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Inclusive Curating in Contemporary Art: A Practical Guide

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 INCLUSIVE CURATING
IN CONTEMPORARY ART
A PRACTICAL GUIDE

by
JADE FRENCH

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 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 1: Facilitating Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Chapter 2: Finding the “Big Idea” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Chapter 3: Acquiring Artwork. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Chapter 4: Developing Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Chapter 5: Installation and Exhibition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

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 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1: Auto Agents exhibition at Bluecoat, 2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Tool 1: Access Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Figure 2: Facilitating Engage­ment Framework, illustration by Emma Curd . . . . . . . . . . 29

Figure 3: Eddie’s sketchbook, 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Tool 2: Community Mapping Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Tool 3: Jigsaw Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Tool 4: One-Page Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Figure 4: Leah’s One-Page Profile, 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Figure 5: Example of Adapted PATH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Tool 5: PATH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

Figure 6: Auto Agents zine, 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Figure 7: Hannah’s artwork exploring autonomy with close-up detail, 2016 . . . . . . . . . 55

Figure 8: “Autonomous Agents” collage by inclusive curators, 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

Figure 9: Workshop with Mark Simmonds exploring Bluecoat’s library, 2016 . . . . . . . 62

Tool 6: Artist Interview Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Figure 10: “Auto Agent Bob”: an activity to explore authorship, 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Tool 7: Whose Job? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Tool 8: Decision-Making Agreements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Tool 9: Equity Compass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Figure 11: Auto Agents interpretation film installed at Bluecoat, 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Figure 12: Auto Agents “drawing tours,” 2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Figure 13: Model of gallery by curators, 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Tool 10: Six Thinking Hats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has grown out of a number of collaborative projects and studies. I
would like to begin by expressing my profound gratitude to the many people whom
have contributed and participated in these over the years. I have learnt so much from
so many people.
First and foremost, I would like to thank the fantastic team that made the inclusively
curated exhibition Auto Agents possible, which much of this book’s research is based.
Monumental thanks for their generous insight, hard work, and unwavering commitment
during this project to the inclusive curators Hannah Bellass, Tony Carroll, Diana ­Disley,
Leah Jones, and Eddie Rauer; the artists James Harper, Mark Simmonds and Alaena
Turner; and support staff Abi Burrows and Donna Bellass. They attended over a year’s
worth of weekly workshops and meetings with such enthusiasm. I am also forever grate-
ful to the to the staff from the partner organizations Halton Speak Out and Bluecoat, par-
ticularly Mal Hampson and Bec Fearon, who contributed their valuable time, counsel,
and generously welcomed me and my ideas in to disrupt their places of work. Thank you
all for supporting me to share our journey so candidly. This book is for all of you.
Enormous thanks to Helen Graham, Associate Professor in the School of Fine Art,
History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds, for your generous support
from supervising my PhD to producing this book. A phenomenal mentor, our conver-
sations and collaborations have sharpened my work immeasurably. I can’t thank you
enough.
Huge thanks to Emma Curd. This book would not have been possible without your
excellent notes and words of encouragement. Thank you for producing the wonderful
illustrations and keeping me company during library marathons and the “I can’t do this”
moments.
This book would also not have been carried out without financial support and invest-
ment. A big thank you to the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council for selecting my
research for scholarship, to Arts Council England for contributing to the Auto Agents’
exhibition costs, and the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities who have enabled
me to attend a range of training and international conferences to refine and disseminate
my research. Thank you to Bluecoat for investing space, time and resources and provid-
ing an ideal context for the inclusive curating project and exhibition. I am so grateful for
the experiences and learning all of these contributions have afforded me.
Thank you to acquisitions editor Danièle Cybulskie, press director Simon Forde, and
the wider team at Arc Humanities Press for their editorial input and guidance during
writing my first book. It has been a wonderful, supportive experience and an absolute
pleasure to work with you all.
Finally, to my wonderful family who have fiercely cheered me along—thank you.

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 PREFACE

My journey to writing this book began in 2010 in the unlikely surroundings of the
offices of Mencap, a British charity that supports intellectually-disabled people. I had
been working with Mencap as part of my job at a small community theatre in London,
and during that time I met Barbara, a woman with intellectual disabilities who was also
a keen visual artist. After meeting one day by chance Barbara asked if she could show
me some of her artwork to which I happily agreed.
Barbara carefully unwrapped her artworks and leant them against the office’s
lavender painted walls. She pointed towards an azure blue mono-print of a bird and
explained; “I had one just like this shown at the Outsider Art Fair.” “Wow” I replied,
“That’s an amazing achievement.” The Outsider Art Fair is considered the premier event
for self-taught artists, taking place in plush venues across Paris and New York annually;
it’s a big deal. She did not, however, seem as pleased. I learnt that Barbara, along with
many intellectually-disabled artists I have since encountered, had not been included in
the decision to exhibit her work or had a say in how her work was presented, inter-
preted, and mediated to the public. She had not been supported to attend the exhibition
where her work was displayed or had even seen pictures. How could this happen? I was
unnerved and perplexed.
For me, this experience marks a pivotal point in my practice. It ignited an interest in
devising ways to support intellectually-disabled artists to have autonomy in how their
work was made and exhibited. Soon after in 2011 I enrolled on a postgraduate degree
at the University of Brighton. Here I began to research curating with intellectually-dis-
abled people resulting in the pop-up arts festival The Dugout (2013) in London’s Hoxton
Arches. Later in 2014, I was awarded a Collaborative Doctoral Award from the Arts and
Humanities Research Council to undertake PhD research at the University of Leeds with
self-advocacy group Halton Speak Out and Bluecoat’s inclusive arts project Blue Room
resulting in the exhibition Auto Agents: further developing this research.
Much of what lies within these pages has seeds within these initial projects. But
although my interests in inclusive curating began with the aim of increasing artistic
autonomy for intellectually-disabled artists, it quickly became apparent that this work
could be applied more broadly and be useful to others working in the museum sector. I
have therefore written this book with the hope of providing greater utility and applica-
tion of this original work. By doing this, I hope to contribute not just an inclusive curato-
rial process but also broaden the ways in which curating (and crucially the curator) is
defined.

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 INTRODUCTION

“SO, WHAT IS A CURATOR ANYWAY?”

