ICOM VoicesMuseum Visits with the Paris Red Cross

Key words: cultural action, charities, social work, mediation, marginalised visitors

“Socially disadvantaged”, “marginalised or excluded visitors”… These are some of the many terms used to describe people who do not typically visit museums. In addition to these individuals, whom museums are increasingly trying to attract, charities are also affected by museum visitor policies, whether or not their primary mission is cultural.

How can volunteers take beneficiaries to visit museums? How can institutions help them? As a student in museum curation and a Red Cross volunteer, I would like to present a view of both sides based on the work of the Paris Red Cross.

 

Cultural activities at the Red Cross

The French Red Cross in Paris has 18 local units that operate independently to organise local initiatives, while the Red Cross regional delegation manages large-scale initiatives. Local unit activities are diverse and vary in number, ranging from first aid and training to social activities such as outreach work, food and clothing assistance, French as a foreign language (FLE) courses, tutoring, and more.

Culture is not a structural mission of the Red Cross, but many local units have spontaneously developed cultural activities as a complement to other efforts, at a frequency ranging from one activity per year to one per week, with one local unit even developing a full-fledged cultural programme with a dedicated team of volunteers.

These activities are organised mainly for FLE learners, many of whom have recently arrived in France and find themselves in vulnerable situations, with some volunteers seeing such outings as an extension of their language courses. Several local Red Cross units take children who receive tutoring or assistance from other charities to the museum, and some take food bank participants, unaccompanied minors or schoolchildren.

These cultural activities take many forms, such as outings to museums or heritage sites, walks around Paris, visits to media libraries, film screenings, trips to the opera or theatre (with tickets obtained by the regional delegation through partnerships), theatre workshops, and more.

 

Let’s go to the museum!

Visits to museums remain among the most popular activities among volunteers and beneficiaries. The institutions they visit range from emblematic sites such as the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, to smaller museums such as the Victor Hugo House to study the author with FLE learners. For outings with children, the approach is slightly different, the idea being to select prominent themes and places where games and activities can easily be organised.

Volunteers may ask a museum mediator to lead a guided tour or workshop or may lead the visit themselves. Some prefer simply to supervise the group, leaving visitors to discover the collections at their own pace and occasionally pointing out items. Others do a significant amount of preparation to provide mediation or even create game booklets or educational kits. Some volunteers take advantage of social inclusion training courses offered by certain museums (for example, at the Louvre, to learn “how to speak in front of works” and discover the content of an exhibition) and some experiment with new types of mediation such as participative mediation.

Whatever the method used, the aim is to take the mystery out of the museum and make visitors want to go back on their own, while sharing an experience with them to help combat social isolation.

 

What can museums and museum professionals do?

Museums are increasingly committed to encouraging charities to visit with their beneficiaries, sometimes even formalising such partnerships. The French Ministry of Culture’s Vivre Ensemble (Living Together) programme includes 37 museums that offer free or reduced admission and training for volunteers. The Paris Red Cross specifically benefits from an agreement signed in 2022 with the public institution Paris Musées. Initially designed to combat isolation, the agreement is used in practice by volunteers to implement the cultural initiatives described above. The agreement grants free access to Paris Red Cross groups and the right to speak publicly[1] for volunteers, with no prior training required. Red Cross beneficiaries can also take advantage of free visits and/or workshops with museum mediators, with a limit of up to 20 activities per year.

Free admission is a key factor when volunteers choose which museums to visit. While a few local units have a small budget for cultural outings, the majority have no budget for what is often simply a complement to another activity and only choose museums that can be visited without paying. Giving charity groups the widest possible choice of benefits (free admission, the right to speak for volunteers, or even free guided tours and workshops) should therefore be a priority for museums.

In addition to offering these activities free of charge, one way to encourage the development of such activities would be to improve communication with charities. The most committed volunteers are often passionate and knowledgeable, or even professionals in the cultural sector, and are familiar with the Paris museum network and the possibilities available to charity workers. However, this is far from being the case for all volunteers, some of whom are unaware of the existence of the agreement with Paris Musées or the possibility of free admissions. Getting in touch with volunteers in the field in the various local units, rather than prioritising contacts in the central structure, could thus make it possible to organise more visits and encourage other volunteers to plan museum outings.

The beneficiaries are not the only ones who see museums as sacred. The perception of museums as intimidating, restrictive and even elitist also persists among volunteers, some of whom say that they do not request a mediator for fear that he or she will not be able to adapt to the needs of certain groups such as FLE learners. In addition, some volunteers have a negative view of particular institutions that have imposed unsuitable time slots on them in the past (sometimes prohibiting weekend bookings), smaller group sizes than for others, or complex booking procedures requiring several months’ notice. These complexities can be discouraging for volunteers who are already overwhelmed by organising an outing, which involves a great deal of work beforehand (communication, content preparation, registration management, etc.) and/or during the visit, as volunteers can sometimes be alone with groups of around 15 people.

 

In conclusion, the Paris Red Cross is one charity that is gradually integrating culture into its activities. With varying degrees of preparation and supervision, volunteers are guiding beneficiaries through museums, encouraged by free admissions and possible partnerships. Now more than ever, museums, which have been working in the social sphere for many years, need to continue their efforts by being proactive and contacting local volunteers directly.

[1] The right to speak publicly in museum halls is regulated in France and granted only to guides and lecturers who hold a professional permit issued by the French Ministry of Culture.