Lived experience,lived expertise: Collecting and interpreting the heritage of Ireland's religious-run social institutions at the National Museum of Ireland

Introduction

In 2022, the Irish government announced the development of the National Centre for Research and Remembrance, intended to honour individuals who experienced incarceration in religious-run social institutions and those impacted by the wider system of family separation, including coerced and forced adoption, boarding-out and illegal birth registration. The Centre will be located on the site of a former Magdalene Laundry on Seán McDermott Street in Dublin and is currently in the preliminary stages of development. Its design includes a museum operated by the National Museum of Ireland (NMI), an archive managed by the National Archives of Ireland (NAI), a reflective garden, and community and educational facilities. As such, it represents a significant moment in the State's engagement with the enduring legacies of coercive confinement.

The authors of this paper are two curators contributing to the development of the museum element of this National Centre. Building on previous work to increase the representation of Ireland's religious-run social systems within NMI collections and exhibitions, we critically examine our collaborative methodology, recognising museums as institutions themselves shaped by disciplinary logics. Our approach is intentionally non-prescriptive and grounded in facilitating ‘a shared authority’ with survivors and affected communities, recognising their lived experience and expertise (Frisch, 2011). ¹ Situated in a live, rapidly evolving context, our methodology reflects ongoing efforts to embed curatorial humility within the structures of a large national cultural institution and challenge entrenched knowledge hierarchies through centring lived experience and lived expertise.

The paper begins by outlining the historical framework of coercive confinement in Ireland, with particular attention to the system of religious-run institutions that forms a central focus of our curatorial practice. We then discuss the origins of collecting material culture related to these institutions, including place-based and ‘salvage’ collecting practices. Next, we introduce our ‘lived-experience collecting’ methodology and conclude with reflections on interpretive strategies that incorporate co-curation with lived-experience experts, considering how curatorial humility can be a foundation for the museum element of the National Centre. Throughout this paper, we aim to share key learnings that may benefit others working with collections, materials and sites that have traumatic pasts, particularly in relation to the histories of coercive confinement in Ireland.

Coercive confinement in Ireland

Contemporary Ireland has been profoundly shaped by its history of a pervasive system of coercive confinement, including a network of social institutions that operated for centuries, often with the support of state, religious and secular entities (O'Donnell and O'Sullivan, 2020). These total institutions (Goffman, 1961) were frequently presented as places of care and reform but often functioned as sites of control, exploitation and human rights abuses against vulnerable populations. One such sensitive heritage is formed by religious-run institutions such as Industrial Schools, Reformatory Institutions, Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby Institutions. ² These institutions operated both during Ireland's time under British colonial rule and after the formation of the 26-county Irish Free State in 1922 (later the Republic of Ireland), when vacuums in power and social service provision were filled by the Catholic Church (Inglis, 1998).

As part of an ‘architecture of containment’, the institutions were primarily run by religious bodies and supported by the state, resulting in systems that confined and abused unknown numbers of women and children – some for months and others for much of their lives (Smith, 2012). ³ Many were operated by Catholic religious orders, however, there are examples across Ireland of institutions run by organisations and laypeople with a ‘Protestant evangelical ethos’, though these were more ‘fragmented’ in structure and governance (Carson, 2021). ⁴

While comparable religious-run institutions existed in North America, Australia and New Zealand, they were ‘especially punitive, pervasive and persistent’ in the Irish context, running parallel to a state-sanctioned system of forced family separation through the adoption of children born to parents who were not married (Fischer, 2016: 829). Since the closure of the last of these institutions in the late 1990s, survivors, affected people and advocates have continuously campaigned for acknowledgement, justice and redress, prompting various state inquiries and investigations.

The wider system of coercive confinement also included institutions not operated by religious bodies, such as psychiatric hospitals, which were among the largest sites of confinement in twentieth-century Ireland (O'Sullivan and O’Donnell, 2007). Although these institutions fall outside the scope of our curatorial practice, the experiences of those who lived in them remain underrepresented in Irish public memory – an absence highlighted in the work of Kelly (2019), whose scholarship centres the perspectives of former psychiatric-hospital residents. This gap is increasingly addressed through initiatives such as the Grangegorman Histories project, a public-history programme that explores the complex institutional past of Grangegorman, a site that once housed a workhouse, psychiatric hospital and prison, and has since been redeveloped as a multi-purpose health, education and community campus.

