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In the discussion paper, Sustainability and museums. Your chance to make a difference (Davies & Wilkinson 2008), the Museums Association mentions three forms of sustainability: economic sustainability, social sustainability, and environmental sustainability. Sustainability has been described as “efficiency with a conscience” and a key aspect of sustainable operation is to use the limited resources that are available efficiently in order to achieve the maximum possible impact. This, in fact, applies to all types of resources, from financial resources, to energy and materials, to human engagement.

In the following text I will focus on the relation between collection development and social sustainability. In aforementioned discussion paper it is stated that long-term sustainability means that museums are becoming more socially responsible. Social responsibility is described as the museums’ efforts “to improve society and undo harm where harm has been done” (loc.cit.: 11). In the end, “museums can only become sustainable when they engage with people and issues outside, including both professional ‘outreach’ activities and personal experiences beyond their own self-interest” (Marstine, Dodd & Jones 2015: 87). Speaking about collections, the Museums Association suggests that to flourish sustainability, museums should “acknowledge the legacy contributed by previous generations and pass on a better legacy of collections, information and knowledge to the next generation”, and “manage collections well, so that they will be a valued asset for future generations, not a burden” (Davies & Wilkinson 2008: 5). What specific methodological approaches towards collection development does sustainability require? Museums are said to work for eternity, but how can museums and other heritage institutions meet different – sometimes conflicting – societal requirements? What is the impact of collecting on the sustainability of ecosystems and communities? Museums are often accused of disrupting ecosystems and communities by their collecting practices. There is a growing awareness that museums should adopt an activist attitude towards key social issues such as social injustice and environmental degradation. Following this attitude, should collecting be replaced by the ethics of guardianship, i.e. the abstinence of collecting in favor of protection in situ, in function? In other words, can museums contribute to the sustainable development of ecosystems and communities by not-collecting? And, going one step further, can museums contribute to this development – in particular the sustainable development of communities – by returning items of cultural significance to their creators?

In order to respect – and to sustain – the interest of the original creator community or user community, the principle of guardianship has been introduced in contemporary museum ethics (Marstine 2011). According to Janet Marstine “guardianship prioritizes repatriation as a human right”. In relation to sustainability it is interesting to reflect upon the fact whether the principle of guardianship should also be applied in the process of musealisation. Guardianship would than prioritize forms of shared ownership where museums and creator/user communities share responsibility for the preservation of objects as living heritage i.e. a form of preservation where heritage value does not exclude use outside the museum context (Meijer-van Mensch, 2015). This can be called dynamic preservation. In fact this principle is more familiar in the sphere of nature conservation, historic buildings, industrial heritage, transport heritage and intangible heritage (Van Mensch 2015). Dynamic preservation combined with shared ownership in a museum context has already some tradition in ethnographical museums, for example as indigenous curation (Kreps 2008). It has challenged the traditional notions of integrity held among conservators (Clavir 2015).

The challenge is to find a balance between the active (and activist) use of heritage and art and the procedures that are part of professional museum work. Important is that the creator community as key stakeholder continues to have access to the objects and has a right to use the objects outside the museum. In this respect the concept of heritage community, as presented by the Council of Europe in its Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society of 2005 (also known as Faro Convention), is of crucial importance, emphasizing a shared responsibility of all persons and organisations with an interest in a certain theme or heritage sector. Arjen Kok described concepts such as heritage community in terms of new collecting (Kok 2009: 55). He identified three forms: (1) the museum doesn’t collect objects, but interactions, (2) the museum participates as equal within a heritage community, and (3) the museum acts as a platform for individuals and groups to collect their own heritage.  The first form of new collecting starts from the assumption that in certain fields private collectors have achieved a high level of sophistication. The role of the museum is to support these collectors, for example by taking care of storage, conservation, and restoration, but also to create new meaning by using the collections for curatorial exhibitions. The second option refers to museums as functioning in networks of private and institutional collectors, but also owners of objects still in use. The third approach emphasizes the role of source or user communities. Most new collecting projects are self-documentary; these projects intend to give people the opportunity to share their stories, providing a platform for the attribution of meaning. But, in more recent projects in the Netherlands and Germany, new collecting also means working with the public as co-curator. The underlying hypothesis is that the social sustainability of collection development depends on the ability of museums to take the role of facilitator, rather than authority.

