I had never been on a picket line until the USS strikes. It was a terrifying – and very lonely decision to take – to be on strike for 12 days (alas I was ill for the first 2 of the full 14). I took courage from friends and colleagues striking at other universities (especially @amy_ryall in Sheffield and @rotster in Leicester), but I had no idea what my own colleagues would think (and still don’t – I have been the only one striking from my department – the Sainsbury Centre at UEA).

I was consciously leaving piles of work behind (some of it already delayed due to large workload), at a time when I was already incredibly stressed and dealing with things at work beyond the remit of my contract. I was leaving unsupported the team I manage. I was not doing things – my own CPD for example – that ultimately would have left me better off. I was not communicating with colleagues on the management team, including my own line manager. I took striking, withdrawing my labour – not doing any work and consequently not being paid – very seriously. I did not check my work emails, or even use the time for ‘work-related’ research and writing. I have been completely on strike. And it has been stressful.

But as time has gone on, I have understood more and more why this has been important. More and more why this has been the single most significant thing I have done in my post, and beyond it. After years in universities (Birmingham, Cambridge, Leicester), as a student and now working in one (UEA), I couldn’t *not* have gone on strike. What was the point of all that education, of everything I have fought for up to this point, if I didn’t demonstrate and practice what I preach? Fairness and justice.

So – why? The strike began as a pension dispute about a change from a defined benefit system, to that of defined contribution, and a potential loss of £10k per year, or £200k in retirement. Money which is deferred payment for work already done and promised through our contracts, but that was effectively going to be taken from us. This affects worst those setting out in their careers, those on zero-hour AT contracts, those who are still students. Those whose current posts are precarious.

About six weeks ago, I had no idea what DB/DC really even meant, let alone all the other pension details I’ve learnt about, or at least come to recognise, so quickly. And then things began to unfold and crumble in front of us. Thanks to some fantastic academics and journalists, especially on Twitter (@DrJoGrady, @ProfAFinlayson, @JosephineCumbo, @mikeOtsuka, @jntod) things were unpicked very rapidly. The pension valuation was based on dodgy maths. We discovered that the process for voting to accept the valuation was undemocratic, and the number/type of people who had signed it all off was fudged. That Oxford and Cambridge colleges had been counted bizarrely and wrongly. That tiny institutions were part of USS and having the same weight as massive universities. We witnessed a farce on twitter late one night with regard to negotiating meetings with UUK not having a clue what they were doing. And to cut a long story very short, a proposal was eventually put on the table. It was rubbish (check the pension calculator to see how – meaning paying in more and getting less from it, and also including having to reschedule teaching lost by striking – unpaid). There was despondency. It was a horrible day or two of waiting and wondering. Really horrible. There was self-doubt. Despair. But the proposal was overwhelmingly rejected. By all of us. #NoCapitulation

Numerous twitter streams and blogs explain all this far better than I do. So instead of analysing things I don’t fully understand, here’s a list of some of the things I have learnt – lessons for life:

1) Solidarity

I haven’t met so many amazing, interesting, wonderful, friendly people since starting my job 18 months ago. Despite working at UEA, I have never felt such a part of the university. It’s been far better than any one to one meeting, or networking scenario, or trying to work out who does what in which department, when I’ve been to meetings in other buildings on campus. It has been real. Social. Political. Dynamic. Passionate. Coffee-fuelled. Baking-shared. With dogs. And singing. And snow. Gather a group together who are fighting for the future of education and this is what happens. We are the university.

2) The union makes us strong

It does. I had only just joined the union (actually not because of the strikes, but because the safety and unity of membership is important). I am in awe of how I was welcomed in. In awe of the hard work done on our behalf by the union reps and staff and all those working hard to share the latest updates (thank you Brett, Claudina, Trevor, Amanda et al.) We all share a common purpose and a common goal. Strength in unity. And strength in number. And it’s across the whole country. We are part of a big thing. Solidarity with university workers we will never meet, but feel united in this. I watched ‘Pride’ last night and felt it. We are the university.

3) Not just lecturers

This has been a very important rallying cry. Universities are all their people. Not just lecturers or academics, but people working in public engagement, libraries, museums, archives, professional services, teaching and learning, administrators etc etc (and huge apologies to those I have missed). I am only sad that membership of UCU is not open to staff on pay-bands below Grade 6 (I think?), as this meant that many of my colleagues at the Sainsbury Centre who may have supported the strike otherwise could not join in. (This tells me both that my colleagues need to be paid much better but also that the union might rethink its membership criteria so that it’s not so lonely on the picket line for a museum professional?) The support from ATs, PhD and other students has been particularly incredible, often losing their entire earnings to strike. We are the university.

