Campaigners fear a loss of “local identity” after the Museum of East Anglian Life changed its name to the Food Museum in an effort to boost visitor numbers and make the museum more relatable.
The move has caused upset among some in the local area who fear they could lose “the only museum with an explicit focus on the history, life and people of East Anglia”.
“It’s very distressing for those of us who have relatives who donated things, or who grew up knowing and loving the connection to East Anglia,” said Matthew Attwood, a local collector and writer who has led the campaign against the changes.
“There is such a thing as local identity. I don’t think you can really welcome people to the area if you don’t have a local identity. This is about love for our region. It’s not about negativity or resistance to change.”
The Food Museum in Stowmarket, Suffolk, said the move was simply a name change and that East Anglia, known as “Britain’s Breadbasket” due to its history of wheat production, was “still at the heart of everything we do”.
“Our trustees, staff and many volunteers are excited about the museum’s potential to link visitors to how food has been grown and made – a key issue in an age when food security and environmental concerns are front and centre,” said the museum’s director, Jenny Cousins.
Nearly 2,000 people have signed a petition calling for the original name to be preserved, while a group of academics, including the Oxford professor Diarmaid MacCulloch, signed an open letter published in the Times saying the move “diminishes a regional identity in favour of a generic national theme”.
“We are deeply concerned about the care of existing artefacts and future acquisitions of value to East Anglian studies,” they wrote. “If you remove a people’s connection from their history, it is no longer their history. We implore the director and trustees to halt their ill-conceived strategy and carry out a robust consultation with experts and the public on the museum’s direction.”
The museum’s board of trustees responded by saying they received positive feedback during their four-year consultation with local people and recent visitor numbers have surpassed pre-Covid figures.
“We remain committed to the 40,000 objects in our collections,” they said.
Cousins said the rebrand was to ensure “that we remain sustainable, relevant and enjoyable to visit”, and that the museum would “still represent the social, cultural, industrial and technological heritage of the region in our collections and displays”.
Current exhibitions include Food Stories, which is visiting rural areas nearby to collect local dialect words, memories and recipes. The museum is also completing the restoration of a historic watermill this summer, as well as opening Hedgerow, an exhibition exploring the important role of hedges, and celebrating rural crafts.
“We encourage people to visit and judge for themselves, and see how the museum’s collection and the rich heritage of food and farming in this region are celebrated,” Cousins said.
Attwood said he was in favour of many of the new initiatives at the museum, but didn’t want it to be at the expense of a focus on the local area.
“If you look on their website, ‘East Anglia’ doesn’t appear in the title, or their vision, mission and values,” said Attwood. “They are reassuring us that the connection is not going anywhere. But actually, how can you present artefacts that have no obvious relevance to food at the Food Museum?”
