COMMUNITIES AND MUSEUMS

IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Communities and Museums in the 21st Century brings together innovative,

multidisciplinary perspectives on contemporary museology and participatory
museum practice that contribute to wider debates on museum communities,
heritage and sustainability.
Set within the context of globalisation and decolonisation, this book draws upon
bi-regional research that will enrich our understanding of the complex relationships
between Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean through museum studies and
practice. Chapters reflect upon the role of museums in defining community identities;
the importance of young people’s participation and intergenerational work for
sustainability; the role of museums in local development; and community-based
museums and climate change. Contributors examine these issues through the lens
of museum partnerships and practices, as well as testing the continued relevance
of the notion of ‘integral museum’ and its relatives in the form of ecomuseums.
With its focus on regional museums in Latin America and Caribbean, this book
highlights how the case studies promote greater intercultural dialogue, global
understanding and social cohesion. It also demonstrates how the methodology can
be adapted to other communities who are facing the perils of climate change and
unsustainable forms of development.
Communities and Museums in the 21st Century proposes creative and sustainable
strategies relevant to a globalised future. With its focus on global societal challenges,
this book will appeal to museologists and museum practitioners, as well as those
working in heritage studies, cultural studies, memory studies, art history, gender
studies and sustainable development.
Karen Brown is Professor of Art History at the University of St Andrews, UK.

Alissandra Cummins is Director of the Barbados Museum & Historical Society,

and lecturer and coordinator in museum and heritage studies at the University of
the West Indies, Cave Hill.

Ana S. González Rueda is a researcher focused on critical approaches to learning

in contemporary art curation.
ICOM Advances in Museum Research

This research series, developed by the International Council of Museums (ICOM),

draws on the expertise of ICOM’s worldwide network of museum professionals,
representing a range of museum- and heritage-related disciplines.
Bridging theory and practice, the series addresses diverse issues of broad interest
to the museum field and is of relevance for institutions around the world, featuring
contributions by representatives of a range of cultures. Focusing on different types
of museums and diverse fields of activity within the museum, the titles in the series
will provide useful and thought-provoking insights for today’s museum profession-
als. Its multi-perspective approach ensures its relevancy for academics, researchers
and students of museology. The behind-the-scenes glimpses offered into the state
of the field will also appeal to the general museum-going public.
The following list includes only the most recent titles to publish within the
­series. A list of the full catalogue of titles is available at: [Link]
com/ICOM-Advances-in-Museum-Research/book-series/ICOMAMR.

The Future of Natural History Museums

Edited by Eric Dorfman

Communities and Museums in the 21st Century

Shared Histories and Climate Action
Edited by Karen Brown, Alissandra Cummins, and Ana S. González Rueda
COMMUNITIES AND
MUSEUMS IN THE 21ST
CENTURY
Shared Histories and Climate Action

Edited by
Karen Brown, Alissandra Cummins, and
Ana S. González Rueda

LONDON AND NEW YORK

Designed cover image: Heritage Identity Workshop at the Túcume
Site Museum. © Luis Repetto Málaga
First published 2024
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2024 selection and editorial matter, Karen Brown, Alissandra Cummins, and
Ana S. González Rueda; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Karen Brown, Alissandra Cummins, and Ana S. González Rueda to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at [Link] has
been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No
Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.
Funded by International Council of Museums (ICOM).
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-032-29127-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-28841-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-28813-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra
CONTENTS

List of figures and tables xi

List of contributors xvii
Preface by Alissandra Cummins xxiii
Funding Acknowledgement xxvii

Introduction: museum communities/community museums 1

Karen Brown

PART I
Community museums: nurturing identities and resilience 21

  1 Community museums and decolonisation: reflections from

the Network of Community Museums of America 23
Teresa Morales Lersch and Cuauhtémoc Camarena
Ocampo

  2 International collaboration between ecomuseums and

community museums: the experience of the EU-LAC
Museums Bi-Regional Youth Exchange in fostering
identity, building community sustainability and resilience 37
Karen Brown and Jamie Allan Brown
viii Contents

  3 Passion as a mobilising tool for community-based

museums: case studies from southern Chile 52
Karin Weil, Bárbara Elmúdesi Krögh, Laura Fúquene
Giraldo and Javiera Errázuriz Contreras

  4 Museums and community engagement in Belize: case

studies for protection and active participation of knowledge 72
Sherilyne Jones

  5 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums 88

Karen Brown, Marie Claverie and Karin Weil

  6 Museums as tools for sustainable community development:

a study of four archaeological museums in northern Peru 116
Luis Repetto Málaga and Karen Brown

  7 Connecting museums through citizen science: Jamaica/US

partnership in environmental preservation 137
Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell

  8 Evoking wonder to inspire action around climate

change—a collaborative exhibition project in the
Cayman Islands 160
Natalie Urquhart

PART II
Connecting regions: communities and museums ­
co-curating heritage and memory 175

  9 The case for a rhizomatic research approach in Caribbean

museology 177
Natalie McGuire

10 Co-curating memory: deconstructing the silences around

Caribbean migration to Britain 198
Kaye Hall and Natalie McGuire
 Contents  ix

11 A case study of community virtual museums in the age of

crisis: designing a Virtual Museum of Caribbean Migration
and Memory 221
Catherine Anne Cassidy, Alan Miller and
Alissandra Cummins

12 Ecomuseology in artistic practice: postcolonial strategies of

collective return in Latin America and the Caribbean 245
Kate Keohane

13 Exhibition-making as storytelling: the 14th FEMSA

Biennial in Michoacán Mexico 266
Ana S. González Rueda and David A. J. Murrieta Flores

14 The Arrivants exhibition: art, migration, museums and

resurrections 292
Allison Thompson

15 The politics of change: new pedagogical approaches to

Caribbean museology, conservation and curatorship 313
Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

Index 343
FIGURES AND TABLES

Figures
2.1 Community Festival, Boruca, Costa Rica, August 2017.
© Jamie Allan Brown 42
2.2 Home visit, Isle of Skye, Scotland, July 2018. © Karen Brown 43
2.3 Community presentation, Isle of Skye, Scotland, July
2018. © Jamie Allan Brown 45
2.4 Presenting at the Itinerant Identities conference, the
University of the West Indies, Barbados, November
2018. © Karen Brown 46
3.1 Ojotas. Footwear made from tyre rubber used by
wood farmers. Part of the Museo Despierta Hermano
collection. © Claudia Ordóñez for EU LAC Project 59
3.2 Presentation of the book Flor de la Higuera by Omar
Rubio in the c­ ontext of the Memory encounter at the
Centro Cultural Museo y Memoria, N ­ eltume, February
2020.  © Karin Weil 60
3.3 Museo Escolar Hugo Günckel, La Aguada, 2019.
© Karin Weil 61
3.4 Isabel Riveros sharing the relevance of the objects at the
Museo Despierta Hermano, Malalhue, January 2019.
© Karin Weil 66
4.1 Habinahan Wanáragua Dancers. Images © JC Cuellar
Photography80
4.2 Male dancer at the annual Junior Habinahan Wanáragua
Competition held in the culture capital, Dangriga Town.
Image © JC Cuellar Photography 81
5.1 Initial Conceptual Model for the EU-LAC Museums
project. © EU-LAC 89
xii  Figures and tables

