‘It wasn’t all bad’: representations of working class cultures within social history museums and their impacts on audiences

Abstract

This article examines the complexities inherent in creating social history displays which honestly represent communities whilst at the same time remaining sensitive to participant’s needs and fears of exposure. It considers ways in which oral history collecting to inform displays is subject to self-censorship, community collusion in ‘stigma management’ and the curatorial decision making process of local government officers. Drawing on material collected for the People’s Palace Glasgow and elsewhere it analyzes the ways in which individual responses are used to create notions of community identity, within the framework of the social history museum as voice of local government. Lastly it considers the impacts of such histories on local, tourist and diasporic visitors when the context for such memories (and indeed objects) has been changed by their relationship to the museum.