Minding the Gap
Museum Galleries Scotland, Inequalities: Bridging the Gap2017
I was one of two keynote speakers for this event conference hosted by the sector’s professional body. The purpose of this year’s MGS conference was, for the first time to focus on the work that Scottish museums were doing to address inequalities.
Some of the thoughts I shared were developed in more detail in a chapter for the Feminism and Museums publication, vol.2, Intervention, Disruption and Change, entitled Claiming Space and Being Brave: Activism, Agency and Art in the Making of a Women’s Museum.
I began by talking about what I saw (from my perspective working in a museum established to address inequalities) as the work that needed to be done in Scottish museums on equalities and concluded with some examples of how GWL (Glasgow Women’s Library) was working to address inequalities as the UK’s sole accredited museum of women’s history.
“After decades of research, theorising and the implementation to a greater and lesser degree of equalities-informed work this feels like a sea change, a more urgently registered momentum with debates, actions and publishing around for example: diversifying museum audiences, transformational participation, museum ‘detoxing’, calls for museum activism, ‘being brave’ and ‘risk taking’. In/equality is now a topic moving centre stage within international museums discourse.”
The talk can be accessed here
Some of the thoughts I shared were developed in more detail in a chapter for the Feminism and Museums publication, vol.2, Intervention, Disruption and Change, entitled Claiming Space and Being Brave: Activism, Agency and Art in the Making of a Women’s Museum.
I began by talking about what I saw (from my perspective working in a museum established to address inequalities) as the work that needed to be done in Scottish museums on equalities and concluded with some examples of how GWL (Glasgow Women’s Library) was working to address inequalities as the UK’s sole accredited museum of women’s history.
“After decades of research, theorising and the implementation to a greater and lesser degree of equalities-informed work this feels like a sea change, a more urgently registered momentum with debates, actions and publishing around for example: diversifying museum audiences, transformational participation, museum ‘detoxing’, calls for museum activism, ‘being brave’ and ‘risk taking’. In/equality is now a topic moving centre stage within international museums discourse.”
The talk can be accessed here