5.2  orkshop on defining a community museum, EU-LAC

W
Museums ­Kick-Off Meeting, National Museum of
Archaeology, Lisbon, November 2016. © Karin Weil 90
5.3 Survey response to the question, ‘If you are part of an
organisation/group or individual interested in local or
community development, what is its type?’ 100
5.4 Survey response to the question, ‘In the community
museum(s) that you know, whose/what story (past,
present or future) is—or should be—being told? (Please
select all relevant fields)’ 101
5.5 Survey response to the question, ‘Who is the main
public for the ­community museum?’ 102
5.6 Survey response to the question, ‘Do you think that a
community museum should best be run by…?’ 103
5.7 Survey response to the question, ‘What makes a
community museum ­sustainable? (Please select any
number of answers. Rank your answers in order of
priority, with 1 being the highest priority)’ 104
5.8 Word cloud generated from the question, ‘Can you offer
a definition of a community museum?’ © Karen Brown 105
5.9 Word cloud of responses to the question, ‘In what ways
should ­community museums engage with national
cultural institutions, networks and ­activities?’ © Karen Brown 107
6.1 Location of the four museums that participated to the
project, in the regions of Lambayeque and La Libertad
(Peru). © Luis Repetto Málaga 118
6.2 Heritage Identity Workshop at the Túcume Site
Museum. © Luis Repetto Málaga 121
6.3 Model 1: Diagram describing the work scheme of the
EU-LAC Museums project for the Lambayeque
region in Peru 124
6.4 Aerial view of the Chan Chan citadel. © Dirección
Desconcentrada de Cultural La Libertad 126
6.5 Horticulture workshop at the Sicán National Museum.
© Luis Repetto Málaga 131
6.6 Cleaning campaign in the countryside of Moche, La
Libertad. © Luis Repetto Málaga 132
7.1 Site preparation at the Virginia Key North Point, Miami,
Florida 142
7.2 Rock Garden developed during restoration of the
Greater Portmore site, Jamaica 142
7.3 Mayor Leon Thomas and project participants from
Miami planting trees at the Greater Portmore site 144
 Figures and tables  xiii

7.4 Jamaica’s Consul General to Miami, Franz Hall, with

project participants from Jamaica at the Virginia Key
North Point site, Miami, Florida 145
7.5 Citizen scientists conducting restoration activities at site
in Greater P
­ ortmore, Jamaica 152
7.6 Citizen scientists planting sea oats and other native
plants at Virginia Key North Point, Miami, Florida 153
7.7 Jamaican and American project participants at site in
Greater Portmore, Jamaica 157
8.1 National Gallery of the Cayman Islands. © NGCI, 2018 161
8.2  Coral Encounters promotional poster. © NGCI, 2018 164
8.3a-d  Coral Encounters installation views. © NGCI, 2018 165
8.4 Students participating in a Coral Encounters tour
exercise in the pop-up ‘Exploration Station’.
© NGCI, 2018 167
8.5 Students completing activity sheets during a guided tour
of Coral Encounters. © NGCI, 2018 168
8.6 A father and son discuss Coral Encounters at a
National Gallery Family Fun Day. Photo by Carol Lee,
© NGCI 2018 169
8.7 Visitors enjoy the Coral Encounters opening reception.
© NGCI, 2018 169
8.8a&b Young students interpreting their Coral Encounters
experience onsite and back in the classroom. © NGCI, 2018 170
8.9 Little Cayman Museum Coral Encounters Travelling
Exhibition Installation. © NGCI, 2019 171
9.1 QR code. Video sample of responses to the term
‘community’ from ­knowledge-sharing sessions in
Trinidad and Tobago, March 2018 189
9.2 ‘For Peace’ (2019) by Barbadian artist Versia Harris on
display in Cache Space, Beijing, November 2019 190
9.3 ‘Burst’ by Katherine Kennedy installed in the Military
Gallery of the ­Barbados Museum & Historical Society
(BMHS), May 2018 192
9.4 ‘King’ by Adrian Richards installed in the Jubilee
Gallery of the Barbados Museum & Historical Society
(BMHS), May 2018 192
10.1 Community-of-practice cycle based on Lave and Wenger
(1991)207
10.2 Community of curatorial practice for The Enigma of
Arrival exhibition 207
10.3 Visitor engagement in the Enigma exhibition,
January 2020 208
xiv  Figures and tables

10.4 Exhibition panel for Enigma, displaying use of

literature, January 2020 209
10.5 to 10.7 Enigma exhibition installation at the BMHS, June 2019 210
11.1 Panellists in the round table discussion ‘Caribbean
Virtual Museums: Opportunities and Challenges’ during
the Itinerant Identities conference at UWI Cave Hill
campus, Barbados  226
11.2 Digital poster panel from The Enigma of Arrival online
exhibition, a­ vailable on the VMCMM 232
11.3 3D model of a suitcase from the BMHS collections,
digitised during their 3D Summer Intensive. The
physical object was on display at The Enigma of Arrival
exhibition at the BMHS in 2019 alongside the 3D model 233
11.4 The homepage of the VMCMM, which allows users to
view digital e­ xhibition panels or continue to the map
interface233
11.5 The architecture of a previously published VMI used for
the VMCMM 235
11.6 API call to retrieve all items from the Omeka database 236
11.7 A demonstration of photogrammetry, used to create 3D
models of ­physical objects in The Enigma of Arrival
exhibition237
11.8 The video-recorded migration story of Brian Batson in
the Destination location on the interactive map interface 239
11.9 Mapping interface with an expanded timeline, showing
notable figures from the Windrush generation 239
11.10 ‘Virtual Museum of the Caribbean: The Enigma of
Arrival’ live F­ acebook event, showing a video-recorded
presentation of the play Windrush by members of the
Barbados Community College 240
11.11 The Enigma of Arrival online exhibition by Reading
Museum242
13.1 Marco Rountree, Untitled (2020). Wood, ceramic and
seeds. ­Installation detail. 14th FEMSA Biennial, Centro
Cultural Clavijero, Morelia, M ­ exico. Courtesy of the artist 279
13.2 Marco Rountree, Untitled (2020). Wood, ceramic and
seeds. ­Installation detail. 14th FEMSA Biennial, Centro
Cultural Clavijero, Morelia, M ­ exico. Courtesy of the artist 280
13.3 Adela Goldbard, Kurhirani no ambakiti (quemar al
diablo): porque solo así nos escuchan (2020). Video
still. 14th FEMSA Biennial. Courtesy of the artist 284
 Figures and tables  xv

13.4 Adela Goldbard, Kurhirani no ambakiti (quemar

al diablo): porque solo así nos escuchan (2020).
Installation detail. 14th FEMSA Biennial. ­Courtesy of
the artist 285
13.5 Adela Goldbard, Kurhirani no ambakiti (quemar
al diablo): porque solo así nos escuchan (2020).
Installation view. 14th FEMSA Biennial, Centro Cultural
Clavijero, Morelia, Mexico. Courtesy of the artist 286
15.1 ‘The Restoration’ 1991 by Allison Chapman-Andrews;
depicting the s­ tabilisation of paintings in the National
Collection by conservator P ­ atricia Byer, assisted by
artists with transferable skills. © B ­ arbados Museum &
Historical Society and the artist 321
15.2 Louise Parris, the late object conservator who trained in
the United K­ ingdom, demonstrating at a collection care
workshop. © ­Barbados Museum & Historical
Society322
15.3 Training in cleaning carpets and collections storage at
the Barbados Museum & Historical Society. © Barbados
Museum & Historical Society 325
15.4 Lidia Aravena, Puerto Rican Consultant Conservator,
assessing a painting under magnification. © Barbados
Museum & Historical Society 328
15.5 Barbados Give Back Volunteer assessing a new
acquisition at the Barbados National Art Gallery.
© Barbados National Art Gallery 329
15.6 Work experience at the Barbados National Art
Gallery Collection as part of a condition survey 2020.
© Barbados National Art Gallery 331

Tables
3.1 Case studies summary 57
5.1 Key components of a community-based museum: summary
of reflections shared during the workshop held at the first
consortium meeting, November 2016, Lisbon 91
CONTRIBUTORS

Anne Bancroft is the Head of Conservation & Collection Care at the Barbados
Museum & Historical Society. Anne has worked as a conservator in Barbados, India,
Italy and the UK for international, national and community museums, libraries and
archives. She has a focus in collection care in tropical environments. Her main area
of research is on the conservation of sacred objects. She has been a guest lecturer on
conservation and heritage programmes in the Caribbean, the UK and India, where she
runs conservation/preservation workshops in different regions as a consultant with a
focus on capacity building. She has authored/coauthored a number of articles and
post prints including ‘Worth a hundred Milibands’; Conservation’s role in Embracing
Cultural Identity at the V&A’, ICOM-CC 16th Triennial Conference, 2011; “Minus
20 Degrees in the sun” in Integrated Pest Management for Collections. Proceedings
of the 2011: A Pest Odyssey, 10 Years Later, English Heritage; and ‘Hanging Sacred
Cloth: The Practice of Displaying Thangkas’, Orientations magazine 4/4, Sept. 2020.