While this broader system forms the wider context, our focus in this paper remains on the religious-run social institutions whose material traces and histories we engage with directly. Although they are no longer operational, many related buildings and artefacts remain. These may be interpreted in a number of ways, from labour and confinement to highly disputed objects and sites of sensitive heritage. Some former institutional buildings have been converted into educational institutions, private housing and hotels; many have been reduced to rubble. Across the island of Ireland, such sites have often been redeveloped without commemoration or engagement with survivors and affected communities. Initiatives such as Rún – Ireland's (In)visible Buildings Project have begun to document these outcomes by mapping remaining structures (CoLab, 2023). Citing Smith, Induni suggests that this lack of conservation occurs due to the exclusion of such sites from Irish ‘authorised heritage discourse’ (AHD), resulting in the degradation of former institutional sites and their omission from national narratives (2019).

Survivors and affected people have shared their knowledge and lived experiences through television, film, books, theatre, interviews, social media, academic projects and other forms of activism, acting as a catalyst for increased public engagement with institutional memory (Fischer, 2016). The remaining institutional material culture has, however, remained underrepresented in Irish museum collections and programming, despite its importance in Irish history and prominence in public awareness. This absence, coupled with the inaccessibility of archival materials, may have contributed to efforts to ‘transcend material circumstances’ by remembering these institutions ‘at the level of story rather than history’, through narrative and creative means such as survivor testimonies, art and digital media (Smith, 2012: 138).

McAtackney advocates for the remaining institutional material culture to be ‘elevated to the status of national heritage’ as an ‘act of transitional justice’. She proposes that including these materials in the authorised heritage discourse can promote public acknowledgement of systemic abuses by both church and state and challenge the ingrained attitudes and abuses that persist into the present and future (2020: 227). As our work within the NMI to engage with these institutional legacies intensifies, we echo this sentiment, reflect on our curatorial practice and consider how we can represent this history and its enduring impact while working towards ‘a shared authority’ with those who have embodied knowledge of its reality (Frisch, 2011). We begin by discussing the earliest stages of this work, including the taking in of objects, the inclusion of voices and the forging of relationships with their communities.

Origins of institutional collections

The NMI has its roots in the Dublin Museum of Science and Art, which was established in 1877, bringing together the collections of the Royal Dublin Society, the Royal Irish Academy (n.d.) and Trinity College Dublin. Working closely with its counterparts in London and Edinburgh, it opened to the public in 1890 with an emphasis on illustrating ‘the expanding British Empire’ (Malone and Joye, 2015: 180). Its main purpose echoed that of the International Exhibitions and World's Fairs of the nineteenth century, to provide education in artistic techniques and encourage manufacture through the study of applied art and objects from across the globe. After Ireland's independence in 1922, the NMI's display choices changed dramatically, focusing on ancient Irish art, prioritising that which ‘glorified the Irish past’ (Crooke, 2001: 5–7). From the 1930s onwards the newly formed historical and folklife collections began to fill galleries as the NMI, like other newly independent states’ museums, asserted its unique identity and history.

These decades were also a pivotal period in the establishment of the Irish State and its subsequent functioning. During this time, the rate of forced incarceration of women and children in religious-run social institutions increased and continued to be a major feature of life for large sections of Irish society, particularly those experiencing socio-economic disadvantage, until their closures in the late twentieth-century (Keating, 2015). In 2010 moves began to start representing these traumatic aspects of Irish history at the NMI. This took time to develop and was, for its first decade, opportunistic by necessity in its collecting, born of the coincidence that the NMI had access to a former reformatory school as a storage facility.

