Silence, memory and empathy in museums and at historic sites.

Silences are significant elements of the ways our pasts are represented. While it is often taken for granted that there are silences at museums and historic sites, the processes by which they operate have been less explicitly conceptualised. This network will make a distinction between 'being silenced' and 'being silent' in order to look at the ways in which histories perceived as challenging or 'difficult' are conveyed and taught by education officers in museums and at historic sites. As part of such teaching, museums and historic sites now frequently employ strategies of empathy to confront difficult pasts. The network will draw on the body of work about empathy and issues of accessibility in order to interrogate the ways in which empathy is being identified in the generic learning outcomes.

The network will bring together academics, early career researchers, doctoral students, curators, and educators to work in a genuinely interdisciplinary way. The diversity of expertise within the network will facilitate a focus on different cultural conceptions of silence and empathy and the way that such understandings are (or are not) part of dominant understandings of memory. The collaboration of academics and practitioners will promote an understanding of how silence, empathy and memory interact in museums and at historic sites. The findings will be of significance for museum and heritage site professionals, policy makers and educators across the sectors.

The network will run three workshops and one conference at the University of Birmingham, City University, the Historic Royal Palaces Tower of London, and Buckfast Abbey respectively. These meetings will be structured to promote dialogue, collaboration and progression of the fields.
The network will maintain a website and blog throughout its duration to strengthen the exchange of ideas, report back on the workshops, maintain the impetus beyond the life of the initial project, and attract interest more widely from the constituencies of the members. The steering group will also disseminate the results via a website, blog, training day for educators, conference papers, co-authored articles, and special issue of a journal.

1. Museum and Heritage Site Professionals:
On the basis of the MLA Challenging History report (see Pathways to Impact), there is a demonstrable need for debate and dialogue across the themes identified, themes with particular contemporary currency. Articulating the role and 'impact' of educational programmes is crucial, especially when issues around human rights, identity, citizenship and meaning making are at stake. One aspiration is that the network will feed into and hopefully influence current practice through dissemination within the professional sector. There are many active networks within the field of heritage interpretation and education who would be interested in the results of the research. Museum and heritage site professionals within the Museums Association, the Social History Curators' Group, the Museums, Libraries and Archive Council (MLA), the Group for Education in Museums, the Historical Association, the International Museum Theatre Alliance, and the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience will be informed of the outcomes of the network via trade publications, the website, conference and existing forums.

2. Policy Makers:
Given the size and complexity of the museum, gallery and heritage sector within the UK, it is important to state that this study is concerned primarily with publicly-funded museums and historic sites in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Within England, policy makers within the fields of heritage (under the Department for Culture Media & Sport, DCMS) and education will be informed of the outcomes of the research via the MLA who are the government agency responsible for leading on museum policy in partnership with English Heritage. In addition, MLA contacts at the Department for Education and Department for Business Innovation and Skills will be kept up to date with developments and recommendations. More widely within the UK, members of the network with pre-existing contacts to CyMAL: Museums, Archives and Libraries Wales, Scottish Museums Council (SMC), Northern Ireland Museum Council (NIMC), Historic Scotland, CADW: Welsh Historic Monuments, English Heritage, Environment Heritage Service Northern Ireland, and the National Trust will further ensure dissemination of the network findings.
There is also potential for impact on international policy through network contacts with the UNESCO Associated Schools Network, the UNESCO Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage initiative (via existing MLA contacts with the International Council of Museums and European partners within the Grundtvig Map for International Development project) and through the Tower Education Service's connections with the Making Sense of our Sites programme (a UK-wide initiative launched in 2009 that aims to help UK World Heritage Sites enhance their offer of World Heritage focused education for schools, funded by UK National Commission for UNESCO and the DCMS). Contacts engendered by the Challenging History group (see Pathways to Impact) will be a useful complement, adding weight to the findings and strength to the voice.

3. Educational programmers:
As demonstrated by the MLA Challenging History report, findings of the research will be incredibly useful for helping educators (in museums and in formal education outlets) think about and deal with silence within education programmes. Questions around the use of empathy in education, the place of experiential learning, and what constitutes 'meaning making' in the study of history are of great currency. There may also be significant impact on the study of citizenship in museums and formal education through initiatives such as the Take One Building scheme championed by HRP Tower of London as well as the British Library's Campaign! Make an Impact project. Steering Group experience in running such initiatives will form the basis of a train