‘Trigger toolkit' for museums comes with its own warning

Times

12-06-2025

A guide that advises prominent museums on how to deal with sensitive topics including divorce, poverty and violence put a content warning on its own 27-page 'trigger toolkit'.
The booklet was released by Museum Development North, which is a partnership funded by Arts Council England between York Museums Trust, the Manchester Museums Partnership, Cumbria Museum Consortium and North East Museums.
The aim of the booklet is to 'support organisations working across the sector to take a practical approach to preventing, responding to and managing a triggering event within a training session'.
The 27-page guide, called 'Trigger Toolkit', advises leaders in the heritage sector on how to prepare training content that will reduce the likelihood of staff being 'triggered' during their work with collections or artefacts.
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Due to 'sensitive' topics, the training guide has two pages of warnings in large red type that states: 'The following two pages contain potentially triggering content.'
People working in the heritage sector are exposed to collections that include 'racist and intolerant artefacts', which could bring back childhood trauma and prompt memories of 'offensive language and name calling', the toolkit states.
Included among the more than 40 topics that could affect museum staff were death, divorce, childbirth, debt, ­violence, politics, classism and warfare. Gambling, hateful language, the climate emergency, disease, the criminal justice system, policing, and natural disasters were among other examples of 'possible triggering topics' included in the toolkit.
The document cites 2022 research that describes a trigger as a 're-experiencing of ­unpleasant post traumatic stress disorder symptoms such as intrusive thoughts being evoked by the ­exposure to materials which spark traumatic memories'.
Liz Main, a mental health policy ­expert who has studied trigger warnings, said: 'On balance I think trigger warnings can be a good thing as they can stop someone from seeing something that may upset them. However, the fact that the booklet is about trigger warnings would indicate to staff that there may be emotionally distressing content in there.'
The toolkit was developed by Inclusive Boards in partnership with Museum Development Yorkshire.
The guide states: 'Many artefacts and conversation subject matters relevant to the heritage sector speak to a time in which intolerant, discriminatory, and offensive attitudes and behaviours were significantly more prevalent than they are today … It is important that in navigating this history organisations ensure that equality, diversity and inclusion is a priority.'
Museum Development North had no further comment.