Politics of. ‘social history’: Diversity, inclusion and engagement with community The adoption of policies promoting social inclusion, cultural diversity and multiculturalism by the New Labour government in the late 1990s was an attempt to address the challenges of an increasingly culturally diverse and multi-ethnic Britain.6 The government directed substantial financial resources towards the implementation of its programmes of social inclusion and cultural diversity. One of the priority areas funded from these grants had been outreach activities directed towards widening participation in society targeting such disadvantaged groups as ethnic minorities, disabled and young people. Small and medium sized regional museums like the Xxxxxxx became key beneficiaries of this policy. In the spirit of the neo-liberalism that became the driving force behind many New Labour reforms (Hall, 2011), the local museums entered competition for government money by designing social inclusion and diversity programmes and submitting proposals to the main funding bodies that were the repositories of government funds. Our expert characterised this situation in her interview: ‘You know, say the people who work in the city, like the Xxxxxxx, in these places tend to be the kind of people who love museums, who see their value in terms of what they can do to engage the community, have that moral responsibility for engaging communities and all communities, right? What happened is the money came in for us to do it… And this was New Labour, new narrative of Britain.’ (UKE2, 16 January 2012) With the Xxxxxxx becoming an independent Trust in 2008 new marketing strategies were employed to attract a wider audience and better access the target groups within inclusion and diversity programmes mainly run by different agencies or departments 6 These policies have been significantly altered with the shift towards ‘community cohesion’ approach to multiculturalism after the 2001 riots in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford (Xxxxxx, 2011). A critical analysis of ‘myths’ of race and migration which at least partly have underpinned the ‘community cohesion’ policies and similar rather xenophobic initiatives of the previous and current governments can be found in Xxxxxx and Xxxxxxx’x (2009) research. of the City Council. For several years, for example, the Xxxxxxx had worked in partnership with the Adult Education Service contributing to their adult literacy and English Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses (UKE1). Th...