4) Students are absolutely amazing

‘Their working experience is our learning experience’ as many inspiring students shouted, amongst many other brilliant statements on the picket line. Students came forth in their thousands. With messages of support. With banners. With Students’ Unions issuing statements in support of the strike up and down the country. And then they started occupying. Calling out the overpaid VCs with their pornstar martinis. Demanding meetings. Demanding fairness. Demanding what it was that they had come to university for. I will never forget the powerful speeches by students Michael Kyriacou and @MaddieColledge. We are the university.

5) Twitter is transformative

I’m a bit addicted to Twitter at the best of times. But this was something else. The speed at which new news emerged, was shared. Statistics were pulled apart. Documents were analysed in real time by world leading experts – for free, and in their own time. Because this is important. But also we saw Dame Lego VC, the Solidarity Dinosaur, fabulous, funny, creative people doing fabulous, funny, creative things with social media. People began sharing more widely. Their stresses and worries and what it was like to work in their situation, talking openly beyond the pension crisis, and to the general state of being overworked and under-valued, with ridiculous systems and metrics to judge us, from REF/TEF/impact, to cultures of bullying and being stressed and being expected to work 50+ hour weeks. We had conversations on and offline. We made new virtual friends. We are the university.

6) Remember this

Space and time for just chatting to each other is vital. We need to recreate, and ensure this interdisciplinary, interdepartmental socialising, idea-sharing and change-making continues. The creativity shown by so many was inspirational. Banners made. Slogans, puns, fabulous statements of support and rejecting the lies we’ve been fed. One of the highlights at UEA was that Jon McGregor refused to cross the picket line for a lecture, and instead, the Students’ Union held a wonderful ‘Writers for the Strike’ event – with Jon McGregor, Rebecca Scott, James Meek and inspiring words from students. There was the alternative university every day. Coming together for a rally. For rousing speeches, not just by politicians, but by students. Who gave the best speeches by far. Going to the pub together. New friends. Rabbits of resistance. We are the university.

7) University museums are the university

Yet it seems as though university museums currently sit somewhere between. Or even, sadly. apart. I was the only one from my university museum striking. It was lonely. But I discovered many others in university museums elsewhere (through twitter) who were on strike. It is not helpful for us to sit outside the university as some would have us do. We sit in a boundary space – not entirely academics, not entirely professional services – we teach, we research, we work with the public, we develop object-based learning. We are asked both to conform to the university (e.g. through REF processes), yet we are somehow set outside it. What can we learn from this? And what will happen (for example through the University Museums Group) as a result? We are the university.

8) Pension cuts hit women most

And in the sadly male dominated museum patriarchy – where most museum workers are women, but most museum directors are men, this is all the more disturbing. In that sense, it was a joy to be on the university picket line which seemed more balanced in terms of gender than the average museum (although I know the patriarchy is alive and well in universities too). But women will suffer the most from the pension cut proposals. And I learnt about Athena Swan, and wonder why we haven’t talked about it at the Sainsbury Centre yet. We will now. We are the university.

9) Marketisation

This is all part of a wider picture. Privatisation. Brexit. Trump. Where education is a commodity and not seen as having intrinsic value. Where it is something to be bought. A culture of students as consumer versus rest of the university as service provider. This makes me feel sick. Where privatisation means that there are more and more people struggling. Where VC pay goes up and up and the empire is worth more than the staff. This is not what education is. We are the university.

10) Strikes work

See what we have done already? It’s amazing. It’s not too late to join UCU (or whatever union you can join) and fight for what is right. The fight continues.

See you on the picket line. #NoCapitulation #wearetheuniversity

I’ve just read the Mendoza Review on the train to the Museums Association conference in Manchester. I haven’t yet read any comments/opinion pieces on it yet, so these are my immediate, rather ill-structured reflections. I am sure many conversations will emerge in Manchester over the next 3 days, and in the coming weeks, and my views that follow may shift…
So, what did I think? Although there is much to welcome (not least the joining of forces between various sector organisations – I really like the use of lottery funding for much needed back-of-house development – p.15, the need to continue diversifying audiences and workforces – p.40, to develop leadership – p.57, ensure digital understanding by senior leaders – p.61, and focus on collections – p.44), I have to say I feel slightly disappointed…
The report asks: ‘What can government do to assist in creating and maintaining a thriving, sustainable and effective museum sector in Britain?’ (p.6) My answer: it can provide funding, enable another ‘Renaissance’. The report states: ‘we estimate that the government provided total funding of approximately £844m in 2016/2017.’ (p.7) But what does this mean? Are we supposed to think this is a lot, a generous gesture from the government? How does this figure compare with the government spending on education, health, sport, defence? Surely that would give a better indication of how much museums are really valued? And what about their intrinsic value?

And then there, in black and white: ‘It is unlikely that there will be significant additional money available for the sector in the immediate future. The main thrust of our recommendations is, therefore, to ensure that we use existing funding in the best way possible.’ (p.7, italics mine). Dash our hopes straightaway. 

