Advancing equity: Challenging embedded whiteness in London Museum

Since October 2020, RCMG has collaborated with staff at London Museum, alongside external partners, to explore forms of embedded whiteness at London Museum. ‘Embedded whiteness’ refers to the ideas, systems, ways of working and normative values that can support, directly or indirectly, the continuation of racial inequities and a lack of racial diversity in the workforce and audience of heritage and cultural institutions.

The research brought together leading-edge research in museums, race and whiteness and thinking and practice around the potential for museums to forge new relationships and ways of working which take up and contribute to antiracist thinking and practice and explore new professional and social realities conducive to equity and inclusive transformation. As part of the process London Museum became a site for collaborative research, reflection, experimentation and sharing, RCMG worked with a range of staff across the organisation, alongside experts in the field, to develop new insights around embedded whiteness in heritage and cultural institutions and practical techniques for both challenging whiteness and working towards the production of a museum reality, a place to work in and visit, where equity is experienced and felt.

The project addressed the following research questions:

• How is whiteness reproduced in the practices, policies, organisational cultures, exhibitionary formats and everyday actions of museums, and in particular London Museum?

• How can whiteness be seen, understood and disrupted in the museum context?

• How can people at all levels of a museum organisation understand whiteness as a form of power, and be empowered to disinvest in whiteness?

• Recognising that many individuals, organisations and wider stakeholders employ tactics to address racism that can actually serve to inhibit, block and contain change, what strategies and actions can we identify to support the redesign of policies, practices and cultures in ways that ensure greater inclusivity for all at the Museum of London?

The research addressed the research questions through four distinct strands of activity:

Research and analysis

Three working papers were developed and an analysis of the programmes, initiatives and experiences were undertaken to develop a deeper understanding of museum work, interventions, and the production of whiteness within the particular context of London Museum.

Development and deep self-reflection

This strand offered a supported space and a highly structured sequence of individual and group activities and workshops for staff drawn from across different parts of the museum in order to examine entrenched forms of privilege and racism within their own professional contexts and explore strategies to address these.

Action

The action strand trialled news ways of working, approaches and strategies. It resulted in the co-development of a Race Equity Action Plan for the museum and a Tool for Culture Change.

Sharing and testing

Throughout all stages of the research emergent findings were shared with staff through a small series of structured opportunities to test out these findings.

The collaborative action research supported London Museum to embed deeper criticality and reflection, and fostered organisational learning and transformation to challenge embedded and systemic whiteness across different levels of the museum. 

The action research also resulted in a Race Equity Action Plan for the museum and a Tool for Culture Change (PDF 41KB).