Reflections on the Prejudice in Power exhibition: confronting UCL’s uncomfortable legacy

Director of Special Collections Sarah Aitchison reflects on the exhibition’s location, messaging and impact and shares insights into the planning process.

Based in UCL LCCOS (Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science), the Prejudice in Power project worked with communities with lived experience relating to the history of eugenics. Through the project we aimed to empower these communities to respond creatively to UCL’s historic role in promoting eugenics and examine the legacies in a contemporary context through a series of co-creation projects. We also explored how eugenics collections in UCL Museums and Special Collections can prompt dialogues that lead to more inclusive thinking and actions across the UCL community. Prejudice in Power: contesting the pseudoscience of superiority, is a physical exhibition with a linked Digital Showcase, which publicly showcases this work.

It was important to everyone involved that the project would help us to understand and improve our practices, allow us to build better projects in the future, and support staff and participants fully. Evaluation was therefore embedded into the Prejudice in Power project from the very beginning, including evaluation of the exhibition and Digital Showcase.

We gathered detailed feedback through exhibition workshops, in-depth interviews with staff members and survey responses from Student Centre users, which has allowed us to reflect on the space, the messaging and the impact of the exhibition.

Location

“The Student Centre proved to be an effective location for the exhibition. The highly visible displays, integrated into the architecture of the building, caught the attention of passersby and regular users alike, sparking conversations and reflections on the exhibition themes”.
Prejudice in Power Evaluation Report, Yasmin Yiang

Based in the foyer of the Student Centre, this exhibition was a move away from the usual mode of display in the glass showcases and instead utilised the whole space, incorporating the balustrades and stairs and using the showcases as a basis for floor to ceiling display boards. It involved a great deal of discussion on how to put challenging and potentially triggering messages into a public space in a way that was not upsetting or confrontational. In order to focus on the work undertaken by the project instead of UCL’s history, many of the historical collection items were instead described in detail in the Digital Showcase.

The Student Centre foyer is generally a ‘passing through’ space, which is why the design used quotations from project participants to try and engage people so that they would read the more detailed text on the showcases. Survey participants also appreciated the accompanying films and visual elements as another, more digestible way into the exhibition.

Using the space in this way required the input of a wide range of UCL staff, first and foremost the wonderful Student Centre team, who supported the installation and were the first port of call for questions. We also worked closely with the Accessible Environments team to make sure that elements such as the placement of boards and the colour scheme were accessible for staff and students.

There was a hugely positive response to the presence of the exhibition in a highly visible and central location at UCL.

Messages

“Finding the right balance between accessibility and context can be a challenge for exhibitions that address difficult and sensitive histories”.
Prejudice in Power Evaluation Report, Yasmin Yiang

Presenting the work of a three-year project while placing it within the context of UCL’s history with eugenics was always going to be challenging. The decision was made to focus on the outputs of the co-creation projects in the physical display and to talk more widely about the collections and history on the Digital Showcase, linking the two via QR codes. Due to the amount of text on the showcases, the banners on the balustrades and stairs remained simple and showed quotations from project participants about their experiences and opinions.


Feedback about this choice was mixed, with the workshop participants in particular wishing for more historical depth and context. The majority of the respondents passing through the space, however, were drawn in by the simplicity of the quotations and these had a substantial impact and inspired curiosity about the subject.

Impact

For those less familiar with UCL’s history, the link to eugenics was often described as ‘shocking’, but the framing of the exhibition generally resulted in positive responses. Several participants asked about accessing further resources and many of them reflected on their own practices and beliefs.

The focus on the co-creation projects was intended to link the history of eugenics to current social structures and norms and the response to this was notable amongst those surveyed, leading some to question their own actions and next steps.

The depth and variety of the Digital Showcase, which contained additional films, resources, historical outlines and details of collections, was praised, as was the potential to build this into a repository for wider work on the topic.

The workshop attendees, in particular, were interested in ways to remain involved, especially through participation in co-creation workshops and events.

Moving forward

There are other co-creation activities and events taking place under the Prejudice in Power banner, such as the public art project Words Matter, which explores the role of arts-based methods in responding to UCL’s historic role in eugenics and has been designed by UCL’s Cultural and Community Engagement team. The project looks at how arts-based methods can include the voices and experiences of those marginalised by the impact of the legacy of eugenics and make these explorations accessible to a wider audience. An exhibition showcasing the outputs has just opened at UCL East.

The focus here has been on the exhibition, but we are continuing to evaluate the work of other areas of the project, including the best ways to undertake co-creation projects and how to support staff working with challenging collections. The aim is to move beyond the Prejudice in Power project, linking to the valuable work overseen by the Library Liberating the Collections Steering Group and continuing to develop best practice.