COMMUNITY MUSEUMS / MUSEOS COMUNITARIOS

ICOM (International Council of Museums) is the world’s largest and most representative organization of museum professionals and museums it self. We can ask ourselves what a museum is? Well, a museum is above all a community that connects people or memory through objects. This link between community and museum is really the heart of the museum concept, which is why the two organizations of ICOM Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean have come together to actively promote and support this EULAC project. The EULAC Museums project is a project on museums and communities, but it is mainly a project about people, real people who express their memory through objects. One of the great challenges of this project is related to how new technologies can interact with people.

03:19 - We study community museums in remote communities, in places of difficult access, where sometimes expressing the memory and the whole culture of the people does not have all the breadth it should have. That is why this project uses new technologies in an approach perspective. Technology can be engaging, may be grounds for exclusion, but, in this case, we use technology to approach. As in other Latin American countries, where the community museum movement has been consolidated, in Costa Rica communities that have created community museums in their locality have a commitment to the protection, research and management of the historical memory of the community, but from the community itself. It is the community that through its forms of organization government, work and collaboration that investigates, manages, exhibits and that develops its museographic project.

04:26 - From the University of Valencia, specifically from the research group “ESTEPA”, in the context of the EULAC-Museums project, the European Commission’s H20 program, we are carrying out a study related to community museums. Specifically, our intention, our purpose, is to analyze which are the keys related to economic development and, furthermore the cultural facilities, from a territorial development perspective but also from a perspective of innovation applied to community museums. To this end, the ESTEPA research group is carrying out a series of instruments adapted to community museums. Which are they? First, an instrument based on participatory strategic verification, adapted to museums and cultural heritage. Second, an integral management model that allows the decision makers of these museums to advance in effectiveness and efficiency and, of course in sustainability, both cultural, social and economic.

05:32 - Third, a method for evaluating cultural heritage that allows community museum managers to select the most outstanding heritage elements in their territorial environment. Fourth, the creation and design of a free-use geographic information system that allows better management of the territorial environment of each community museums. And finally, an analysis of the territorial resources, realizing that they are fundamental to carry out the territorial development of all the community museums. The University of Valencia is working specifically in two reference territories. On one side, the millenary garden of Valencia known as the “Huerta de Valencia” and on the other, a small garden of medieval origin, Moorish, in the Valencian mid-mountain in Cortes de Pallás.

06:31 - Both in the Huerta de Valencia and in Cortes de Pallás, we will apply each of these methodological instruments to improve the management of cultural heritage. In the case of the team formed by Universidad Austral de Chile, in an interdisciplinary way, our main objective is to develop an integral characterization of the museums that are part of the network of museums in the region of los Ríos, which we have been developing since the first year of this project. Which was very interesting because we were able to create an instrument that has been replicated in Peru to date, and it is also possible to use it in Barbados and Costa Rica and other experiences of community museums, in order to demonstrate that the principles of Santiago de Chile… the definition of an integral museum remains in force and, following the call of Unesco in 2015, that appeals to all museums to validate and recover the social function in museums. We are also participating in this EU-LAC MUSEUMS project and it’s something that gives us pride and an opportunity to collaborate with other countriesin the rest of Europe and Latin America to share experiences that will make us grow and make our museums better like those of other countries who participate in this remarcable project.

08:03 - We are also very proud that the University of Valencia and invited us to participate in this project. Thank you very much. This project has as main objective look for cultural enterprises that can use the cultural heritage to improve the quality of life of the participants, especially in the small communities. In the case of Peru, the project includes the Chan Chan site museums the Huacas Moche Museum, in the Libertad region and in Lambayeque the Túcume Museum and the Sicán National Museum. A set of activities were carried out that are intended to work directly with the community. Because we want to move from the contemplative attitude in the museum to a participatory attitude.

