To Oliver Dowden,

We are aware that you have called a forthcoming ‘Heritage Summit’ on the 23rd February 2021, as reported in The Telegraph on the 13th and 15th of February 2021. We are concerned that this meeting will reinforce a colonialist and nationalist agenda thereby pressurising cultural and heritage organisations into toeing an unethical party political line.  

This summit has been framed as an ideological one in the media. It has been described by The Telegraph as ‘British culture’s last stand against woke zealotry’. A DCMS source reportedly told the same paper that you aimed to ‘defend our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists constantly trying to do Britain down’. You have also taken the extraordinary step of requiring that arms-length heritage organisations notify DCMS in advance of any actions or public statements in relation to contested heritage or histories.

Given the framing of this conference in the media, and your request for cultural organisations to share actions or public statements with the government in advance, we believe heritage organisations are at risk of being put under inappropriate pressure by DCMS.

We seek to advocate for a representation of history based on an honest and evidence-led reappraisal of British colonialism and its enduring legacies. We stand against attempts to devalue archive driven inquiry that seeks to shed light on how Britain’s institutions have been shaped by colonial links and have profited from slavery. We advocate for the use of archives in opening up more nuanced and complex public understanding of our colonial past and its impacts on the present.

To build confidence in the Government's good faith, consultation with the broader heritage sector on these matters should be formalised and communicated transparently, rather than selectively leaked to one paywalled newspaper. Some unrepresentative voices are disproportionately dominant in shaping the national debate in the face of a ‘woke’ threat that, in reality, does not exist. 

We urge the government to consult widely amongst the arts, culture and heritage sectors, in order to obtain a rounded picture of decolonisation and reparative practices in the context of recognised best practice in collections and audience development work. These practices are, in part, about acknowledging that more communities have contributed to Global Britain than the minority previously recognised, with a goal of social cohesion and inclusion, by adding to, rather than inhibiting, understandings of how the empire of the past led to the world we now inhabit. 

Signed;