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| Photo taken from Twitter @IcomOfficiel |
Quote from our MOOC (Massive Open Online Course):
“This course has
opened my eyes. Never before thought of museums as being harbingers of change
in anything.”
The same person wrote later:
“Yes, my opinion
has changed and I’m much more convinced that museums have a positive role to
play in achieving and enhancing social cohesion. I had been stuck in my
‘sixties experience of the passive museum, storing items for the mere sake of
storage. Today they are put to use to make a positive difference in the world.”
“Recent years have seen an
explosion of interest in the relationship between museums, human rights and
social justice…The idea that museums can positively impact individuals’ lives
and bring benefit to society at large is one that has taken hold and gained
increasing consensus across museum practitioners and policymakers
internationally. In 2014 the UK’s Museums Association launched Museums Change
Lives – a new vision for the social impact of museums. They can enhance the
wellbeing of individuals. They can create and contribute to better places in
which people live, and they can inspire people and ideas. Recent years have
seen the emergence of an activist museum practice, one that seeks to use the
resources of the museum to contribute purposefully and actively towards a more
fair and just society” (Richard Sandell, ibid).
Social Justice:
The term “social justice”
is contested. We all mean something slightly different when we use
it, and a lot depends upon what country one is in and what political system one
lives under.
Here are some American terms
and definitions:
Social justice is…
Civil rights.
Protecting the
poor people, the downtrodden, those who can’t help themselves.
The ability
people have to realise their potential.
Here is a rule
that I learned in my study of Communist societies…Social justice means
left-wing equality…There is no social justice if there are rich and poor
The term crops up in variety
of contexts, such as faith, health, economics, politics and the environment.
What do I mean when I use the
term “social justice”? Two things, really:
·
Equality of
access to what museums do – and how museums behave to create this;
·
Addressing
social ills, perhaps even campaigning to right those ills.
It is important to remember
that it depends where you are; social justice in a war-torn region might look
very different from that in a peaceful western democracy, for example.
Social ills and
campaigning:
What, and how? These are some
examples - racism, homophobia, modern slavery: these ills are found in all
nations around the world.
The International Slavery
Museum, Liverpool, for example, is a campaigning museum that fights against
racism and other human rights abuses such as people trafficking, through its
exhibitions, debates, events.
There are other examples still,
including post-conflict campaigning.
And so we come to a key issue
of our age – migration. This is a highly politically-charged issue, but there
is a growing feeling in the museum world that we have a role to play in
enlightening people about migration, not least because museums often take a
long view of social and economic development. Because of this, museums are well
placed to explore the long-term complexities of migration.
There are a number of museums
around the world that look in some detail at different aspects of migration,
for example those in Melbourne Australia, Bremerhaven in Germany, and Sao Paulo
in Brazil. More are being created, for example in London and in Malmo, Sweden.
In Liverpool we have for many years had an Emigration Gallery in the Merseyside
Maritime Museum. These museums all look at identity and other cultural aspects
of the movement of people which is, after all, and endemic part of the human
condition. These movements have had a great variety of causes, and some of
them, for example the movement across the Atlantic Ocean of Africans in the 16th-19th centuries,
that is better known as the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and which is looked at
in some detail in Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum, were enforced, not
voluntary.
It is rare that mass
migrations, such as that of Muslims and Hindus after the Partition of India in
1947, do not have a profound impact on nations; often this impact is such that
ethnic and religious tensions survive for hundreds of years – the world is full
of such tensions; modern migrations within Europe really are nothing new from
this perspective, nor are the tensions they create.
As long as we have museums
that are dedicated to human migration, run by people who are prepared for the
challenges and opposition they will, inevitably, face; and who believe in the
museum as a campaigning agent of change, fighting for social justice, then we
can hope that those who argue against migration will lose the arguments and be
shown up as the narrow-minded bigots and racists they are.
David
Fleming addressed the plenary session at the ICOM General Conference in Milan
on 6 July 2016.
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