Cultural inequality, multicultural nationalism and global diversity: Tate encounters: Britishness and visual culture

Tate Encounters was a three-year research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the Diasporas, Migration and Identities Programme. The project started in April 2007 and involved three collaborating institutions: Tate Britain, London South Bank University and the University of the Arts London, through Chelsea College.

The project aimed to provide an in-depth account and analysis of a sustained encounter between London South Bank University (LSBU) students who have a migrant family background and Tate Britain as an important national cultural site. The project developed knowledge and understandings of how narratives of Britishness are contained, constructed, and reproduced within the curatorial practices and collection of Tate Britain, and of how such notions are received and valued by different migrant and diasporic family members within the context and cultural practices of their everyday lives. From this encounter the project developed new curatorial and educational perspectives relevant to wider and more culturally diverse audiences and contributed towards cultural change within the Museum and Galleries sector.

In April 2009 Tate Encounters concluded its two-year fieldwork period with a month-long programme of public research interviews, discussions and ethnographic film screenings at Tate Britain. The programme was divided into four strands which reflected the key areas of enquiry within the project: the history of gallery education practice at Tate since 1970; the relationship between the museum and the digital realm; the impact of cultural policy on the museum and specifically cultural diversity policy, and the forms and expressions of the diasporic encounter with the museum.

The report offers a new vision of cultural diversity in Britain.

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