Jamie Allan Brown is a research fellow at the School of Art History at the ­University
of St Andrews. His experiences include working and supporting multidisciplinary
projects across the Global South, his research interests include community herit-
age, sustainable development and youth participation in community-based muse-
ums. He previously led the bi-regional youth exchange between Latin America and
Europe for the EU-LAC Museums project (EC Horizon 2020, 2016–2021), was
Co-Investigator for the Community Crafts and Culture project (GCRF, 2019–2021)
and will coordinate the research-led youth exchange between Scotland and the Car-
ibbean for the Shared Island Stories project (UKRI 2022–2027).

Karen Brown is Professor of Art History at the University of St Andrews. She spe-
cialises in the role of community museums and heritage for addressing global issues,
including social inclusion, well-being and climate action. Recent publications
xviii Contributors

include the issue ‘Museums and Local Development’ of Museum International

(2019) and the co-edited volume On Community and Sustainable Museums (2019).
She has coordinated multiple national and international research projects including
Shared Island Stories between Scotland and the Caribbean: Past, Present, Future
(2022–2027) and EU-LAC Museums (2016–2021), and she is winner of the 2021
Europa Nostra Ilucidare Award for Heritage-led International Relations.

Catherine Anne Cassidy holds a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the Uni-
versity of Central Florida, a MLitt (dist.) in Museum and Gallery Studies and a PhD
in Computer Science from the University of St Andrews. She led the virtual museum
design work in the EU-LAC Museums project and developed workflows for commu-
nity-led digitisation efforts in Scotland, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean,
creating virtual tours, 3D objects and virtual museums. She is continuing this work
through Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme–funded projects CINE: Connected
Culture and Natural Heritage in a Northern Environment, PHIVE and HIVE, as well
as Interreg North Sea Region Programme project CUPIDO. Catherine Anne brings an
interdisciplinary approach to the research group Open Virtual Worlds, which develops
emergent technologies for cultural and natural heritage organisations. Her doctoral
research included developing strategies to 3D digitisation that allows the value of
digital heritage to be recognised while strengthening connections between heritage, its
community and the museum through emergent technologies and their democratisation.

Marie Claverie holds a Maîtrise in Art History from the Panthéon-Sorbonne

­ niversity, Paris, and a Master of Engineering from the Ecole Centrale Marseille.
U
She worked at ICOM as a project manager and coordinator (2012–2020). In the
Programs and Partnerships Department, she coordinated partnerships, fundraising
activities and digital projects aiming at supporting the fight against illicit traffic
of cultural goods. From 2018, she contributed to the development of the newly
created Museums and Society Department. Her work there aimed to support and
promote the social and environmental role of museums around three thematic pil-
lars: sustainability, peace and human rights, and cultural democracy and inclusion.
More recently, she has worked as a cultural heritage officer for the French local
government at Conseil Départemental de la Haute-Garonne (2021–2022).

Tracy Commock holds a Bachelor of Science in Botany from the University of the
West Indies and a Master of Philosophy in Plant Systematics and Conservation from
the Universities of Reading and Birmingham. She is currently Director of the Natural
History Museum of Jamaica (NHMJ). She also served as the Natural Science Special-
ist for Jamaica’s delegation at UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee (2014–2017)
and is a member of Jamaica’s Scientific Authority for the Convention on the Trade
of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). She conducts botanical
research and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of the West Indies, where
she is researching a genus of plants endemic to Jamaica. She led the Museum Con-
nect Project, coordinating the overall administration of the project in Jamaica.
 Contributors  xix

Alissandra Cummins is Director of the Barbados Museum & Historical Soci-

ety and lecturer and coordinator in museum and heritage studies at the Univer-
sity of the West Indies, Cave Hill. She specialises in Caribbean heritage, art and
museums. She has served in a number of prestigious positions, including Founder
President, Museums Association of the Caribbean; President, International Coun-
cil of Museums; Chairperson, Executive Board of UNESCO; and Editor-in-Chief,
International Journal of Intangible Heritage. She is currently President of the
­International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. Key publications include the co-
edited and co-authored volumes Curating in the Caribbean (2012), Plantation to
Nation: Caribbean Museums and National Identity (2013) and Exhibiting Migra-
tion and Gender: Reflections, Response, Resilience-Companion Reader (2020).

Bárbara Elmúdesi Krögh holds a bachelor’s degree in History from the Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Chile and a master’s degree in Public Humanities from
Brown University. She has led initiatives linked to the enhancement of cultural her-
itage as well as formal and informal education with public schools, libraries, muse-
ums, non-profit organisations and communities both in Chile and abroad, providing
a vision that allows people and their communities to develop in a comprehensive
and contextualised way in a fair and collaborative manner.

Javiera Errázuriz Contreras is a Journalist. She graduated from Universidad de

Santiago and holds a master’s degree in Rural Development from Universidad
Austral. She specialises in researching, writing and editing content on culture, her-
itage, tourism and local development.

Laura Fúquene Giraldo holds a degree in Industrial Design from the Universidad
Nacional de Colombia and a masters in Human Scale Development and Ecological
Economics from the Universidad Austral de Chile, as well as a diploma in Cultural
Management. She is a Research Assistant for the Chilean team of the EU-funded
project ‘EU-LAC Museums and Community’. She is currently a Project Formula-
tion Coordinator at the Office of Relations and Cooperation of the Mayor’s Office
of Santiago de Cali, and Advisor to the Office of the Superintendence of Family
Subsidies for the Colombian Pacific region.

Kaye Hall holds a Master of Education (MEd) in Social Context and Education Pol-
icy from the University of the West Indies (UWI) as well as a teaching certificate
in Heritage for Human Resource Management and Training from the University of
Florence. She currently works as the Education and Community Outreach Officer
at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society (BMHS) where she manages its
public education programming.

Sherilyne Jones is a doctoral student at the University of South Florida in Tampa,

Florida. She earned her master’s degree in Museum Studies from the University
of Leicester, UK. As a museum professional from Belize, she has over 18 years of
xx Contributors

experience in archaeology and museum management. She was the former Director
of the Museum of Belize, and her academic interests include multiculturalism and
cultural diversity, museum anthropology, critical museum and heritage studies, and
national narratives. Her current research explores issues and practices in heritage
and its intersection with museums.

Kate Keohane is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the History of Art at the
University of Oxford. She completed her PhD at the University of St Andrews in
2020 as part of the Horizon 2020 project EU-LAC Museums. Her research centres
on the interplay between text and image and the ways in which art can offer alterna-
tive models for being-in-the-world. She has published with Wasafiri and Afterim-
age, and has written for Tate, Art History and the International Curators Forum. She
is currently working on two book projects. The first, ‘Some Otherwhere: Edouard
Glissant and the Caribbean in Contemporary Art’, tests the limits of Glissant’s rel-
evance to art making, writing and curation. The second, ‘Locating Common-Places:
Artistic Practices for Existing Differently in a Damaged World’, focuses on collabo-
rative, site-specific artistic strategies of resistance against toxic and colonial forces.

Natalie McGuire holds a bachelor’s degree in History of Art at the ­University of

Leicester and a master’s degree in Museums and Cultural ­Heritage at the University
of Auckland. She is currently a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at the University
of the West Indies Cave Hill with a research focus on Anglophone Caribbean muse-
ums and community agency. She is the ­Curator – Social History and Engagement
at the Barbados Museum & Historical Society and serves on several committees,
including as Public Relations Officer for ICOM Barbados, and is a member of the
board for the Barbados National Art Gallery.

