"People just need to feel important, like someone is listening": recognizing museums' community engagement programmes as spaces of care

Citation

Munro E (2013) "People just need to feel important, like someone is listening": recognizing museums' community engagement programmes as spaces of care. Geoforum, 48, pp. 54-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.04.008

Abstract
This paper examines the ways in which spaces of care are produced within museums. In particular, this paper investigates community engagement, a relatively underexplored facet of museum practice in the UK. Community engagement is often understood as a way for museums to engage with those individuals, groups and communities who do not or cannot regularly visit museums. Goals for community engagement programmes range from the short-term, for example the creation of a body of knowledge around an object from a museum’s collection, through to the long-term, for example the cultivation of a relationship between local communities and the museums service. The paper draws upon a period of ethnographic research undertaken with Glasgow Museums – the city of Glasgow’s municipal museum service. I use the example of community engagement as a means of interrogating the spaces of care produced within museums. I argue that museums are ideal places within which to create caring spaces and yet clear problems arise when the caring that is done within museums is not recognised as such. I also argue that ideas about women’s ability to cultivate and sustain care relationships are reproduced in museum settings.

Keywords
Museums; Care; Gender; Community engagement; Outreach

Journal
Geoforum: Volume 48