Race Equality at The Peace Museum – Autumn 2022 Update

Last autumn, we posted an update for Black History Month, reviewing what we were doing as a museum to promote racial equality. A year on, we would like to update you on what we’ve been up to, and what our plans are for the future.

• We have now launched our Race Equality education session, and it is available for KS3 classes this school year. There are also free educational resources on our website for teachers for both this session and our Peace Out Workshop, which you can access on our education page.
• Our staff and trustees have undertaken training on unconscious bias and anti-racist practice, and as a result we have gained a better understanding of how to support visitors to our museum when we reopen.
• We undertook an Audience Development Plan using information from our Equality Action Plan. Race was one of the protected characteristics that we focused on during our consultation sessions, and participants were able to provide valuable insights about their lived experiences and needs as museum visitors. This work will allow us to create a more inclusive visitor experience in our new galleries.
• We recognise that our collection and our galleries have not previously reflected the diversity of our visitors, or explored anti-racism as an important aspect of peacemaking. As we are in the process of developing content for our new core galleries, we are working to incorporate more of these elements, and to make a Peace Museum that reflects all of our visitors. Part of this work will be incorporating the feedback from our recent Defining Peace exhibition.

Let us know about any additional changes you want to see to our approach to race equality at the museum, or to our collections, by emailing us at [email protected]. There will be more updates to follow in the next few months, particularly surrounding the content of our new galleries.

The development of our Equality Action Plan is supported by grant money from the AIM Tackling Inequality Hallmarks Grant Award. 

Photos from our Then Informs Now pilot educational sessions.