What are Museums for?

That’s the question I asked the 200 assembled guests at the launch of our new ‘Strike!’ exhibition at National Museum Cardiff.

‘Closing down!’ shouted someone from the crowd, referring to the funding cuts so many Museums and cultural organisations have faced across the UK in the past year. And that’s largely why I’ve been asking myself this question repeatedly over the past twelve months.

It hasn’t been the easiest of years for us at National Museum Wales. We had to absorb the biggest funding cut in our history and lost many valued colleagues as a result. But the upside of those challenges has been the outpouring of love for our family of seven museums, and the widespread expression of appreciation for the work that we do.

So, we know Museums are loved. That became clear during the pandemic when going to Museums was one of the cultural things many people really missed.

And we know what Museums do. They safeguard collections. They provide learning programmes and offer opportunities to discover new things. They undertake research and conserve special objects. They actively collect items from the events of today that will become the history of tomorrow. They tell and share stories. They put on exhibitions and events. They organise activities, birthday parties and even sleepovers for children. Often, they provide great coffee in their cultural cafes or fantastic, present-buying opportunities in their collection-inspired shops. But is this what they are for?

Museums are often at the heart of our communities, whether they be volunteer-run small museums in towns and villages, or nationally-funded ones in our capital cities. ?And it is this connection with community that made me realise one of the important things the National Museum Wales is for: we provide safe spaces.

This has been a difficult year not just for National Museum Wales, or for museums generally. It has been a difficult year for us all. It has been a year of conflict, of financial hardship, of uncertainty. It has been a year of political change and of extreme weather. It has been a time when communities have been pitted against each-other and there has been a focus on what makes us different rather than what we have in common.

In this turbulent context our museums have been safe spaces. At a time when people haven’t been able to afford to put the heating on, our museums have offered warm spaces. At a time when the cost-of-living crisis made everything feel so expensive, our museums offered genuine ‘free time’ thanks to the free entry provided through Welsh Government funding. At a time of division in our society, a time of ‘them and us’, we have welcomed everyone and anyone, regardless of colour, creed or identity.

Our safe spaces are places of acceptance and connection. We offer supported work placements for young people whose learning disabilities makes regular work very challenging. We hold workshops for asylum seekers and refugees to come together to connect with one-another and the new culture they are living in. We provide sessions (and bus tickets) for low-income families to have fun together, and gain confidence around spending time in spaces that might otherwise be unfamiliar to them. We have a community garden where people can dig, prune and plant to improve their mental wellbeing. Our National Waterfront Museum in Swansea was the UK’s first Museum of Sanctuary. We are very proud of the safe spaces we offer.

But being safe doesn’t mean being cosy or complacent. I believe that as well as being safe, our spaces should also be provocative. They should challenge thinking and orthodoxies. In our ‘Art of the Selfie’ exhibition at National Museum Cardiff, we brought together Van Gogh’s ‘Portrait de l’Artiste’ with Anya Paintsil’s highly textural ‘Blod’, a work that incorporates strands of the artist’s own hair. Our visitors probably didn’t expect to see these two works together. But just as Museums can create new dynamics by bringing differing works of art together, so they can create a powerful dynamic by combining being safe spaces with being spaces of protest.

Protest is a recurring theme for us in National Museum Wales. It runs through our collections, our research and our community engagement. We believe we can use our spaces to protest against prejudice, injustice and ignorance. Through our collecting, we can protest on behalf of the vulnerable, the unheard, the marginalised. In recent years we have actively collected objects from Black Lives Matter and Pride marches. In our St Fagan’s museum, we have celebrated the post-WWI peace petition, which was led by the women of Wales, and hand delivered to the women of the US in 1923.

Safe spaces and protest spaces are not mutually exclusive, they are mutually reinforcing. If people see we take their protests seriously, they will feel safe in our spaces. If people are safe in our spaces, they will feel confident to protest their right to be heard, seen and represented.

And that is why our ‘Strike!’ exhibition feels so relevant. The strikes of 1984/85 were protests that were both social and economic. They shaped our communities in Wales and defined a generation. They championed a largely unrecognised, undervalued, working class culture. It is a culture and community that continues to feel undervalued today. That may be why the spirit of protest of the 84/85 strikes continues to reverberate.

In the exhibition we share the stories and experiences of the 22,000 Welsh miners who were driven into conflict with their Government. The visitor route flows through four seasons of protest, exposing the impact of a year of turbulence, hope, violence and hardship. Visitors are encouraged to consider the legacy of that year and are asked to look beyond the binary narrative of miners versus Margaret Thatcher. This was a complex period, defined by complex relationships: the miners and the NUM; mining communities and the media; South Wales police and the Metropolitan police. There was a lot of ‘them and us’ during that time of social division too.

We couldn’t have put together an exhibition of protest without working with activists. One of the great things about National Museum Wales is that we have activists working for us, with us and alongside us. They challenge us, force us out of our comfort zones. Ceri Thompson, who curated the ‘Strike!’ exhibition is our Senior Curator of Industrial History. He was also a striking miner in 1984/85.

Ned Jones, Alex Matthews and Beli Evans are some of our Amgueddfa Cymru Producers, a group of over 100 young people who we contract to disrupt our thinking on new projects and policy. Ned, Alex and Beli were born long after the strikes, but they have inherited that legacy of protest and are activists within their own valleys communities. We employed them to bring their lived experience to the creation of the exhibition, to make sure it was grounded in, and relevant to, the communities it was representing.

When I asked Ned how the experience of contributing to the exhibition had been for her, she said it had been good, but there was lots we could improve. Activists like Ned make us better.

The impact of incorporating this activist perspective is palpable. For the people who walked around the exhibition on that launch evening the connection was so powerful some of them cried. Visitors from mining communities said they had never expected to see people like them on the walls of a place like this. Spontaneous conversations sprang up between miners and government officials; between the photographers who had documented the strike, and the photographer who was documenting the event.

Some people might ask why National Museum Wales would put on an exhibition about a strike when we are known for our extraordinary collections ranging from Monets to molluscs. Part of the answer is that we also have a coal mine, at Big Pit, where retired miners give tours underground and share their experiences of life, quite literally, at the coal face. But even if we didn’t have a mine, this exhibition would still be the right thing for us to do. Coal and mining shaped Wales. It is part of our national identity, and its story should be shared in Wales’s national museum. Beyond this, the very principle of protest is part of our history in Wales and is part of our living present. Many of our communities are still protesting to have their rights, their identities, their experiences recognised.

So what are museums for? ?The general answer is that they are for lots of things. The more specific answer is that what they are for will vary from community to community.

Right here, right now in Wales, we are creating safe spaces, where everyone is welcome, and where we explore the power, impact and legacy of protest.

Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales