Abstract
Increasing numbers of museums and galleries worldwide have developed an array of working practices that might be termed 'participatory' or 'co-creative', which seek to involve visitors, non-visitors, community and interest groups with diverse forms of expertise and perspective in their activities. Frequently the central aim of such practices has been to strengthen relationships between a museum and its audiences through projects that are jointly conceived and developed with local communities. However, relatively little attention has been given to participatory practice within the work of larger institutions, particularly those with a national and international remit, reach and audience base, where participatory practices are adopted to enrich the development and content of new permanent displays (aimed at large and diverse audiences). Drawing on a single case study – the development of the permanent Information Age gallery at the Science Museum in London, which opened in 2014 – this paper aims to reflect upon the extent to which existing concepts, theories and approaches to participation and co-creation resonate with museum work of this kind. Unlike many participatory practices internationally, the range of projects and activities utilised in the development of Information Age were driven less by a desire to share authority and decision-making with communities outside the museum and more by a concern to foster involvement with diverse communities of interest in the making of a major gallery and to generate and embed plural perspectives on the objects and stories presented within it. This paper raises further questions around how participatory work is perceived, valued and shared across the sector.
Highlights
In the last decade, increasing numbers of museums and galleries worldwide have developed an array of working practices that might be termed 'participatory' or 'co-creative', which seek to involve visitors, non-visitors, community and interest groups with diverse forms of expertise and perspective in their activities (Simon, 2010; Lynch, 2011)
What forms might participatory practice take within such organisations? What opportunities and challenges are posed by the use of participatory approaches where the end result, proscribed and predetermined by the museum, is a major permanent gallery intended to engage and meet the needs of those who participated in its production but of wider audiences, including diverse local, national and international visitors? This paper explores these questions in the light of the lively debates that surround participatory practices in the international museum sector
Drawing on a single case study – the development of the newly opened Information Age gallery at the Science Museum in London – this paper aims to reflect upon the extent to which existing ideas, theories, and approaches to this type of work resonate with museum work on this scale
Summary
In the last decade, increasing numbers of museums and galleries worldwide have developed an array of working practices that might be termed 'participatory' or 'co-creative', which seek to involve visitors, non-visitors, community and interest groups with diverse forms of expertise and perspective in their activities (Simon, 2010; Lynch, 2011). Such practices are found in all kinds of museums, large and small, and those with both local and national reach. Both in scale and ambition, the participation activities that shaped Information Age sought to go further in terms of co-operation across departments to embed community involvement more fully in the exhibition development process than had been attempted previously at the Science Museum
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