St Conleth's Reformatory School was situated in Daingean, Co. Offaly. It was established by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1870 and operated as a reformatory for boys until its closure in 1973. The reformatory system was established in Ireland by the Reformatory Schools Act 1858, which certified several existing institutions and homes as suitable for the reception of young people convicted by the courts and committed for the stated purpose of reform. The state funded these institutions for the maintenance and education of the children placed there. Originally numbering ten (five for boys and five for girls), the number of reformatory schools had dwindled to two by 1944 as many institutions converted to industrial schools.

Reflecting the broader aims of the reformatory system, St Conleth's provided vocational training for boys aged 12 to 17 who had been court-ordered to serve time for alleged criminal offences – many of which would now be recognised as minor. The 1970 Report of the Committee on Reformatory and Industrial Schools, chaired by District Justice Eileen Kennedy, identified St Conleth's as inadequate in achieving its goals of reform and education. The boys were poorly fed and clothed, and the use of corporal punishment was excessively violent and deliberately humiliating (Ryan Report, 2009: 640–642). Following the publication of these findings, the school closed in 1973.

In 1979, the vacant complex was transferred by the Department of Education to the National Museum of Ireland for use as storage for its agricultural machinery and transport vehicles. Unlike comparable sites – such as the former Letterfrack Industrial School in Galway, which was fully renovated for use as a third-level educational facility – the Daingean site remained largely unchanged for decades. BM was stationed at the site as Collections Curator and Site Manager at the time the Ryan Commission Report was published. Many survivors of the reformatory system, some of whom had contributed testimony to the Ryan Commission, visited the Daingean complex and told BM about their experiences there. While these conversations were not recorded in any way, nor were they part of the museum's official work, they significantly influenced the decision to assess and collect the material remnants of the site and preserve its history within the national collections. This work began as ‘salvage’ collecting: gathering found objects across the buildings and wider site. These included items left behind by the Oblate Brothers when they vacated the school, including clerical clothing, devotional objects such as water fonts and religious images, instructional books, dormitory nameplates, carved wooden crucifixes and sewing needles. Together, these items illustrated the ‘religious and industrial ritual that dictated life in the school’ (Malone and Houlihan, 2022: 225).

BM, however, noted that the voices of the boys themselves were absent from this material culture. Drawing from details of conversations with survivors, BM began to collect objects around the site which spoke to those experiences; this included the remnants of a crêpe paper decoration, guided by a survivor's memory of the Visitors’ Room, the only room to be decorated at Christmas. A showerhead and soap dish represent the many stories of sexual abuse that occurred in the showers, while graffiti on toilet stall doors – where boys’ numbers were carved, often in groups – illustrate the dehumanisation experienced by children through the removal of their names, as well as the friendships that formed among them. In this way, the survivors’ memories led to the collection of specific objects, though without that individual's direct input. Additionally, BM documented the site through photography, focusing primarily on the graffiti, to record the experience and voices of the boys incarcerated there, ensuring that their presence was preserved alongside those who governed the institution.

This work took place during a period of profound social change marked by the decline of the Catholic Church's influence in Irish society. Key constitutional amendments, including the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion rights in 2018, were approved via public referenda. Recognising the importance of these changes, BM began collecting materials related to the campaigns and public dialogue surrounding these events. Initially, the focus was on acquiring protest banners from both sides of the debate as part of a rapid response collecting strategy, a method through which curators proactively acquire material culture contemporaneously with a live event. However, this initiative quickly evolved into a citizen-curatorship approach, with individual activists engaging directly with the NMI to contribute objects of their own choosing. ⁵ This represented a marked departure from traditional practices for historical collections at the NMI as, although public participation was sometimes included, decision-making power rested solely with curators. The NMI's policy restricted acquisitions to material at least fifty years old, thereby excluding representation of ongoing social change. Objects acquired through these new practices formed the foundation of the Contemporary Ireland Collection, which highlights themes such as human rights since the establishment of the Irish Free State. Building on these practices, BM continued to collect material documenting Ireland's history of coercive confinement.

