The idea and practice of participation has boomed in museums over the last twenty years. Not only has there been a proliferation of participatory museum practice but also a proliferation of critical dialogue about the nature of museums and participation between practitioners, researchers and those enrolled as participants. While a strand of critique draws attention to the lack of breadth of participative work, that it is too focused on small numbers and has failed to have an impact on persistent demographic inequalities in museum visiting, another strand of critique is concerned with the lack of depth, that power is never satisfactorily devolved and authority not shared. Those of us facilitating participation in museums find ourselves somehow caught – never efficient enough and never ethical enough.
This ‘in conversation’ event explores the current state of museums and participation, seeking to get to the underlying political formations and paradoxes at work in adding participation to museums. We will so do by drawing on moments of often painful personal revelation and identifying the potential moments like these might have for generating alternative political formations for collecting, conserving and heritage-making.
Berandette Lynch has been at the forefront of facilitating a deeply reflective conversation about museums and participation through key publications and projects which have politicised the sector’s understanding of the new participatory trend. In recent years this work has led her to internationalise her approach and to activate solidarity as a transformative political concept via the network she established Solidarity in Action.
Helen Graham has long been an attentive reader of, and engager with, Bernadette’s work alongside somehow, and to her increasing horror, finding herself over and over again in the same types of political quandary as an action research facilitator of museum participation.
Bernadette and Helen have got lots of questions for each other, including Helen wanting to ask… ‘is there one cake’? And them both wanting to ask each other, ‘what has (our) whiteness got to do with it?’ and ‘where does this leave our commitment to museums?’
We also want to draw you into the conversation – when we ask ‘what, exactly, have we been doing?’ that includes you too…
This in conversation event is linked to books published, or to be published, by UCL Press.
Helen Graham (2025) Deconstituting Museums: Participation’s Affective Work. London: UCL Press. Open Access link.
Berandette Lynch and Johanna Zetterstrom Sharp (eds) (2026 forthcoming) Museums and Solidarity in Action. London: UCL Press.
