Keeping Traditional Skills Alive – Is It Safe?

A recent newspaper article got me thinking about the museum’s role in preserving traditional skills. Commendably museums and heritage sites have encouraged the conservation of traditional arts and crafts: dry stonewalling, thatching, hedge laying... I could go on.

At the same time museums have often been accused of indulging in safe heritage, making the past easy to digest for audiences. The process of selection goes on when selecting objects, perhaps less consciously museums are also selecting safe traditions and skills to preserve. Which brings me to the newspaper article.

Reading the Daily Telegraph on 11^th August 2011. I appreciate this may be seen as an act of rebellion in itself in a liberal profession and I’d like to think a deliberate choice on my part (in reality the paper shop was sold out of The Guardian). However, I digress. The paper showcased the training (for a price) to fly a Spitfire. Not just any training, but the actual combat training RAF pilots would have got in 1940 before being let loose on the Luftwaffe.

Naturally safe heritage being what it is, the trainees are then not allowed to shoot down any German planes which have the temerity to cross the Straits of Dover. This is because we are not at war with the Germans; we just bask in the glow of having defeated Hitler and refuse to move on.

However, in keeping with the new economics of museums how can they earn money and keep skills alive that may have relevance today. A museum declaring war on a foreign country is not feasible, although I admit I haven’t seen the forward plan for the Imperial War Museum.

The simple, cloudy and unreasonable solution is torture.

Many regimes, including our own fair government, have indulged in what might be regarded by more sensitive souls (Guardian readers rather than Telegraph readers) as infringements of human rights. Many museums have collections that point to a past, which suggested this kind of activity was relatively common. Ask yourself, have you used your stocks/scolds bridle/iron maiden/rack  (delete as applicable) lately – do you even know how to use it properly?

An email to the intelligence agency of your choice offering your equipment for use (for suitable remuneration) will increase access to your collections, improve the income generation of your collections, keep traditional torture methods alive by getting dubious confessions the old fashioned way.

In the immortal words of the torture scene in Marathon Man the phrase ‘Is it safe?’ now need not always be applied to museum and that can only be a good thing.