In 2018, Laura McAtackney, a contemporary archaeologist working on the Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry, approached BM with an offer to acquire its contents. At that time, the site was earmarked for demolition to facilitate an apartment development – which, as of the time of writing, is yet to be built. Despite its most recent use as a commercial laundry, Donnybrook retained much of its original Magdalene-era infrastructure, including machinery operated by the women who were confined there. The challenge of collecting at Donnybrook was, again, that its surviving material culture spoke primarily to the operational and power structures embedded in the site, rather than the voices of the women who worked there.

During site visits with McAtackney, BM was present for the recording of a small number of oral histories (conducted by McAtackney) during which survivors identified machines and objects that held particular significance in their memories. ⁶ This interaction marked a critical moment in integrating lived experience into the collection and the interpretation of material culture at its earliest stages. The objects collected from the site embodied the repetitive processes of washing, spinning, drying, pressing and folding described by participants. They also conveyed the site's physicality and sensory impact, evoking heat, steam, weight and smell. More importantly, survivors recounted the feeling of working on the machines and the physical toll they had on women's bodies. This approach – object-based collecting inspired by first-hand accounts – embedded intellectual and emotional depth in the collection by using embodied knowledge as a lens through which to read physical artefacts.

The NMI's initial experiences of collecting the histories of coercive incarceration in twentieth-century Ireland were both challenging and informative. Practical challenges ranged from storage availability and staff resources for conservation to policy updates that would allow for the collection of more contemporary materials, with the understanding that salvage collecting will continue to be necessary due to external factors. However, the most critical decisions for the NMI stemmed from the desire to orient future collecting efforts towards an approach informed by lived experience, recognising survivors and affected people as historical experts and collaborators (Lundy, 2024).

Lived-experience collecting

In 2021, the capacity for developing this work increased when DR commenced her PhD research at the NMI, the National College of Art and Design and University College Dublin, focusing on collaborative approaches to representing Ireland's religious-run social institutions within cultural heritage contexts. At that time, as noted earlier, most materials in the collection primarily reflected the industrial and operational aspects of these institutions. Notably, only one known collection of items was donated directly by a survivor, who left the items at the NMI's front desk after a brief discussion with the duty officer. This collection includes cut-glass ornamental condiment holders, along with tools and cowbells from the St Francis Xavier's Industrial School in Ballaghaderreen and the Donnybrook Magdalene Laundry. The survivor visited the convents to seek information about herself but was consistently denied it. Each time this happened she secretly took an item.

DR's involvement brought established networks of trust with individual survivors and affected people, raising awareness of the NMI's mission to represent their experiences. As a result, donations of materials directly from survivors increased. The formalisation of the NMI's role within the National Centre has enabled a growing focus on community engagement, broadening the size and scope of the collection. Our approach centres on organically building connections ‘at the speed of trust’ (Brown, 2017) through a peer-led referral process akin to snowball sampling. This allows us to reach people at the margins, including those who have not engaged with heritage or academic projects, and to navigate a social landscape that requires relational sensitivity and mutual trust (Ungvarsky, 2025).

Survivors and affected people are informed that they can donate materials representing their expertise and experiences, regardless of whether these date from the institutional period. This creates space to recognise the full temporal scope of lives in all their complexity, avoiding overreliance on what Tuck describes as ‘pain stories’ (2009). Tuck proposes that while acknowledging harm is essential, focusing solely on damage risks defining people entirely by oppression and can create conditions in which community expertise is undervalued and individuals feel pressured to repeatedly relive their pain for the media, academia or the state to be heard or to effect change.

