Addressing Cognitive Dissonance in Museums

To address the dissonance of othering and ownership shifts showing up in this work, this chapter looks at what has been discussed in museums about this problem. In the author’s experience just about everyone working in museums had read the report Whose Cake Is It Anyway? (Lynch, 2011) and it was already informing changes in thinking about best practice and methods of meaningful participation (Lynch, 2011; Heritage Lottery Fund, 2010). The core message was that to combat empowerment-lite practices (Lynch, 2011), Lynch determines that the language of participation has what an ‘invisible power’ (2011: 15) operating within museums—a power that ‘subtly’ informs the practice of participation in such a way that it is ‘empowerment-lite’. This practice gives lip service to participants in their ‘decision-making’ under the guise of giving them greater agency, which ultimately disempowers, if and when the museum disregards decisions made in favour of their own (Lynch, 2011). This chapter will track this dynamic whilst also genealogically tracking what UK museums have been attempting to do in order to address this since 2010.