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ABSTRACT
As art museums increasingly commit to socially engaged practices that require critical ways of engaging with artworks, collaborators, and visitors, what does gallery educators’ ongoing learning look like, and what motivates it? How does it inform or respond to change? Drawing on research with freelance gallery educators in Scotland, this article examines these questions within the overlapping contexts of the coronavirus pandemic and protests for racial justice in 2020. The tensions, challenges, and possibilities that emerged from participants’ stories reveal complex relationships between professional learning, freelancer realities, and the adaptability required across the profession. In fleshing out how such a significant and unstable moment shaped professional learning, I consider what the field of museum education can learn from freelancers’ experiences. Moving forward, how can we imagine futures that foster ongoing critical learning, sustained accountability, and collective wellbeing?
Acknowledgements
I extend my sincere thanks to the educators who agreed to participate.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 For the purposes of this article, my use of the term “art museums” refers to not-for-profit visual art exhibition venues. In the UK context, “art gallery” is an equivalent term to “art museum.” Similarly, the term “gallery educator” encompasses “art museum educator.”
2 Scotland shut down on March 17, 2020. The government lifted some measures over the summer as infection rates went down, however, at the same moment as my focus group with freelancers in October, the Scottish First Minister was announcing new measures to control the virus. Thus, by “first wave” I am referring to the period between initial lockdown to this second rise in infection rates (March–October 2020).
3 General Teaching Council for Scotland, “Professional Learning.” The council overseas the work of classroom educators, however, their definition is equally applicable to the work in museums. See Tran, Gupta, and Bader, “Professional Learning”; Montalvo, “Training Ground.”
4 General Teaching Council for Scotland, “Professional Learning.”
5 The Group for Education in Museums (GEM), for example, has organized their Competency Framework according to reflective thinking, technical skills, and relationship building. GEM is currently working towards the inclusion of digital and other skills that the pandemic highlighted. See GEM, “Framework.”
6 Brookfield, “Critical Theory,” 53.
7 Brookfield, “Critical Theory”; Clover et al., “Introduction”; Cranton, Understanding; Johnson-Bailey, “Positionality.”
8 Deprizio, “Transforming”; McCray, “Adult Learners”; Palamara, “Practice First.”
9 Hooper-Greenhill, Educational Role; Mayo, “Sites”; Debono, “Participative”; El-Amin and Cohen, “Representations.”
10 Dewhurst and Hendrick, “Decentering”; Ng, Ware, and Greenberg, “Activating.”
11 Hooper-Greenhill, Educational Role; Mayo, “Sites”; Mörsch, “Alliances.”
12 Dewhurst and Hendrick, “Decentering”; El-Amin and Cohen, “Representations”; Haywood Rolling Jr., Black Lives; Keith, “Imagining”; Murray-Johnson, “Inside Out”; Wajid and Minott, “Detoxing.”
13 Ballengee-Morris and Stuhr, “Knowing.”
14 Mörsch, “Alliances.”
15 Allen, “Situating”; Anderson, Common; Hooper-Greenhill, Educational Role; Sandell, “Agents”; Scottish Museums Council, Social Justice.
16 Anderson, Pering, and Heal, “Manifesto.” The authors contend that “These crises are interrelated. They make it imperative that we make a transformational change to the role of museums in society. This is a time that requires radical social innovation.” The content of this manifesto mirrors commitments outlined in a joint statement of intent from member-driven organizations for UK museums, galleries, heritage, and archives (including GEM, Engage, and Museums Association among others) in response to BLM protests: https://engage.org/happenings/joint-statement-of-intent-for-the-heritage-sector/.
17 Martinolli, Visitor. These institutions receive more than 27 million visits yearly, and more than half offer free entry to their visitors.
18 Museums Association, Museums in Scotland. Part of the wider context for these key issues moving forward is recent UK Government policy and public debate around decolonizing history and “culture wars”: Kendall Adams, “Fears.”
19 Over the last two years, for example, critical training for museum professionals offered by UK professional associations has touched on subject matter such as difficult history, discrimination, decolonization, anti-racism, Black history, sustainability, and LGBTQIA+ learning and engagement. Recent literature offers examples of on-site museum training from North America; see El-Amin and Cohen, “Representations”; Dewhurst and Hendrick, “Dismantling”; Murray-Johnson, “Inside Out.”