We refer to this methodology as ‘lived-experience collecting’ to emphasise the centrality of personal experiences and embodied knowledge in our collecting practice. This approach aims to recognise not only the narratives of harm and trauma but also those of connection, identity, resourcefulness, creativity, activism, family, friendship and community. Materials donated to date include objects retrieved from institutions, photographs and copies of documents painstakingly compiled despite limited access to archives, as well as objects related to activism and memorialisation. Some have highlighted the gendered, racial and ethnic dynamics within Irish institutions, as well as the prominence of disability and class in shaping experiences. ⁷

Through the process of lived-experience collecting, it became clear that survivors often wish to speak to the memories and knowledge prompted by the objects they choose to donate. However, there is usually not enough time or space to accurately and sensitively record this within existing NMI acquisition documentation. This observation led us to expand our practice to include the option for donors to record oral histories when bringing objects to the museum. Our approach to subsequent interviews has been inspired by models such as the Danish Welfare Museum's ‘Memory Mondays’, an example of object-prompted and site-specific oral histories that foster community connection and facilitate dialogue between survivors as historical experts (Jensen, 2020).

We drew inspiration from the biography/life story approach when conducting oral history interviews, a holistic method that embraces the entirety of life experiences, values subjective meaning, and promotes an equitable relationship between interviewer and interviewee, while recognising the potential of oral history in ‘purging, or releasing, certain burdens and validating personal experience’ (Atkinson, 2012: 39). This is particularly significant in the context of acquisitions by national cultural institutions and offers an alternative to the ‘constricted voice’ often found in state justice mechanisms (Lundy, 2020: 266). Further influence came from oral historians like High, who has advocated for an interpersonal approach centred on deep listening and relationship building (2014), and Portelli, who emphasises ‘the opening of a narrative space for the subjectivity of the interviewee, which becomes in turn a significant historical fact’ (2018: 239).

In the context of the North of Ireland, Lundy has examined the impact of truth-telling and survivor oral testimonies in institutional child-abuse inquiries, finding that while survivors articulate diverse understandings of justice, many emphasise the importance of having their experiences acknowledged, believed and documented, especially ‘in a significant setting’ (2020: 258) such as a national museum with its associated cultural significance. Museological models, such as those provided by the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, suggest that the NMI can offer a space for ‘truth-telling’ about religious social institutions, facilitating critical dialogue about their enduring impact today and for future generations. Moreover, this work can serve as a societal reminder and a potential safeguard against historical revisionism and future abuses.

Traditionally, cultural institutions were ‘invented to capture and keep against a background of change, not to change’ (Knell, 2004). Western notions of ownership, along with concepts such as title, possession and property, have long shaped the acquisition practices of many museums. Today, however, collection development practices are transforming, driven by evolving understandings of the role of museums, the communities they serve and the types of materials they care for. Through participatory and dialogic approaches, curators increasingly collaborate with communities to co-create meaning, foreground intangible heritage and challenge entrenched power asymmetries. This shift reflects a broader movement in heritage studies toward reflexive methodologies that acknowledge curatorial positionality and emphasise the redistribution of authority (Gutman and Wüstenberg, 2023; Smith and Campbell, 2022). In this context, curators act as facilitators of a shared authority, mediating between communities and institutional structures in ways that transform museums into spaces of mutual respect and critical dialogue, where community voices guide public understanding of past oppression and inspire more equitable futures.

Embedding these frameworks within the NMI presents challenges, especially given its origins as a nineteenth-century colonial enterprise. Curatorial humility must remain central, alongside an openness to continuously learning with and from collaborators. For example, John Collins, an artist and donor to the lived-experience collections, recently described his contributions as ‘belongings’ rather than ‘objects’ or ‘artefacts’, foregrounding their personal and relational qualities in contrast to the detached, depersonalised terminology often used in museums – an insight that succinctly captures the ethos of lived-experience collecting.

This initiative presents an opportunity to engage with evolving global discussions about the relationships between objects, communities, institutions and power (McDonald, 2011: 91). It also enables the development of a new collection that speaks directly to the legacies of coercive confinement in Ireland. By approaching this work with a thorough understanding of the NMI's significance as a national cultural institution, and drawing from examples of effective practice and research, while prioritising lived experience and expertise, this initiative can evolve into a meaningful and nuanced collection that reflects the experiences of survivors and affected people in their own words.