A monumental question asked so casually, and at that particular moment, I had no
answer. This fleeting exchange with inclusive curator Eddie during our first curatorial
meeting remains a memorable one.1 It cuts to the heart of a key question concerning the
practice of inclusive curating: what does a curator actually do?
A century ago the role of a curator conjured an image of a singular figure in a muse-
um’s basement: tending, caring, and cataloguing collections and artefacts. Yet over
recent decades curating has moved beyond any singular definition and now occupies a
much broader scope of activities, practices, and professions. The modern-day curator is
not only a carer and preserver of cultural heritage, they are influential selectors, inter-
preters, commissioners, activists, artists, and tastemakers. The curator, once a behind-
the-scenes caring figure who “tended” ground, has evolved to one who actively secures,
organizes, and landscapes it; becoming the culturally central figure we know today.2
But despite significant transformation, curating has an enduring reputation as an
exclusive job for a privileged few. The curator’s status as a powerful “expert” and “gate-
keeper” persists, with art critic David Sylvester claiming that the most important peo-
ple in the cultural world are not artists but in fact curators, “the true brokers of the art
world.”3 Curators have risen to such prominence particularly within contemporary art,
with some gaining almost celebrity-like status, because of their increased importance
in mediating between institutions, artists, the academy, market forces, and crucially,
publics.4
Alongside this evolution of the curator, recent decades have also witnessed a radical
re-examination of the museum’s role, purpose, and responsibility in society. Traditional
concepts of what a museum is and how it should operate have been met with new intel-
lectual, social, and political concerns regarding the legitimacy of specialized knowledge,
bias in collecting and display, and the museum’s civic purpose.5 Museums have therefore
become increasingly aware of reflecting in both exhibitions and collections the voices of
communities in more respectful and equitable ways,6 moving towards more collabora-
tive and participatory approaches to exhibition making.7
For many museum practitioners, including communities in curating has become an
accepted, if not necessary, way of creating exhibitions. Numerous labels have emerged

1 French, “Art as Advocacy,” 52.

2 Balzer, Curationism, 40.
3 Millard, The Tastemakers, 108.
4 Sheikh, “The Trouble with Institutions.”
5 Pearce, “General Preface to Series,” 1.
6 Sandell et al., ed., Re-Presenting Disability.
7 Golding, Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections and Collaboration.

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2 Introduction

to describe a range of approaches: “community curation,”8 “coproduction,”9 “constituent

curator,”10 “team approach,”11 “external party,”12 “collaborative curation,”13 and “public
curation”14 to name but a few. In her book The Participatory Museum, Nina Simon also
identifies categories that aim to articulate the varying approaches to how museums
enable communities to participate:15 which are differentiated according to where the
power to define projects and the capacity to make decisions resides.16 Her category “co-
creation” happens when communities and the museum work together from “the begin-
ning to define the project’s goals, and generate the programme or exhibition based on
the community’s interests,”17 crucially, it is about the community’s agendas. This may
seem like a fairly straightforward definition, yet co-creation remains an area of museum
work that is fraught with a myriad of practical and ethical difficulties.18 Academic and
museum professional Bernadette Lynch, for example, has drawn attention to how such
participatory models in museums often position communities, sometimes unknowingly,
not as equal partners but as beneficiaries of the museum’s “generosity’.19
What is clear is that more robust models of inclusive and participatory approaches
to curating which are able to support a greater emphasis on shared curatorial author-
ity are required. Although discussion concerning community involvement in curating
is present in museum literature, as well as amongst museum practitioners and com-
munities themselves, gaps exist in understanding process and facilitation. This is where
this book contributes. If “co-creation” has been acknowledged as a category by which to
define a particular type of community participation in museums, then inclusive curating
is a process by which to “do it”; recognizing the intimate relationship between not only
what but how work is done.20

What is Inclusive Curating? Who is an Inclusive Curator?

The process of inclusive curating shared in this book emerged by bringing together my
artistic practice and experience of working with intellectually-disabled people through
self-advocacy work and person-centred planning. Drawing on my experience as an

8 Schwartz and Adair, “Community as Curator.”

9 Graham, “The ‘co’ in Co-Production.”
10 Byrne et al., The Constituent Museum.
11 Doering, The Making of Exhibitions.
12 Davies, “The Co-Production of Temporary Museum Exhibitions.”
13 Golding, Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections and Collaboration.
14 Satwicz and Morrissey, “Public Curation.”
15 Simon, The Participatory Museum, 180.
16 Govier, “Leaders in co-creation?,” 3.
17 Simon, The Participatory Museum, 187.
18 Helguera, Education for Socially Engaged Art.
19 Lynch, “Collaboration, Contestation, and Creative Conflict.”
20 Janes, Museums and the Paradox of Change, 353.

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 Introduction 3

inclusive artist, the prefix of “inclusive” also helpfully intersects with definitions of
“inclusive arts practice”21 in that a key marker of this work is facilitation and collabo-
ration.22
With this in mind, inclusive curating is an applied process that works to demys-
tify curating by breaking down curatorial tasks and decisions to enable more people
to express their exhibition ideas as critical inclusive curators. Rather than a traditional
curatorial model whereby a “professional” curator produces an exhibition, alternatively,
inclusive curating is a process that empowers community groups to curate exhibitions
with the guidance of a facilitator. From this perspective, inclusive curating relates to
three basic questions: first, what are the curatorial tasks, second: how do the individuals
involved work together, third: how are decisions made?
While museums have a history of including communities in the curation of exhibi-
tions across art,23 science,24 anthropology,25 history, and heritage,26 the quality of such
collaborations vary. Museums often approach communities with an exhibition subject
already in place,27 revealing a presumption on the part of the museum that they are the
expert.28 Equally, many collaborations between communities and museums are typically
short-term and project-driven, meaning that they are designed to achieve a “particular
objective normally within a very short period of time.”29 Such fragmented approaches
do little to challenge systemic inequalities within museums; rather, they reproduce
hierarchies and maintain a status quo allowing inequalities to remain overlooked.30 In
contrast, inclusive curating is “slow curating,”31 with inclusive curatorial projects tak-
ing several years on average to complete. Quality collaborations require time and only
through sustained partnership and embeddedness can institutional legacy be created.
This is a sizeable commitment for all parties. However, for communities to authentically
define the agenda of the exhibition, its curatorial approach, and work through a process
of sharing authority and expertise, time is an essential ingredient.
But first, what do we even mean by a museum’s “community”? Who is this mys-
terious and desirable group with whom museums wish to connect, and potentially,
empower as curators? At its worst, the term “community” is used as a blanket label

21 A field of artistic practice describing the creative collaborations between intellectually-disabled

and non-intellectually-disabled artists.
22 Fox and Macpherson, Inclusive Arts Practice and Research.
23 Byrne et al., The Constituent Museum.
24 Bunning et al., “Embedding Plurality.”
25 Peers and Brown, Museums and Source Communities.
26 Golding, Museums and Communities: Curators, Collections and Collaboration.
27 Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture.
28 Maranda, “The Voice of the Other,” 63.
29 Mutibwa, Hess, and Jackson, “Strokes of Serendipity,” 2.
30 Rooke, Cultural Value: Curating Community?, 4.
31 Johnston, “Slow Curating,” 25.

