A museum collection charity has been criticised for removing a ‘best practice’ link to a glossary of inclusive terminology, after media reports highlighted the guidance for its section on Palestine.
The Collections Trust, which works with museums to improve the management of and access to collections, has been criticised for removing the link to the third-party glossary in the wake of media reports and for its failure to communicate with the author before doing so.
The charity was the subject of reports in the Telegraph newspaper after third-party guidance that it had linked to in the ‘best practice’ section of its website had a section on Palestine added to it.
The Inclusive Terminology Glossary is a collaborative, live project created and edited by Carissa Chew, a freelance inclusive metadata consultant and founder of the Cultural Heritage Terminology Network. It was not funded by the Collections Trust, both parties confirmed.
The resource aims to collate information about the historic and contemporary use of words related to race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender and disability, which seeks to inform decision-making around language use in the heritage sector.
Chew said she was dropped as a freelancer by the Collections Trust after the guidance’s new addition on Palestine made headlines, in an article that she described as “misleading”.
The Collections Trust issued a statement after the media reports, distancing itself from the work, saying that the charity was not aware of the existence of the new section relating to Palestine until it was contacted by the media.
It said: “The Palestine-related content in question is not our guidance, but part of a broader third-party resource we had linked to before it was posted.
“Once it was drawn to our attention, we removed the link to it from our website. We will review all third-party terminology guidance we link to, and our policy on linking to third-party resources in general.”
But Chew criticised the charity for dropping the glossary in response to the media reports, saying its reaction was “disappointing”.
She told Third Sector: “Language bias towards Jews, Muslims and Palestinians is part of the remit of any inclusive description work, so it is really disappointing that Collections Trust are continuing to promote themselves as ‘inclusive’ leaders in the sector when they aren’t willing to engage with these issues and treat freelance workers from marginalised backgrounds as disposable.”
In a blog post responding to the situation, Chew added: “I remain deeply disappointed by the Collections Trust’s failure to communicate with me prior to publishing this statement, especially given that they have not been transparent about our working relationship.”
Chew said: “As a young woman of colour, working freelance as an inclusive metadata consultant in the heritage sector leaves me vulnerable to this kind of employment discrimination.
“Without having given me a contract, Collections Trust have been able to ‘drop’ me from future work (which had previously been discussed to take place in Spring 2024) simply because my crowd-sourced inclusive language guide includes marginalised Palestinian and Jewish social justice perspectives.”
Chew added that she has been recommended to approach the charity’s funder, the Arts Council England. She said she decided not to pursue this in light of the recent updates to the grantmaker’s guidance on managing reputational risk caused by “political” statements, which met with backlash from the sector.
She has urged the trust to “revisit” the decision to remove the glossary and to issue her with a public apology so the two parties can “move forward in our shared aims to improve sector-wide cataloguing standards”.
When contacted for comment about Chew’s claims, the Collections Trust pointed to its previous statement and declined to comment further.