What happens to Black History on 1 November?
Part 2: Embed Black History All Year
Note from Sandra Shakespeare,
Founder & Executive Director of Museum X
“This article is a part of a new Museum X series written by Livi Adu, our e-Curator in residence. These provocations aim to continue open conversations: not just who gets invited into museums, but what happens once people arrive, and whether participation ultimately leads to agency, authority and meaningful change.
These posts are not intended to offer fixed answers.
They are part of Museum X’s ongoing invitation to question practice, share learning and create dialogue across the sector and with the communities we work alongside. We’d love to hear what resonates, what you would challenge, and what these questions look like in your own practice“
Introduction: Black History is more than a month
In part 1 in this series, we asked what changes when museums begin with care rather than possession. But care is not only about what museums hold. It is also about the histories they preserve, recognise and choose to tell.
Every October, something changes. Museum programmes fill with talks, tours and exhibitions. Social media feeds become populated with stories of Black pioneers, artists, campaigners and community leaders. Schools, charities, heritage organisations and businesses turn their attention towards Black British history.
Then October ends. So, what happens on 1 November?
Black History Month has created a vital space for histories that have too often been marginalised, misrepresented or ignored. The problem is not that we dedicate a month to Black history. The question is what we do with the other eleven…
Perhaps we need to think differently about what October is for. Rather than seeing Black History Month as the month in which we have to produce Black history.
What if we used it to discover, research and plan for the whole year ahead?
What if October was the beginning rather than the endpoint?
Black British history IS British history
Black British history is not something separate that needs to be added to an otherwise complete story of Britain. It is already there. Black British people have shaped our culture, history and country. Black British history exists within every aspect of our pasts, whether it be industry, art, literature, science, empire, migration, war, medicine, music, protest, family, labour and everyday life. In Museum X's 2021 Museums Journal takeover, contributors challenged the tendency for museum narratives to move from enslavement straight to Windrush, as if there were no Black histories before, between or after these familiar reference points.
That raises an important question for museums. Instead of asking:
Where can we add Black history?
Perhaps we should be asking:
What parts of the histories already in our collections have we not yet recognised?
What stories sit behind the buildings, objects and collections in our museums?
What names have disappeared from catalogue records?
What relationships have not been researched?
Sometimes the history is not absent. We simply have not learned how to see it yet. There is another uncomfortable part of this conversation. Black history doesn’t just belong to your Black colleague, volunteer, or communities. Black history is everyone’s history and it is an integral part of British identity and culture as a whole.
If your organisation decides it wants to do more around Black History Month…
What outcome expectations do you have?
What resources have you provided to complete the work?
Black history is not your Black colleagues’ responsibility
Too often, responsibility for diversity becomes the responsibility of the people who ‘provide the diversity’. The only Black member of staff becomes the person asked to suggest speakers, check terminology, find community contacts, review interpretation or explain why something might be problematic. Representation cannot become an excuse for delegation because it then just becomes extractive and tokenistic.
Black British history should be part of the work of curators, collections teams, educators, researchers, communications teams, volunteers, senior leadership and trustees. It should not disappear from an organisation's knowledge because one member of staff leaves.
The emotional and physical labour needs to be on the institution as a whole, not just the participants or staff with that lived-experience. There can be enormous pressure around Black History Month to produce something...
A social-media campaign?
An exhibition?
A talk?
A blog?
But meaningful research takes time and care.
What if October became a research month instead?
Instead of rushing to find a Black history story because October has arrived, museums could use the month to identify the things they do not yet know. Be inspired to choose:
An object or,
A person or,
A building or,
A historical event or,
A photograph or,
A collection or,
A local story or,
Then ask what connections to Black British history have not yet been explored. Remember to give yourself permission not to immediately turn the answer into content. Research it, speak to people, visit archives, find the people who already hold knowledge about that history, and build meaningful long-term relationships.
Organisations such as Black History Month, Black Cultural Archives, The Mixed Museum, and The Black Curriculum provide great starting points. Local archives, family collections, oral histories and community knowledge are important for creating more relational and personal connections with audiences.
October could become the moment we identify the questions. The following eleven months are when we do the work to enrich our collections, histories, and culture.
Engage not to extract, but to enrich
Researching histories held within communities also brings responsibility. Community engagement cannot mean arriving with a project, collecting stories, photographs and memories, turning them into an exhibition, and disappearing when the funding ends.
Museum X has found purpose in working differently, through developing our experimental museum model. This places relationships, shared knowledge and community agency alongside collections and research. Through projects including To Whom Does This Belong? and Our Living Archives, we have been exploring what happens when communities are treated as collaborators and knowledge holders rather than simply audiences or sources of material. For us, the question is not simply:
What can we learn from this community?
It is also:
What are we contributing to this relationship?
Engage not to extract, but to enrich:
Enrich your understanding.
Enrich your museum.
Enrich your communities.
The most important aim should be to create something of value for the communities whose histories you are asking them to share, reciprocity is the cornerstone of growing mutually beneficial relationships.
Beyond separated histories
This way of working does not have to begin and end with Black History Month.
The same question could be asked during LGBTQ+ History Month, Disability History Month, South Asian Heritage Month, International Women's Day, International Men's Day and other moments when attention temporarily turns towards histories and experiences that institutions have not always represented well. These dates can be great prompts but, using them as targets for content makes it become tokenistic.
Realistically our histories do not fit neatly into calendar boxes anyway, so a contemporary museum needs to be an intersectional one, one that can hold all of these histories at once. So perhaps the calendar can be an opportunity to help us notice where our knowledge is missing and then encourage us to keep looking after the commemorative month has finished, so we can embed intersectional histories throughout our museums all year round.
What is the future of Black History Month?
Black British history does not begin on 1 October and disappear on 1 November. Perhaps one of the most valuable things we can do during Black History Month is discover the histories, questions and relationships that will keep us working for the other eleven months.
And when we begin looking properly, another question quickly appears.
Why has the space for these histories not been prioritised?
This also raises other questions that we will explore further in the next post:
What happens once people from marginalised communities are invited into our institutions?
Are they expected to carry responsibility for changing those institutions by themselves?
What power are they given to participate, challenge and influence the institution?
Where do we go from here?
Here is our call to action for museum professionals this Black History Month: We invite you to be curious about your collections in a new way. Choose one aspect of your collections to explore its intersectional history for a year; whether it be a person, object, place, photograph or collection connected to your organisation whose Black British history you do not fully understand.
Use October to start asking questions; then keep going:
Follow the archive.
Speak to people.
Build relationships.
Research mindfully.
Compensate people for their expertise.
Question your catalogue records.
Share what you learn when the work is ready, rather than when the calendar tells you it should be. The questions below are offered as a starting point for reflection for 1 November.
Reflection Questions for Museum Professionals:
1. What have we learned?
2. What do we still not know?
3. Who have we built relationships with?
4. How have we enriched our museum and communities?
About the Author: Livi Adu
Livi Adu is Museum X’s e-Curator, working across digital heritage, research, interpretation and socially engaged museum practice. Her work explores questions of power, ethics, representation and accountability in museums and cultural heritage, with a particular interest in how collections, archives and digital technologies shape whose knowledge is preserved, shared and valued.
This article is part of a Museum X series in which Livi explores some of the difficult questions facing museums today: from care, ownership and representation to participation, knowledge and institutional power.
Alongside her work with Museum X, Livi writes and researches through Much Adu About, where she explores museums, heritage, digital culture, ethics and the ideas emerging through her wider practice.
Explore more of Livi’s work at muchaduabout.com.
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