Alan Miller is a lecturer in Digital Heritage and Communications in the School of

Computer Science at the University of St Andrews. He holds a bachelor’s degree in
Politics from the University of York, a master’s degree in Software Systems and a
PhD in Computer Networking from the University of Glasgow. His research focuses
on the use of emergent 3D and immersive technologies for the preservation of her-
itage and promotion of sustainable development with an emphasis on exploring
climate futures through Virtual and Augmented Reality. Alan has extensive experi-
ence in applying immersive technologies to create heritage mobile applications,
VR exhibit frameworks and virtual museum infrastructures. He has worked with
museums and galleries in developing award-winning digital visitor-facing exhib-
its. Alan oversaw digital development of the virtual museum within the EU-LAC
MUSEUMS project and the Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme–funded
project CINE: Connected Culture and Natural Heritage in a Northern Environment,
and he continues to do so for the Northern Heritage Network, a result of clustering
digital heritage project outputs in the PHIVE project. He is part of the University
of St Andrews research group Open Virtual Worlds and a founding member of the
company Smart History.
 Contributors  xxi

Teresa Morales Lersch is a research professor in the National Institute of Anthro-

pology and History of Mexico. From 1985 to the present, she has helped estab-
lish 27 community museums in the state of Oaxaca, together with her husband,
­Cuauhtémoc Camarena. They also helped create the grassroots networks, the Union
of Community Museums of Oaxaca in 1991 and the National Union of Community
Museums of Mexico in 1994. Since 2000, they have fostered the development of
the Network of Community Museums of America.

David A.J. Murrieta Flores is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Art of the
Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City, Mexico), under the supervision of Dr
Ana Torres Arroyo. He holds a PhD in Art History & Theory from the University
of Essex (UK), a master’s degree in Art History & Theory from the same institution
and a bachelor’s degree in History from the National Autonomous University of
Mexico (Mexico). As a postdoctoral researcher, he works on the collectives articu-
lated around the ‘little magazines’ of Crononauta (Mexico), Rebel Worker and the
American Situationist International (US).

Dionne Newell is Senior Research Officer of Entomology at the Natural History

Museum of Jamaica (NHMJ). She holds a bachelor in Zoology and Botany and
a masters in Zoology with a focus on Pest and Pesticides Management from the
University of the West Indies. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Department
of Life Sciences in the same university. She joined the staff of the NHMJ in August
1999. She was appointed Jamaica’s National Focal Point for the Inter-American
Biodiversity Information Network (IABIN) in 2005 and served as the Caribbean
representative on the IABIN Executive Committee. She currently represents the
Institute of Jamaica on several committees, including the Biodiversity and Game
Bird Committee and the local Scientific Authority for the Convention on Inter-
national Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Under
the Museums Connect project, she served as one of the local scientists training
students in biodiversity assessments and species identification.

Cuauhtémoc Camarena Ocampo holds a degree in Social Anthropology from the

Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH) and has been a research profes-
sor at the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) since 1981. He was
Director of the Museo Regional de Oaxaca from 1989 to 1992. In 1985, he began
to collaborate with indigenous people for the creation of community museums in
Oaxaca, along with his wife, Teresa Morales Lersch. They promoted the exchange of
experiences and mutual support among communities, which led to the founding of the
Unión de Museos Comunitarios de Oaxaca, A.C. in 1991. Over the course of 34 years,
they have advised the creation of 27 community museums in the State of Oaxaca.

Luis Repetto Málaga (1953–2020) was a Peruvian museologist. He served as Director

of the National Institute of Culture and of the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions
of the Riva-Agüero Institute. He also served as President of ICOM-Peru from 2010
xxii Contributors

to 2016. He was an ardent supporter of the role museums can have for sustainable
community development and was one of the pillars of the EU-LAC Museums project.

Ana S. González Rueda is a researcher focused on critical approaches to learning

in contemporary art curation. Recent publications include the co-edited volume
Decolonising the Curriculum (2022), ‘Disorienting the Gaze: Ngozi Onwurah’s
Early Films’ (2021), and ‘Possessing Nature: The Mexican Pavilion as a Site of
Critical Analysis’ in the Journal of Curatorial Studies (2020). González Rueda
worked as a research assistant for the SFC GCRF Community Crafts and Cul-
tures (2021) and the EC Horizon 2020 EU-LAC Museums projects. She currently
teaches at the American College of Greece in Athens.

Allison Thompson PhD is an art historian, writer and curator living in Barbados. She
has been a lecturer in the Division of Fine Arts at the Barbados Community College
specialising in modern and contemporary art of the Caribbean, Africa and the African
diaspora. She is co-director of PUNCH Creative Arena, an initiative for creative action
and has worked with a number of cultural organisations in the Caribbean including the
Barbados National Art Gallery, ICOM Barbados, and is the founding president of AICA
Southern Caribbean, a regional chapter of the International Art Critics Association.

Natalie Urquhart is the Director and Chief Curator of the National Gallery of the
Cayman Islands and the Cayman National Cultural Foundation. She holds a bachelor’s
degree in Art History, a Master of Arts in Arts Policy and Management, and special-
ises in arts sector strategic planning and development, programming and exhibition
making. She is the author of the ‘Art of the Cayman Islands’ (Scala, 2016) and writes
regularly about Caymanian art for national and regional journals. She is a former core
committee member of the Tilting Axis Caribbean contemporary arts alliance (2016–
2020) and board member of the Museums Association of the Caribbean (2016 – 2022),
serving as MAC’s president from 2017 to 2020. She currently heads the Visual Arts
and Creative Industries Committee for the Cayman Islands National Culture and Herit-
age Policy Project and is the Creative Director of Cayman Art Week, an initiative she
founded in 2021 in response to the impact of the pandemic on the creative sector.

Karin Weil is an anthropologist. She holds a master’s degree from Universidad Aus-
tral de Chile and a diploma in Curatorship from the UAI with training in ­Climate
Change and risk assessment for cultural heritage. She is currently coordinating
internationalisation strategy at Prorrectoría and is in charge of cultural and natural
heritage at the Río Cruces Wetlands Centre of the Universidad Austral de Chile.
She has extensive experience in the management and coordination of projects
related to the heritage of southern Chile. During her professional career and as an
adjunct academic at the Universidad Austral de Chile, she has led interdisciplinary
research projects, heritage management, community museography, curatorship and
others, addressing various situated dimensions of the culture and communities of
the southern south of Chile.
PREFACE BY ALISSANDRA CUMMINS

In his conception of a modern museum of the Americas as a place of continuous

dialogue, mixing tangible with intangible, capable of conserving both diversity and
creolisation, Édouard Glissant’s idea of the museum as itinerant (living), rather
than fixed and permanent, was conceived on the model not of a continent but of an
‘archipelago as a network of interrelations between traditions and research, open-
ing onto the unknown, locating itself at a sort of focal point of this universe…’
and was intended to counteract the forces of homogenisation generated by globali-
sation. Fernando Ortiz Fernández’s seminal thinking, particularly his profoundly
influential concept of ‘transculturation’, embraced simultaneity, conflict, inherent
contradiction and hybridity to grasp the complex transformation of cultures brought
together in the crucible of colonial and imperial histories. For Kamau Brathwaite,
the shared histories, languages and structures of feeling of the Caribbean islands
formed the fabric of a submarine unity premised on creolisation and cultural diver-
sity. Other Caribbean intellectuals have conceptualised the archipelago as an ana-
lytical framework for disrupting the notion of insularity and for thinking beyond
linear narratives of historical, national and cultural development.
This volume directly addresses this deficit in global understanding and the sig-
nificant gap in the available literature which results. It explores some of the com-
plex issues arising from recent approaches to comprehending what the term ‘shared
history’ truly means to collaboration between museums and their communities.
Recognising and respecting the multiple perspectives of community participants is
one thing, but how can museums incorporate this successfully into exhibitionary
and educative practice? What are the strategies that were explored and deployed in
the various crossdisciplinary approaches described by the museum practitioners in
South and Central America, the Caribbean and Europe who, as both experienced
xxiv  Preface by Alissandra Cummins

