Bristol museums join anti-racist programme

Five Bristol museums have joined a national pilot programme working towards becoming anti-racist. The professional development scheme is run by the Museums Association, which aims to create meaningful change in the sector.

The museums involved are The Georgian House Museum, The Red Lodge Museum, Blaise Museum, M-Shed and Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. The announcement follows the unveiling of Edward Colston’s statue in a permanent exhibition in M-Shed earlier this year.

The toppled statue is now encased in a thick glass case, still showing the damage from the protest. Bristol is a city which has had extensive involvement and ties with the Transatlantic slave trade and campaigners have fought for the changing of names of many buildings, such as Colston Hall, which is now called Bristol Beacon.

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The Anti-racist Museums Programme pilot will run until September this year. The programme focuses on embedding inclusivity and diversity to the core of museums, making them accessible for the future.

Along with the group of Bristol museums, the programme includes Birmingham Museums Trust, Fulham Palace, the Migration Museum, Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museums Wales and Museums) and Galleries Edinburgh.

Joshua Robertson FRSA, Policy and Campaigns Lead for Museums Association, said: “I am proud to launch the Anti-racist Museums Programme, the culmination of months of dedicated work and thoughtful collaboration. This comprehensive initiative is designed to guide museums through a transformative journey towards embedding inclusivity and equity at their core.

“Through rigorous analysis of self and practice, strategic planning and extensive training, this programme is dedicated to addressing and dismantling systemic racism. It stands as a testament to a growing commitment to ensuring that our museums truly decolonise and begin to serve the diverse communities that they seek to represent.”

Philip Walker, Head of Culture and Creative Industries at Bristol City Council, said: “We’re really pleased to have this opportunity to be part of a UK wide network of professionals working in the museum sector seeking to tackle racism and how it manifests itself in museum structures. Museums have complex relationships with their colonial pasts and origins, and have often contributed to perpetuating racist ideologies.

“We aim to use this programme to help us explore ways in which to expose and address some of the racist structures that many museums are founded upon. This will likely range from looking at Bristol’s own collections and how they are catalogued, what is displayed and how the collections are interpreted and whether there are other underlying systems and processes that we do that perpetuate structural racism.”

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