This book traces the relationship between the museum and the micro-cultures of the countryside over the last 50 years. The period is one of extraordinary tensions and change for the countryside, as it has experienced widespread agricultural mechanisation, rural depopulation and changing demographics, the growth of environmental activism, and the development of the heritage industry. Global issues such as the political and social imperatives to tackle population growth and climate change have led to an increasing sense of a distributed responsibility for the world's welfare with strong local implications. Through all of this, the countryside is ever more under pressure, and of increasing importance as a healthy provider of more and more resources. How are these competing histories, visions and politics represented by the museum, and throughout the wider world of arts organisations and the heritage? To what extent can a response to a locality, as reflected in programmes of such bodies, be accompanied by responsibility for it? Is there room for the arts and the museum to engage actively not only in reflecting cultures but in shaping them? What are the opportunities for the import of creative and lateral thinking from different cultures, bringing new visions and means of understanding, and how is this happening? This book outlines some museum and artistic projects and enterprises which are attempting to introduce new ways of investigating, learning and creating cultures though engagement between localities, objects and people.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.