Decolonisation in Museums

About the course

Decolonisation in Museums is one of a number of courses that sits within the Museums Association’s Online Learning opportunities.

This course is for everyone who works in and with museums. It aims to explore with you to the ideas and issues around decolonisation so that you can embark on this work with confidence and clarity of purpose.

In advance of  this course, we recommend you look at the Museums Association guidance document, ‘Supporting Decolonisation in Museums’ and want to learn more. If you have not looked through the guidance yet, please do this now.

The guidance provides reflections and insights into how to begin the decolonising journey, with the course creating opportunities to think more deeply around how it relates to your professional practice and context. It will point you to the questions you should be asking, the information to seek out, the research you need to do, the connections you should be making, and some of the accepted behaviours and practices that require challenging.

You will also find a Glossary for the course below. It features the language and terminology you need to understand to fully engage with the course content.

Decolonisation – Glossary

Course content warning

In this course, we will be considering issues related to racism and colonial violence which may be triggering or traumatic. Where this is the case in external links a warning will be posted to keep you informed so you can monitor your engagement.

We recognise that engaging with this course’s content could be emotionally intensive for some learners, especially those with lived experiences of racism and for those who have had difficult relationships with museums in the past.

Please ensure you prioritise your own wellbeing within this, taking appropriate breaks, seeking out support or help as required.

When engaging in decolonisation work, please remember your responsibility to engage sensitively with and support all those involved, especially those who seem more readily connected to Britain’s historical global empire.

The list below includes suggested sources of support. You can also access the Museums Association’s Wellbeing Hub. You will find further resources to support you and your colleagues (especially those with lived experience of racism) at the end of the course, in an exercise entitled ‘Sources of support’.

Decolonisation – Sources of support

Museums Association’s Competency Framework

Decolonisation in Museums is grounded in the Museums Association’s Competency Framework, which has been designed to support individual professional development and career progression.

Although all the competencies are relevant to decolonising, Leading and Change Making and Sustaining Relationships and Partnerships relate the most to this course.

While most of our online learning courses support your awareness and practice at levels 1 and 2 of the Competency Framework, the content and exercises in Decolonisation in Museums will help you to achieve some level 3 competencies, for example:

Leading and Change Making:

• Challenges structural inequalities and all forms of intolerance, discrimination, and marginalisation.

Sustaining Relationships and Partnerships:

• Encourage an open, safe and approachable environment by listening and not judging.
• Acknowledges different and sometimes conflicting outlooks and demonstrates willingness to find common ground.

Undertaking the course

Decolonisation in Museums is divided into five Modules, each containing five lessons. Each lesson features a number of exercises to complete. You should complete all the exercises in order to have fully completed the course. There are some additional, optional, exercise in some topics if you wish to explore it further. The exercises are grouped under the following headings:

• Connecting – exercises associated with making connections with others, specialist groups, communities, colleagues within and outside the organisation/ sector, and with other learners.
• Doing – exercises associated with action, making notes on documents or films, seeking further information, visiting other museums or organisations.
• Listening – exercises associated with listening to talks or podcasts.
• Reading – exercises associated with reading case studies, reports, books, articles and papers.
• Reflecting – exercises associated with thinking about your own professional practice, organisational and sector practice, and assessing your knowledge and experience to consolidate your learning.
• Watching – exercises associated with watching role models, films or short clips.

You will see the exercises that you need to complete below once you select expand.

When you finish each exercise or lesson mark it as complete and you will automatically progress to the next exercise or lesson. Throughout the course you can see your progress, if you take a break from the course, you can return later and pick up where you left off.

This course may take longer to complete than our other courses – we suggest spending a minimum of 16 hours on it (e.g. four hours a week for a month, or an hour a week over four months). However, some of the content may be hard hitting and, as such, you may choose to take longer to complete it.

We recommend you approach this course in the following way:

1. Please start by reading our Supporting Decolonisation in Museums guidance. It will give you an overview of the many different discussions and issues relating to decolonisation within the sector and help you to get started.
2. We strongly recommend that you complete the Supporting Anti-racism course as a foundation before you embark on Decolonisation in Museums.
3. Approach this course module by module and allow yourself time in between for reflection and to record your engagement. learning and insights – you can use NotePad or dictate your insights into Voice Notes.
4. Revisit Modules if you need to before you move on. You may wish to return to the films and watch them all, rather than just the segment identified for the exercises.

To begin the course, click Lesson1: Introduction below.