ABSTRACT
Ryedale Folk Museum worked as a place where people inside and outside the museum came together to create more opportunities for access and inclusion in a remote rural community; to demand a decent environment. The British Museum asked Bede’s World to be the only UK venue for the exhibition because the museum was leading best practice nationally in community and place. One of the important and useful functions a museum can fulfil – and which museums can do uniquely through the power of collections – is to empower more complex, human-sized and historicised views about situated heritage and identity. It is the impact of the work that differentiates a museum’s ecology from an exhibition in any other context. Community radio is a low-tech tool with a proven track record of enabling ordinary voices to build cultural organisations, by fostering genuine capability for conversation and collaborative development.