08:47 - Seeking a new definition in which the community can tell us it wants to be represented in its museums and how from the heritage or cultural landscape and intangible heritage can become an economic asset for these communities. For us the community museum is an organizational space, something that arises from the initiative of the community itself, does not arise from an external entity that tries to convince a community to create something of this type, on the contrary, arises from the need to speak of the proper heritage of counting the stories themselves, to legitimize these stories and to make themselves known. Strengthening the memory of the community and its integration as a whole. A museum run by people from the same community - not by an outside institution - is a space that serves the interests of the different sectors of the community and, therefore, the community owns what is in the museum; develops all the works from the research, to the selection of the themes, to the way of investigating them presenting them is decided by the community itself. All the children want to visit a museum… I’m talking about the neighborhood where I live and I believe that the other neighborhoods are the same…

we are five neighborhoods 11:06 - and these five neighborhoods when it comes to a museum is a crazy curiosity because the kids come here and they learn and they come home and they start to imitate everything they have learned everyone here wants to say things, they memorize the places: where they salted the fish, etc… It is very important that the kids have this connection with the museum, yes it is. The EU-LAC MUSEUMS project led a program called “our vision of change”, this program works with the community museums of the three communities so that in each community there is a team of facilitators led by a working group in local schools and together with this group has been developing activities once a month for the strengthening of culture, the investigation of community culture with the elders. A facilitator is not a specialist who will perform a job without consulting the community by his own decision A facilitator will be someone who will respond to the needs of the community it is a difficult role because they will not work with their ideas or their own way of organizing but will only put their knowledge at the service of the community, guiding processes, orienting how things will be. In that sense the facilitator will not do research but train people to do research, will not design the museum but rather create workshops on how to draw the museum.

12:53 - The facilitator should not be the protagonist must be an element of support to the community processes. We this have group: FMID photography, memory and identity that has 12 years of continuous activity. Every Thursday for three hours they find themselves in this space to deal with the memory and registration of local memory very based on photography. Therefore photography is the element that triggers the political debate but also the memory. This is recorded during these three hours per week; 12 years, every Thursday in which the group turns out to be the very element that walks the village and the surroundings gathering information, capturing images, photographic albums of the families and that, at the moment, reaches for us, museum, a collection of about 50 thousand images all of them very documented in terms of information.

14:18 - The museum is you, the museum is the museum, in fact, in most cases - I know there are some exceptions - but in most cases, the museum manages its collection and offers to the community or to ist public offers its service. The way we thought it was the right way to connect with our neighborhood community and make our project their own, was to rely on them to put together projects in common for example, we will show the public or study the water filters and we ask them to give us temporarily some of their homes. With this we first evolve them, make them participate in our project, make them aware of the importance of this achievement, value their piece, spread it and teach them to conserve it. And above all make them understand that this would not be possible without them, without the work previously done, without their concept of conservation and use of the object and the concept of the ceramic work as such. The EULAC project has been developed in this area of northern Peru in two places: Trujillo and Lambayeque, specifically developed from the university-museum model; and we are working specifically now in the museum of Túcume in a project that is very linked to the community and that tries to strengthen capacities in craftsmanship, organic horticulture, scenic arts and visual anthropology.

16:28 - The workshop in visual anthropology seeks to rescue through audiovisual the values and culture that surround the museums where this project is being carried out. I think that what distinguishes the museum from other institutions as valid or more than museums, in many cases, such as: libraries, cultural centers, centers of social animation, parishes, why not, what distinguishes the museum is precisely the knowledge about collections about objects: restoration, conservation, preventive conservation over time. Those simple and banal things that any museum professional knows, how to measure humidity, temperatures, check the conditions of conservation of collections. This is a knowledge that no one else does except the museums. Everything else museums should do, social empowerment, social development, as is done here in Mértola.

17:31 - I began to weave, in the 28th of March… it is now 30 years that I work here… The weaving workshop, this cooperative was created, in a way, to work on the preservation of this traditional know-how. We went to get those ladies who still knew how to weave and who knew how to do the whole process of wool. In this place, the most important thing we want to preserve is the know-how related to the wool, which goes from the shearing of the sheep to the final product that is the woolen blanket. I always dedicated to the handicraft. I was in the north (Chile) in Calama. I love learning things and teaching them. I created a crafts center and I sent to Spain a project, (the crafts center project) and in Spain there were two social workers who met me in Calama I explained the project here and they sent me money. With this money they bought these looms.