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4 Introduction

that obfuscates a number of minority groups32 and is seen to express a coded language.33
Nonreflexive notions of “community” can also unhelpfully work to construct, fix, and
divide people into seemingly homogenous groups, reinforcing what Waterton and Smith
describe as “presumed differences between white, middle classes and ‘the rest,’ as well
as between museum experts and ‘everybody else.’”34 In this book, the term community
is used to describe any group of like-minded people united by a common cause who
are not typically a part of the museum’s permanent staff. It is a frame of reference that
coalesces more broadly around shared interests or collective experiences, recognizing
what many sociologists have claimed: communities are an incomplete process through
which people continually construct, reconstruct, and create identities, whether geo-
graphically, virtually or imaginatively.35 Communities are more often social creations
that are continuously in motion, rather than fixed entities or descriptions.
It is through breaking down these ideas of communities, expertise, and collaboration
that important questions emerge. Can curating ever be inclusive, when it is a practice
largely based on selection and decision making? How do we make decisions collectively
without diminishing accountability? What is the capacity of inclusive curatorial teams
to influence museum practice and policy in a meaningful way? How might we address
the perceived credibility of including “non-curators” in museums? Addressing these
questions tends to generate new theories of what museums are and will involve major
changes for the both the museum and discipline of curating: from inward to outward
looking, from individual to collective, from reactive to proactive, from a singular voice to
platforming multiple perspectives.

Why Curate Inclusively?

It is important to remember that curatorial practice in contemporary art has always
sought to “extend boundaries,”36 to innovate, and to test limits. Curatorial practice is less
about orthodoxy and more a place for invention and experimentation.37 It is essential to
continue to expand our definitions of curating, and more importantly who we think of
as potential curators.
Curating plays a key role in how our shared culture is constructed, portrayed, and
legitimized. There is no neutral position and exhibition-makers continue to face choices
concerning the ways in which they develop narratives.38 This view spearheaded the
famed 2017 #MuseumsAreNotNeutral campaign created by museum professionals Mike
Murawski and LaTanya Autry which set out to refute the myth of neutrality that many

32 Ahmed and Fortier, “Re-Imagining Communities.”

33 Kinsley et al., “(Re)Frame,” 58.
34 Waterton and Smith, “The Recognition and Misrecognition of Community Heritage,” 5.
35 Neal and Walters, “Rural Be/Longing and Rural Social Organisations,” 237.
36 George, The Curator’s Handbook, 27.
37 Ibid., 37.
38 Sandell, Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference, 195.

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 Introduction 5

museum professionals and others put forward.39 Yet, despite this increasing recognition
of the museum as both non-neutral and active in shaping the way we perceive, think,
and act, studies reveal that significant underrepresentation of people from diverse back-
grounds remains40 in curatorial roles across disability, ethnicity, class, gender, health,
race, religion, socioeconomic status, and sexuality.41 Greater levels of public participa-
tion in curating is just one response to the evolving roles of museums in a postmod-
ern, multicultural society. Inclusive curating, and the process shared within this book,
is therefore intended to offer applied solutions in enabling a wider range of people to
express themselves through curating. As a result, museums and museum professionals
can advance their oft-stated goals of promoting representation and diversity.42
Inclusive curating also has potential to enable museums to more fully embrace the
opportunity to be allies with communities. “Ally practice,” writes exhibition designer Xan-
der Karkruff, is a “framework that museum professionals can use to transform inclusive
ideals into concrete actions.”43 Echoing ambitions of what museum scholar Richard Sand-
ell describes as “activist museum practices” whereby museums actively work to address
social injustices, crises, and inequalities.44 Museums have progressively experimented
with curatorial practices that aim to critique and disrupt previously unquestioned exhi-
bition and collection narratives and disciplinary knowledges. This territory is loaded
with ethical pitfalls which a number of researchers45 and curators46 have sought to exam-
ine and, in the book Museum Activism,47 I further examine inclusive curating as a potential
activist practice. Yet what is clear is that museums must continue to examine and debate
the language of “community,” “inclusion,” and “activism,” in light of real and valid ques-
tions of ethics, power, and control. Museums cannot continue, as Lynch describes, “to
play the role of gatekeeper allowing access” and instead must enter into genuine creative
partnerships between people in and out of the museum, to mutual benefit.48
The richness of culture comes not just from its consumption. Richness comes from a
broad range of people actively making and remaking culture;49 this is in the same sense
that academic Carol Rose describes culture as something that enriches rather than
depletes the more people participate in or “use” it.50 Too, as the role of curator continues
to shift away from that of exclusively being a “gatekeeper,” communities can begin to have

39 Autry, “Changing the Things I Cannot Accept,” unpag.

40 Museums Association, Power and Privilege in the 21st Century Museum, 3.
41 BOP Consulting, “Character Matters,” 12.
42 Brook et al., “Panic!”
43 Karkruff, “Queer Matters,” 46.
44 Sandell et al., ed., Re-Presenting Disability, 3.
45 Sandell and Nightingale, Museums, Equality and Social Justice.
46 Reilly, Curatorial Activism.
47 French, “Auto Agents.”
48 Lynch, “If the Museum is the Gateway, Who is the Gatekeeper?,” 10.
49 Lessig, “Re-crafting a Public Domain,” 181.
50 Rose, “The Comedy of the Commons.”

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6 Introduction

a more prominent voice within museums, creating opportunities to unlock enriching

exhibitions, projects, collections, and campaigns. Partnerships and community collabo-
ration remains a useful source of new energy, new ideas, and new museum meanings.51
By bringing together diverse communities with different knowledge, experience, and
“personal contexts”52 to curate, inclusive curating aims to generate a plurality of perspec-
tives within the museum presenting a wider scope for rich interpretive opportunities.
That is not to say inclusive curating is a utopian solution for museums, but merely
one tool by which we might address questions of inclusion, representation, and democ-
racy. On the contrary, inclusive curating is messy. Tension between the inclusive cura-
tors, artists, and the museum will inevitably arise and those who wish to practise
inclusive curating must be willing to embrace “passion and partisanship” which polit-
ical theorist Chantal Mouffe emphasizes is essential in democratic social exchanges.53
Also, Associate Professor of Museum Ethics Janet Marstine contends: “contemporary
museum ethics is not a canon of ideas based on consensus” but rather “marked by differ-
ences in opinion from diverse contributors.”54 By acknowledging the contested nature of
art and the myth of museum neutrality, conflict can in fact be a constructive process that
presents avenues to develop equitable and sustainable partnerships.55 The challenge is
neither to eliminate nor gloss over contention or “messiness” brought to light through
inclusive curating, it is to mobilize it for democratic ends by practising a process of non-
consensus. Admittedly, this is easier said than done, but the approach set out in this
book makes space for conflicting views and such moments of tension are shared and
discussed throughout the cases studies.

The Structure of this Book

This book is structured via six chapters. Following this introduction, the next five
chapters describe the five-step process of inclusive curating: Facilitating Research;
Finding the “Big Idea”; Acquiring Artwork; Developing Interpretation; Installation and
Exhibition. Each of these chapters contains an outline of the process and key ideas
alongside case studies taken from the inclusively curated exhibition Auto Agents to illu-
minate the process in action. Additionally, each chapter includes practical resources.
The tools and activities have been designed to tackle inclusive curatorial tasks; group
discussion, decision making, recruitment, planning, or reflection, as discussed through-
out the book. That said, tools and templates are “blunt instruments”56 and are best used
when adapted to specifically fit both the project and participants; I happily invite read-
ers to adapt these accordingly.