Despite trying to think about regional activity and the local placemaking agenda of museums, the report still reads as a very London-centric (or certainly nationals-centric) report. And as such it is hierarchical (and somewhat patronising?) in tone. The section on ‘National responsibilities for national museums’ grated particularly (p.14): ‘The Review team recognises the excellent work already taking place, but would like it to be more strategic to ensure audiences and museums outside London get what they need from the nationals’. Fine – yes, this is of course an important aim – but what about what the regionals might give the nationals? Nationals need things and can learn hugely from the non-nationals/regionals and their approaches. Nationals are still going to be getting the lion share of the funding. ‘Our great national museums are open to all and free to all’ (p.8) – they also benefit from huge numbers of tourists, and while I don’t begrudge free entry in the slightest – would that all museums were free for all? – I wonder at the financial sense here. It’s also fantastic that recommendation 9 is to grant local authority museums more freedom, but where is the funding and support to actually enable this to happen?

Our ‘wonderfully different’ (p.5) museums are exactly that. And there’s a definite recognition here building on things like the MA’s Museums Change Lives that museums can ‘bring people together and promote community cohesion’ (p.5) even going further to suggest that they are ‘integral to placemaking and economic regeneration’ (p.5) This, I would argue, happens par excellence in places other than national museums. It is fantastic that growing and diversifying audiences is prioritised, but I couldn’t help being slightly disappointed that issues around access haven’t been spelt out – mentioning different types of sensory engagements for all, for example – and importantly physical access into spaces (not least for those with disabilities who don’t seem to get a mention), but emotional/intellectual access (including through interpretation – a word not mentioned at all?) for all too.
I enjoyed the brief summary in Annex B – a history of museums policy – but was disappointed by the comments on Renaissance. ‘The MLA took on responsibility for Renaissance, which never quite took off.’ (p.84) Now I’m a career ‘child’ of Renaissance and the DCMS/DfES Strategic Commissioning programmes (the latter not mentioned in this report). Starting out my first paid role in the sector working for a hub museum in 2005, and then moving to a second one in 2007 enabled the most dynamic, risk-taking and exciting work with local communities that I have been able to enjoy. There was funding. I thought the desire and ability to engage with the most disadvantaged communities was the norm, and that there would subsequently always be funding to support such work. How wrong I was. Renaissance funding was abandoned: ‘The 2009 Selwood report reviewed it and concluded that it had suffered a lack of strategic focus, as well as funding. A new strategy replaced the existing nine regional hubs with 22 partnerships funded on merit.’ (p.84)
There is little about the funding crisis for HEFCE funded university museums too, although a review is promised. The mention of ‘over 60 university courses in the UK specialising in museum practice, producing hundreds of graduates in museum studies each year’ but that are not necessarily providing students with the knowledge needed is significant and points towards a new partnership model perhaps.
So – my main thought – some good stuff, but there’s a still a drastic need for regional funding. Anyway, that will do for now. I’ve just checked into the conference and my hotel and am all ready for #museums2017. Here we go.  

Today has been extraordinary. Adrenaline, excitement and pride. Overcome by emotion, keeping going and carrying on – and realising that the reason why I am doing it all, is because I want to get it right for these children, for the people and communities we are entrusted to inspire. And that’s such a huge thing – a privilege and a responsibility – and hard to think about, and hard to write about without raising lots of questions…

I’ve prepared for today more than I would for any academic conference, any MA lecture, any training course for museum professionals, even actually for my PhD viva. Loose preparation, willing to change at any movement.

The reason why… 180 VIPs from West Earlham Infant School in Norwich. It had to be right. I don’t know if it was right, but I think it was ok. It worked I think.

What amazing children.

I’m still settling in here. I don’t know the city yet. I don’t know its politics. But I know that this was for these children. And thank you to all my colleagues at the Sainsbury Centre who knew this and suggested it. All credit – and so much more – to the children – Reception, Y1 and Y2. I’ve never done an assembly for infants. I’ve never really even led a workshop session for this age-group.

Yet they were that wonderful mix – of being utterly excited, yet utterly well-behaved – enthusiastic and full of ideas and questions. We talked about the queen, about Fiji and its objects, about the Sainsbury Centre, and about why the queen loved Fiji, and why she was here today. We passed Fijian objects around, and looked at Fijian coins. We talked about corgis and pets. The queen was the official VIP, but it was actually the children who were the real VIPs. The pride in the crowns and flags and banners and chains they’d made said it all.

My favourite comment of the day was when someone asked the Mayoress if she was a pirate. What an amazing question. (And yes, she did look a bit like one and offered her pirate hat to one of the pupils, plonking it on their head!) The children all answered questions, asked new ones… They met new people, interacted with the student ambassadors, walked through crowds, answered news reporter questions, saw students cheering, saw students still in pyjamas, walked through the whole campus.

This (campus – or new experiences – or asking questions) is for you. One day soon. Now.

