Research Centre for Museums and Galleries

Description

The Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG) is a part of the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester. The centre's research aims to stimulate innovative thinking and creative practices that enable cultural organizations to become more impactful in nurturing more equitable and inclusive societies. The research involves academic rigor and a commitment to socially engaged thinking and practice. Collaboration with cultural partners is central to RCMG's research practice. RCMG builds teams comprising diverse skills, experiences, and perspectives to meet each project's specific needs and requirements, creating spaces for different forms of expertise to come together. The centre aims to generate insights that open up new possibilities for museums and their role in society.

RCMG's research engages with real-world contexts and responds to contemporary social, political, and environmental issues. They seek to stimulate values-led change and support experimental practice that fosters cultural organizations' active engagement in changing social, political, and environmental arenas. The center explores how museums can inform and enrich audience attitudes and public debate by ethically framing and hosting conversations around contemporary societal concerns. They also explore how museums can engage with diverse and ever-changing communities and audiences meaningfully. RCMG examines and interrogates the impact and value of culture and cultural participation.

RCMG's research combines academic rigour and a commitment to socially-engaged thinking and practice, challenging hierarchical ways of working. The centre creates spaces within which different forms of expertise come together, and researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, artists, and activists collaborate. RCMG values creative experimentation that generates insights and opens up new possibilities for museums and their role in society. The centre is international in outlook, values, dialogue, and exchange, and all their research reports and publications are available to download for free.

RCMG's research is built around interlinked themes that focus on radical transformation, human rights, queer/LGBTQIA+ equality, anti-racism, reframing difference and disability, and culture, health, and social care. RCMG's research aims to drive radical transformation in cultural organizations' working practices and relationships with communities to take up a more inclusive role in relation to pressing contemporary social, political, and environmental issues. The centre supports institutions to uncover and explore previously suppressed or marginalized histories of same-sex love and desire and gender diversity. RCMG is also addressing the urgent need for museums and galleries to actively challenge systemic racism and ongoing coloniality. They also stimulate public and professional debate around societal attitudes towards disability and difference, contributing to advance and shape museum practices internationally. RCMG's collaborative work with museums, galleries, and heritage sites has also demonstrated the capacity for cultural organizations to contribute towards more equitable, fair, and inclusive societies, alongside revealing their immense potential as spaces of social care.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

1999

Contact details

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University affiliation(s)

University of Leicester
Leicester