20 Participants spoke to the impacts of the current moment on their immediate and long-term work and learning. Both geographical areas in which I did my research had relatively low COVID caseloads at the time of data collection and, according to the most recent census, the percentage of people who identify as white (92%) was just below that of Scotland as a whole (96%).
22 Charmaz, Constructing Grounded.
23 Dewhurst and Hendrick, “Decentering”; Naylor and McLean, Character. Ninety-four percent of respondents in a recent survey of UK museum freelancers, self-identified as white: “The results suggest that routes into freelancing in the sector for people of colour – as well as support to progress, stay and thrive – are required, and echoes similar needs in the overall workforce.” See Lister and Ainsley, Museum Freelance.
24 Charmaz, Constructing Grounded.
25 Stuckey, Taylor, and Cranton, “Assessing.”
26 Forester, “Deliberative Practice”; Kadlec, “Deliberative Democracy.”
27 Both participant groups will be discussed in my final PhD dissertation; permanently employed educators’ perspectives and experiences will feature prominently in subsequent discussions that will offer a deeper analysis of all eight participants’ conceptions of critical practice and the significant role of informal learning in the everyday.
28 Throughout, I opt to use the singular they, their, and them to protect participants’ anonymity.
29 According to a recent analysis of Labour Force Survey from the Office for National Statistics, among freelancers in the sector, women and younger people appear to have been disproportionately affected; See Florisson et al., “Impact.”
30 This begs some consideration beyond the scope of this article; namely, how art museums will address the potential for increased digital divides within their freelance roster and to what extent the digital literacy of gallery educators could be approached as an access issue, much as it is with students and other learners.
31 Florisson et al., “Impact.”
32 Lister and Ainsley, Museum Freelance; Blanche, Mapping the Visual Arts.
33 My focus on professional learning among freelancers through COVID-19 is situated within critical discussions of freelance employment more broadly, both prior to and during the coronavirus pandemic. See for example, Culture Counts, Radical Futures; Florisson et al., “Impact”; Lister and Ainsley, Museum Freelance.
34 It is relevant here to consider the potential ripple effects on professional learning of a recent class action suit in London. In 2018, 27 art educators (known as the NG27) filed the suit against the National Gallery for unfair dismissal and to be recognized employees. In 2019, the judge rejected their claim of unfair dismissal but ruled that they should be classified as “workers” – a status offering them more rights than freelancers but fewer that full time employees. See National Gallery Educators, “Help”; Artforum, “Workers’.”
35 This led some participants to fear they would be dropped entirely once COVID restrictions fully eased; similarly, another feared that financial imperatives cause by closures could result in volunteers replacing professional educators.
36 It is worth noting that at the time of my focus group with freelancers, GEM offered an online 6-week training course entitled “Anti-Racism in Practice,” which is being offered a for second time in 2021. This year Engage Scotland is also offering anti-racism and cultural proficiency training, led by Intercultural Youth Scotland, to groups, organizations, and individuals.
37 No participants detailed how COVID-19 had directly impacted their personal lives or finances. It is worth noting that according to a UK survey conducted during the time of this study, the negative financial impact on freelancers working in museums, libraries, archives, galleries and heritage sites was consistent across these sectors. According to the survey results, 78% of respondents experienced a drop in income between March and October 2020 compared to 2019, and 52% were not eligible for the government's Self-Employment Income Support Scheme. Lister and Marge, Covid-19.
38 As one participant stated,
In a place where there's not much to feel grounded about, it does feel like an anchor to grab hold of and hang on to at times, really. When it's changing and uncertain, and you don't know when the next wave's going to hit you, it does feel like kind of that ship on a sea metaphor […] that if you can hang on to something when it gets rough, you feel like you can kind of get through it.
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Emily Keenlyside
Emily Keenlyside is a mid-career gallery educator and doctoral candidate and instructor at Concordia University. With a particular interest in adult education and the cultural politics of art museums and galleries, her current research examines critical professional learning among gallery educators. Emily trains volunteer guides at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and previously co-coordinated education programming at DHC/ART (now Phi) Foundation for Contemporary Art. She has published in Muséologies, Canadian Review of Art Education, and the Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education.