Reflections — working with Collections Trust part 3
Bear with me, I’ve skipped a reflection part in this series about the work I’ve been doing with the Collections Trust. However, I’ve been thinking about my workshop ‘Finding the Words’, I ran on April 16th 2024. Here, I discussed how I approached addressing problematic language within the Bath Chronicle newspaper (now archived), based on the guidance document I wrote commissioned by Bath & Colonialism Archive Project.
Since the guidance document is available online for people to read or listen to, I sought to use this space to focus on three areas that frame my research approach:
- Your rationale for addressing problematic language
- Ways to embed accountability and transparency
- Effectively communicating this process both internally and externally; to encourage confidence. consistency and long-term action
In my work, I actively encourage people to ‘do the work’ of enacting action once the acknowlement of an issue has gone through several cycles of discussion. To essentially, move the needle of change towards that, change. Yet, ‘action’ without care, intention and understanding of our rationale for said ‘action(s)’ can cause harm (or continue to do so). Which particulalry pertains to conversations trying to address societal inequities. When that understanding and intention lacks deeper investigation from within, this ultimately gives rise to the pervasiveness of performative acts of allyship or solidarity. And when people (and by extension, organisations) are questioned about their stance, it very quickly crumbles, revealing the shaky foundations of disingenuous intentions. Hence, genuine intention and understanding our rationale are cornerstones of my practice that I encourage people and organisations to better understand first before making disingenuous acts.
During this workshop, I repeatedly made this point — which for some, may have not felt useful at the time. But in some ways that was the point. It is not possible for an hour long workshop to provide a copy and paste application to the problematic language present within museum collections or archival material. Instead, I wanted us to take a step back to think about our why, as the pressure ‘to do’ can sometimes cloud how we go about this process. And addressing problematic langugage is just that, a process. It is slow work (especially when dealing with large collections) and requires care, time and dialogue. And most importantly, it is a continous process since language is constantly evolving. The literature review and latter part of the guidance document offers some practical examples of how others and I have addressed problematic language, once going through the the foundations of intentions and roles of accountability too often skipped during these dialogues.