51 Jenkinson, “Museum Futures,” 53.

52 Klobe, Exhibitions, 69.
53 Mouffe, On the Political, 2.
54 Marstine, The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics, 6.
55 Fouseki, “Community Voices, Curatorial Choices,” 189.
56 Belfiore and Bennett, “Beyond the ‘Toolkit Approach’,” 122.

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This introductory chapter presents an overview of the curator’s changing role and
remit to provide context around inclusive curating and its emergence. This includes
a historic review of the curator’s role from its origins in the fifteenth century and the
“Wunderkammer,” to the rise of group exhibitions in the nineteenth century, to the cura-
tor as artist in the late twentieth century. Throughout key concerns are highlighted:
namely the curator’s reputation for being a powerful “gatekeeper” and “expert” and
curating in relation to autonomy and authorship. This chapter also introduces the facili-
tator: the role central to enabling inclusive curating and concludes by introducing this
book’s case study, the exhibition Auto Agents (2016) at Bluecoat, Liverpool’s centre for
contemporary arts. This exhibition was curated by five intellectually-disabled artists
and explored complex issues of independence and autonomy, resulting in new arts com-
missions, a non-textual approach to interpretation, and a programme of public events.
Chapter one “Facilitating Research” is the first step in facilitating inclusive curat-
ing. This chapter discusses ways to support inclusive curators to undertake effective
research in museums to inform their own exhibition and curatorial strategies. This
includes supporting them to identify and discuss any access barriers when visiting art
museums in their own terms, as well as observing diverse curatorial styles across dif-
ferent museums. How is a solo exhibition curated differently from a group exhibition?
How does an artist-led space curate differently to a large institution? With the help of
the activities provided in the toolkit, and by drawing on a case study of a research visit
to Tate Liverpool, this chapter shows ways to support this type of critical thinking and
observation.
Chapter two “Finding the Big Idea” explores how to support inclusive curators to
devise a curatorial framework for their exhibition. What will their exhibition be about?
What concepts or issues will it address? These questions are answered by groups identi-
fying shared experiences and looking towards their own lives and identities, which cru-
cially, may differ from or challenge the dominant narrative of the museum. This chapter
presents PATH and zine making as an effective methodology by which to enable group
planning, discussion, and reflection on these topics. Case studies are also shared from
Auto Agents demonstrating how zine making and arts-based enquiry enabled intellectu-
ally-disabled curators to develop the title of their exhibition.
Chapter three is “Acquiring Artworks.” During this step, inclusive curators require
facilitation to select artists and artworks for their exhibition. This chapter shares ways
to support them in the development of their own artistic networks: cultivating rela-
tionships with artists, collections, or artworks. Furthermore, this chapter explores the
possibilities of supporting inclusive curators to commission contemporary artworks.
Commissioning artwork is a unique role of contemporary art curators. This chapter dis-
cusses how to develop artist briefs, interview artists, and participate in the development
the commissioned works, all under the umbrella of inclusivity. In this chapter, issues and
challenges of authorship are also discussed with the help of case studies and activities.
Chapter four is “Developing Interpretation.” At this stage in the curatorial process
inclusive curators would have researched museums and exhibitions, developed a theme
for their own exhibition, acquired artworks for their programme, and may be commis-
sioning new works for display. They are now tasked with developing interpretation.

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Interpretation, broadly speaking, is anything that helps visitors make sense of an exhibi-
tion. This typically includes artist statements, captions, wall texts, catalogues, tours, and
increasingly digital tools and devices. This chapter introduces the key debates and chal-
lenges of interpretation in art museums, including questioning the “authoritative voice”
of the institution and reliance on inaccessible language or “Artspeak.”57 This chapter
draws upon a case study exploring a non-textual approach to interpretation, reflecting
the ways the inclusive curators of Auto Agents differently read, write, and communicate
as well as “Drawing Tours.”
Chapter five is “Installation and Exhibition.” During this final step, inclusive curators
are supported to finalize where the artworks will be located inside the gallery space, as
well as planning the installation of the exhibition. Given that the placement of artwork is
an exercise in both practical and aesthetic reflection, this section discusses the balanc-
ing of these thought processes. It also provides practical activities in supporting inclu-
sive curators to think critically about these decisions. During this final step, they are also
supported to think about marketing strategies, the exhibition opening, and evaluation.
Finally, a brief word on terminology and tone. Throughout this book “museum” is
used as a catch-all term to describe museums, galleries, and other sites such as heri-
tage spaces where art is exhibited. Equally, we will consider several different groups of
curators: curators as professionals, specific curators employed at museums, as well as
the curators engaged in inclusive curating discussed in the case studies. For clarity, the
curators engaged in inclusive curating are described throughout as “inclusive curators”.
However, this is not a label used in practice and they are described simply as curators. In
terms of tone, at times this book adopts a more personal tone rather than maintaining
“academic distance.” This choice is reflective of my practice in that storytelling and nar-
rative feature as both research method and facilitation tool. Narrative approaches are a
growing trend and regarded as an important means of access to knowledge in human
and cultural sciences.58 By including and drawing upon personal descriptions and narra-
tives it is intended to offer rich descriptive accounts showing the ways in which facilitat-
ing inclusive curating is filtered through my own perspective, and how meaning is elic-
ited from particular interactions with my collaborators. The integration of the artists,
inclusive curators, and my own recorded voices and actions is a method by which to cap-
ture a more robust picture, and crucially, to explore and illuminate relational dynamics.

Who Is This Book For?

Often the problems of “real world” do not present themselves as well formed struc-
tures, but what philosopher Donald Schön describes as “swampy zones,”59 that is to say,
muddy, indeterminate conditions that are difficult to navigate. Curating is a swampy
zone. Like many creative processes, it is not readily amenable to being divided into a
series of clearly defined tasks or decisions, and previous efforts to map this complex

57 Levine and Rule, “International Art English,” unpag.

58 Polkinghorne, Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences.
59 Schön, The Reflective Practitioner, 3.

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process, such as Bienkowski’s use of “soft systems,”60 have served to illustrate the messy
and interrelating nature of this practice.
With this in mind, I have endeavoured to develop a practical guide which is grounded
by an academic case study for readers relatively new to inclusive and participatory
approaches to curating with communities. This book has been written with groups of
people in mind: arts and museum studies students, artists and facilitators, community
organisers and museum practitioners perhaps already working with community groups
but would like to incorporate curatorial projects. Without experience to draw upon, it
can be difficult to know where to start with this type of work; for instance, finding exam-
ples of activities to engage people, how to problem-solve, or anticipate issues ahead of
time. The question posed by Eddie at the beginning of this introduction—what does
a curator actually do?—inspired this book to show the “shape” of curating. To make it
tangible through breaking it down into actionable parts with the intention of making it
more useable for more people. The process outlined is therefore underpinned by a case
study, example tools, and activity templates to best support readers to put this work
into action. Alongside these practical elements this book is also supported by an over-
view of the key museological questions such as: Who benefits from inclusive curating?
How can we ensure this work is undertaken in respectful and ethical ways? How do we
make decisions collectively? How can we practise non-consensus? These questions are
explored throughout this guide with the support of case studies, reflecting the fact that
these endeavours have both theoretical and practical significance and are intertwined.
There are many ways to approach the work of a curator.61 The methodology pre-
sented in this book is just one possible framework from which readers may base their
own ways of working, and hopefully they will expand with use. Though my own experi-
ence of inclusive curating has been carried out within the context of contemporary art,
I believe elements of this guide could be transferred to other cultural contexts such as
historical collections and heritage sites. I welcome such application and look forward to
learning how practitioners reconfigure and adapt this process to be used in their own
specific areas of practice.