An absolute credit to their teachers and families.
I feel slightly emotional about it, but this feels like a direction… so impossible to evaluate or quantify… There’s something about an ethical imperative here.

Learning is for everyone.
It opens doors. It opens imaginations. It opens.

2017 here we are. Happy New Year!

2016 was a year of change. It involved big life events and big professional events, entangled with big world events, often all occurring simultaneously, both heartening and disheartening. In hindsight, it was hard. Exciting, challenging, inspiring, joyful, new – but also exhausting, sad and hard.

It started with a blustery New Year’s Day walk at Gaddings Dam (Britain’s highest beach). People then here, now not here. Rather too many of them. Warrior Treasures at the Royal Armouries. Working there with some of the most creative and brilliant people I’ve met. And leaving, just as I was settling in. Selling my lovely home in Sheffield. Packing up a life and moving away from Yorkshire after 11 years. Saying goodbye. More loving and leaving. Submitting my final PhD corrections and graduating. Dr Woodall. A German Easter. Hay on Wye. Latitude. Croatia. A few job applications. An interview at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich. Bunnies and a lake. Head of Learning. A new place. New networks. New job challenges. Art at a university. Just what I’ve been looking for? A house to rent in a new city, a new region. New people. New places. East Anglia. Exploring. Not knowing.

And I adopted my cat, Molly, on 23 January 2016. Amidst all the change, she is a constant (albeit never constant herself), and to her I am more grateful than she probably realises. So for 2017, a hope for some more Molly-like constancy, a few more roots, and a bit of flourishing. That should do nicely.

Molly watching Yorkshire from Norwich during ‘To Walk Invisible’.

Last night I went to see the wonderful ‘Kreutzer vs Kreutzer‘, part of Music in the Round’s May Festival: Beethoven Revisited. Based on a Tolstoy story of a man who confesses to murdering his wife in a fit of jealousy, this setting is told from the perspective of the wife. A play for two actors (the brilliant Stacey Sampson and Sandy Batchelor), and a chamber music concert in two acts. This performance combined Laura Wade’s wonderful play, with Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata in A Major (Op.47) in the first half, with Janacek’s Kreutzer Sonata String Quartet No.1 in the second. From Ensemble 360, violinist Benjamin Nabarro played in both halves, with Tim Horton on piano in the first, and then with Claudia Ajmone-Marsan (violin), Ruth Gibson (viola) and Gemma Rosefield (cello – and her stock bright pink shoes) forming the quartet for Janacek. And what a clever juxtaposition.

The first half, flirtatious, flighty, light-hearted, funny, and the second half conflicted, complex, dark, haunting. Told initially as the story of an affair between a married woman and her music teacher (one cannot get more intimate, the text insinuates – what does music really do if not inspire the passions?), the second half retells the story as one of unrequited and restrained desire. Both have tragic consequences. What is the real story that led to the husband murdering his wife?

I had never heard much Janacek before this – or rather, I had never deliberately listened to much Janacek before this. The play enabled me to hear his work in a completely new light – a really exciting one. It sparked my imagination in a way that may not have otherwise happened. The discordant yet harmonious sounds told me unexpected things, and I wanted to keep listening. It made it relatable. I think there’s huge potential for making more chamber music like this, or for making more challenging pieces of music accessible through combining different artforms together… I think there’s even potential for using the Object Dialogue Box in a musical setting. And what better way to end the Janacek, and the tempestuous performance, than with a violin string snapping under all the pressure. This is what music does.

Earlier this week, the Object Dialogue Box made the journey from Sheffield to London to meet its curious cousins at the Enlightenment Gallery at the British Museum. I was delighted to have the opportunity to lead a workshop ‘Extraordinary objects and imaginative unknowing’, with Graham Moore, the Children and Young People Coordinator at Museums Sheffield, as part of ‘Objectively Speaking’, the annual national partnerships conference at the BM.

Here is the blurb we put together about our session:

Museums collect objects so that we can know about things. But what happens if we challenge this knowledge? What happens if we begin from a position that accepts and admits not knowing? And what if we prioritise this imaginative unknowing as a strategy within museum interpretation?

This workshop aims to explore some of these questions through a practical object-based activity using Museums Sheffield’s Object Dialogue Box. Containing a series of extraordinary objects created by artists Karl and Kimberley Foster, the box encourages a sort of imaginative knowing, or, one might say, an unknowing, that often runs against the grain of traditional curatorial readings of objects. Impossibly possible objects act as catalysts for play and imaginary make-believe, which, we argue, is just as important in the work of the museum as c.ontextual object knowledge.

