Amid the noise of the culture wars, we must continue to share our work with pride

One of the many sad things about the so-called culture wars is the ongoing impact on our public pride in our work. I remember looking forward to the interviews with journalists as projects launched out into the world, picking up the phone and getting ready to beam down the phone, sharing my unreserved joy in what had been achieved.

Now, I know that I have to scan sentences ahead, to check my own enthusiasm just in case something I say could become ammunition in a battle that I never signed up for.

As museums, we now work in period of ferment, when it takes relatively little to stir the hornets’ nest, or indeed, to mix my metaphors appallingly, when traps are actively set for us to become the next story.

The choice of language in an unguarded comment or in a press release can make it either sink without a trace or be splashed across pages and screens. Within these constraints there is only loss: loss of enthusiasm, loss of progress, and yes, loss of pride.

Instead of the relaxed smile with which I used to embrace public communications, I now wait with tension for those key questions that might not be quite what they seem, that might put words into my mouth or might create a position statement that is completely at odds with the actual situation.

Launching and communicating work and partnerships is now tinged with a deep anxiety, and for the wider team as well. We might work hard to craft press releases and considered comments, but these are still crafted within an ivory tower.

It is on to the front-of-house teams, and the people who manage the social media accounts, and our volunteers who rarely, if ever, get to see those words in advance, that much of this burden falls.

I think a lot about how to navigate this new world. I imagine a map of Communication-Land, rolled out in front of me, like something that Tolkein might have drawn.

There are the rolling shires of local magazines. Beyond them are the winding rivers of social media, broad and smooth in some places, as they nourish and grow communities; hurtling, confusing, rock-filled rapids in others, with all the same power of a river to bring damage and destruction.

My mental map is ringed by the mountains of the national and international press. We raise our eyes to these mountains, don’t we, and want our stories, our work, to perch on the top, like the flag proudly planted on the summit by the successful climber.

But these mountains of the press, like all mountains, are tricky places; the weather can change suddenly, and unexpectedly. One slip, a shout just that little bit too loud, and you can bring down an avalanche. And surrounding it all, those famous, ever-changing tides of public opinion.

Now this is all deeply fanciful, and any embattled head of communications will quite rightly look askance at such nonsense. But I do also find it quite a helpful visualisation: to see it all as an interconnected world filled equally with risk and opportunity actually fills me with hope and reduces some of that anxiety I face when the phone rings.

The weather changes easily in this world, and as those of us who go out walking in the hills know, there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes. So now, as we navigate this world, we must be prepared for times of challenge, but we must also press on.

There are museums across the country that are carrying out work that is actively changing lives, challenging inequalities, and openly and honestly representing our shared past. These projects deserve to be shared from the mountain tops, shared with joy and yes, with pride.

Lizzie Dunford is the director of Jane Austen’s House. She is on the panel for the session Backlash: Museums in the Culture Wars, which takes place 1530-1630 on Tuesday 12 November at the Museums Association Conference 2024 online and in Leeds.