know,
a place that is inviting for all to feel that their voices are welcome, their presence is welcome.
Their ways of being are being taken and acknowledged as something that is important.
So I think that is where I want to thank you guys for thinking with us and working with us and ensuring that we're being held accountable.
That was the Rivers Museum's Matters of Policy podcast produced by the Seward House,
yet bomb maker man Alexis Barriere and vocal sounds music by Jack Forcett voice over Baiju,
who led a special thank you to Muranga Thomas from Oakland and the Knowledge Exchange.