Minority Heritage Museum
Summary of the proposed project
We aim to propose an experience of museum curation and mediation that will result in the creation of student led exhibits and an online museum experience. The proposed project focuses on raising awareness and disseminating knowledge on minorities and their heritage in the region.
Heritage is often defined by international standards (eg. UNESCO and ICOM conventions that fail to account for the localized plurality of heritage definitions and sources). The creation of an Authorized Heritage Discourse (Smith 2015) often results in the sidelining of bottom up approaches to heritage that act as living testimonies for disappearing communities (Azoulay 2019). Preserving minority heritage carries the potential, for civil society, of becoming an act of learning a decentered national history through the integration of its dissonant elements (Hayden 2002).
In offering the students the possibility of creating their own exhibit on a lesser known part of their country's heritage, this project fosters greater understanding of pluralism in the region through practices of museology that go beyond the frame of preservation and contribute to the preservation of minority heritage as a living force in society (Pieprzak 2020).
This project proposes to foster students' ability to develop academic research on national minorities, as well as to exhibit the gathered material and act as mediators of heritage for other students and the general public. For this reason, the project is divided in three parts, each of which allows for the development of specific skills that are practical, theoretical, and transferable.
The proposed project and timetable
Step 1
Students gather material in their country and store their material in a safe, neutral space
In the first part of the project, students are asked to work on their research skills by practicing fieldwork in their countries. They are required to gather material of various types; examples include video recordings of interviews with members of the minority;s community; audio recordings of music, poetry, oral history; photographs of objects, monuments, people; copies of archival documentation. The students also reflect on the ways they can store and safeguard this material outside of the exhibit.
Step 2
Students write and develop descriptions, context, and questions for their objects.
Once they have collected the material, students are asked to contextualize the collected data through academic research; they are then asked to reformulate the content of their theoretical and historical findings and to create supports for their material. Mediation supports can vary; they can include: short paragraphs that will be converted into panels; voice recordings that provide context on the material; video recordings. The students are free to choose the mediation that they find more interesting as long as it provides valuable insight on the minority,s history and the chosen material.
Step 3
Students curate an exhibit with their objects within their university
Once every student has developed their contribution to the exhibit, the curation of the exhibit starts as a collective, collaborative project. The discussions of the students should center around the organization of their exhibit, the title, the location, the supports, the means of engagement with the audience, and the logistics of the exhibition of their different material. The chosen space for this exhibit should ideally be within the premises of the university.
Step 4
Students share their exhibit with other students in other countries.
Students digitalize their museum and organize visits for the other students belonging to other universities; each exhibit gets feedback from its visitors; students act as tour guides for their exhibit, providing context and answering questions.
Step 5
All the digitalized exhibits are joined together to form one museum that remains accessible to the students and potentially the public in order to be used as an educational tool to talk about minority history, heritage preservation practices, and memory in the region.
Place
University rooms and online