The Interview

Talking to the British Museum about broadening accessibility in the UK's culture sector

This Walpole Culture Month, we speak to Sarah Saunders, Head of Learning and National Partnerships at the British Museum, about the cultural sector's initiatives to showcase diverse narratives, the challenges it faces in reaching new audiences and reimagining the British Museum as a space for communities to feel welcome, represented, and equal
16th Oct 2024
The Interview Talking to the British Museum about broadening accessibility in the UK's culture sector

Walpole: Tell us a little about your role, and what makes you passionate about what you do?

Sarah Saunders: I lead the British Museum’s public engagement and partnership work in London and across the UK. This involves managing five key areas: national programmes; learning and inclusion; interpretation and visitor consultation; volunteers; and Treasure and the Portable Antiquities Scheme (the largest community archaeology project in the UK). I engage with all areas of the collection, which makes my work so varied and interesting.

Last year, we reached over eight million people across the UK through our national programmes, long-term loans and partnership galleries. Meanwhile, our learning programmes, digital experiences, volunteer-led tours and public events in London engaged over 500,000 people of all ages.

For me, seeing the impact of the work we deliver in communities makes me passionate about what I do. Pushing the boundaries of visitor experiences really energises me – from creating immersive digital experiences for schools co-designed by pupils to collaboration opportunities with communities to create new content, responses or displays. Throughout my career, I have always championed collaboration, and I think that comes from my design background. I believe that by working together in diverse teams, we can achieve so much more.

How have you seen engagement with cultural institutions evolve throughout your career?

I’ve worked in the culture sector for over 20 years and, in that time, I’ve seen a great deal of change as institutions have embraced a much wider social purpose and looked to attract more diverse audiences.

My first role in a museum was as Student Education Officer at the V&A. That was an exciting new role that sought to address a need to be more inclusive for the thousands of students who came to the V&A, to attract a larger young audience and to create a buzz. That work at the V&A was part of its FuturePlan and accompanying Culture in Crisis, which focused on supporting the organisation to modernise, increasing its inclusivity to a wider, more diverse demographic. The V&A is a real innovator in engagement and many of the frameworks I helped to embed are still relevant to cultural institutions today.

Other areas that I have seen blossom are the changing ways we collaborate with communities in socially engaged practices. Funders supporting this kind of work have really helped us to do more and to do it better. Years of research and learning from each other has grown confidence that the work we do with and in communities really matters in supporting happy and healthy lives through cultural experiences.

As part of your role, you lead the British Museum’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion policy. How has this informed your audience engagement strategy?

Leading on EDI policy has had a major impact on how I think about everything we do at the museum. EDI is about removing and reducing disadvantages, meeting people’s needs and encouraging people to participate. A major part of my role is to raise awareness of the importance of EDI as a major part of our public duty across every department and function.

When I started at the British Museum, I wanted to ensure that all policy and plans truly embrace inclusion. To create a holistic approach, I formed a team with the Head of HR and together we have recruited two EDI Managers and developed a new structure for cross-departmental EDI leadership that ensures greater equity for staff, volunteers and visitors across everything we do.

We have consulted externally and created staff networks for Global Majority (a collective term for people of Indigenous, African, Asian and Latin American descent), Disability and LGBTQI+ groups. There is a great deal of work to do and it is ongoing, but there is now more visible evidence of how we are improving each year. We work in greater depth with different communities and carry out research into collections to enabling more dialogue. We are also researching and presenting more diverse narratives, including African and Caribbean histories, South Asian history, Disability history and LGBTQI+ history.

The future is bright and through our plans to reimagine the British Museum, we will strive for everyone to feel welcome, be represented and to be a part of our future.

What inclusivity campaigns have you seen within the cultural sector that you admire?

We recently worked in partnership with Manchester Museum on a co-curated gallery as part of its ‘hello future’ redevelopment project. From the start, Manchester Museum's bold and exciting mission was ‘to become the most inclusive, imaginative and caring museum you will visit’. Having worked on several capital redevelopment projects, I understand how challenging this ambition was to realise. I really admired the sheer determination and energy that everyone put in to ensure this ambition was not compromised.

Having this overarching mission, prioritised and endorsed by the Director, was vital to ensuring all parties involved realised these aims in every aspect of the project. It was such an inspiring project to be part of and to learn from. The reimagined museum, now open and thriving, demonstrates that if you put in the effort and work together with communities, museums can become ever more equitable and caring.

This project really resonated with me as I had just finished developing V&A Dundee’s mission to be a ‘Living Room for the City’ – somewhere everyone feels at home. I have always believed that our cultural venues are places of community where people of all nations, faiths, beliefs and cultures can come together to share ideas, company, experiences. It is so fulfilling to see this happening more and more.

What challenges does the cultural sector face in broadening accessibility to institutions?

Some of the largest barriers to broadening accessibility can broadly be categorised as physical, financial, geographical and social. Physically, the fabric of our building is old and requires upgrading to ensure people can experience an equitable visit. Financially, people are struggling and when it is hard to put food on the table, visiting a cultural organisation is not a priority. So, we need to work harder than ever to ensure that we can create and fund initiatives that demonstrate value to health, wellbeing and education.

There are many areas in the UK that are less well-served by culture and lots of people are unable to travel, so geographical barriers are another challenge. And finally, there are many social barriers to broadening access. The British Museum must remain relevant to the needs of a wide-ranging audience by integrating different viewpoints and perspectives into our narratives and representing far broader histories that include everyone. We need to articulate a clear mission and purpose, and to speak about our values so people can choose to visit based on those values and commitments to accessibility and inclusion.

Tell us about an aspect of your approach to the staging of the British Museum’s forthcoming exhibitions, Silk Roads and Hew Locke: what have we here?, that have been designed to break down barriers for potential new audiences?

All our exhibitions give us exciting opportunities to engage new audiences and build more a sustainable museum. For Silk Roads, over 900 people attended our community preview, spanning many faiths and diverse cultural heritage. The development of the exhibition was innovative in that three curators came together, along with our interpretation team, to develop the narrative. Our British Museum Young People's Programme designed a Friday Late called 'Barter and Bazaar', which thousands of young people attended, and the museum’s marketing team also created a special £5 ticket deal to make the exhibition accessible. All of these initiatives help us grow new audiences for the future.

Working with renowned Guyanese-British artist Hew Locke on Hew Locke: what have we here? has helped us to engage and support more teachers and secondary school pupils with teaching and learning about Black history and the history of British imperialism. This exhibition builds on work we have been doing for a number of years with external partners to create resources for the classroom and to support the teaching of Black history through teacher events. For Hew Locke: what have we here, we will have a free teacher preview evening and free school mornings especially tailored for schools to visit. This work is so important in ensuring that we engage openly with questions of history, ownership and identity.

> Discover what's on at Walpole cultural institutions, as well as around Britain, in our Culture Month Guide 2024

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