Curatorial humility and lived expertise in changing Ireland

As we build a collection of materials and voices related to the history and impact of Ireland's religious-run social institutions, we recognise the need for a collaborative, survivor-centred approach to interpretation, particularly in the context of developing a new museum at the National Centre for Research and Remembrance. To date, few museum exhibitions have addressed this sensitive history or its contested present in Ireland. One notable example is A(D)ressing Our Hidden Truths, an ongoing exhibition commissioned by the NMI in 2019 and curated by Audrey Whitty, featuring artworks by Alison Lowry inspired by the history of religious-run institutions. Lowry's work incorporates survivor testimony and draws on the visual language of Holocaust memory sites, using multiples of children's clothing and paper dolls to evoke what Landsberg describes as ‘not an experience of presence, but an experience of profound absence’ (1997: 81).

The exhibition also includes a display of cut hair symbolising gendered punishment and an apron crafted from pâte de verre glass. As noted by Goffman, the regulation of dress is often the first encounter between individuals and a total institution (1961). Nineteenth-century perspectives understood uniforms as tools to depersonalise and discipline the body, enforcing power structures and social organisation through attire (Tynan and Godson, 2021). Despite their significance in the context of coercive confinement, very few examples of institutional clothing have survived. Nevertheless, uniform acquired through lived-experience collecting features prominently in the new Changing Ireland galleries at the NMI. Opened in October 2025, these galleries explore the layered history of Ireland over the past century, including the sensitive histories of coercive confinement.

In keeping with our commitment to fostering curatorial humility through collaborative practices, we are working to shift the museum's authoritative voice towards facilitating the expert voices of communities. Dedicated spaces within the exhibition have been created for survivors and affected individuals to share their knowledge and experiences through materials of personal significance. One co-curator selected a pinafore, or work coat, worn by her mother – one of the few remaining belongings that connects their shared experience of forced family separation and generational confinement in institutions. Conversations about other items in the gallery prompted the removal of certain church-related objects, such as a soutane worn by clergy at the Daingean Reformatory, to centre narratives of those who endured the institutions rather than those who operated them.

Recently, we introduced a second exhibition case in this area to further develop co-curatorial approaches. This case currently features materials donated by community members who are also artists and whose creative practices have enriched the space and opened new interpretive pathways. Increasingly, we are engaging with survivors and affected communities in Ireland and abroad, with this case serving as a space for lived-experience experts to collaborate with us in selecting objects, writing exhibition text and making display decisions. Feedback to date has been positive from both community collaborators and visitors, and we recognise this process as an important first step towards deepening co-curatorial and collaborative practices. At the same time, it has surfaced significant learnings. Unlike traditional curation, this approach is inherently unpredictable and requires NMI staff across departments to remain flexible in responding to emerging ideas, needs and learnings. The curator's challenge lies in balancing this flexibility with the responsibilities of a national institution, including the legislative parameters within which national museums must operate, long-established procedures and fixed timelines, while sustaining a commitment to shared decision-making.

Additionally, incorporating co-curation into conventionally curated galleries presents challenges in maintaining visual continuity within the space. It is essential that visitors clearly recognise the presence of lived knowledge, rather than interpreting these contributions as part of the museum's more distant curatorial voice. We are also acutely aware that lived experiences are diverse, encompassing confinement in connected but distinct institutions; adoption, fostering and boarding-out; ongoing engagement with state justice and redress mechanisms, often marked by frustration or disappointment; and narratives of activism, advocacy, resistance, community and connection. Throughout this process, we have become increasingly conscious of the significant debates surrounding the attribution of responsibility among churches and religious bodies (both Catholic and Protestant), the state and wider society, as well as the most appropriate ways to acknowledge and address these legacies.

