Museums and Social Responsibility

“Illogical and absurd”, “limited in their scope of social responsibility”: this is David Fleming’s assessment of, and warning to, museums that do not move beyond their traditional role of collecting, preserving and researching. It is an assessment I share and while Mr Fleming is the Director of National Museums Liverpool I believe his warning is most pertinent at the small, independent and volunteer-run end of the museum spectrum. We who receive the least, if any, public funding, who rely the most on donations and public support, have the most to lose if we become irrelevant to our communities. How though are we to make our museums relevant, what lies beyond our traditional roles, in what direction should we travel and how can we fund new roles when we struggle to fund even the old ones?

You might expect me to say that finding answers to these questions is going to be easier for the larger, national and nationally-styled museums. They after all have the funding, resources and manpower to diversify and have the treasures in their collections that people will always want to come to visit should their experiments in embracing new roles and a wider social responsibility fail. There is something to be said though for having a smaller, more modest collection, less, if any, staff and no cash to speak of. We are hungrier for change that brings success, or guarantees survival, often have the institutional flexibility to accommodate rapid transformations and operate on a smaller scale that presents fewer risks. However, while small, independent museums may be nimble enough to respond to this challenge and adopt swifter change I have not answered the question of what change museums should adopt.

The honest answer to this question is ‘I don’t know’ – or more accurately that ‘we are still looking for the answer’. The only way to find answers though is to look to your strengths, look to your community, think about how best you can serve it and to experiment. When I first volunteered at Egham Museum I was struck by its potential, the rich history with which it had to work and the wealth of enthusiasm, skills and knowledge tapped in its long-standing volunteers and untapped at Royal Holloway, our university neighbour. This is where the concept of a ‘teaching museum’ or ‘public history lab’ came from, the idea that providing volunteers, particularly students, with opportunities to devise, develop and lead their own projects that help us explore and promote this rich local history should be at the heart of what we do. For the students this offers the chance to create something unique that reflects their own ideas while gaining useful experience and developing transferable skills. For us we get the benefit of fresh perspectives, new ideas and enthusiastic help in reaching new audiences. Since adopting this approach we have gone from having one or two student volunteers working with us each year to nearly twenty, and expect to exceed this number in future years. In fact, we are on track to become one of the largest single providers of volunteer placements for Royal Holloway students.

The success of this model, for us, can not only be measured in terms of the positive feedback we have had from students or the funding it has attracted (we are now in receipt of two grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund), thus in part answering the question of how we can fund new roles whilst struggling to fund the old, but in terms of the positive social impact the student-led outreach projects are having. A good example of this is our Memories of War project. Launched as a small pilot project, Memories of War sees teams of students interviewing local residents with memories of war and then editing the resulting footage to create thematic micro-documentaries for local schools. Daniel O’Reilly, the then Social Events Coordinator at Merlewood Residential Care Home, said:

We are delighted with our residents recent involvement with the Memories of War pilot project which has proved a highly valuable experience on many levels. The project has provided a fantastic opportunity for reminiscence therapy offering a platform for our residents to recollect valuable memories. The interview format has also helped promote communication and has encouraged self-expression. … We thank the volunteers of Egham Museum for providing our elderly residents with a platform for restoring their sense of significance and reminding them of their personal value.

Memories of War, which is now a fully-fledged HLF-funded project, just goes to show what can happen when a museum experiments outside of its traditional role. This type of work and the positive impact it is having may not be our social responsibility but it is certainly an opportunity: an opportunity to be relevant, to be engaging and to serve our communities better.

David Fleming is right. Museums can be so much more than the traditional role prescribes. As we are hopefully demonstrating at Egham, museums are more than the sum of the contents of their display cases. Museums can, and should, be forward-looking, creative and experimental institutions, doing good in their communities and in so doing ensuring their own relevance now and in the future.

Dr Matthew Smith, Curator, Egham Museum