Restoration and Renewal: Parliamentary Heritage Collections, Democracy and Social Justice

Restoration and Renewal delivers a comparative case study approach to Parliamentary art and heritage collections in the age of migration. It builds out of a Parliamentary Academic Fellowship in UK Government with the Heritage Collections Team (2021-23). With distinct historical contexts, and in different ways, the three Parliamentary collections in the research project - UK, Belgian, Norway - are grappling with legacies of colonialism due to Empire or settler colonialism.

Parliamentary Heritage Collections offer an ideal space to consider the representation of power and democracy in changing and diversifying societies. Attending to critical, timely questions of social inequality, diversity and justice in relation to collections and issues of display, Restoration and Renewal will explore how stories are told about the nation, who belongs, who is excluded, imagination and voice.