How Prospect heritage group are promoting equality in the workplace
To mark Race Equality Week, we caught up with what the Prospect Heritage Group has been focusing on to promote equality and tackle discrimination.
Heritage is important to so many of us. From telling stories of our past and helping us to make sense of the world through to the joy of visiting museums and galleries in one of our towns and cities. Heritage is also a contested area. And thanks to the work of our members across archaeology, museums, and galleries a union issue.
The heritage sector can, and should, play a key role in ensuring a fair and equal society. For example by dealing appropriately and sensitively with the issues stemming from a colonial legacy such as restitution and reparations; the interpretation and presentation of cultural heritage; and by ensuring equality of employment within the sector.
In the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the increased prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement, Prospect’s Heritage Group established a dedicated anti-racism taskforce to address how racism and discrimination affect the heritage sector. You can read our anti-racism statement here.
Racism is a real and serious systemic problem in British society stemming in part from issues around the definition and use of the terms ‘race’, ‘heritage’ and ‘culture’. As Evelyne Godfrey, Chair of the Prospect Heritage Group’s Anti-racism taskforce, sets out in our group’s response to the Sewell Commission (2021) report:
“We disagree fundamentally with the assertion of the Sewell Commission (2021) report that “there is no consensus on the meaning of even fundamental words like racism and discrimination”. An international consensus was reached over fifty years ago and published in a statement unanimously adopted at the conclusion of a meeting of experts on race and racial prejudice, held at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in September 1967, defining racism as comprising anti-social beliefs and acts which are based on the fallacy that discriminatory relations are justifiable on biological grounds.”
In line with the UNESCO Statement, Prospect’s Heritage Group has affirmed that all people living today belong to the same species and descend from the same stock. The problems arising from so called ‘race relations’ are social in origin rather than biological.
What do we mean by heritage?
The term ‘Heritage’ refers to tangible cultural objects and sites found, or created, in a particular place, and intangible cultural traditions practiced by a group of people. We are concerned that British people of African or Asian ancestry continue to be given the message that Britain’s heritage is not their heritage, a view that perpetuates a racist fallacy that culture is biologically inherited. Culture is not biological, the main distinguishing aspects of cultural heritage being language, religion, and artistic expression (including music, dress & fashion, and cooking). These are intangible cultural heritage practices, which are learned, subjective, and changeable.
The tangible cultural heritage of our country includes the buried archaeology, excavated artefacts, the landscape, sites and monuments, and historic buildings. Tangible heritage is linked to a geographical place. Britain’s historic environment is the heritage of all those who live in this country today, regardless of where their ancestors – immediate or distant – may have lived. The perspective of decolonisation is that the ownership of heritage rests with the local community. The history and archaeology of Britain form the heritage of every permanent resident in our community.
Making heritage an equal employer
ONS employment statistics for DCMS heritage employment subsectors (museums & galleries, cultural education, historical sites, architecture/buildings conservation and crafts, and archaeology) highlight a significant lack of employment equality and diversity. In absolute numbers, in 2019, only around 1,000 non-”white” people were working in museums and galleries in all of England and Wales, accounting for just 2% of the total Museums and Galleries workforce of around 45,000 employees.
In addition to being deterred at school, Britons with African or Asian ancestry may well feel discouraged from working in the heritage industry due to the low pay, lack of progression, and poor employment conditions in the sector creating barriers to entry, employment security, and to progression. Often heritage services have a business model based on unpaid volunteers. Even many development-funded commercial archaeology units are registered as charities. Social mobility, and the ability to improve socio-economic status are limited currently such that those who are either already established; well-off; or with a spouse or partner in a better-paid job are better placed to have a career within the sector.
Prospect are campaigning for increased equality, diversity, and inclusion; for an improved funding model; and to tackle racism and discrimination.
We are committed to respecting our members’ dignity and encourage all heritage workers to join Prospect and to join our campaign for genuine equality in our heritage sector.
