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UK report on migration museum relevant to Ireland
By Noreen Bowden | July 24, 2009
A UK think tank has produced a paper asking whether there is a case for a major museum of migration in the UK; the suggestions contained in the Institute for Public Policy’s A moving story: Is there a case for a major museum of emigration in the UK? are highly relevant for Ireland.
As Barbara Roche, the chair of the Migration Museum Working Group and former UK Minister for Immigration, says, “The establishment of a Museum of Migration, and indeed the journey towards it, would be a powerful signal that the UK has embraced the centrality of migration in our national life. Emigration and immigration are bound up with what it means to be British. ”
The same, could of course, be said about Ireland. Ireland currently has no national museum of emigration, although there are a number of smaller attractions that base their appeal on their links to emigrant history. Perhaps the most prominent of these is the Cobh Heritage Centre, which has an exhibition on the story of emigration from the port town.
The Dunbrody Visitor Center in New Ross, however, is slated to become a new national emigration history centre with a geneological facility and several exhibitions relating to the emigrant experience.
The report makes several recommendations; many of these are worthy of consideration for Ireland as well.
- Establish a “Migration in Museums” steering group
- Build a “Migration in Museums” coalition consisting of key players
- Create a “brand identity” to link up existing initiatives
- Establish a migration heritage web portal or “virtual museum”
- Encourage the reinterpretation of existing collections from a migration perspective
- Create a database of researchers working on migration history
- Create a schools outreach programme
- Establish an international outreach programme to capture the stories of migration and settlement from British emigrants abroad
- “Moving Stories”: a major touring exhibition for 2012
- Establish a Museum of Migration as a “hub with spokes”
The recommendation about a brand identity to link up several initiatives is a good one for Ireland. An emigrant heritage center map could be a useful tool for tourists; a virtual museum could arise out of such a network as well. Ireland already has several programmes running to capture stories of emigrants; oral history among older Irish emigrants around the world is currently a popular and worthwhile activity. Linking them up would be useful and would give a larger profile to individual initiatives. The Irish Emigration Curriculum website could be used as a tool in a schools outreach program.
Of course the report is also relevant to Irish concerns as any museum of migration in the UK would include the Irish role in the UK’s inward migration flow. The background report accompanying the recommendations notes that there is a surprising lack of visibility of the Irish diaspora in the UK’s heritage centre. It says, “the Irish community has not been the subject of any major exhibition”. This underrepresentation has resulted in the misrepresentation of the Irish community in Britain.
The background report also examines a number of museums of migration around the world, which have been increasing in number since the late 1990s.
The entire report is well worth reading:
- A moving story: Is there a case for a major museum of emigration in the UK?
- Stories old and new: Migration and identity in the heritage sector (background paper)
Related web pages:
- MigrationMuseums.org – A network of migration museums around the world; a project of UNESCO in cooperation with IOM-Rome
- The Association of European Migration Institutions
- Ean.ie: Diaspora centre a future tourist attraction? (January, 2007)
- Ean.ie: Dunbrody ship to become centre for emigration history (November, 2008)
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