The Curator’s Changing Role

When first facilitating inclusive curating, I had never formally studied curation. Much
of my curatorial knowledge was gained through arts practice; being curated and curat-
ing my own work. As my practice developed into practice-led research, I examined the
historic evolution of the curator and the museum more closely which proved invaluable
in contextualizing my work and thinking critically about my approach. In this section, let
me review the curator’s changing role over time, paying particular attention to curator
as gatekeeper, authority, and artist, as well as curating in relation to ideas of autonomy
and authorship. In my further research, it became clear that these were key concepts to
unravel (and resist) for the practice of inclusive curating.

60 Bienkowski, “Soft Systems in Museums.”

61 Hoare, ed., The New Curator.

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The word “curator” has its origins in the Latin word cura, meaning “care,” and in
the Late Middle English curate as one who has “a care or charge.” However, the term
“curator” has moved beyond any singular definition and now occupies a much broader
scope of activities, practices, and professions. Historically, curators designed and exe-
cuted exhibitions alone and this practice was closed to “non-curators.”62 In the mid-fif-
teenth century, Italian nobles began to arrange privately collected artworks, primarily
from ancient Greece and Rome, with the specific intention of displaying them to invited
guests holding valued social positions. A well-known example of such displays is the
Wunderkammer or “cabinets of curiosities.” Ferrante Imperato’s Dell’Historia Naturale
in Naples is one of the earliest cabinet of curiosities represented in a wood cutting and
painting of the same name dating to 1599.63 The wood cutting depicts a densely packed
embellished room of objects, featuring books, shells, and marine creatures, and a large
stuffed crocodile. Accumulation, definition, and classification was the threefold aim of
cabinets of curiosities. Display panels, bespoke cabinets, drawers, and cases were not
only a response to a desire to preserve and classify items, but also to “slot each item into
its place in a vast network of meanings.”64 Such groupings of objects began the notion of
storytelling and the arrangement of narratives within displays and the “construction of
a temporally organised order of things and peoples.”65 The Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford
is considered a surviving example of such a collection and display practices. Founded in
1884, The Pitt Rivers’ anthropology collection remains densely displayed in thematic
groupings and classifications such as “Pottery,” “Lamps,” “Religious Figures,” and famous
case of “Shrunken Heads”66; it is a museum of a museum.
As time passed, cabinets of curiosities evolved and grew in importance and the
small private cabinets were absorbed into larger ones. In turn these larger cabinets
were bought by gentlemen, noblemen, and royalty for their amusement and edification.
These merged into cabinets so large that they took over entire rooms. Over time, these
noble and royal collections were institutionalized and turned into public museums. The
best-known example is of the Ark, the cabinet of curiosity of John Tradescant Senior
(1570–1638) and John Tradescant Junior (1608–1662), which was acquired by Elias
Ashmole which later became the Ashmolean Museum’s collection. The Ashmolean in
Oxford is now considered the oldest public museum and the first purpose-built museum
in the world.67
With the emergence of the public museum, in the mid-nineteenth century, the group
art exhibition format flourished, and the curator became an influential figure of knowl-
edge who could draw together artists via master narratives. The curators’ reputation
as gatekeeper and expert developed further; they became responsible for “upholding

62 Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge.

63 Mauriés, Cabinets of Curiosities, 12.
64 Ibid., 25.
65 Ferguson et al., Thinking about Exhibitions, 101.
66 O’Hanlon, The Pitt Rivers Museum.
67 Ashmolean, “The Story of the World’s First Public Museum,” unpag.

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divisions between art and artefact, ‘high’ and ‘low,’ practitioner and spectator.”68 As soci-
ologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu describes, curators evolved into “specialized
agents who shaped the economy of cultural goods […] capable of imposing a specific
measure of the value of the artist and his products.”69 This shaping of “cultural goods” as
Bourdieu describes involves processes whereby art is “filtered and legitimized.”70 This is
described by Morris Hargreaves McIntyre as the “subscription process.”71 “Subscription”
recognizes that a series of gatekeepers and stakeholders, namely curators, who by inter-
acting with the artist and their artwork add to its critical value, importance, and prov-
enance. It has been argued that this traditional mode of curatorship became a standard-
ized, homogenized, institutionalized, and object-dominated practice, the dynamics and
activities of which parallelled the art market.72 This type of curatorial practice “worked
within”73 the institution, and has since been accused of creating a distance between the
audience and actions of the curator by upholding ideologies, certain systems of value or
hierarchies, which are not made apparent to the public.74
But it was in the 1960s and 1970s the curator’s prominent role was cemented. The
wake of conceptualism paved the way for bolder custodial scenarios described as “cura-
torial expression.”75 This is exemplified in the work of curators Harald Szeemann and
Lucy Lippard who undertook “ground-breaking”76 curatorial projects which had simi-
larities with the work of some conceptual artists at the time, for whom ideas took pre-
cedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. In other words, the
avant-garde movement amongst artists was met by an avant-garde movement in curat-
ing.
For instance, Documenta 5 (1972) is today considered a major highlight in the his-
tory of contemporary art curating and the “first major exhibition project in which a cura-
tor can be seen as creative ‘author.’”77 Documenta is a major international contemporary
art presentation that continues to takes place every five years in Kassel, central Ger-
many. Documenta 5 is considered pioneering due to its radically different presentation,
conceived as a one-hundred-day themed event comprising performances and “happen-
ings,” as opposed to static displays. “Super-curator” Hans Ulrich Obrist articulates how
exhibitions shifted from a historical approach of order and stability via static displays, to
a place of flux and instability, the unpredictable.78

68 Ault, “Three Snapshots from the Eighties,” 38.

69 Bourdieu, “The Historical Genesis of a Pure Aesthetic,” 204.
70 McIntyre, Taste Buds, 4.
71 Ibid.
72 Vidokle, “Art Without Artists?,” unpag.
73 De Lara, “Curating or the Curatorial?,” 4.
74 Ramirez, “Brokering Identities,”
75 Ventizislavov, “Idle Arts,” 87.
76 Fotiadi, “The Canon of the Author,” 29.
77 Ibid., 27.
78 Obrist, A Brief History of Curating.

