A Counterpoints Arts’ Learning Lab with Errol Francis, Director of Culture& - focusing on issues surrounding diversity, access, decolonisation and restitution/reparation, in addition to questions of ‘heritage’ and the ownership of ‘collections’ in museums and other public institutions.
At a time when public museums and arts institutions are increasingly perceived as contested spaces in the context of the so-called ‘culture wars’, the work of Culture& poses a substantial challenge to what we might mean by ‘diversity and access’ together with ‘equality’ across the arts, culture and heritage sector (moving beyond tick box gestures of ‘inclusion’).
The unique methodology of The New Museum School is designed to radically re-imagine/re-structure the arts and heritage workforce, placing diversity as a driver of change, whereby public and private collections can more democratically reflect the cultural richness and complexity of the times we have both inherited and are living in and through.
Culture& strategically joins up the spaces and skills between the fields of curation and the management of arts, culture and heritage. It advocates (following the work of Stuart Hall in ‘Whose Heritage 1999) that we:
- Understand ‘heritage’ as a field which is shaped by arts and culture – a dynamic space of history, politics and cultural interests;
- That rethinking national heritage is not merely about including ‘other heritages’ to an immutable national story;
- That ‘heritage work’ demands interconnected skills between ‘practice, process and policy’.
This Learning Lab was designed in three parts: beginning with the conversation with Errol Francis in the context of the work of Culture& and the issues raised in their recent publication Black Lives Matter for the UK Heritage Sector; in addition to a new sound installation by composer Peter Adjaye in the Queen’s Presence Chamber in the Queen’s House Art Gallery. Created in response to the Armada Portrait, Adjaye’s ‘A Proposal for Radical Hospitality’ traces the painting’s legacies of empire and the roots of the transatlantic slave trade. The conversation will also focus on a recent project curated by Culture& called Cyborgs, exploring the perceived boundaries between human and non-human, race, gender and class.
Followed by a series of breakout groups – with final feedback from breakout groups.
Like all Learning Labs, the aim was to learn from each other and to share insights and exchange diverse ways of thinking and working.
Dr Errol Francis
Errol was appointed CEO of Culture& in 2016. He has substantial experience of community engagement around mental health and the arts with minority groups and was formerly Joint Programme Lead at the Sainsbury Centre of Mental Health and Programme Manager at the Department of Health Race for Health programme. He was programme manager at Arts Council England, Inspire Curatorial Fellowship Programme; Head of Arts at the Mental Health Foundation and artistic director of the highly acclaimed Anxiety Arts Festival London 2014, Acting Out Nottingham 2015 and Hysteria 2017-2018 public engagement programmes. He is Visiting Professor at the University of West London. Errol was awarded his PhD from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, where his research focused on postcolonial artistic responses to museums. He was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of West London in 2017.