and emerging professionals, have grown in their learning and have come to value
their experiences of working closely with the audiences they serve? How to
­position themselves vis-à-vis the cultural specificities of diasporic societies, such
as those of the Caribbean, has been a challenge acutely faced by remote and island
museums and galleries, large and small, and this has been a driving question in the
development of memory institutions and their relations to the communities and
cultures that surround and encompass them.
The aim of this book is to gather experiences from small museums and remote
communities, often silenced by academia and their authenticity and credibility
ignored because they lie outside what much of the museum and art world per-
sist in defining as the mainstream. In order to explore and explain in an equita-
ble manner their perspectives with respect to working with communities, this
book provides first-hand evidence of how both institutions and individuals work
together to achieve legitimacy and sustainability through public education and
audience engagement, through conservation of traditional culture, and cyber
museology of cultural communities and diasporas seeking to re-connect. It also
explores the new museum pedagogies they have begun to articulate to achieve
such goals.
The November 2018 Itinerant Identities event, an international museum confer-
ence, co-hosted by the University of the West Indies and the Museums Associa-
tion of the Caribbean with the funding support of the EU-LAC Museums project
under Horizon 2020, provided the crucial underpinnings for the development of
this publication. It aimed to provide a timely and interactive international plat-
form to meet, discuss and debate museologies and intersecting disciplines through
a range of engaging discursive and experimental gatherings. This book has drawn
on the wide-ranging, interdisciplinary experiences and expertise presented at this
gathering where museologists and museum administrators, art historians and archi-
vists, curators and community leaders, exhibit designers and educators, critics and
cultural theorists, came together in Barbados to interrogate the museum condition-
alities of the past, with a view to informing the present and the multidisciplinary
debate on the new frontiers of museums and community engagement. In this con-
text, the gathering has inspired the future direction of these institutions in address-
ing the changing needs of their communities.
Nevertheless, the preceding decade since ICOM had last co-hosted the annual
conference of the Museums Association of the Caribbean (MAC) with the support
of the International Curators Forum (ICF) also provides an important frame of ref-
erence within which this book’s emergence should be understood. That conference
held in Barbados in 2009 produced two major results. It forged the beginnings of
the bi-regional curatorial partnership entitled Black Diaspora Visual Arts (BDVA),
which ultimately resulted in the generation and development of the Arrivants art
exhibition discussed later in this book. The other legacy was the publication of
some of that conference’s papers within the first book on Caribbean museums –
Plantation to Nation: Caribbean Museums and National Identity.
 Preface by Alissandra Cummins  xxv

However, while that book focused primarily on revealing the histories and
­genealogies of the region’s institutions, this volume has quite a different trajectory.
The chapters in this book are based on contemporary museum practice, particu-
larly through engagement with local and diasporic communities. The experiences
outlined by institutional and academic specialists from multiple fields focus on
their work’s intersection with issues of museums and memory/history and heritage
and in effect become ‘a network of interrelations between traditions and research,
opening onto the unknown’. The contents are therefore expected to stimulate
debate, promote advocacy and provoke action, based on cutting-edge presenta-
tions, informed by intense dialogue and interaction.
A book like Communities and Museums in the 21st Century: Shared Histories
and Climate Action could not have been possible without the cooperation and col-
laboration of several individuals and institutions, many of whom were instrumental
in the writing of its content. The editors are particularly gratified that the techni-
cal, academic and funding support provided under the project EU-LAC Museums,
which received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme
under Grant Agreement number 693669, has resulted in this critically important
resource, garnering significant recognition in 2021 for the project with the award of
the ILUCIDARE Special Prize for Excellence in Heritage-led International Rela-
tions. Continued research has been supported by the UKRI Engineering and Physi-
cal Sciences Research Council grant number EP/X023036/1-Shared Island Stories
Between Scotland and the Caribbean: Past, Present, Future (2022–2027). The Gov-
ernment of Barbados, most particularly Prime Minister the Hon. Mia Amor M ­ ottley
and then Minister the Hon. John King, with responsibility for culture, afforded the
project a generous and sustainable environment which was essential for the fulfil-
ment of many of its objectives. The enduring partnership between the University
of the West Indies at Cave Hill, its Vice Chancellor, Principal and its Office of
Research, and the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, its management and
staff, as well as the emerging collaboration with the University of St Andrews in the
UK, provided the fundamental framework for the conceptualisation and dissemina-
tion of new museological approaches included in this book. The Museums Asso-
ciation of the Caribbean (MAC) with the generous support of the Smithsonian’s
Museum of African American History and Culture provided crucial opportunities,
particularly for Caribbean colleagues, to participate in the dialogues and discourses
which have seen results within the pages of this book. The ­Barbados Commu-
nity College’s academic and student corps formed a crucial support team for the
Itinerant Identities conference and the Arrivants exhibition, which provide a key
backdrop to this book. Finally, our grateful thanks go to the International Council
of Museums (ICOM) for supporting this publication, especially the commission-
ing editors, editor and indexer – Aedín MacDevitt and Antonia Ivo, Sashivadana
Ambikadas and Averill Buchanan – for their patient assistance in its production.
This preface has provided an opportunity to acknowledge all these p­ arties for their
contributions with grateful thanks.
FUNDING ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This edited book has been supported by two main research grants: the European
Union’s Horizon 2020 programme under Grant Agreement number 693669; and
the UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council grant number EP/
X023036/1.
We also wish to thank ICOM and Routledge for their generous editorial and
­production expertise.
INTRODUCTION
Museum communities/community museums

Karen Brown

This book explores case studies of community museums, ecomuseums, grassroots

heritage organisations and their networks from Europe, Latin America and the
Caribbean. It builds upon and complements the growing literature on the broad
topic of ‘museums and community’ through its specific focus on museums that
have been created from community action, respond to local challenges and are
reliant upon local systems of governance. The volume is birthed out of the interna-
tional conference Itinerant Identities: museum communities/community museums
held at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, in November 2018. This was
a major academic meeting for the European Commission Horizon 2020 research
project ­European Union and Latin American and Caribbean (EU-LAC) Museums
that brought together museum and university partners from the Caribbean, Chile,
Costa Rica, Peru, Portugal, Scotland (project co-ordinator), Spain and International
Council of Museums (ICOM) ([Link] On this occasion,
we partnered with the Museums Association of the Caribbean and launched the
innovative exhibition of contemporary art entitled Arrivants: Art and Migration in
the Anglophone Caribbean World at The Barbados Museum and Historical Society.
These transatlantic events and the compilation of this volume are part of an ongoing
process seeking to address imbalances in the discourses of museology and art cura-
tion that have to date occluded the Caribbean and Central American regions, and
where possible we endeavour to give greater agency and voice to the communities
represented. The conference title Itinerant Identities reflects ­Alissandra Cummins’
point that the Caribbean is in essence a region where (virtually) everyone came
from (virtually) everywhere else, whether voluntarily or by force, and the sub-
title ‘museum communities/community museums’ seeks to reflect the problematics
of terminology in the field while also reinstating the possibility of ­characterising
a ‘community museum’ informed by transatlantic research.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-1
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
2  Karen Brown

In the past, scholars, including Hooper-Greenhill (2000), Weil (2002), Witcomb

(2003), Watson (2007), Crooke (2007) and Davis (2011), have tended to refute the
idea of a set definition for community in relation to museums. As Peter Davis con-
cluded, the term ‘museum community’ is ‘an almost meaningless expression’ from
a sociological perspective (Davis 2011, p. 36). Even so, in recent decades, a great
many volumes on the topic have appeared by these authors and more including
Karp, Lavine and Kreamer (1992), Golding and Modest (2013), Kadoyama (2018)
and Allison (2020). The complexity of the field is largely owing to the multifaceted
working relationships between museums as institutions and communities on the
ground. For example, Sheila Watson notes the misunderstandings and assumptions
that frequently arise between museums and their stakeholders when they attempt to
work with and for communities (Watson 2007, pp. 8–12), while Elizabeth Crooke
recognises the political side of museums, entwining her arguments with concepts of
place, belonging and memory when she asserts that ‘collectively we form a ­myriad
of sometimes shifting communities […] Nevertheless, we need communities in
order to build our experiences and forge our identities’ (2007, pp. 71–2). Almost a
decade later, she reflects,

the sustained interest in the concept of community has had a major impact on
museum practice […] it is not just a case of museums representing or sym-
bolizing community; now it is museums forging community identity, altering
­community experiences, and improving community life.
(Crooke 2015, pp. 481, 486)