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The blurring of lines between artist and curator during this period characterizes the
conceptualist moment, but this was not always an amicable development. In the case
of Documenta 5, artists were “hostile to the powerful Harald Szeemann on more than
one occasion”79 and later a manifesto was signed by artists such as Donald Judd and
Sol LeWitt which accused “Szeemann and his co-curators presenting work in themed
sections without the artist’s consent.”80 As themed exhibition formats like this boomed,
the curator’s power grew. Curators began to be criticized for superseding the work of
artists through the reinforcement of their own authorial claims “that render artists and
artworks merely actors and props for illustrating curatorial concepts.”81 Implicit here
is the idea of autonomy as a zero-sum game; that one person’s gain must be equivalent
to another’s loss. In other words, as curators gained autonomy the artists’ capacity for
autonomy was diminished. I have found this to be a useful idea to support people in
articulating and reconsidering their feelings about curatorial power and control, as we
will see in later chapters.
Curator and academic Paul O’Neill also explores this issue of whether contemporary
curators can be recognized artists in their own right.82 In support of this claim, O’Neill
cites theorist Hans-Dieter Huber who believes curatorship has been transformed into
“something like a signature, a specific style, a specific image” and “what once character-
ised the work of an artist, namely his style, his signature, his name, is now true of the
work of the curator.”83 Developing this idea further, curator Jens Hoffmann argues an
understanding of the author–curator’s work as constituting individual practice due to a
“strong creative sensibility” and “apparent artistic development over time.”84 However
not everyone agrees on the curator’s claim to artistry. Robert Storr, an artist, curator,
critic, and educator, wrote a series of articles for Frieze magazine in 2005 on the subject
of curators as artists. He finds the idea of curators as artists to be seriously mistaken. He
traces this “mistake” back to the various philosophical challenges to authorship, citing
the discourses from Oscar Wilde’s The Critic as Artist and Roland Barthes’ “The Death
of the Author.” In Barthes’ influential work he rejects the idea of authorial intent, and
instead develops a reader-response critical theory, or in his words “the unity of a text
is not in its origin, it is in its destination.”85 Building on this, Storr asserts that the cura-
tor is not in the business of having aesthetic experiences but of facilitating these for
end-users. He uses the analogy of a curator “being akin to that of a good literary editor,
who may justly take pride in spotting ability and fostering accomplishment but who is
otherwise content to function as the probing but respectful ‘first reader’ of the work.”86

79 Balzer, Curationism, 46.

80 Ibid., 47.
81 Vidokle, “Art Without Artists?,” unpag.
82 O’Neill, The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s).
83 Ibid., 122.
84 Ibid., 97.
85 Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” 148.
86 Storr, “The Exhibitionists,” unpag.

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Similarly, curator and philosopher Sue Spaid wrote an engaging response to academic
Rossen Ventzislavov who made the case in a widely cited thesis that “curating should
be understood as fine art.”87 While Spaid agrees that curatorial ideas offer (though only
temporarily) a genuine contribution to the life of the artworks involved, she identifies a
crucial distinction in that she considers curatorial ideas to “contribute cognitive value,
not artistic value.”88
However, the image of the curator as single author and artist is to some degree a
construction. More often than you would expect, and even in the cases of some exhi-
bitions which have been strongly linked to an individual curator’s name, innovations
in curating have commonly resulted from collective or collaborative endeavours. The
previous example of Documenta 5 is almost never remembered as a team project but
an individual curatorial achievement of Harald Szeemann. On further research I found
this to be not entirely accurate. Bazon Brock, who could be categorized as co-curator
on Documenta 5 described the process of curating the renowned exhibition as: “All the
participating artists were named by the different curators but chosen by collective deci-
sions and of course Harry Szeemann was the moderator-in-chief.”89 Brock clearly pres-
ents the exhibition as a group endeavour with shared decision-making, that is, collective
and collaborative curatorship. Individual Methodology where the interview with Brock
was published, clearly maintains that Documenta 5 had been the most important and
complicated curatorial project during the first fifteen years of Szeemann’s career. But
the same publication also demonstrated through interviews with those working on the
exhibition that both in terms of the conception, as well as in its delivery, it was the prod-
uct of a collaboration with a number of individuals. So why is Documenta 5 universally
acknowledged as an achievement of Szeemann? Eva Fotiadi believes that it is due to the
lack of systematic research on the history of curating that “allowed practitioners in the
art world to create a curator’s persona as it was more convenient for the professional
art world.”90
Yet with the increase of new biennials and other large international exhibitions, the
1990s provided new sites where curatorial and artistic practices converged, explicitly
blurring the distinction between artist and curator.91 Curating became an expanded
methodology; emancipating the role of the curator from previous notions of “divine
power” and authorship92 by opening the possibilities of curatorial action. This approach
to curating is relational, offering new possibilities of multilateral thinking across disci-
plines, fields, and so on. It invites dialogue across and between “without any need for
any singular author”93 and crucially here, curating is not seen as the practice of indi-

87 Ventzislavov, “Idle Arts,” 83.

88 Spaid, “Revisiting Ventzislavov’s Thesis,” 87.
89 Pesapane, “Interview with Co-Curators,” 135.
90 Fotiadi, “The Canon of the Author,” 27.
91 O’Neill, The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s).
92 Robbins, “Engaging with Curating,” 150.
93 De Lara, “Curating or the Curatorial?,” 5.

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vidual “genius” but as distributed and shared. This is also described by journalist Robert
Wright as “non-zero-sumness”: the prospect of creating new interactions that are not a
zero-sum game.94
This shift away from a singular authorial voice was most likely aided in the 1990s
and 2000s by a new focus on audience-orientated art such as participatory and rela-
tional art practices.95 This reimagining of curatorship is famously advocated by Hans
Ulrich Obrist who claims that to curate in this sense is “to refuse static arrangements
and permanent alignments and instead to enable conversations and relations.”96 Simi-
larly, in 2015 Karen Gaskill undertook research into the social practice of the curator
where she observed curation as an “active and working practice,” both “holistic and
responsive.” Social curation also supports the relational, intangible attributes of works
in equal measure to the physical, tangible aspects.97
Today, the word “curate” continues to evolve and is not the museum-specific term it
once was. During the period of writing this book, I visited a new restaurant in my city. As
I scanned the menu my eyes were drawn towards the phrase “curated by the head chef.”
But this is not the first time “curate” has appeared in unexpected contexts. Hollywood
actress Gwyneth Paltrow “curates” a weekly online lifestyle publication Goop. In 2017,
Firefly in Delaware became the first “fan curated music festival,”98 and you can now
download an app to help you “curate” your funeral.99 It appears curating is now becom-
ing a concept increasingly dislocated from the museum. The rise of the term “curate”
online appears to reflect an “agentive turn to meta-authorship.”100 Michael Bhaskar
believes curating has become a buzzword because it answers a set of modern problems:
“the problems caused by having too much.”101 With increased productivity, resources,
communication, and data, the more “stuff” we produce as a society, the more valuable
curatorial skills are becoming. “Curate” as a label with its “scholarly pedigree, is more
prestigious and thus deserving of a high price” rather than “selected” or “organized.”102
Thus is it becoming synonymous with the act of “careful selection,” wryly echoed in
comedian Stewart Lee’s quip, “it is reassuring to know that it has been curated, what-
ever it is.”103
In the art world, an increasing number of projects are experimenting in transferring
curatorial responsibility over to the general public (rather than co-curating with select
community groups). A notable example of this is Per Huttner’s project I Am a Curator

94 Wright, NonZero, 7.
95 Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics.
96 Obrist, Sharp Tongues, 25.
97 Gaskill, “In Search of the Social,” 125.
98 Moore, “Delaware Festival Firefly to Become First Fan-Curated Music Festival in 2017,” unpag.
99 Amirtha, “Death Apps Promise to Help People Curate their Afterlives,” unpag.
100 McDougall and Potter, “Curating Media Learning,” 201.
101 Bhaskar, Curation, 6.
102 Kingston, “Everyone’s a Curator Now,” unpag.
103 Lee, “Curating... You are the Disease, I am the Curator,” unpag.

