Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

If musical instruments are relational objects that provide a physical and emotional link between player and listener, what is the unique potential for museum collections of musical instruments to create new inclusive relationships and networks? The complexity of musical instruments as cultural objects is reflected in the diversity of activities generated by the musical instrument collection in London’s Horniman Museum and Gardens. Musical instruments by their nature offer enormous potential for engagement and this paper describes how developing this potential can reframe the relationship between the museum and its constituency. Building on the Horniman’s extensive past experience of collecting projects; the diversity of our partnerships and engagement work; our understanding of how music is explored through fieldwork, sound recordings, handling collections and live performances, I compare our approach to that of other major museums devoted to music. This review of will expose the challenges of engaging people with such a relational collection within the confines of the museum, as well as the potential some methods of interpretation and engagement have for co-creating a truly inclusive vision for museums. In response the Horniman has reached out to existing and new communities and practitioners, to collaboratively explore new understandings of the collection. The final section of the paper describes Music in the Making, the Horniman’s current strategic engagement programme, which involves a large and diverse constituency in reconsidering the musical instrument collections and co-developing new contexts of engagement, with lessons for the wider cultural sector.