In a world in trouble, how to be in solidarity from a position of privilege? What role for museums as spaces of public responsibility and power? This book has come out of a four-year international discussion and debate between colleagues and critical friends in museums, academia and grassroots organizations, all sharing a commitment to exploring solidarity relations as a way to replace inadequate collaborations between museums and their communities fundamentally. Its 20 chapters, by 31 authors, explore this through four key themes, including insider/outsider positionality, institutional and structural barriers to solidarity work, care, and solidarity as an unfinished project.
Critical Friends during Critical Times
Rosie Barker, Head of Curatorial and Participation, Birmingham Museums Trust, Birmingham, UK
Faisal Hussain, Artist and Director of True Form Projects, Birmingham, UK
Rachael Minott, Head of Access Diversity and Inclusion at the Wellcome Collection, London, UK
Sara Wajid, MBE, Co-CEO of Birmingham Museums Trust, Birmingham, UK
Birmingham Museums Trust (BMT) and Solidarity in Action (SiA) led an international critical friends project. Through this project BMT asked a group of international museums and their community partners to collaborate with Birmingham and its community partners to understand, review and improve the ways in which museums and their local communities work together. The aim was to develop ways of working that are genuinely collaborative and that ensure community interests are represented at the heart of museums programmes and how they operate. The chapter addresses issues of engaging emotionally and intellectually when acting as critical friends, particularly when collaborators are conscious of institutional baggage including power dynamics, paid labour, co-opting and misrepresentation.
Sara Wajid, as commissioner of the critical friends project will explain what she hoped the project would bring to all involved. The chapter will then be a series of reflective pieces by three of the twenty Birmingham participants in the project. Rosie Barker, will reflect on developing the idea of solidarity and asking what it looks like in practice, and where it can be found when we do engagement, participatory and community work. Faisal Hussain, as a collaborator with BMT, will reflect on the deepening knowledge of what it means to be inside and outside institutions and the changes these make to our solidarity practices. Rachael Minott will conclude by reflecting on how the project came together, from planning to participating. Closing by looking ahead to the uncertain times in Birmingham and how lessons learnt on solidarity will be needed for the future.