Ms Lynn Scarff:

I thank the Chair and the committee for the opportunity to speak today. I am the director of the National Museum of Ireland. I am joined today by my colleague, Ms Rosa Meehan, one of our curators, who has been the lead in all of the work we have been doing with the Traveller community.

By way of background, the National Museum of Ireland is Ireland’s largest national cultural institution with four public sites including one in Turlough Park, Castlebar, County Mayo. We collect, conserve and interpret the largest holdings of portable heritage, comprising more than 4 million artefacts. We welcome more than 1 million visitors per annum. There are currently 170 staff employed across all four of our sites. Following our recent submission, we are very honoured to be here today to share our experience in collaborative practice with the Traveller community. We very much wish to acknowledge the people in the Seanad Chamber today. We have been working with many of them over recent years and we thank them for their contribution and work with us.

The National Museum of Ireland holds and interprets our national collection. It is a critical value of the museum that this collection is reflective of all of the people of Ireland and our shared experiences. It is also crucial that individuals and communities are co-curators of that story with the museum and are editors of their own narrative and experience. It is with these values in mind and in our role as a public institution that the museum is taking an increasingly socially engaged and intentionally collaborative approach to its work. Of particular focus is the manner in which it engages with communities that have been traditionally marginalised and under-represented in our national cultural institutions. While the museum views this work as critical to our values as an organisation, in the context of today it is important to note here that the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act 2014 emphasises our public sector duty to embed equality and human rights considerations in our policies and programmes.

While our museum is free to enter, the actual barriers to entry are many and sometimes invisible to those of us within the institution. It requires the building of long-term and trusted relationships where mutual understanding is sought and forged and relationships nurtured to enable the addressing of these barriers. This community-led, co-curated and participative approach sees the museum and communities working together to identify objects that tell our national stories. It very much values the expertise of communities in telling that story. In doing so the museum’s goal is to give a platform and power to voices that have been marginalised or overlooked in our cultural spaces in the past. While the museum is never neutral, we are a safe, non-partisan space that provides and can facilitate prolonged dialogue about culture and identity. We want the museum to be a space where visitors can engage with and explore Traveller material culture and ethnicity. We know there is no one definition of Traveller culture and we recognise the importance of the Traveller community in framing its own stories. Crucially, the museum wants to work in collaboration to enable visibility of, and engaged conversation about, Traveller culture across place, space, time and generations, by and with visitors to the museum.

Our recent experience of making visible and exploring Traveller culture has been based around the museum’s temporary exhibition and associated programme, Travellers’ Journey - Mincéir Misl’d. This involved a year-long exhibition opened by President Michael D. Higgins in July 2018 and a series of events and talks on aspects of Traveller culture and identity, including the publication of "This Giant Tent", a wonderful collaborative project with local schools, the Traveller community, Kids' Own Publishing, and local artists and writers. It also included the CAMP project and panel discussions such as "I am Traveller: Our History and Heritage". Many people in the room took part in that particular event. Our approach towards this project aimed, at its heart, to be inclusive, collaborative, respectful and authentic. While expertly led by Ms Meehan, it has also involved the National Museum of Ireland board, the senior management team, curators, our education and marketing teams, and, crucially, our visitor security teams. We also engaged with museum-wide training on Traveller culture, identity and awareness for all our staff on all our sites. Ultimately, as an institution, the experiences of working in collaboration on this project have greatly expanded our knowledge and experience and have changed our own practice.

We have some key learnings and recommendations to share today. The first relates to reaching out. As a national cultural institution, is critical that we reach out, support and participate in Traveller events as a way of making and growing connections with the community. Partnerships are critical. We worked in partnership with the Western Regional Traveller Health Network on Travellers' Journey, but Traveller community expertise is core. One must work with representatives. It is also important to provide pathways to those in the community not associated with organisations through open calls, events to engage and a chance to develop networks.

We very much recognise that the Traveller community as an ethnic group has a shared and connected history with many different expressions. There are challenges in consulting inclusively with the whole community and it is important to work in partnership to achieve this. Consultation and partnership take resources for all involved. As a large cultural institution, it is important to note that sustained engagement can be challenging and that there is a need for more dedicated resources and supports. In working in partnership, discussion and the embedding of shared goals is essential. The review and allocation of resources in partnerships and collaborations are also essential.

With regard to widening the audience, public programmes are an integral part of our work. Broader public programmes increase visibility and promote conversations beyond the already engaged. Our awareness of cultural appropriation and sensitivity to the imbalance of power between our institutions and traditionally marginalised voices is important. For this reason, every effort is made to ensure members of the Traveller community lead our events about Traveller culture. No event will ever be held without their involvement. It is not enough to say that all are welcome. Particular initiatives are needed to encourage participation of the Traveller community within the museum space and to address the invisible barriers about which I spoke earlier. Traveller-specific events can give participants a sense of belonging within the museum and help to break down those barriers.

We aim to widen the collaborators' reach and to bring artists, poets, and writers into the cultural community. Seeking out collaborative creative projects is an important way to broaden the conversation and the exploration of Traveller culture in a meaningful way. We engaged in a number of projects with a range of Traveller communities and age groups.

The inclusion of members of the Traveller community on any curatorial selection panel for commissioned projects is also essential. It is not just about having one person from the Traveller community, but multiple people with different voices and different perspectives. We recommend that a specific fund for Traveller culture creative projects be established in partnership with organisations such as ours that could reach out and enable more Traveller artists and communities to participate in artistically expressing Traveller culture and identity. Creative and other partnerships foster links and build relationships. Our experience of creative projects such as the "This Giant Tent" book, which was a project by children for children created as part of the exhibition, demonstrate the importance of creating quality Irish-produced material on Traveller culture and identity. The museum also wants to support a diverse workforce. We require expertise from the wider community to inform our strategic planning.

While collaboration provides an opportunity for lasting engagement real change requires a diverse workforce in our cultural institutions. We need to look at mechanisms to enable traditionally marginalised voices and people to join our teams. We value support from equality agencies to implement ideas around good practice in that space.

The National Museum of Ireland deeply values the relationships it has developed over the past years in these projects. As we are now in the process of developing a new permanent exhibition on Traveller culture and history in our Museum of Country Life we wish to grow these relationships further. We recognise that we are only at the beginning of this journey. We aspire to be a museum that recognises and celebrates the diversity of a wide range of communities and ethnicities. We note, however, that at the root of all these programmes are trusted relationships between individuals and communities. This kind of relationship requires multi-annual, long-term, sustainable systems and resourcing that recognise the complexities of this process and enable the initiatives.