References

The text of this article is based on the forthcoming second edition of New Trends in Museology, written by Peter van Mensch and Léontine Meijer-van Mensch, and published by the Museum of Recent History, Celje (Slovenia).

Miriam Clavir (2015) ‘Preserving the physical object in changing cultural contexts’, in: Annie E. Coombes & Ruth B. Phillips eds., Museum transformations. The International Handbooks of Museum Studies 4 (John Wiley and Sons, Chichester) 387-412.

Maurice Davies & Helen Wilkinson (2008) Sustainability and museums. Your chance to make a difference (Museums Association, London).
http://www.museumsassociation.org/download?id=16398

Arjen Kok (2009) ‘Het Nieuwe Verzamelen in Zoetermeer’, in: André Koch & Jouette van der Ploeg eds, 4289 Wisselwerking. De Wonderkamer van Zoetermeer. Verslag van een geslaagd museaal experiment (Stadsmuseum Zoetermeer, Zoetermeer) 54-58.

Christina Kreps (2008) ‘Indigenous curation, museums, and intangible cultural heritage’, in: Laurajane Smith & Natsuko Akadawa eds., Intangible Heritage (Routledge, London) 193-208.

Janet Marstine (2011) ‘The contingent nature of the new museum ethics’, in: Janet Marstine ed., The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics. Redefining Ethics for the Twenty-First-Century Museum (Routledge, Abbington) 3-25.

Janet Marstine, Jocelyn Dodd & Ceri Jones (2015) ‘Reconceptualizing museum ethics for the twenty-first century. A view from the field’, in: Conal McCarthy ed., Museum Practice. The International Handbooks of Museum Studies 2 (John Wiley and Sons, Chichester) 69-95.

Léontine Meijer-van Mensch (2015) ‘Die Musealisierung von Lebendigkeit – Ein Widerspruch in sich?’, in: Barbara Keller, Stefan Koslowski, Cornelia Meyer & Ulrich Schenk eds., Lebendige Traditionen ausstellen (Hier und Jetzt, Baden) 96-109.

Peter van Mensch (2015) ‘Museality at breakfast. The concept of museality in contemporary museological discourse’, Museologica Brunensia (in print).

Léontine Meijer-van Mensch is deputy director of the Museum for European Cultures- State Museums Berlin and chair of the International Committee for Collecting of ICOM.

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At the Global Sustainability Institute our research explores issues from global resources and risk, to individual behaviours and change. We regularly look at when and how people change their everyday practice, what influences these changes and how to support people in achieving goals that they want to achieve. We also look at global trends like climate change, food security and energy availability and how this impacts on social and financial stability.

How people change is wrapped up in their identity. These identities change with time whether they are young or old, parents or not, working or unemployed, moving home or moving country.

How people respond to global crisis is also wrapped up in identity.

The responses to global crisis are interesting. They often, but not always, falls down a political divide. In the Anglo-Saxon world the left is, broadly, engaged in sustainability discourse and at least discussing solutions. The right is, broadly, not. This divide is most visible in the North America and Australia.

There are notable exceptions to this with former republican Governors of U.S. states having taken bold leadership after seeing the opportunities that tackling some of these global challenges can bring. Ministers in the UK Conservative party, and indeed the former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher have led bold initiatives on pollution targets, climate investments and solutions to ozone depletion.

Solving climate change can easily be framed as a perfect excuse to go all out for free market economics and unleash the power of business. I’m always puzzled that this hasn’t been embraced by the right. The technology fix for climate change needs huge investment in the private sector which could be used to speed up privatisation of global energy systems, deregulation of energy technologies and huge changes to planning laws. Transforming the global economy into a more competitive and efficient system should be the ideal platform for leaders of the right.