At the same time, some recent scholarship has come to recognise that museums are
not neutral spaces and is advocating for them to acknowledge the contestations sur-
rounding their histories and current uses, calling on them to wake up from a state
of ‘sleep walking’ to become more ‘active’, ‘ethical’ and ‘mindful’, especially in
response to the climate crisis and its attendant issues for South-North relations
(Sandell 2007; Newell and Wehner 2017; Janes and Sandell 2019).
This new volume will explore how community museums are gaining in recog-
nition within this movement through the presentation of case studies from remote
areas of Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. The local actions presented are
all, in their own ways, speaking to major societal shifts and global issues, such as
climate justice, in a manner often under-recognised by museum support organisa-
tions and governments. For example, Chapter 6 on archaeology museums in north-
ern Peru and sustainable development focuses on community-level responses to the
impact of the cyclical El Niño weather phenomenon, which prompted museums
to build community cohesion alongside sustainability of cultural heritage assets.
Despite their contemporary relevance, remote museums that engage meaning-
fully with communities are nevertheless often systemically under-resourced and
under-represented on the national and international stages, often precisely because
of their small scale, lack of visibility, clear definition, constitution, conformity,
 Introduction: museum communities/community museums  3

museology research or inscription in national accreditation systems. This is one

of the major gaps in knowledge that this book seeks to address. By seeking to
­characterise community museums in all their diversity, it brings to light their poten-
tialities vis-à-vis global challenges, informing a new wave of what I shall refer to as
‘ecological community museology’ for the 21st century. This concept aligns with
scholars such as Cameron (2014) and Wehner (2016) who have argued for the need
to ‘ecologise’ museum work at large because of the ecological crisis facing the
world (climate change, food and water crises, overpopulation, loss of biodiversity,
species extinction and more), with profound impacts on humanity (Rockström et al.
2009; Jeffrey 2019). The potential for museums to be significant collaborators in
local climate action is evident in several activities presented in this book, such as
community-based exhibitions, education activities and citizen science in Jamaica
(Chapter 7) and at the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands (Chapter 8).

What is a community museum, and why do they matter?

While this book advocates for the societal and environmental relevance of
­community museums, to define a ‘community museum’ in a universal way as part
of this discussion is likely to prove an unhelpful endeavour. This is because discus-
sions in this field can quickly become complicated – and contested – when ­scholars
attempt to define ‘museum’ and ‘community’ and even more so when these words
come together as ‘community museum’. To begin by breaking down the term
‘community museum’ into ‘community’ and ‘museum’, one notes that the concept
of ‘community’ itself is a vast topic of discussion in social science – at least 94
definitions have been identified, the only common characteristic being that they all
involve people (Hillery 1955, cited in Barton and Goldsmith 2016, p. 25). When it
comes to the term ‘museum’ itself, there are numerous definitions offered by dic-
tionaries and museum support organisations, although in recent years, definition-
making has proved a contentious and divisive task. From 2013, in ICOM debates
on the revision of its Statutes, and through the formal process of the reimagining
of the ICOM definition of a museum that has taken place since 2016, voices have
clashed in a world structured and fractured by histories of inequality (ICOM 2019;
ICOM Code of Ethics 2021). This friction is all too easily pitted as conservative
versus inclusive museology, or Global North versus Global South. However, the
process has also highlighted the fact that the world has firmly entered an age of
museum activism, one in which a new generation is calling for a more diverse
system involving community action and social participation to supplant what it
sees as an outdated museum model inherited from the West (Cummins, Farmer
and Russell 2013; Mairesse 2017; Brown, Brulon Soares and Nazor 2018; Brown
and Mairesse 2018; Sandahl 2019; Brulon Soares 2020a). In Prague, on 24 August
2022, the Extraordinary General Assembly of ICOM finally approved the pro-
posal for the new museum definition (ICOM, 2022). Calls for museums to become
facilitators of community action and decolonisation are also gathering apace, led
4  Karen Brown

by museum support organisations, such as the UK Museums ­Association, who

define decolonisation for museums as ‘a long-term process that seeks to recog-
nise the integral role of empire in museums – from their creation to the present
day’ (UK Museums Association 2021), and ICOM’s International Committee for
Museology (ICOFOM), which is investigating ways in which museology has been
predominantly shaped by Western thought. Drawing on the thinking of Anibal Qui-
jano, Walter Mignolo and others concerning the coloniality of power, ICOFOM
Chair, Bruno Brulon Soares, has propounded that ‘decolonising museology’ is an
active process of reclamation by subaltern groups whose museums were previ-
ously defined by experts and ’the hegemonic discourse of nation states’ (Brulon
Soares 2020b, 51; see also Mignolo and Walsh 2018; Quijano 2020; Brown, Brulon
Soares and González Rueda 2022).2 This line of thought is aligned with Chapter 1
in this book, whose authors, Cuauhtémoc Camarena Ocampo and Teresa Morales,
based in Oaxaca, Mexico, have led the Red de Museos Comunitarios de Amé-
rica and created and promoted museos comunitarios in Latin America at grassroots
level for decades. These museums usually do not receive State support, and their
personnel are often volunteers with limited access to professional training, mak-
ing these institutions at once vulnerable in economic terms, but potentially strong
in terms of community-led sustainable development. This is because at their best,
community museums are created from community need, curated from traditional
knowledge and managed using accepted forms of local governance.
Attempts have also been made to provide practical guidance on the creation of
community-led museums, including the American Alliance of Museums’ Museums
and Community Toolkit (2002) aimed at planning successful museum–­community
dialogues, and the Manual para la creación y desarrollo de museos comunitarios
(Camarena Ocampo and Morales Lersch 2014), discussed in more depth later. On
Community and Sustainable Museums (Brown, Davis and Raposo 2019) – another
key output from the EU-LAC Museums project – contains landmark instructive
chapters by Hugues de Varine, Morales and Davis, and a selection of case stud-
ies of community museums from countries partnering in the project. An initiative
to map community museums online also originated from the EU-LAC ­Museums
project, with researchers uploading a suite of short videos on community muse-
ums to a YouTube channel called ‘Museos Comunitarios’ and proposing an
Observatory of Community Museums to policy makers for future funding by the
European Commission. A recent book and online resource researched by Csilla
Ariese-­Vandemeulebroucke (2018) has correspondingly broken new ground in
mapping community museum organisations in the Caribbean with an emphasis on
the grassroots, and a new project, Shared Island Stories Between Scotland and the
­Caribbean: Past, Present, Future, is augmenting these investigations into ecological
community museology from the grassroots and continues to advocate for commu-
nity museums around the world.3 A number of the museums featured in the present
volume likewise grew out of collective action at community level, often as a way
of rescuing heritage at risk of disappearance. For example, the Museum of Neltume
 Introduction: museum communities/community museums  5

