blog by Christelle Pellecuer, Cultural Heritage Manager, and Suzanne Van Even, PhD Researcher
In the past few years we have seen across the world, the concept of “decolonising museums”, “decolonising education”, “decolonising the mind”. The meaning of the term “decolonisation” itself is being debated and can mean different things for different people.
For the past year, BSWN has been undertaking a National Heritage Lottery Fund project focused on Intangible Cultural Heritage. As part of the project, BSWN has interviewed cultural and heritage organisations within the South West in order to examine how the concepts of inclusion and decolonisation are understood. A report of the outcome of the interviews will be available at the end of September when the first phase of the project comes to an end.
Museums across the South West have themselves been challenged with the term “decolonisation” and been called to decolonize their institutions and their collections. BSWN has also been engaging with Bristol Culture team to explore a more inclusive ways of working. In December 2019, BSWN delivered a pilot workshop around decolonisation to the Bristol Culture team. Following the workshop, further discussions took place between Bristol Culture and BSWN and a series of workshops around the concept of decolonisation was programmed. The aims of the workshops are to discuss background and history of decolonisation, its relationship to museums, reflect, share and discuss good practice around the concept and respond accordingly with positive actions.
The first workshop, which took place at the end of June 2020, included a presentation from Dr Nicole Truesdell, Senior Director at the institute for Transformative Practice at Brown University and from Dr Errol Francis, Artistic Director and Curator of Heritage Programmes.
Dr Truesdell delivered a presentation on institutional change and inclusion from a historical perspective. Dr Truesdell talked about the importance of focusing on humanity. She argued that civility and niceness is linked to Whiteness, thus standing in the way of change. Dr Francis’ presentation also had a historical focus but used current events as a point of departure. Dr Francis used the metaphor of ‘I can’t breathe’ and being suffocated to address the way that museums have historically disguised genocidal colonial violence against Black people. He illustrated this with the looting of Benin Bronzes and described how history has been sanitised through the selective display and interpretation of objects. He calls this epistemic violence. Dr Francis ended the presentation by referencing a rare example of a museum addressing decolonisation in the present with the acquisition by the Wellcome Collection of an artwork by Black artist Kat Anderson that depicts the killing of a young Black man in a psychiatric hospital. One quotes that stayed in participants mind following Dr Francis’ presentation is "Museums should be a place of humanity not just objects”.
Dr Errol Francis delivering a presentation to Bristol Culture staff
The workshops participants have found the session really useful in contextualising and understanding race from a historical context and looking forward to future workshop to continue the discussion around decolonisation and its relationship to museums, reflect, share good practices.