I invite you to contribute papers for this strand which will illustrate, explore and debate contemporary education and learning interventions and positions in museums, art galleries and libraries and the roles they play (or can or should play) as critical catalysts for sustainably and change.

Background:

Public museums, art galleries and libraries have become dominant features of the landscapes of countries worldwide. Although often reduced to mere preservers and conservers (or lenders in the case of libraries), they are in fact first and foremost, educational institutions that provide a plethora of lifelong and adult learning opportunities (UNESCO, 1997). As such, they are making contributions to community, cultural and social development. But the arts and cultural sector rests in the centre of competing discourses, and these have are having a profound impact.

Governments, who provide the funding bases and speak the language of market forces, demand these institutions contribute to wealth creation, shape national identity, generate social cohesion, provide employment-related and technological skills, and meet new ‘customer’ needs through learner-centred and self-directed learning activities. Yet Hewison (2014) challenges, “the role of government is not to occupy or dominate the public realm…but to act as a guarantor of its integrity” (p.226).

As social and cultural fabrics of communities fray under neoliberalism, progressive museum scholars and professionals and librarians promote quite different ideals in and for their institutions. Without the capacity to seek information, to enhance knowledge, to have opportunities to debate, to think through issues, and to make their voices heard, people risk becoming more and more marginalised. The role, therefore, of public museums and libraries is to understand and respond to struggles for equality, justice and change – to be agents and players in social justice, change and development. Nightingale and Sandell (2012) refer to this as moving issues of equality and human rights from the margins of their work, to the centre. Museums and libraries must re-position themselves to promote the power of the human aesthetic dimension, collective engagement through creativity, the imagination and the arts/literature, as vital to social fulfilment. Information and communication need to be re-orientated as essential elements of social empowerment and development; education need to be returned to a more intentional process, operationalised to its full, transformative potential to work consciously in the interests of people, and not the market.

Yet Janes (2009) reminds us that in all the books, studies and debate

concerned with the most pressing problems on the planet such as climate change and a bewildering array of local concerns pertaining to health and well-being of myriad communities the world over…museums [and galleries] are rarely, if ever discussed…causing me to conclude that the irrelevance of [these] social institutions is a matter of record (p.26).

Durrani (2014) argues that

Public libraries are in decline, not because communities no longer need them, as we are so often told, but because the service has failed to respond to the needs of society...Under capitalism [libraries have] developed into one-track, blinkered [spaces] which see society and its needs from the perspectives of the dominant classes, leaving out the majority of working people with a tokenistic service with claims of being open to all.

References

Durrani, S. (2014). Progressive librarianship: Perspectives from Kenya and Britain,1979-   2010. London: Vita Books.

Hewison, R. (2014). Cultural capital: The rise and fall of Creative Britain. London:Versobooks.

Janes, R. (2009). Museums in a troubled world. Milton Park, Abingdon, USA: Routledge.

Nightingale, E. & Sandell, R. (Eds.) (2012). Museums, equality and social justice.London: Routledge.

UNESCO (1997). Museums and libraries. Hamburg, Germany: IEU.

Questions:

Some of the questions that will inform conversations in this Strand include:

1. How are libraries or museums working pedagogically with diverse marginalised populations (both within and beyond institutional walls)?
2. How are they negotiating competing government/social discourses and responding to social/community needs?
3. How do exhibitions act as dialogic and critical practices of education and learning?
4. What kinds of partnerships work or are required?
5. What types of social issues and debates are being taken up and what are the results?
6. How are these institutions positioning and debate ‘education’ and ‘learning’?
7. What lifelong learning and adult education practices are effective and why?
8. How do these institutions understand the place and role of the arts and/or information acquisition in advancing sustainability, and social development?
9. What is the place and role of technology? How are its potentials and challenges being taken up or debated?
10. If Google now plays the role of organising the world’s information and making it universally accessible, what is the role of libraries? How are they redefining themselves and their pedagogical practices?
11. What is the place and role of the arts and aesthetics in local regional development? How do libraries and/or museums and galleries advance this?

Conference Schedule: 1700, Wednesday 7 October (thematic introduction to Strands)

Speaker profile: Professor Darlene Clover