in Chile discussed in Chapter 3, which began with one family making a collection
concerning woodlands and subsequently engaging in collective memory work by
narrating stories of dictatorship and its impact on their local population.
However, while community museums are gaining enhanced recognition in the
21st century, it is important to remember that they have been born from community
need in different formats and in different parts of the world since the 19th and early
20th centuries. They include small local examples formed in the UK and USA, the
Heimatmuseen in Germany, Open Air museums in Sweden and initiatives in Africa
and Mexico (Chaumier, in Mairesse and Desvaillés 2011; Davis 2011, pp. 50–68).
For example, in promoting sensitivity to local natural habitats and their value for
people to study and enjoy, the English otologist and founder of Wimbledon Village
Club, Joseph Toynbee’s (1815–1866) thesis was that museums need not collect
and display rare or remarkable objects, but rather ‘the common objects of Nature’
in the neighbourhood of the museum – in this case specimens found within a five-
mile radius of a parish church of Wimbledon (Toynbee 1863). Arguing that what
he called the ‘New Museum’ be first and foremost useful for society, the Director
of Newark Public Library from 1902 to 1929, John Cotton Dana (1856–1929),
created the Newark Museum in 1909 at a small, local scale because the ‘museum
of the old type […] has hardened into a cake of ancient and outgrown customs’
(Dana 1917, in Peniston 1999, p. 35).4 William Noland Berkeley (1867–1945)
similarly explained why ‘small-community museums’ are both feasible and very
desirable, for their ‘helpful service to every class of citizens’ in small cities, towns
and villages (Berkeley 1932, pp. 7–8). Such community-based principles arguably
paved the way for the better-known Anacostia Neighborhood Museum, opened in
­Washington, DC in 1967. Described as ‘probably the first really communitarian
museum in the world’ by de Varine, Anacostia was created as an African-­American
museum commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution where the founder, the
Methodist Episcopal Zion preacher John Kinard, worked alongside the local com-
munity to create a museum focused on education for future generations, produc-
ing displays on issues facing the local residents such as life in prison (Kinard and
Nighbert 1972; de Varine 2017a, p. 20).
Other initiatives, cited by de Varine, and also by Serge Chaumier in the
­Dictionnaire encyclopédique de muséologie (Mairesse and Desvaillés 2011), are
first from Niger, where the Niamey ‘modules of living culture’ (de Varine 2017a,
p. 19) saw seven principal ethnic and cultural groups living on five hectares of
land, charged with the maintenance and interpretation (in the colonial language
of French) of their own cultures, and second Mexico’s Casa del Museo created in
the 1970s. Overseen by the Director of the Mexican Museum of Anthropology,
Mario Vázquez Ruvalcaba (1923–2000), the Casa del Museo was an experiment in
decentralisation. Located in a peripheral area of the country, this museum sought to
be more embedded in the community than traditional museums and to butt against
the often elitist and rigid tropes of traditional museums. Museologist François
Mairesse notes how it became a place of exchange and discussion of consciousness
6  Karen Brown

raising (as was the case with Anacostia) by bringing together ­awareness of social
issues with ancient Mexican culture (Mairesse 2000, pp. 43–4). The 1960s and
1970s then saw the growth of community museology and ecomuseums as a move-
ment heavily influenced by political, cultural and social forces, including environ-
mentalism (Davis 2008; 2011, pp. 50–68; de Varine 2017a, pp. 24–5, 34–9, 55;
2017b).5 It is no accident that just as ideas of sustainability and decolonisation
are assuming increased urgency today in the face of climate change and calls for
global social justice, so community museums are – 50 years after Stockholm’s UN
Conference on the Human Environment and the 1972 Round Table of Santiago de
Chile – due to come into their own in addressing major societal and environmental
issues for the 21st century (ICOM Resolution No. 5, 2019).6

Museos comunitarios in Latin America

Museos comunitarios thrived from the 1980s, often as a form of resistance against
dominant regimes. Mexico saw the Declaration of Oaxtepec promoted by Inter-
national Movement for a New Museology (MINOM) (see Davis 2008), and the
Union of Community Museums was created in the Mexican state of Oaxaca in
1991. In 1993, the National Program for Community Museums was created, defin-
ing a community museum as one that is born in, created, run and managed by the
community. The network Red de Museos Comunitarios de América was founded
in 2000, and at its first meeting, it resolved to strengthen the museums located
around Latin America (Camarena Ocampo and Morales Lersch 2016). Directed
by Camarena Ocampo and Morales, this network maintains a carefully crafted and
fixed definition of the museo comunitario, referring specifically to ideas of col-
lective self-determination and memory that are crucial for Indigenous and ethnic
contexts:

A community museum is created by the community itself: it is a museum “of”

the community, not generated outside “for” the community.
A community museum is a tool for the community to affirm the physical and
symbolic possession of its heritage, through its own forms of organisation.
A community museum is a space where community members build a collec-
tive self-knowledge, fostering reflection, criticism, and creativity. It strength-
ens identity because it legitimises history and their own values, protecting the
community’s way of life inwards and outwards. It strengthens the memory that
feeds their aspirations for the future. (What is a community museum?) (www.
[Link])7

Their practical Manual para la creación y desarrollo de museos comunitarios

(2014) calls for the whole community to be involved in the decision-making pro-
cesses of museum creation, in the gathering of the museum’s collections and in
the selection of the topics that are to be told. Through such involvement, it is the
 Introduction: museum communities/community museums  7

community’s vision that is projected by the objects on display, and the authors
argue in compelling ways, here and elsewhere, that the distinctiveness of museos
comunitarios arises from their focus on ‘telling a story, building a future’ to bring
about community self-determination (Camarena Ocampo and Morales Lersch
2019, pp. 38–53).
Museos comunitarios are important in Latin America for several reasons. Often
these museums tell a different story from mainstream museums, being born from
the grassroots and curated by local people using local systems of governance,
especially in Indigenous territories. They are examples of Brulon Soares’s reflec-
tions on the power of the subaltern in contemporary discussions about institutional
power and control, and they offer a model for self-determination of Indigenous,
ethnic and marginalised groups in the realm of tangible and intangible cultural her-
itage, which speaks powerfully to contemporary debates in decolonisation. They
are represented in Chapters 1 and 2 of this volume through examples of museums
and community empowerment from Mexico, Colombia and Costa Rica.

Towards a transatlantic community museology

The primary aim of this volume is therefore to advocate for the contemporary
­relevance of a global community museology rooted in the past but mindful of
global issues, such as social justice, decolonisation and climate change, when con-
sidered through a transatlantic lens. The secondary aim is to expand the museum
studies corpus on community museums, ecomuseums, critical museology or socio-
museology, in English language. In his landmark monograph L’Ecomusée singulier
et plurial (2017a), de Varine observes that ‘ecomuseology’ does not exist as a dis-
cipline in academic research or university teaching and adds that ‘the New Muse-
ology as a world movement and as a discipline different to traditional museology
has been little studied’ (p. 67).8 His observation could be challenged by citing the
teaching of museology in institutions, such as the Sorbonne in Paris, the University
of Lisbon, the Reinwardt Academy in Amsterdam, the University of Newcastle
upon Tyne and the Institute for Experimental Museology in the ­Federal Univer-
sity of Rio de Janeiro.9 However, it may be fair to state that although the New
Museology – including ecomuseology, sociomuseology and community museol-
ogy more ­generally – has been explained by a number of scholars, such as Van
Mensch (1992) and Peter Davis, who summarises it as a ‘radical reassessment of
the roles of museums within society’ (2011, p. 62), these topics have so far been
under-represented in the UK and Anglophone museum studies programmes.10 This
gap is also prevalent in the Caribbean region; an issue addressed in our closing
Chapter 15 where Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft present the history of
museum studies teaching in the Anglophone Caribbean and suggest innovative
ways forward, including prioritising museum conservation training for tropical cli-
mates, thereby combating systemic histories of dependency between the region,
North America and the UK, in particular.
8  Karen Brown

