Reciprocity, accountability, empowerment: emancipatory principles and practices in the museum

Abstract

In the 1980s, as the disability movement gathered momentum in the UK, a powerful conceptual tool emerged in the form of what became known as the social model of disability. The social model, widely debated but nevertheless still influential today, rejects an individualist, medicalized conception of disability and instead draws attention to the multiple barriers which exclude disabled people from fully participating in society. Building on these ideas in the early 1990s, disability studies academics began to examine the ways that disabled people had also been excluded from the research process. Challenging the way that disabled people had historically been used and exploited as ‘research subjects’, a new research paradigm emerged which came to be known as emancipatory disability research. This new paradigm aims to give disabled people control over the researchagenda, seeks to benefit those involved in the research process and ensure that outputs are accountable to disabled people, in the way their views and experiences are represented. This research philosophy marks a significant shift in thinking and aims to tackle fundamental power inequalities within the research process itself. In this new model, the role of the researcher as expert is challenged as disabled people’s embodied knowledge about their impairments is given an equal footing to the researcher’s knowledge. One of the central aims of emancipatory research is that the process should be used as a tool to change society. This chapter will explore the implications emancipatory research principlesand practice might hold for museums. I shall argue that emancipatory methods can usefully inform the ways in which museums establish relationships with disabled communities; relationships that move beyond short-term consultation and a narrow focus on creating physical access to ones which are genuinely collaborative, holistic in outlook, equitable and inclusive. I briefly review the museum context and the ways in which the sector has respondedto disability issues to date before unpacking the concept of emancipatory research practice to identify the principles and characteristics that underpin this approach. I conclude by reviewing recent work at the Holocaust Centre, in north Nottinghamshire, England, and a project which used an emancipatory approach to support a group of young disabled people to work collaboratively with staff at the Centre’s Memorial Museum, challenging both issues of access and the representation of the disability history of the Holocaust. This grassroots approach aimed to enable the young disabled people to gain access to power and decision making ‘behind the scenes’ with the project acting as a catalyst for change within the museum.