Culture-Space: Towards a Better Understanding of Space Exploration

Across three workshop meetings, the 'Culture-Space' research network will explore the potential for a new generation of museum displays about space exploration. Until now, the vast majority of such displays, built around large artefacts such as rocket engines and satellites, have told a predominantly technological story. The possibility of a broader, more culturally-rich, interpretation was signalled by the Science Museum's widely-praised 'Cosmonauts' temporary exhibition in 2015, a display that rooted the Russian space effort's origins in much older Russian cultural traditions, notably the idea of 'Cosmism', popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such an approach enabled the display of a much wider range of artefacts and art works than would be normal for a space display. It also led to a much wider visiting demographic than space displays usually attract.

The success of this exhibition throws down a challenge to curators about how such a broad cultural approach to space exploration could be applied to the next generation of 'permanent' (ie with a 25+ year life) space displays, including the one we plan to open in the next decade. The Science Museum Group, an IRO since 2009, sees research activity as core to developing its professional practice (see: https://group.sciencemuseum.org.uk/our-work/research-public-history/research-strategy-2018/). A significant aspect of that approach involves the convening of multidisciplinary networks such as this to develop discourse around museum problematics that might also stimulate academic reflection and new directions in research. In this case, space scientists (via the European Space Agency, our hosts for the second meeting) will mingle with historians and science studies academics; space psychologists and physiologists with art historians; anthropologists with science fiction scholars. The meetings will be staged first to consider the current form of museum representation of space exploration with its presence in other media; second, the diversity of participants in - and audiences for - space exploration, as well as the diversity of disciplines that study it; and the third will aim to create a synthesis of the previous discussions. Outputs will include a report and presentation for the Museum's masterplanning review group and at least one summary article (for submission to a museum studies journal) as well as conference presentations. The major long-term dissemination will be the redeveloped Science Museum space gallery, which will be visited by millions of people. This will be accompanied by a catalogue, containing essays by many of the network participants.

Museum researchers and curators will benefit from the Culture-Space research network through its pioneering new approaches of placing scientific and technological displays into a broader, culturally relevant, context. This new methodology will flow onto the broader public via the new space gallery at the Science Museum - reaching millions of visitors. The emphasis on increasing the diversity of space cultures represented also promises significant engagement of new demographics in the contemplation of space exploration.

Traditionally, space galleries have a perception of being of interest only to those predisposed to the technical or scientific elements of space exploration. Yet, by reframing the subject within a more human and cultural perspective we will engage a wider range of the public. In the first instance, this includes the museum's daytime visitors comprised of school groups, science, engineering and technology enthusiasts, cultural consumers, lay-historians, and domestic and international tourists. Additionally, as a permanent gallery, the new space display will extend to visitors that attend our "Lates" sessions. These visitors diversify those who will be directly impacted by the research, and includes young adults, professionals, trend-adopters, and entertainment seekers.

The research network's artistic and creative participants will benefit from connecting to contemporary space scientists, engineers, social science and humanities scholars, as well as the unique objects from the Science Museum's collections. We envisage the artists and creative professionals will be inspired by these interactions to produce new and exciting works. Importantly, because these network participants have the capacity to mediate society's interaction with human-space activities, they will also help broaden the benefits of a culturally centric perspective of space beyond the confines of the network and Museum.

Further, British and international space organisations, such as the European Space Agency (ESA) with whom the Museum is partnered here, will be able to build, cultivate and maintain strong relationships with public sentiment to understand how society values their contributions, as well as discover new pathways to generate interest in their current and historical space activities. In addition, the existing social sciences research programmes administered by international space organisations will benefit from building new collaborations with university social sciences researchers.