I learnt so much from the process of working together, as well as from the conference itself. Graham’s style of unravelling the box is different from my own. His ritual is a slow, meditative one. A hypnotic, soft voice, and a slow reveal, section by section, with time to reflect on what it is that can be seen at each stage. I loved his quiet and understated approach. I’d love to experiment more with the effect of an individual’s performance on the experience with the objects. Above all, it was fun to work together and share ideas about using the box. Graham talked about how he’d noticed that people often tell stories in the first person, but sometimes (less confidently?) in the third person. I’d never noticed this overtly. We also had interesting conversations about the ’emperor’s new clothes’ phenomenon that sometimes we both worry about. Keen to make sure we went out in the galleries (unlike other conferences which tend to forget their location), off we went with our groups up to the Enlightenment Gallery. We kept disbelievingly saying: ‘wow – we are actually doing this at the BM!’ It felt like the Object Dialogue Box had gone home, even though it has never been there before. The Enlightenment Gallery and all its attempts to catalogue, rationalise, order the world and its knowledge (albeit through mermen) beautifully juxtaposed with this box of irrational, unfamiliar familiarities, and the impossibility of knowing… Unknowing. Hopefully not its last visit there. Our delegates were enthusiastic and full of imaginative thoughts, stories, questions. We left buzzing.

The workshops were part of the day-long conference #objectbasedteaching. Divided into three themes (collections use in academic teaching, creative teaching practice, and digital objects), unfortunately we were limited just to the morning  presentations because we had to deliver our session twice after lunch. Susan Raikes opened the day hoping it would inspire, challenge and stretch. Keynote speaker Claire Brown, whose company Thinking Museum is based in Amsterdam (and who I have chatted to on Twitter but had never met in real life) started by noting just how little people really look and notice in galleries. We had to look at a painting to see what we noticed in a very short space of time, then a bit longer. Her talk focused on the use of objects for three different ends: to develop transferable skills; to stimulate curiosity and wonder; and to combat museum anxiety. She focussed on the skill of looking in particular, drawing our attention to Slow Art Day (today!): the more you look, the more you see. Referring throughout to a tactic called ‘thinking routines’ (which rang slightly cultish alarm bells for me), she spoke about staying curious for curiosity’s sake, playing open-endedly, and using this to develop confidence in museum visiting. I totally agreed with her – for me there was nothing particularly radical (does this matter?) in her presentation. A sort of preaching to the converted. I reflected afterwards though, that her talk would have been probably quite controversial and really inspiring as a new approach for some delegates, and that has to be a good thing. Anything to encourage curiosity-based enquiry. Her thinking museum certainly got a huge amount of positive feedback on Twitter.

Next Claire Ackroyd and Sofia Maskin from Bradford Museums talked about the development of a cross-curricular session there called ‘The Art and Science of Noticing‘. Children make ‘noticings’ on their museum journey. (What a wonderful word!) This session was completely delightful and captivating. A return to the simplicity of thinking through making drawings and using proper drawing pencils to do so.

After this, Sandra Kemp talked about a collaboration between the V&A and Imperial College, making visible the invisible in nanotechnology, taking an MSc cohort out of their comfort zone to think about materiality in new ways by looking at museum objects. Practical ideas included having museum trails on placemats in the museum cafe, and blogging in the first person as if an object. Above all this was a paper about rethinking epistemologies. How do we know what an object is? Indeed, what even is an object?

Next, the brilliant Helena Tomlin talked about a project she has been working on with the University of Manchester – a dermatology visual research project, ‘Under My Skin’, a curious collaboration between dermatology, museology and art practice. Observational skills, she argued, are absolutely essential to all these. The dermatologist has much to learn from the artist. She referred to research at Harvard where doctors had also worked closely with art collections when developing observational skills (see Training the Eye). Doctors gained confidence through this looking in a new way. Studies of materiality underpin all these disciplines. What can I see? What does what I can see tell l me? (And how can a talk which shows a juicy Bomberg oil painting fail to inspire?!) Helena called for the establishment of a national network for using underused collections with doctors and for doctor training (and an audience member suggested medical student too). What a wonderful idea. I hope it comes to fruition. It’s sort of the other half of the National Alliance for Museums, Health and Wellbeing. The arts as esoteric and therapeutic, and as practically teaching ways of seeing and ways of knowing.

And of course, of imaginatively unknowing.

Who is here to smash the patriarchy? YES I AM! The Guardian recently published Yasmin Khan’s excellent article about inequality for women in the museum sector, and the amazing Space Invaders conference which brought together about 130 women (and 2 brave men) to discuss it at the Imperial War Museum on 18 March 2016. It was without doubt one of the most amazing conferences I have been to. Intelligent, warm, angry, cooperative, inclusive, a challenge. I loved cheering with Shami Chakrabarti that the day on which it was held was ‘tampon tax day’.

It is somewhat ironic that writing this post has taken various iterations before I have felt it publishable. The first time I wrote it (on the train on the way home), I was angry. I talked about the time I was called an ‘utter twerp’ by a male director, the problematic use of the so-called ‘Bradford factor’ to monitor sick leave (look it up – and you’ll see it automatically penalises women), the museum’s collection itself being one of boys’ toys with barely a woman featuring… Paragraph after paragraph. I am still angry. But my anger is more general now, and it makes me want to smash that patriarchy more than ever.

