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The History Department at York has a long-standing commitment (embodied in the work of James Walvin, Simon Smith, Douglas Hamilton, Henrice Altink and Geoff Cubitt) to path-breaking research into the history and memory of transatlantic slavery. Our researchers have worked closely with museums and educational practitioners to establish a `virtuous circle' in which research: (i) influences the content of heritage and educational presentations; (ii) reflects on those presentations, gauging public response and prompting stakeholder debate; (iii) provides constructive feedback to museums and others. This impact case study shows how research by members of the Department has contributed to each stage of this process. Professor James Walvin's research publications from 1993 until his retirement in 2005 revealed how slavery has shaped the nature of contemporary British society, a body of work that significantly contributed to the slave trade's inclusion in the National Curriculum in 2008. In addition to his on-going record as an exhibition curator, historical advisor and commentator on slavery, he advised and helped create the York AHRC-funded `1807 Commemorated' project (2007-9), principle investigator Laurajane Smith (Archaeology) and co-investigator Geoff Cubitt; Data Management Group Walvin. This project helped heritage professionals and other stakeholders understand and analyse the extensive museum activity on slavery generated by the 2007 Bicentenary of the Act Abolishing the Slave Trade, and led to innovations in museum practice and new collaborative relationships within the sector.
The last twenty years has seen a gradual transformation of museums from being collections-focused to becoming audience-centred organisations. Graham Black, a `practitioner academic' with a proven commercial track record, has played an important role in enabling this change. His research has been instrumental in developing alternative approaches to display, activities and events, and online provision. Black argues that the speed of change in the external world - a `perfect storm' involving rapid demographic change, generational shift and the influence of new media —must be matched by an equally speedy response in the definition, mission and public practice of museums (`Developing Audiences for the Twenty-First-Century Museum', 2013). Through publications, talks and exemplar design practices his work has helped to shape public debates on museums and user participation/user generated content, and on museums and civil engagement, in the UK, Europe and beyond.
The Ure Museum is at the heart of the Department of Classics, and a key part of the UoA's leadership in digital humanities work. The database has generated very considerable impact on: i) the development of the digital humanities beyond the discipline base, ii) digital animation work and pedagogical practice in schools, through thousands of visitor interactions, scores of workshop events, and several special projects and iii) activities in museums and the arts. The Ure Museum's ever-growing appeal among academics, students and the general public, quantified below, makes it powerful example of impact in UK Classics. All these impact-bearing activities stem from the Museum's function as a research collection and in particular Prof. Amy Smith's (Professor, Curator of Ure Museum, 2004- ) creation of its online database, constantly updated and enhanced, which disseminates knowledge of, and research on, the collection's holdings to as broad an audience as possible on a 24-7 basis; it is also part of the EU's digital library, `Europeana' as well as providing the data for a number of other impactful projects.
Research by Simon Tanner has had a significant effect on open access policy in the museum sector. His research demonstrated that the cost of managing intellectual property and maintaining payment structures in cultural heritage collections almost always outweighs actual revenue. Museums, galleries and archives internationally have embraced unmediated, open access to digitised assets and Tanner's work is frequently acknowledged as a catalyst for this change in policy. Since 2008, the number of high quality digital images freely available from art museums has risen to more than 2 million. The key beneficiaries have been the general public, schools and life- long learners.
The case study demonstrates how research conducted by staff in the Centre for Museology has informed the development of innovative display and interpretation practices in public museums in the UK and overseas. It shows how applied critical and reflexive museology has been used in a range of curatorial contexts, thereby directly affecting institutional practice and, in turn, providing visitors and volunteers with new opportunities for engagement. The impact is evident in the curatorial process, involving both staff and stakeholders, and in critical responses from practitioners and policy-makers.
Beard, Osborne and Vout were invited in 2008 by the Keeper of Antiquities, Dr Lucilla Burn, to assist in re-displaying the Greek and Roman objects in the Fitzwilliam Museum, with the support of the AHRC. Through the reorganisation of the galleries, the arrangement of exhibits and accompanying written materials (labels, information boards, website), their research on museum display, Greek and Roman sculpture, Greek vase painting, and Greek and Roman epigraphy has been made accessible to the public and transformed (real and virtual) visitors' understanding of the manufacture, distribution, use, preservation and collection of the artefacts displayed. Visitors, students and professionals in museology have registered — positively — the distinctive nature of this re-display.
This research was initiated in 2003 in recognition of the neglect by museums and galleries across the UK of disability history, arts and culture. Before the research began, disabled people — comprising the UK's largest minority — were almost entirely absent from and/or misrepresented in the UK's cultural heritage institutions. Three distinct but sequential projects investigated this and, through a programme of action research:
- stimulated and supported experimentation in museum exhibition and learning practice in the UK and internationally, enabling museums and galleries to confidently engage visitors in debates surrounding disability, disability rights, hate crime and, more broadly, discrimination and societal attitudes towards physical and mental difference;
- developed new approaches to interpretation and audience engagement that have changed the ways in which general visitors and schoolchildren think about physical and mental differences and the rights and entitlements of disabled people;
- pioneered new approaches to museum practice that have informed policy and set standards for best practice not only in the UK but internationally.
The three key areas of impact are:
Impact 1 is significant because it has directly and demonstrably affected the ways that two groups of museum professionals deal with their interface with the public. Impact 2 is significant because icons are perhaps the most important - and certainly the best known to a broad public — manifestation of Byzantine culture; changes in the way that they are presented to museum audiences and other readers of museum pamphlets have a direct impact on public understanding of Byzantine art and culture. Impact 3 is significant because it affects how Byzantine history and art history will be understood and taught to the next generation of Italian university students (Italy has the highest proportion of students at secondary school and university level taking modules in Byzantine studies of any country in Europe).
The practice-based research output nanoq: flat out and bluesome, a cultural life of polar bears has had impact on cultural life, civil society and on both artistic practitioners and museum/gallery professionals. These impacts have been created through the interdisciplinary nature of the work, and have challenged engrained approaches to the divide between art and museology, and to fixed perceptions of human interactions with the natural world.
Evidence for the cultural impacts and influence on civil society, through provoking consideration of environmental issues on the level of an emotive response to changing values and the consequences of societal norms, is primarily provided through reviews of the outcomes themselves, mainly through arts and science journals, book chapters and testimonials by scholars and practitioners in a variety of fields. Similarly, impact on the approach to professional practice in art curation and, particularly, in museology is similarly documented in the public domain.
Five historic Blackfoot First Nations hide shirts held in the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM) since 1893 were lent to two museums in Alberta, Canada, to promote cross-cultural exchange of knowledge. Under historic assimilation policies (1885-1970), most heritage objects had been removed from Blackfoot communities to museums, contributing to the destabilization of Blackfoot cultural identity and poor mental and physical health typical of indigenous populations. For the first time in a century over 500 Blackfoot people were able to handle objects made before the assimilation era. This provoked the sharing of cultural knowledge within the Blackfoot community, led to improved self-esteem, and intensified interest and pride in cultural identity. In exchange, Blackfoot people shared cultural knowledge about the shirts with museum professionals from all UK museums with significant Blackfoot collections, trained them in new approaches to museology, and co-curated exhibitions sharing Blackfoot perspectives in Alberta and Oxford reaching over 50,000 people.