ABSTRACT

This chapter contends that the museum frontiers – museums acting in partnership – are ideally placed to promote learning that involves recognition of complex layering of ideas: difference and similarity, between and within communities, at a local and a global level. To explore this concept the chapter draws on Black1 theoretical perspectives and applies them to case studies in the Horniman Museum, London. The case study examples2 focus on collection-based themed projects with school groups including underachieving pupils in danger of disaffection. Overall it is argued that negative media portrayals of ‘Other’ cultures and peoples as starving and ‘primitive’ have a detrimental effect on the self-esteem, motivation and academic attainment of all pupils (both Black and white), which frontier projectwork can counter by providing a vital reflexive space; where dialogical exchange can replace stereotypical and prejudiced views with greater intercultural understanding. In this way museums benefit all members of Britain’s plural, multicultural society by developing a new collaborative praxis.