The mission statement (before we used such terminology) of Frederick Horniman and his museum was “Bring the World to Forest Hill”.
While watching the opening of the Winter Olympics and seeing all the flags and designer team outfits, I couldn’t help think about this awe inspiring idea and how we should reference it thematically when we get the chance.
I just feel it captures a highly distinctive brand identity for Forest Hill and yet it has the ‘stretchy’ quality that it is suitable for a variety of applications with various levels of subtlety.
Also, it is by definition universal in its appeal.
So glad I posted that when I did. It was an example of a thought which ‘knew itself’ to be right on an intuitive level. If I had overthought it, it would have made it more difficult to express subsequently.
But now that I have posted it, I have been able to process the thought more deeply.
Firstly, the ‘Bring the World to Forest Hill’ (henceforth BTWTFH) notion must be understood to have originated in the time and setting of Mr Horniman. The museum has evolved several times since then and I would argue that it now has taken ownership of this complex line of thought, unpacking it and analysing it through the discipline of museology.
And secondly I think the idea can be re-interpreted to bring it ‘out of the museum and out of history’ and into the locality as a community-led initiative. I don’t think this is necessarily original, but it’s about nuance and resonance within our contemporary situation.
That’s a great question Rob, thank you for asking it. This is a brilliant opportunity to touch upon the methodology I am developing ‘over’ on my history research AND the methodology I use to integrate findings into ‘actionable’ formats which is part of my research into facilitation theory.
(Incidentally I never intended to write history in this topic, this thread is about the application of one idea to community engagement, which I will continue to develop.)
So the quick answer is Frederick Horniman did not commit a substantial body of thoughts about his ‘mission’ as a collector to be published. He spoke about his intentions to individuals in an ad-hoc way as he interacted with guests and visitors to his early private collection and later the public museum. Some of these observations by witnesses survived in biographies of individuals connected to his orbit, and I will be detailing this over in the history category.
It was only as recently as 2022 that Clare Paterson published Mr Horniman’s Walrus: Legacies of a Remarkable Victorian Family, the first and only ‘full’ biography of the Horniman family, and note not one devoted to Frederick alone.
After Mr Horniman’s death, the early museum was left to rationalise what he had intended and knowing he was a Quaker they sincerely believed he wished to communicate the commonality between different human societies. But during the 20th century anthropologists questioned how (or whether) this intention was valid let alone well executed.
As the museum reorganised its rationale several times to keep up to date they were still left with the problem of communicating what Mr Horniman had ‘intended’ consciously or otherwise. And out of deference (I would argue) the summation of his mission bubbled up through hundereds or re-tellings until the phrase Bring the World to Forest Hill became established as a go to phraseology. It is now almost impossible to pin down who would have first uttered that exact phrase, but it is almost certainly not attributable to Frederick himself.