How the Black Country Living Museum is prioritising Inclusive Storytelling

MuseumNext travelled back in time with Nadia Awal and Izzy Taylor from the Black Country Living Museum to discuss the efforts the museum has taken to connect its visitors to a diverse range of stories from the past.

As a living museum, the BCLM offers a truly immersive experience, with historic characters reflecting real stories from the Black Country’s rich history. Through their Inclusive Storytelling initiative and Forging Ahead project, the team are representing the stories of Black Country citizens who have historically been overlooked.

Part of the Interpretation and Research team at BCLM, Nadia Awal exercises her passion for “bringing stories together and giving them a social history context, particularly marginalised stories.”

Meanwhile, Izzy Taylor is BCLM’s Public Programme Producer, programming events, themed holidays, and being the “next link in the chain after research when it comes to storytelling”.

Izzy says, “The museum work suits me because it’s what I love to do, telling real stories and finding the extraordinary in the ordinary.”

This is exactly what BCLM has been working to achieve through Inclusive Storytelling and its Forging Ahead project, the latter of which involves building a full 1940s-60s town.

Inclusive Storytelling is an ongoing initiative designed to represent as much of the Black Country as possible in the museum’s characters and collections, with a particular focus on marginalised groups with stories that may have previously been in the shadows.

Nadia says, “Our Inclusive Storytelling working group started in 2021, but we’ve taken our time in uncovering the best way to be inclusive and tell stories in a meaningful and impactful way. Now that we’ve found our feet, we’re starting to see some fantastic progress.”

Representing more of the Black Country through Inclusive Storytelling

Much of the initial focus of Inclusive Storytelling has centred around the museum’s Forging Ahead project. In creating an entire town showcasing the Black Country of the 40s, 50s, and 60s, the team saw an opportunity to highlight those narratives that haven’t always been reflected in historical records.

Nadia says, “Forging Ahead highlighted a bigger picture: what stories are important to the Black Country? We were shining a light on the period between the 40s and 60s, when people were migrating from all over the world, particularly from the Caribbean, but also from India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, and so on.

“We knew we wanted to represent this, but we also thought about LGBTQ+ stories, and disability stories, and women’s stories. Forging Ahead has allowed us to do this.”

Izzy adds, “We’ve been telling Black Country stories since the museum opened in the 1970s, but there are wider, more varied stories from marginalised groups that often fly under the radar. That period of 1940s-1960s is in living memory, so we’re in a strong position to be able to speak to people who are still with us. We want people to see their families and themselves in our projects, to make us a more inclusive museum.

“It’s about representing the people of the Black Country as they are today, and telling stories that have been historically underheard.”

Looking backwards and Forging Ahead

Forging Ahead has given the team the opportunity to explore wider, more inclusive storytelling. Once the project is complete, they plan to give the same treatment to the museum’s other collections and displays, both new and existing.

Izzy says, “We plan to use the lessons of Forging Ahead to look at our Edwardian village, which will be more of a challenge as we don’t have accounts from those with living memory. But even back then, there were people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, and people living with disability in the Black Country. We want representation across the entire museum, not just in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.”

Nadia adds, “The LGBTQ+ community didn’t suddenly appear in 1940, and same with the Caribbean community. People have been here, living and working, all this time, and if we fail to tell those stories, we’re failing to tell the story of the Black Country.”

Challenges and successes

Such a mammoth undertaking is not without its challenges, but the team’s Inclusive Storytelling efforts have also yielded huge successes. Reflecting on these, Izzy says, “Underrepresented stories are, by their nature, ones people are less familiar with. The characters must do more work to push the narrative.  Our characters include a Jamaican nurse and a Punjabi character who wears traditional salwar kameez. We’ve recently trialled a deaf character. Telling these stories and seeing people interact with them is the achievement, because that’s what we set out to do.

“Some identities are what we call ‘invisible identities’. You can’t tell that a character is LGBT+ just by looking at them, so we have to explore ways to get their identity across, often through props. One of our recent characters was James Whale, an openly gay film director. We featured letters addressed to him and photographs of his partner, so people could put the pieces together. It became a shared journey of discovery.”

Motivation, mistakes, and making lasting change

Nothing worth doing ever comes easy, and this was certainly true for the BCLM team. Working on inclusivity had to take place alongside what Nadia calls the “bread and butter” of the museum’s work: “running the museum day-to-day and ensuring visitors have a wonderful experience.”

Izzy says, “To do this work properly and meaningfully, it needs to have your full attention. We’re constantly asking ourselves what the best course of action is, and often the answer is to try something, and learn along the way, or postpone an idea to give it the time it needs.”

But the rewards for such scrupulous efforts also can’t be overstated. Nadia says, “Collecting these diverse histories has been really rewarding. We’re improving the collection, and these stories are going to exist forever. There’s an excitement about this project across the whole team, which gives us a sense of doing trailblazing work.”

Measuring success

The true mark of both Forging Ahead and Inclusive Storytelling has been seeing the positive reactions of those engaging with the work, both in the museum and online. The team use surveys, social media, reviews, and feedback gathered by historic characters to hone their efforts, trialling different mechanisms and technology to ensure the displays are as accessible as possible.

Following on from the success of Forging Ahead, Nadia says “expanding the museum’s diversity even further” is the team’s number one priority.

“We want to engage with stories and groups we haven’t yet represented, such as the Gypsy Roma and Traveller community, the Polish community, and the Irish community. Our inclusive language guide will be released soon for all staff, and we’re looking at other avenues of inclusive learning, such as a research library of books, podcasts, and other useful learning materials.”

Izzy adds, “We will use what we’ve learned to look at other parts of our site. Inclusivity isn’t a fixed goal, it’s a continuous journey to constantly evaluate our efforts. We’re going to look at how we embed Inclusive Storytelling across all areas of the museum, in every story that we tell, and how we can make that resonate with people.”

Advice for other museums? Don’t go it alone

To truly embrace inclusivity, you need to work together, and this is something both Izzy and Nadia emphasise as vital for any other cultural institution looking to carry out similar work. Izzy says, “Speak to people, not about them. Talk to the communities you are seeking to represent; consult with them, pay them for their time, and foster an encouraging and safe environment for co-creation.

“Embrace the journey. Acknowledge the fact that you’ll be learning along the way, and be open to getting things wrong while still being diligent.”

Nadia adds, “Don’t let fear stop you. It’s hard work but you’ve got to start somewhere, and that’s where a diverse team is so important. If you take a top-down approach, you don’t achieve true inclusivity. It’s about embracing everyone, and bringing everyone on that journey.”

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