I think comments from the initial talk by Dr Nirmal Puwar were what resonated with me most strongly. How I identified with thinking about the threatening and disorienting capacity of a woman leader. We have to constantly prove our ability: we need to make our leadership skills visible in a way that a man simply does not do. We are made to feel small, child-like – we can only do our jobs because of others. We exist under a burden of doubt, imposter syndrome, a feeling that our authority is misplaced, that we will be harshly judged and criticised. A performance. Sometimes, I have felt this infantilism very strongly. And sometimes, I am glad to say, I have not felt it at all, but have felt respected and valued as a strong, creative, independent woman with ideas, and in a much more equal place.

I don’t want this post to be entirely negative. There is much to be said, for example, for having strong female role models: this is something to have come out strongly from the conference and something in which I believe passionately. The value of surrounding yourself with women, or with those from own own intersections, whatever these may be. Solidarity. I have been fortunate. My AMA mentor, a highly regarded female director, is someone I regularly share thoughts with, and I have a variety of strong intelligent passionate women leaders (both in ‘official’ leadership roles, as well as those who lead from ‘elsewhere’) within my networks. At the last gallery in which I worked, though I didn’t realise at the time, I would argue that the culture was entirely female driven. There have always been exceptional women leaders (both from the top, but also the ‘rebels’ from the bottom up) in organisations where I have worked. There still are now.

Space Invaders has fired me up into taking action. For too long I have sat too quietly on equality. Yes of course I have thought it vital and essential to stand up for what I don’t just believe, but what fundamentally just has to be. I left my teaching job 12 years ago in part because of the men in tweed jackets, gaffawing about cricket and rugby, and the ritual of ‘master’s tea’ being wheeled into the staff room at 4pm every day. ‘Where is my cake?’, I wanted to know. I think there I was branded as some sort of renegade feminist (said in sarcastic tones) even by my female colleagues. And although I didn’t enjoy it much, part of me feels proud now to have been educated in an all female college at Newnham. And prior to that at an all girls school in Dorset where we believed that we could do whatever we wanted to do with our lives. (Although even these admissions, I realise place me in a problematic social/class intersection…)

So what little steps can I take now? I don’t know what other women feel about their own equality (or lack of it?) in my organisation, not just on the executive board, but in its very collections, its policies. I want to find out. How can we bring women’s stories into the museum? I don’t know if the organisation has moved from an equality and diversity model to a diversity and inclusion one (as per Tate’s excellent presentation). The fact that I don’t know what the policies are and who/where they are championed is worrying in itself. I’m cross with myself for not knowing or having sought them, and I want to know. Perhaps some informal lunches with other women to discuss these things, put them on the agenda would be a start…

But I think leadership comes from all places, unexpected ones too. The hierarchical patriarchal pyramid needs to go. It should have gone ages ago. We should be following more organic, flexible, free models, experiments. Skunkworks. Doing things under the radar just to see what happens. It is out of this that I think the most radical change will come. I’d like to gather a bunch of women together, be part of a network, building on what has gone before (with Network for Change), a new generation of women in museums and galleries. Change. For women and for equality. Because this matters. It mattered to the suffragettes and it still matters for women and girls – and for all people – around the whole world. Let’s do this thing.

#MuseumAgender

I’ve just finished reading the DCMS Culture White Paper, published yesterday, ‘the first white paper for culture in more than 50 years and only the second ever published’ (p.5). I started reading it on my computer screen, but then had to print it out, realising I needed to scribble over it (violently at times) while I was reading. This response is a very immediate, quite visceral one – my opinions might of course change as I share ideas about it with more people and think about it a bit more – but I just felt moved to pour forth some initial rambling thoughts.

I do laud some things: that there is a government report about culture, for example. That my home city of Sheffield is mentioned for a new £1million arts hub (p.32), and given recognition for its affordable studios for artists at Yorkshire Artspace (p.37). That there is ambition to display the Government Art Collection more widely (p.43), and that access and engagement are central. And particularly exciting for my own rummaging interests, that the Museums Review will consider access to collections in store (p.57). I am encouraged by the paper’s recognition of a digital world (p.38), and the need for more digitisation and access to collections including through crowdsourcing, transferring authority out there (p.39). I learnt that there is such a thing as the culture diary, ‘a master list for culture’ (p.43), and that DCMS will continue to work together with the Wolfson Foundation to fund capital projects (where is the money for infrastructure, though?) (p.53). I really do look forward to the Museums Review, and hope the opportunity is not wasted, but is one with genuine new findings and insights, and with data that can be used for change and action.

