This London museum is spending £100,000 to make its exhibitions more diverse

Over the past few years, inclusion, diversity and anti-colonialism have been a hot topic when it comes to London’s museums, exhibitions and statues. With calls for London’s statues to be reviewed, huge memorials being labelled as offensive, and demands for museums to return their stolen colonial artefacts, is it time London looked its colonial past in the face?

For one museum, the answer is yes. The Imperial War Museum (IWM) has announced it’s going to spend £100,000 to make its exhibitions more diverse. The museum asked equality and inclusion specialists to submit bids for consultancy work last month. Now, the funding for this work has been revealed. The UK’s biggest military museum will drop the six-figure sum on giving the museum a more global perspective on the impact of war. 

The new contract with the equality specialists will affect all six of the IWM’s UK sites, including the Churchill War Rooms. It will also involve enrolling all staff into inclusivity training courses. 

Last year, the museum’s equality strategy document said it would ‘ensure that our audiences are aware of the global impact of war’. It added that all wartime artefacts should ‘reflect the diversity of our local communities and the nation as a whole’.

The document said: ‘We will continue to engage with audiences through conversations that ask difficult questions, facilitate debate, and encourage exploration.

‘IWM has a strong part to play in telling stories that help the public understand our past so we can make sense of our present and shape our future.’

An IWM spokesperson said: ‘Imperial War Museums is looking to gain a better understanding of the challenges facing the organisation in creating a culture that is fully inclusive, equitable and welcoming of everyone, for the benefit of visitors, staff and volunteers.

‘As is best practice with work of this nature, we are looking for expert external support with the development of sensible and practical initiatives to address these challenges.This work will result in IWM being more reflective of the communities represented in our collections, our stories, and our society.’

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