18:52 - But my satisfaction is to learn and share: that other people do it. Since I was a child I had a taste for teaching, I taught a lot of people here, from the north. I traveled all over the second region of Chile region from the mountain range I taught all these people, but not from a rule perspective, but rather to improve their things. We are here at the National Archaeological Museum in Lisbon as part of the EULAC Museums youth, community and sustainability exchange. As part of this exchange we come with a delegation of three community museums in Costa Rica, the indigenous territories of Boruca, Rey Curré and the community of San Vicente de Nicoya On this first day we are visiting the museum through a guided tour and strengthening the exchange links between countries participating in the EULAC Museums project.

23:31 - Hello, my name is Abigail, I am from Boruca and my desire for the community is that we should not be ashamed of our cultures and traditions, but rather be proud of being indigenous. Hello, my name is Jose Qeatz, I am from Costa Rica, from the indigenous can of Boruca and my message is as indigenous people we are please keep alive and and take a greater consideration of where we have come from, something live… about our languages and cultures. Hello, my name is David and I am from the Boruca community of Costa Rica and I want to leave a message let’s not let our roots die we must feel proud to be indigenous, where we came from… continue to practice our traditions, culture, dances, ancestral games, we are not ashamed to be part of it, aspects that characterize us and are very important. Hello my name is Gaudi, I am from the community of Boruca and my message to the community is that hopefully we do not lose our language, being proud to be indigenous and able to help to protect our resources.

25:56 - This project of intercultural afternoons was born in 2003, was a project… since Setúbal is a city marked by migration and in recent years by immigration. Let us say that it constitutes an ethnic and cultural mosaic that needs to be diversified and studied. And meanwhile, at that time, in 2003, in this museum also worked a workshop of classes for students who were learning the Portuguese language as a second language and so this is to say the raw material for us can then design these intercultural afternoons. Let’s say that this museum is a place of cultural enjoyment and we built this structuring axis by studying the memories of people associated with their communities.

29:32 - This girl is my mother Ana José Branco, this one is part of the family… Ms. Joana These passages have to do exactly with, what all the women told us and that was common to them. You will see. If you read the texts carefully,… talks about the children, talks about the work, talk about working hours, talk about the care they had with presentation and therefore this panel is a little an oral history panel is a collection panel, is a panel of memory, and is in fact a panel that tells me a lot and that was tried to be the summa of everything that we have been gaining with the knowledge of the lives of these women and these people who were part of the history of the city. We have a project that is already in the second edition, called “Museum ix al carrer” in which we try to bring the museum to the street, to be closer to the citizen of Paiporta. This exhibition, in particular, tries to expose in panels photographs that, a certain moment were taken in a certain place, and are now placed in the place where the photographer took them at a certain time so that the population can verify the changes, the architectural and artistic evolution that happened in the place.

31:46 - The Portuguese team of the EULAC project, together with the team of Professor Alan Miller of the University of Saint Andrew’s, applied new technologies in the registration of iconic community objects, in the register of the traditions of the communities and also of their community museums. In this sense, we used the photogrammetry and 360-degree photo to collect these images, which allows us to use them in various digital media, specifically the use of QR-codes, the use of augmented reality and the use of virtual reality. Perhaps one might consider that these new technologies are a bit ambitious, but on the other hand they are the way we have to approach communities. For example, a 3D object shown to various people around the world adds value. The issue of community empowerment, 360 pictures allow us to have a global view of the context not just with a partial view, such as a wall or an exhibition we can see with 360º how space is and more important that space are the people, their experiences, hence also the video records, the records of testimonies that allow us to build the databases not only of museums, traditions and also intagible heritage…

33:19 - Intangible heritage which are, first of all the people, who are, obviously, the maximum expression of their traditions. And that is what we want with this project. Allowing people to express themselves and speak with their heart because when they speak of their heritage they always speak with their hearts… and this is what is community museology, it is a social museology of a society that exists and talks about objects who tell stories because they belong to real people. .