We will carry forward these learnings as we continue to facilitate the voices of survivors and affected people in Changing Ireland and as we contribute to making collaborative practices central to the museum element of the National Centre. The Centre's location within a former Magdalene Laundry, founded in the 1820s, offers a unique opportunity to allow the building itself to speak to earlier institutional periods, from which surviving lived-experience accounts are sparse. As a site with a long and layered history, and one that sits at the centre of contemporary activism around both its conservation and its destruction, careful consideration must be given to how these meanings are represented and negotiated in interpretation. We can draw valuable insights from examples of site-specific interpretative practices in Denmark, Canada and Australia, which respond to the legacies of coercive confinement with nuance and care. ⁸

The challenge – and opportunity – extends beyond merely including the voices of survivors and affected people. It is to ensure that their insights genuinely shape interpretation within the National Centre, creating exhibition spaces that are ‘social, embodied, and generative’ (Lehrer and Milton, 2011: 3). Embedding these methodologies within a national cultural institution requires navigating structural constraints, including bureaucratic processes, resource limitations, legislative parameters and the tension between institutional timelines and the slower, trust-based pace of community collaboration. Throughout this process, we have learned to remain grounded in the principles of curatorial humility and ‘a shared authority’ (Frisch, 2011), extending decision-making power to those with lived expertise. Relational, survivor-centred practice requires time, continuity and sustained organisational staffing and resourcing; without these, shared authority cannot be realised in practice. These commitments are central to preventing the replication of historic power structures within curatorial practice and to recognising the profound value of lived knowledge.

Conclusion

Focused efforts to represent the history and impact of Ireland's religious-run social institutions within both the NMI and the National Centre remain in their pilot stages. Progress has been gradual and initially constrained by organisational capacity, and at times collecting practices required a ‘salvage’ approach with limited opportunities for collaborative interpretation. Increased focus in recent years has allowed for a greater diversity of materials and voices to be included in the collection and has supported the development of more collaborative curatorial practices.

While the National Centre represents a long-term commitment to acknowledging Ireland's institutional legacies, it is important to remain mindful of the temporal associations between museums and the past, and the risk of framing this as simply a ‘dark part of our history’ (Kenny, 2013). Avoiding ‘top-down efforts by the state to encode preferred memory’ (Lehrer and Milton, 2011: 3) requires active engagement with the ongoing challenges many survivors and their families face, including the limitations of existing justice mechanisms, unmet health and care needs, and the absence of respectful burial practices for those who died in institutions. Though some may consider this a ‘weak form of redress’, museums can initiate ‘subjective acts of reckoning’ that articulate the continued injustices experienced by those most affected (Cooper-Bolam, 2019: 143).

The development of a new national collection dedicated to the legacy of Ireland's systems of religious-run social institutions and family separation places the NMI in a distinct position to deepen public understanding of this sensitive yet significant aspect of Irish heritage. As work on the museum element of the National Centre intensifies, it becomes imperative to interrogate what shared decision-making means in practice within a large national cultural organisation. Learning from cultural institutions and communities responding to the legacies of coercive confinement elsewhere can support reflexive practices that support curatorial humility and position lived-experience communities not only as experts but as collaborators.

Working within a state cultural institution brings structural inflexibilities, including inherited systems, legislative obligations and organisational timelines that cannot always move at the pace survivors need. Limited staffing and capacity further restrict the depth of engagement currently possible. These constraints lie beyond our sole authority to change, yet they constitute the conditions within which opportunities for collaborative work must be identified. Our focus, therefore, is on recognising the thresholds at which institutional structures can shift in response to survivor expertise and acknowledging where they cannot. Within these limits, we work to support practices that meaningfully incorporate lived expertise, while recognising that substantive shared authority ultimately depends on broader governance structures within the National Centre initiative.

As Steele notes, ‘if these practices are instead led by academics, government bureaucrats or heritage professionals, they can simply become another layer of epistemic violence and disempowerment’ (2022: 13). Her observation resonates with the need to direct resources toward developing pathways for shared decision-making that shape each stage of the museum component of the National Centre. Such approaches can support the creation of collections and spaces that enrich understanding by foregrounding lived expertise and the inherent agency and authority of survivors and affected people, while resisting the reproduction of the institutional and carceral dynamics that shaped Ireland's past. Positioning curatorial humility as a structuring principle for both the national collection and the National Centre may also offer a useful model for practitioners working in comparable contexts, while contributing to a more nuanced understanding of Ireland's legacies of coercive confinement grounded in the knowledge of those most directly impacted.