However, it is more often than not seen as a left wing drive to increase public sector responsibility and delivery. A drive to tax the rich that is anti-competitive.

If we were to have a debate about the best route to future economic stability within the context of the limited planet on which we live, that would at least engage in real issues. As it is, most debate is focussed on whether any of the things going on around us are real or not (or possible real but all in God’s plan). We are not really debating whether unleashing the power of private sector leadership could transform the energy-economic landscape of the world or whether we need a more public sector led transformation.

The world currently has a hugely unbalanced energy system. Large fossil based companies, and their infrastructure, exist because of huge public and private investment and subsidy over the past century. This is particularly true for research and development and in the underpinning of the infrastructure and security needed to find and transport fossil fuels around the world.

This investment has transformed the world and delivered huge benefit. However, that investment is now capturing our debate and we are looking at how to squeeze out every last penny of return rather than looking at where the next global transformation will come from. It is captured through the accumulation of capital into those companies and through the influence of those vested interests in our every day lives and decisions.

We attempt to paint a negative view of the future to spur action: climate change will cause many deaths, economic turmoil and biodiversity collapse. We attempt to paint a positive view of the future to spur action: the future low cost of renewable technologies allows for a massive green economy paradigm shift that will support jobs, investments and returns.

Arguably neither has really galvanised action at the scale it is needed in any sector. Certainly in business and politics we have become expert in talking about solutions and rewarding ‘greenwash’ as a great step forward. A company can win a sustainability prize on the same day it unveils a technology that will rapidly increase carbon emissions. This means they have a very effective marketing department – not that they have responded appropriately.

Those on the side of no action have ‘won’ the argument so far. Not because their case is stronger – but because it is very difficult to change our global identity. We are a society that has rapidly changed our individual prospects within a few generations so that we, on average, benefit from living on this planet more than we could have ever imagined. We put a man on the moon and just landed a probe on a small rock hurtling through space. Our ingenuity and sense of adventure has been unleashed. However, our sense of identity seems to be tied into the underpinning technologies and infrastructure that supported this change rather than having a sense of identity tied to ‘thinking outside the box’ and achieving the best we possibly can.

So those few on the ‘right’ who protest at a global conspiracy to unleash socialist ideologies do not have to try hard to keep the status quo.

At Anglia Ruskin University we run an annual student sustainability art prize. This always receives some fantastic entries exploring various aspects of the challenges we face today. In 2015 our choice of winner caused more controversy than usual. Ian Wolter’s monument to climate denial received a lot of attention in online blogs, newspapers and on Twitter.

The goal of a global socialist utopia is not the opposite of a business as usual denial of risks. It is more the opposite of a global utopia of liberalism. Both can deliver solutions to climate change and resource depletion. Both have their approach to poverty alleviation.

Climate change is real. Global resource scarcity is real. I personally believe we should also solve massive inequality as we re-engineer our economy. I don’t think any solution that does not address inequality provides economic stability as the availability of information and increasing access to visualising the identities of inequality are now just a touch of the button away. We can see inside people’s homes and lives on Facebook. We are in danger of global frustration linked to increasing unequal access to resources and climate impacts leading to social unrest. I am not sure we can contain that social unrest easily or pretend we are trying to tackle it without directly tackling it.

My sustainable identity is separate to my political identity. But then I would say that wouldn’t I – I’m a bit too far ‘left’ for those commentators on the ‘right’.

However I am happy to have that debate and to debate the best route to a solution that delivers this. The longer we wait and focus our debate on whether we face a challenge or not, the fewer choices we will have. It will no longer be possible to debate – we’ll be forced to act and will end up in a solution that probably no one wanted. I hope we have visionary leaders about to emerge on both the left and right that can help frame a national, regional and global debate on what sort of society we want. We are unfortunately lacking that visionary leadership today – on any side. Otherwise we will not have a choice – and we may not have a society.

I’ve recently been called Dr Apocalypse. I may get a t-shirt printed with that identity.

Dr Aled Jones is Director of the Global Sustainability Institute at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK. http://www.anglia.ac.uk/gsi

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