National Museums NI, in partnership with the African and Caribbean Support Organisation Northern Ireland (ACSONI) and Northern Ireland Museums Council (NIMC), are among ten UK museums selected to receive a grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund, which is awarded by the Museums Association.
The awarded project titled, ‘Global Voices, Local Choices’ has secured a grant of £80,187, which will support a dedicated post for 18 months. Project partners will be working to engage marginalised communities, to avail them of a fair opportunity to assert their right to make choices relating to National Museums NI’s World Cultures Collections, such as how items within are interpreted.
The project will bring diverse cultures and perspectives into Northern Ireland’s local and national museums and will be an important learning experience for all partners and participants.
Dr Livingstone Thompson, Chair of ACSONI said: “ACSONI is pleased to be associated with this project. It is only in more recent times that the need to do justice to the memory and heritage of ethnic minorities’ communities has been appreciated. For centuries, colonial nations gave themselves the right to tell the stories about the life and experiences of people from colonised contexts.
“This project will give an opportunity to address the acquisition of artefacts, the stories that are told about them and who is best to tell these stories. It will and ought to explore how the history can be upended so that those who were treated as footnotes in the stories of others can come to tell their own stories.”
Hannah Crowdy, Head of Curatorial at National Museums NI, said: “Our ‘Global Voices, Local Choices’ project will raise awareness and understanding of these collections, and how a decolonisation approach can be implemented in a fresh and inclusive way through creativity.
“This will be an opportunity to present marginalised global voices and learn from the expertise within marginalised communities, as we seek to devise a new approach for connecting people with collections that have a complex legacy, but present significant opportunities for promoting understanding and respect and supporting good relations.”
Siobhan Stevenson, Director at Northern Ireland Museums Council said: “Northern Ireland Museums Council is delighted to partner in this project and will be keen to work with our member museums to engage them and their local communities in this journey of mutual learning and understanding. In sharing collections and creative responses to them, in public museum spaces across Northern Ireland, the project will help to raise awareness of the rich complexity and diversity of cultural heritage and identities in this place, and in doing so will help challenge misconceptions and promote empathy and understanding.”
