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Research at UWE Bristol has transformed public awareness of Bristol's history and the impact of the Atlantic Slave trade in Britain, particularly in relation to the built environment, the evolution of racial attitudes and the continuing legacy of slavery. It raised consciousness about the connection between existing stately homes, public buildings and monuments and slavery generated wealth in Bristol, London and throughout Britain. It has stimulated and informed reinterpretations of English heritage and National trust properties and has been utilised in national website projects. Its findings also made explicit the link between Bristol's social and cultural institutions and slavery-generated wealth.
This research has also benefited the wider public by enabling the production of historically well informed teaching and tourist resources for Bristol. It has generated new museum exhibitions and informed the acquisitions policies of libraries and archives. It informed the content and interpretation, and acquisitions policies, of both national and local museum and stimulated the generation of websites, popular plays, artwork and literature.
Marcus Waithe has carried out research that has resulted in a web-based `reconstruction' of the St George's Museum, a gallery and library for artisans founded in Sheffield in 1875 by the art and social critic, John Ruskin. Impact can be demonstrated in four areas:
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.
Making Histories Visible produces visual art projects with internationally recognised museums and galleries, in which new artworks and installations activate institutional and curatorial policies to re-examine collections and collecting. By investigating the historic through the contemporary, using the mechanisms of display and interventions, youth centred workshops, symposia, web-sites and publications; we help museums find new relevance within contemporary society.
Thin Black Line(s) Tate Britain (2011/12), Cotton Global Threads Whitworth and Manchester Galleries (2011/2012), Jelly Mould Pavilions NML (2010), reflect collaborations and sustainable relationships with a wide, influential range of museum curators, directors and community leaders.
DU researchers have delivered their innovative model of participatory action research (PAR) with Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums Service (TWAM, a major regional museum service in the North east, comprising seven museums and galleries) to further social inclusion and deepen participation from socially marginalised groups. Research findings have led to: (1) enhanced income generation for TWAM, with bids citing DU research bringing in more than £0.5m at a time of shrinking resource for the museum sector; (2) the development of a major new museum gallery, which opened in July 2013; and (3) changes to professional practice consequent upon intensifying the practice of participatory working within TWAM.
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 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.
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.
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.
This case study demonstrates how research has informed and influenced the policies and practices of a leading UK museum group, the Tate; and specifically to (a) barriers to access to publicly-funded culture and (b) responses to cultural policies advocating cultural diversity amongst audiences.
Impact includes: (i) repositioning of Tate's On-Line strategy leading to a more permeable web-site; (ii) recognition and acceptance by Tate Trustees, Management and funding authorities of the significance of longitudinal social science research in shaping the plans and future development of Tate; (iii) informing and influencing the Tate's Audience Development Strategy, 2012-15; (iv) modelling conceptual categories of audiences to allow for effective audience recognition and engagement; and (v) advising Tate's learning programmes in relation to the use of new media and making them more relevant to a diverse youth audience.