Jo Quinton-Tulloch

National museums outside of London are different. I didn’t fully appreciate this until I came to Bradford.

In London a large percentage of visitors are international tourists, making a once-in-a-lifetime visit to a must-see gallery. Outside of London, museum visitors and their motivations for visiting are quite different. Grappling with the context of a museum and its relationship with its audiences, is key to unlocking its full potential.

Our Museum was established in a serendipitous way; Bradford wasn’t chosen as its location in 1983 because of an exceptionally strong heritage in photography, film or broadcast technologies. There isn’t a particularly strong intellectual connection to ‘place’ or a historical narrative that provides a relationship between the collections and our city. Yet the Museum has undoubtably established its roots. How do we strengthen and nourish them?

Bradford and Chicago: Community Co-Creation Exchange, 20th November 2019, Stony Island Arts Bank. Photo credit: Erik Peterson

As part of our research we visited Chicago, where there is a strong history of activism and of grassroots organisations that have successfully addressed imbalances of power. It was inspiring – and at the same time frustrating. I recognised that these smaller, independent, self-organised groups and organisations were able to achieve radical change, in part because of their flexibility and nimbleness.

At one moment, Faheem, the director of the Floating Museum (an art collective that creates new models, working on site specific projects across the city – the antithesis of our museum) talked about strengths and limitations:

“You’re not going to change the museum – it took hundreds of years to get here, it’s not going to change in one lifespan. You need to understand the limitations that are in place because of the institution. Each organisation/individual has a different type of institution, with its individual limitations. But the limitations have to be on the table with all our hopes and dreams. Be honest about the limitations.”

His point was that in knowing your limitations you can work effectively with them. And even more importantly, be clear about the limitations when embarking on a partnership. Other organisations can be more nimble and flexible; can make decisions and respond more quickly; and operate in ways that we cannot. But we have other strengths. We have relatively secure national funding, we have historically significant collections and high-profile exhibitions, we are part of a Group that brings resource and expertise, we have a national platform that connects us to other national and international platforms, we have our international networks of museums and researchers. We can bring all of this to the work we do, aligning with and complementing the work of other organisations within the rich Bradford cultural ecosystem.