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(2003) at the Chisenhale Gallery, London. This exhibition invited the public to apply
to be a curator for the day, and with over seventy artworks to select from, individuals
worked with the gallery team for an afternoon in realizing an exhibition. Other models
invite the audience to select works via online possibilities. Do It with Others (2007), a
project hosted by Furtherfield. This drew reference from Fluxus’s Mail Art projects in
creating an e-mail art exhibition where users submitted their artworks and their own
ordering and selection strategies for public consideration. Another event using online
platforms is Click! (2008) at the Brooklyn Museum, which defined itself as a “crowd
curated” exhibition, and invited the museum’s visitors, online audiences, and the public
to be responsible for the selection process. Click! asked photographers to submit their
work, then the public were responsible for the final selection.
The explosion of social media has also accelerated curatorial ways of thinking. Plat-
forms such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Snapchat enable users to col-
lect and collate images and text for an audience of friends and strangers which “has
become a ubiquitous, quintessentially 21st century act.”104 In 2013, the Essl Museum in
Klosterneuburg, Austria, hosted Like It, a permanent-collection exhibition based solely
on Facebook likes. Even Sotheby’s, one of the world’s largest and “premier” brokers of
fine and decorative art has advised artists how to “curate” their Instagram account sug-
gesting: “In museums, people stroll. On Instagram, they scroll. And they scroll fast. To
grab their attention, your pictures must be visually arresting.”105
Some in the museum sector are unhappy about the term “curate” being used in this
way,106 but is this approach to curating more democratic and inclusive as it allows a
broader range of voices to be included in the valuing and recognition of culture? Some
argue that this broadening of voices and perspectives calls into question the concept of
“quality” or “scholarship.”107 The same critique is also applied to inclusive arts and prac-
tices of participatory arts which employ audience engagement, on which arts journalist
Mark Rinaldi comments, “when audiences become a variable, the quality of art varies a
great deal.”108
Evidently, the role of the curator is an ever-changing and shifting one, derived from
various sources and expressed in different arenas. Curatorial authority was understood
to be established and shaped as early as the seventeenth century but, over time, has been
subject to challenge and rapid change. For me, what remains consistent is that curating is
more than the capacity to select and display, it is about understanding and demonstrat-
ing how critically informed decisions fit into a wider matrix of links and publics. Curat-
ing is a therefore a critically-engaged process. The methodology outlined in this book
evidences that there are ways of engaging a wider spectrum of people with curating by
reconfiguring the framework for critical decision making using inclusive and participa-

104 Borrelli, “Everybody’s a Curator,” unpag.

105 Anon., “Curating an Instagram Account for the Art World,” unpag.
106 Booth, “Do you use ‘Curate’ when ‘Organise’ will do? Well you shouldn’t….” unpag.
107 Fleming, “Museums, Human Rights, Contested Histories and Excluded Communities.”
108 Rinaldi, “Art and the Active Audience,” unpag.

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16 Introduction

tory approaches. Can anyone be a curator? Yes, I believe most people can. But to engage
“anyone” with this practice, it must be underpinned by a rigorous process to ensure criti-
cality. Crucially, it is how that “critical eye” is cast that I believe should not be reserved
for, or decided on by gatekeepers, but open to interpretation and participation by all.

ACTIVITY
“Can Anyone be a Curator?” Continuum Line
Should the term curator be used broadly or narrowly? Can it cover professional museum
curators as well as Pinterest boards?109 Can anyone be a curator? This activity aims to
stimulate these thought-provoking questions. During inclusive curatorial projects, this
activity is facilitated with both the inclusive curators and museum staff (sometimes
together) and works particularly well at the beginning and end of a project, providing a
sense of people’s thoughts and feelings and to see if, and how, they change throughout
the process.
Set up time: 5 minutes, Activity time: 30 mins

What to Do
–– Find an empty section of wall or floor (the larger the better) and fix a piece of string
in a straight line from side to the other like a horizonal timeline. Then, place the
words “yes” and “no” at opposite ends of the string.
–– Stick up the question you would like participants to consider where everyone can
see. In this instance; “can anyone be a curator?”
–– Without discussion, give participants the same colour sticker (for example “Post-It”
notes) and ask them to write their name on it and position their sticker along the
line in relation to the opposing terms. The closer you place your sticker towards
“yes” it means you strongly agree with the statement. The closer you place your
sticker towards “no” it means you strongly disagree with the statement. It can be
beneficial for some groups to do a practice round with a different question, demon-
strating how the process works.
–– Once participants have placed their sticker, they are then invited to feed back their
decisions through a “living continuum” by positioning themselves along the line by
their sticker, allowing them the time to explain their decision and attempt to per-
suade their colleagues to move their choice along the continuum. During this pro-
cess, facilitators can use questions to support participants in identifying and artic-
ulating the thinking behind their decision-making. Using this activity, can groups
develop their criteria for being a curator?
–– Record the continuum using photographs, film or notes.

109 Pinterest is a social media platform that enables users to collect and collate images via pin­
boards online.

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 Introduction 17

Tip
This process works well to unpick any question or statement. If a facilitator encounters
points of tension during the project, this activity can be used to as a way to air discussion
and reveal nuance and difference in point of view.

The Facilitator
Facilitation, first and foremost, is about groups of people. No matter the group or cir-
cumstance, the purpose of all facilitators is to strengthen the effectiveness of a group
who are there to complete a task or address an issue together. In other words, facilita-
tion is the practice of applying structure to the complex and unruly process of collabora-
tion. Inclusive curating is a guided process that requires a facilitator to act as a conduit
between the museum, its staff, artists, and the inclusive curators, and is responsible for
enabling the overall process. Facilitators are becoming increasingly commonplace in
museum work; however there has been little research rigorously examining their role.110
Frequently, I am asked, “what makes a good facilitator’? Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist
once described curating as “building temporary communities” through “connecting dif-
ferent people and practices and causing the conditions for triggering sparks between
them.”111 I find this to be true of great facilitators too. The skills of a facilitator should
be broad-reaching. Acting as a community builder, mediator, translator, catalyst, and
synergist, at the core of this practice facilitators use their “own knowledge and skills
to facilitate and enable other’s creativity.”112 They employ creative ways of looking at
and engaging with art through a process that is active and experiential, good facilita-
tors exert their capacity to scaffold learning. Facilitators know the process is not about
them. Facilitators know how to actively listen; they smile and make eye contact, use ver-
bal affirmations, they question and summarize what people say for clarification, they
observe body language and take notice. Facilitators are also reflexive and willing to be
vulnerable. Many facilitators I know are meticulous by nature, but on the flipside, they
adapt quickly to change and are willing to abandon their well-made plans for the sake
of the group. For facilitators, spontaneity and intuition are important, but reflecting and
critical thinking are equally significant.113
At the beginning of an inclusive curatorial project I am always clear in defining my
own role as a facilitator to the inclusive curators, artists, and broader networks: I am
not an “artistic director,” “co-curator,” or “producer.” I describe how my role is akin to
a “support worker” who is there to help everyone keep track of the exhibition, to work
and communicate effectively with people, and crucially, to support them make criti-
cally-engaged decisions. The decisions and trajectory of the exhibition are ultimately
the group’s to make. The position of facilitator requires a reflexive approach, ensuring

