‘We may be courtin’ but are we engaged?’ COLLETTE BROWNLEE
Introduction1 ‘we may be courtin’ but are we engaged?’ developed from a local government museum community engagement programme created to access local socially excluded groups. This article will discuss how the Irish Linen Centre and Lisburn Museum (LM) attracted non-visitors to participate in an education project designed to gather two pieces of information: participant attitudes to museums and to world war I. The Community Engagement Project (CEP) was made possible by a grant from the Northern Ireland Museums Council (NIMC) and took over a year to organise, finally taking place between February and June of 2015.
Why engage with community groups and on what subject? The project developed from an invitation by the NIMC to participate in a pilot museum community engagement programme aimed at attracting local socially excluded groups. The object was to connect with groups identified as non-visitors to LM, targeted from Council electoral wards with high social deprivation indices. Initial contact between LM and NIMC began in August 2013 but it took over a full year before gatekeepers of community groups were identified, signed up and ready to begin.
— 1. This article is adapted from a presentation made at the Irish Museums Association Education and Outreach Forum on 19 June 2015, Dublin 2. Decade of Centenaries / Remembering the Future (2012). Northern Ireland Community Relations Council
It was hoped that the project would include groups from Catholic areas because world war I was not a topic that LM had previously worked on with them. Before the decade of centenaries initiatives (Northern Ireland Community relations Council, 2012),2 the general local perception of world war I seemed to reflect the idea that the war belonged to one community and that had little to do with the other. It is perhaps because of the centenary commemorations, that the contribution of the Catholic community to the war has been highlighted in recent years, notably but not exclusively, through the
‘We may be courtin’ but are we engaged?’
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