How Cultural Heritage Organizations Can Promote Diversity and Inclusion
As cultural heritage organizations strive to preserve and showcase the rich cultural history of various communities, it’s essential to promote diversity and inclusion within the organization and the audience it serves. In this article, we’ll explore some effective ways cultural heritage organizations can promote diversity and inclusion.
Setting the Context: Understanding Diversity and Inclusion
Before we dive into specific ways cultural heritage organizations can promote diversity and inclusion, let’s first understand what these terms mean. Diversity refers to the varied identities, experiences, and backgrounds that make people unique. It encompasses differences in race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, ability, culture, and more. Inclusion, on the other hand, means creating a welcoming space where people of diverse backgrounds feel valued, respected, and supported.
Creating Inclusive Spaces
One of the crucial ways cultural heritage organizations can promote diversity and inclusion is by creating inclusive spaces. This involves providing accessibility services like wheelchair access, offering gender-neutral restrooms, and creating cultural sensitivity training programs for staff and volunteers. By prioritizing physical and emotional accessibility, organizations can ensure that their spaces are welcoming to all.
Amplifying Underrepresented Voices
Cultural heritage organizations have a responsibility to tell many stories and not just the dominant narratives. They should add diverse perspectives to their collections and exhibits and make sure to showcase and amplify the voices of underrepresented communities. This can be achieved by working with communities, artists, and academics, and also doing research to know more about those underrepresented communities.
Creating Engaging Community Programs
Organizations must create programs that engage their audience by including diverse communities’ stories and experiences. Programs that allow visitors to share their stories, host cultural events or exhibit programs that allow visitors to interact and be active such as increasing museum accessibility, school sponsorship programs and many more are a few simple strategies to efficiently promote diversity and inclusion.
Conclusion
By prioritizing diversity and inclusion, cultural heritage organizations contribute to a larger effort in creating welcoming communities where everyone feels welcome, valued and seen. Creating inclusive spaces, amplifying underrepresented voices and audience engagement can facilitate significant change within communities. It is an excellent opportunity for cultural heritage organizations to fulfill their mission of preserving and sharing unique stories, history, and culture to diverse communities, thereby achieving inclusion and diversity.
