Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: As museums and other heritage organizations are coming to terms with their colonial pasts and their contemporary legacies, there has been extensive coverage on how they may enact such practice. However, limited academic consideration has been given to how it may implicate one dedicated stakeholder group: their volunteers. Volunteers are fundamental for organizations to function on a daily basis, and so it is important to fully gauge and understand volunteer responses to decolonization. Using semi-structured interviews and participant observation, this paper explores the Fulham Palace’s decolonial practice to answer two questions: “why do volunteers either support or oppose museum decolonization” and “how can organizations overcome potential opposition to engender volunteer support for decolonization?” The findings suggest that volunteer responses are filtered through both the moral opinions of volunteers regarding the narration and (re)presentation of histories of Empire and volunteer motivation, place attachment, and the significance of their activity.
Source: Museums & Social Issues
Author: Laurence Maidment-Blundell
Institution: University College London
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4417157691