110 Thomas, “Why Make a Case for the Artist Facilitator?”

111 Obrist, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Curating but Were Afraid to Ask, 166.
112 Pringle, “What’s with the Artist?,” 37.
113 Pringle, “The Artist-Led Pedagogic Process in the Contemporary Art Gallery,” 71.

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18 Introduction

personal opinions and preferences do not influence the group’s decisions. In my view, a
facilitator’s opinions must not encroach on the project but instead must work to create
opportunities for participants to discover, question, and share their opinion.
Some readers may be intending to facilitate inclusive curatorial projects themselves,
while other readers may be planning to recruit someone for the job. If the latter applies
to you, let me present a personal specification for the facilitator’s role that has been
crowd-sourced from a number of facilitators in the field.

FACILITATOR JOB SPECIFICATION

Experience
Experience of leading workshops for diverse audiences
Experience of workshop research and planning
Experience of curating
Experience of project co-ordination and administration
Experience of working with a range of arts professionals

Knowledge
Knowledgeable about access barriers within museums
and contemporary art for different communities
Knowledgeable about art, curating and interpretation
A repertoire of creative activities
Knowledge of safeguarding procedures

Skills
Excellent communication skills; confidently uses a variety of methods as needed
to build relationships
Excellent observation skills
Ability to make boring tasks dynamic and participatory
Ability to motivate and encourage people
Ability to respond to sensitive issues in a confidential manner and to share infor-
mation appropriately

Personal Qualities
Confident collaborating with a range of people from different backgrounds
Remains positive and resilient under pressure
Self-aware and reflexive
Skilled at negotiating challenging situations

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 Introduction 19

The facilitator will be vital in facilitating workshops that support inclusive curators to
undertake research, work with artists, make decisions, create interpretation, and man-
age the exhibition’s installation. As we will explore throughout this book, a key chal-
lenge of inclusive curating is navigating how facilitators, like other stakeholders, can
support the curatorial work of communities without “taking over.” With their own job
potentially on the line, how can they enable critical decision-making without wielding
their power? When does “support” veer into “over/protection,” or even control? What
does “ethical” facilitation look like and is it possible to articulate a model? To address
these questions, I draw upon practice and research located in disability studies which
explores the complexities of support work by researchers such as Ross Chapman114 and
Jan Walmsley.115 Teamed with my own practical experience having worked alongside
intellectually-disabled people as a support worker for ten years, my experience has been
helpful in articulating an approach to facilitation for this book.

Auto Agents, An Inclusively Curated Exhibition

The main body of research underpinning this book is a three-year (2014–2017) pro-
ject at the University of Leeds titled Art as Advocacy.116 Employing an action-research
approach, this project investigated the ways in which curating could be reimagined as
an inclusive and accessible practice alongside intellectually-disabled people, whilst also
examining the potential for curating as a site for collective political expression and advo-
cacy for this group.
Importantly, Art as Advocacy was underpinned by collaborating with two organi-
zations: Halton Speak Out and Bluecoat. Founded in 2001, Halton Speak Out is a self-
advocacy charity run by and for intellectually-disabled people. Halton is a district in the
Liverpool City Region centred on the towns of Widnes and Runcorn, both having large
chemical industry backgrounds. The group’s slogan “the right to have a life” reflects how
the organization continues to address inequalities faced by intellectually-disabled peo-
ple in their community through a range of projects including person-centred life plans,
support worker training, peer advocacy and consultation with the local authority. The
second organization is Bluecoat, Liverpool’s centre for contemporary art. Thought to be
the United Kingdom’s oldest arts centre,117 Bluecoat houses four gallery spaces, a cre-
ative community of artists and businesses and a large programme of participation and
engagement. Since 2008 this programme has included Blue Room, a weekly inclusive
arts project specifically for intellectually-disabled visual artists who play an active role
in Bluecoat. From the membership of both organizations I recruited five people with
intellectual disabilities who had all applied to take on the role of a curator: Hannah Bel-
lass and Leah Jones from Halton Speak Out, and Tony Carroll, Diana Disley and Eddie

114 Chapman, “An Exploration of the Self‐Advocacy Support Role.”

115 Walmsley, Inclusive Research with People with Learning Disabilities.
116 French, “Art as Advocacy.”
117 Bluecoat Museum, “Heritage,” updated 2018, http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/content/heritage.

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20 Introduction

Figure 1: Auto Agents exhibition at Bluecoat, 2017

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 Introduction 21

Rauer from Bluecoat’s Blue Room. By strategically recruiting the inclusive curators from
both organizations the aim was to bring knowledge and skills in self-advocacy into dia-
logue with knowledge and skills in artistic expression. Once the research team was in
place, I and two support workers met the inclusive curators weekly at Bluecoat over the
course of a year to curate an exhibition.
The result was Auto Agents, an inclusively curated visual arts exhibition that opened
at Bluecoat on November 26, 2016 and ran until January 15, 2017, and then went on to
be displayed at The Brindley theatre in Runcorn between March 4 and April 15, 2017.
Significantly, both the participatory process of curating and the exhibition theme itself
came together to address an issue that is at the heart of advancing the rights of intellec-
tually-disabled people: autonomy. Autonomy or, in the words of the inclusive curators
“what it means to be independent by making your own decisions,” is a central concern
for self-advocates and emerged from the inclusive curators’ personal experiences from
research around the continued lack of autonomy faced by many intellectually-disabled
people. With the support of an Arts Council England grant, Auto Agents featured two
new commissions by local artists James Harper and Mark Simmonds made in close col-
laboration with the inclusive curators. In addition to these commissioned pieces, work
by London-based artist Alaena Turner was also included. As well as undertaking cura-
torial research, developing an exhibition theme and commissioning and selecting the
artwork, the group planned the installation and designed accessible interpretation and
public programme for audiences.
Curating Auto Agents produced a rich account of the ways in which curatorial and
self-advocacy practices intersect. This intersection, whereby tools found in self-advo-
cacy were carried over into curatorship, provided new methodologies that enabled
curating to become an inclusive practice and underpins much of the process outlined
in this book. This research is archived on a website—www.artasadvocacy.co.uk—which
features the written work alongside a project archive of images, film, sound, journaling,
and other pieces of qualitative data from the research.

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