Paper Short Abstract:

This paper investigates examples from Germany and the UK of grassroots memory activism and critical initiatives that have acted as catalysts for institutional transformations, promoting accountability and contributing to reshape how museums engage with the histories and legacies of colonialism and enslavement.

Paper Abstract:

After decades of institutional silences, the critical engagement with histories of colonialism and enslavement has become a pivotal challenge for museums across Europe (Lehrer et al, 2011; Macdonald, 2023). Museums have begun to engage with colonial collections in their custody (von Oswald, 2022), reflect their own historic involvement during the colonial project (Bach, 2019; Hicks, 2020), and contribute to reshaping national narratives that consider more substantially the role that colonisation and enslavement played for European nation-building (Araujo, 2023; Sieg, 2021; Tinsley, 2023). Frequently, grassroots actors have been integral interlocutors for institutional transformations, utilising a range of activities and strategies. This paper presents a selection of examples from Germany and the UK demonstrating how grassroots initiatives have contributed to institutional transformations in which museums have begun to engage critically with these histories and legacies. Prioritising initiatives that emerge from outside museum organisations and the wider sector, and taking varied societal, cultural, and political contexts in Germany and in the UK into account, I demonstrate how activism has acted as an accountability mechanism and catalyst, encouraging museums to unlearn dominant narratives of the past and to contribute to shaping contemporary democracy and social equity. Research for this paper has been conducted as part of the AHRC-DFG funded project ‘Cultural Dynamics: Museum and Democracy in Motion’, researching how museum organisations in Germany and in the UK have been changing and evolving, in response to changing ideas of democracy in both contexts, and the role that grassroots activism has played in shaping institutional transformations.