But the cynic in me asks why there is now this report about culture. And what is this culture?  By p.13, if not before, I was cross. It is a paper purportedly about culture, yet one which has an extremely dubious definition of culture (if it can be defined). ‘Culture no longer simply means being familiar with a select list of works of art and architecture…’ Really?! Did it ever mean this?! In whose world? Certainly not mine, and not even in the Oxford English Dictionary (a bastion of culture if ever there was one…) where the history of the term is painted as complex:

in modern use… the term is frequently used as a general term to denote the arts and other aspects of intellectual life, without any special reference to their historical development (nor to their connection with any particular society), and hence again with less transparent connection with earlier senses of the word…

But in the White Paper, culture is ‘the accumulated influence of creativity, the arts, museums, galleries, libraries, archives and heritage upon all our lives’. Everything, merged together as though these are all the same. The cultural sectors are defined as those organisations and individuals that ‘together preserve, reflect and promote who we are as a nation, in all our rich diversity’ (italics mine). No no no! Wrong on so many levels. What about those that create, challenge, encourage questioning, making, new ideas, open experimenting? Arts. Culture is not just about preservation. And while the term ‘reflect’ is one I would usually use positively and creatively, here, it is relegated to something didactic: it sounds as though it is the cultural institutions alone that have some sort of authority to reflect to the public who they are. Really? Them and us. And what about culture as ‘promoting nationhood’? Don’t get me started…

So I continued reading. Section 1.1 ‘Culture should be an essential part of every child’s education, both in and out of school’. Yes, of course. But then I despair… What is meant by this? The government returns to Gradgrind’s ‘facts, facts, facts’. For here, ‘knowledge of great works of art, great music, great literature and great plays, and their creators, is an important part of every child’s education’. Knowledge of. What about encouraging the creation of new things? What about responding to? Where is our imagination? How does making art fit in? What is meant by great? Who defines this? Why do we have to know about, rather than just make and do? Knowledge is not just about: it is active, sensory, creative, emotional. Just because I know about Shakespeare does not have any bearing whatsoever on my own imaginative response to the things that are being fed in. And it continues, ‘so too is being taught to play a musical instrument, to draw, paint and make things, to dance and to act’. Now, if this sentence did not include the ‘being taught’ bit, I would like it a lot more. But it does. For in this report, we are passive agents, empty vessels to be filled. Knowledge and skills: what and how. No why. No questions.

This paternalism can be found throughout: ‘The government expects all museums, theatres, galleries, opera houses and other arts organisations in receipt of public money to reach out to everyone regardless of background, education or geography’. Great, and of course this is to be welcomed (despite its extraordinary list of elite cultural places). Organisations ‘reach out’ –but where is the dialogue, the shared understanding, the letting go, the community reaching in and out of the organisation, the empowerment? And where is the funding for this ambition? There is no additional money to support the ambitions of the White Paper. It is certainly not in the local authorities whose sources are being cut constantly. How are the regions, other than a few select places mentioned time and again for various initiatives, to carry out these ambitions without the resources to do so? Resilience is the buzz word of the day (and has been for rather a long time now): ‘organisations… must also think more broadly how they will adapt their business models and financial strategies to deal with potential challenges to funding’. In between the lines, if we don’t become successful businesses, or good at crowd funding, or finding a wealthy sponsor, then this government is actually not interested in culture at all. Hmm.

Ironic too to suggest that ‘national museums are looking to build on their existing regional presence’ (p.35) when we all know of the recent debacle of the NMM photography’s move away from Bradford to London. And what on earth is the GREAT campaign (p.44)? Apparently £113.5 million has been spent on this since 2011. Now I work in this sector, and I’ve never heard of it, and when I consulted my colleagues in the office, neither had they. Whiffs of empire. Moving on to workforce diversity: this is vital, and the ambition to publish data on leadership of chairs and trustees is a significant step in the right direction (p.27), but we have heard this before. Does investing £10million in Skills for the Future really change a culture? There is still so much to do just in terms of women’s lack of leadership in a sector full of women. We need radical change, not just another paper. Words, words, words. Curious turns of phrase litter the document: ‘culturally ambitious young people’ (p.22) – what about just ‘young people’? ‘Soft power’ (p. 42, p.57) – what is this? Where is the action? The list of organisations involved in the report is lengthy, but has some notable exceptions. Where is the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries at the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies? Why was it not consulted? GEM and Engage are also missing.

And finally, the Appendix contains the ways of measuring the impact of the ambition. Output indicators are all about ‘increase in engaging in culture’… What does this mean? We all know there is a huge difference between bums on seats and real engagement. A quick visit (or as some organisations literally just count those walking through on their way to somewhere else), is not the same as a long-term relationship. So why is this paper so insistent on evaluating impact through quantitative statistics? Where is the measure of quality of experience? So many assumptions and unanswered questions. But that will do for now. Action is what is needed. Let’s hope the Museums Review leads to change. And of course that this White Paper does too.

The latest exhibition at Sheffield’s brilliant Site Gallery, with pieces also on show over the way at Sheffield Hallam’s SIA Gallery, has just opened. Listening is part of the Hayward’s Touring Curatorial Open – the result of the third open competition by the Hayward and funded through ACE, to take risks and support new and dynamic curatorial approaches. Curated by Sam Belinfante, the exhibition is entitled Listening. Yet it is not simply a show about sonic art: Sam is quick to explain that this has been done many times over the past decade, and his approach does something different…

Sam is himself an artist, performer, choreographer, interested in sound and movement, and his curatorial practice reflects these interests, as well as his curating being an intrinsic part of his own creative and artistic practice. The exhibition is most definitely a creative and artistic project, choreographed as an immersive experience for the viewer/audience (more on this distinction to follow). I was delighted to go along to the curator-led tour and hear him talk more about the exhibition while also experiencing it for myself. I was also really delighted that lots of the pieces had been commissioned specially for the show, and in dialogue/collaboration with the curator. I find that dynamic approach really exciting.

Enough to pull me in just by virtue of there being a Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller piece in Sheffield again, I was in fact delighted, fascinated and excited by the whole exhibition. Yes, the Cardiff/Miller piece is a classic of sonic art, as terrifying as it is thrilling and gripping (over-active imaginations experience a creepy dark forest, hiding in bushes, confrontation, and a shot being fired – different in scale from the Documenta (13) Alter Bahnhof Walk in 2012 which I walked though and from the 40 part motet Spem in Alium which I’ve sung), but I also made lots of new discoveries… 2013 Turner Prizewinner Laure Prouvost’s amusing and quirky use of theatrical lighting, and playing with museological modes of object display and narrative was one such in her new and rather magical commission for this exhibit, as was Amalia Pica’s rather beautiful Eavesdropping piece (which conjured up so much resonance and memory, and for some reason a bit of the aesthetic of Gabriel Orozco’s Asterisms too).

Mikhail Karikis makes another appearance in the city after his Art Sheffield 2013 Children of Unquiet project. In Listening, we find his amazing SeaWomen, based on the lives of women from Jeju, an island between South Korea, China and Japan, who dive under water for ages at a time to find pearls and edible sea creatures such as starfish, having adapted a remarkable way of making a breathing sound (sumbisori) which means they can dive  deeply. I went to Karikis’ talk about this a couple of years ago, also at Site, and it was amazing to be reunited with these women again. (And for weird reasons, starfish have a bit of a place in my head at the moment, so it was a strange juxtaposition to be sitting on a squidgy black cushion on reed matting, in the middle of Sheffield on a Saturday afternoon, but transported to a jagged seascape and starfish associations…)

As someone who writes a lot about disrupting the hierarchy of the senses, particularly through use of touch in galleries, the thing that struck me most about the whole show was that it really is about an embodied sort of listening. It’s not just focussing on the ears, the aural. It’s about a whole process, entirely sensory, and entirely not just about one sense at a time. It’s not, as Belinfante explained, telling people to ‘listen’, but it’s about what our bodies are doing while we are listening in space, and in time, how this relates to what our eyes are doing, what we touch. Listening.

And for me the piece that really encapsulates an embodied sort of touching/seeing/ listening was Laurie Anderson’s Handphone Table (from the year of my birth, 1978). Sitting at a wooden desk, hands over ears, the visitor/audience places their elbows on a dip in the table, and sounds are transmitted through the arms. It’s amazing. Especially if, like me, you aren’t a physicist or musician who understands audio waves. A real playing with what constitutes listening. Someone asked whether a deaf person would be able to hear the sounds: nobody seemed to know the answer, but it would be fascinating to test.

I really liked Sam’s constant references to etymology. So important in the way our thinking develops. In particular, he talked about the words ‘visitor’ and ‘audience’. ‘Visitor’ stemming from words around that visual ‘top of the tree’ sense (as also, he pointed out are many of our words around ‘thinking’ and ‘ideas’), but ‘audience’ from the audio. Definitely something to think about a bit more. And other things that Listening leaves me pontificating about include:

• the ethics of audio: Nietzsche apparently said that unlike eyes, ‘the ears have no lids’ – we can’t switch off sounds
• sometimes we have to contort our bodies sometimes in order to listen
• there’s something sometimes intimate about listening, at others utterly immense
• sometimes listening is an absence (SB referred to some works as ‘mute’ – which again is interesting in relation to ethics/ways of perceiving sensory (dis)abilities etc)
• metaphor, mythology and sound – thunder, time, stars, sirens, ebb and flow, conflict
• exponential expansion of the senses through focussing in on them

I’m unfortunately not able to go to what sounds like (ha ha!) an amazing Listening Conference event on 25 April: what is the listening body? but Listening has certainly given me a lot to think about, and was a thoroughly beautiful experience too. And I like the way too that it’s a sort of curation of curation of curation of curation…