Museum communities/community museums: case studies

The chapters that follow are organised into two thematic sections. In PART 1,
‘Community Museums: Nurturing identities and resilience’, thematic strands
include: the role of community museums in the struggle for self-determination;
the question of the role of museums in defining community identities; the impor-
tance of young people’s participation and intergenerational work for sustainabil-
ity; the  role of museums in local development, reconciliation and healing; and
­community-based museums and climate change.
The opening Chapter 1, ‘Community museums and decolonisation: reflections
from the Network of Community Museums of America’ by Camarena Ocampo and
Morales Lersch, highlights the colonial context for asserting self-determination in
community museum contexts in their networked museums from eight countries in
Latin America. Drawing on the key thinkers and writers of the Latin American net-
work of modernity and coloniality, including Quijano and Michael (2000), Mignolo
and Walsh (2018), Castro-Gómez and Grosfoguel (2007), the authors frame the sit-
uation for how museum communities view themselves in the context of a colonial
order imposed by a European cultural imaginary. Linking with the ideas of Linda
Tuhiwai Smith of New Zealand (2012) in relation to Māori people, they also tackle
the epistemic problem of incorporating subaltern knowledge into the processes of
knowledge production to enhance self-determination, well-being and self-worth.
Emphasising their own network’s practices in creating community museums since
1985, the authors outline how they engage Indigenous communities in a collec-
tive methodology in the construction of knowledge through existing community
assemblies’ frameworks. The chapter is instructive in demonstrating methods used
by different communities, including community workshops for shaping display
narratives, intergenerational transmission of knowledge through oral history and
research questions, as well as disentangling their stories from colonial narratives
and enriching self-worth that resists a dominant imaginary and enables new ways
of seeing self through their collective processes. In Chapter 2, ‘International col-
laboration between ecomuseums and community museums: the experience of the
EU-LAC Museums Bi-Regional Youth Exchange in fostering identity, building
community sustainability and resilience’, Jamie Brown and Karen Brown explore
some of these ideas through a specific case study of a transnational youth exchange
that involved community museums in the network discussed in Chapter 1, as well
as the ecomuseum of the Isle of Skye in Scotland, and several others in the northern
Porto region of Portugal. This case study draws attention to the essential value in
investing in young people, with one of the core methodologies used being inter-
generational transmission of knowledge, and another being community mapping,
in which the young people recorded significant sites, resources and other places
of importance for local identity and tradition. Through a detailed account of the
process of running and disseminating this youth exchange, the authors suggest the
value of such cultural exchange between youth not only to the local communities
involved but also as a model for future projects.
 Introduction: museum communities/community museums  9

Chapter 3, ‘Passion as a mobilising tool for community-based museums: case

studies from Southern Chile’ by Karin Weil, Bárbara Elmúdesi, Laura Fúquene
and Javiera Errázuriz also takes a case study approach to community-based muse-
ums, this time in the context of the historic Round Table of Santiago de Chile
of 1972, and focusing on the social role of museums. Somewhat like Camarena
and Morales, their findings highlight the role of community-based museums in
telling uncensored stories and communicating memories from within the com-
munity itself, ultimately creating a sense of belonging. The chapter draws signifi-
cant attention to the setting for the Santiago Round Table, which took place over
ten days, convened by the government of President Salvador Allende. For the
authors of this chapter, the conditions for community-based museums go beyond
the sharing of attributes, to be conditional on the strength of connection between
members of the community, who are ‘doing something’ in an active way together.
Case studies include the Museo Comunitario Despierta Hermano de Malalhue,
founded to tackle discrimination against Mapuche children, the Museo Esco-
lar de la Aguada, created in response to environmental conflict, and the Centro
Cultural and Museo y Memoria de Neltume, developed in the context of human
rights violations. These museums are presented for their roles as ‘activist muse-
ums’ in offering safe spaces for reflection against dominant powers and hegem-
onic institutions, for processes of overcoming trauma enacted at community level,
to ‘perfect the art of living, not that of progress’. Similar issues are at stake in
Chapter 4, ‘Museums and Community Engagement in Belize: case studies for
protection and active participation of knowledge’ by Sherilyne Jones. Focused on
a country located culturally in the nexus between Central America and the Anglo-
phone ­Caribbean, Jones explores the role of museums as an enabling tool for the
exploration and expression of identity and collective histories in an independent
nation (since 1981) that includes a variety of ethnic roots. She traces the develop-
ment of the Belizian network of Houses of Culture – small, local museums that
are cultural spaces in district towns aimed at empowering communities through
shared authority to preserve, transmit and promote their culture, such as Garifuna
drumming. This expansion of the definition of community museums is then devel-
oped in Chapter 5, ‘The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based muse-
ums’, by Karen Brown, Marie Claverie and Karin Weil. The chapter reflects on
the terms of the EU-LAC Museums project and presents the results of the project’s
international survey entitled ‘What is a community museum in your region?’. By
19 April 2021, this survey had gathered 528 responses from 70 countries written
in English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French and yielded some fascinating
insights about community museums, their governance and value for local commu-
nities within and beyond the EU-LAC regions. From these results, the emphasis is
found to be on ‘people’, ‘place’, ‘space’, ‘culture’ and ‘future’ as holding the key
characteristics of the community museum.
Furthering the discussion around museums, community and sustainability is
Chapter 6, ‘Museums as tools for sustainable community development: a study of
10  Karen Brown

four archaeological museums in northern Peru’ by Luis Repetto Málaga and Karen
Brown, which transitions the book towards an ecological community museology.
This chapter communicates the processes and outcomes of the Peru case study
of the EU-LAC Museums project, which worked with four community-centred
archaeological museums on Peru’s northern coast. The chapter also grounds itself
in the 1972 Round Table and emphasises a principle of decentralising museum
focus to the peripheries but moves on to discuss ways in which museums can
become a resource for local cultural, educational and economic development,
through territorial management and international tourism. The former was most
significant for the north-coast populations, when the severe El Niño flooding that
hit in February 2017 drew attention to the need for museums to get involved in
territorial management, supported by the University of València in Spain. One of
the ways to do this was by reviving popular traditions, such as chicha de jora
making (a traditional alcoholic drink made from maize). Herein, sustainability is
framed as necessitating involvement of community members and support for them,
while also highlighting areas where there has been a disconnect between the muse-
ums and certain communities. A similar focus on engaging local populations with
heritage organisations for tackling climate change issues is found in Chapter 7,
‘Connecting museums through citizen science: Jamaica/US partnership in environ-
mental preservation’. Herein, Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell present the case
study of the project ‘Citizen-Led Urban Environmental Restoration’, which saw
young citizen scientists (aged 14–18) in Jamaica and the USA work closely with
scientists from the museums to restore two environmentally degraded urban sites.
The chapter reflects on the benefits and effectiveness of education outreach out-
side of traditional museum walls. It also offers possible solutions and methods to
improve the efforts of museum professionals in natural history and engage ­citizens
in environmental restoration in urban spaces.
Another case study from the Caribbean closes this section on museums and
climate action: Chapter 8 by Natalie Urquhart, ‘Evoking wonder to inspire action
around climate change – a collaborative exhibition project in the Cayman Islands’,
transitions the volume towards a focus on participatory curatorial practice. Tak-
ing the stance that museums are among the most trusted institutions, the chapter
presents a compelling case for their role in bringing about positive change in cli-
mate action, especially in the context of islands, which are among the most vulner-
able places in the face of changing climate effects. An effective way in which this
can be achieved, argues Urquhart, is by inspiring wonder through art installation,
using waste as materials. By creating visitor experiences that trigger not despond-
ency, but positive reinforcement and action, museums can make a difference. The
example provided is the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands’ multidisciplinary
collaborative exhibition Coral Encounters, which drew on macro photography to
consider the wonders of underwater nature and coral health in the reefs, together
with science-fiction inspired colours and grids to create impact and engage a wide
range of audiences, including schools and families.
 Introduction: museum communities/community museums  11

The second section of this book, PART 2 ‘Connecting Regions: C ­ ommunities

and museums co-curating heritage and memory’, examines similar issues
through the lens of contemporary museum partnerships and practices, as well as
testing the continued relevance of the notion of the ‘integral museum’ and its rela-
tives in the form of ecomuseums. Herein, a series of case studies present diverse
opportunities and approaches that offer insights into communities partnering with
museums through co-creation and co-curation strategies to enable ­bi-regional
action. This section focuses largely on exhibition development, both from
­Caribbean and Latin American perspectives and for Caribbean and Diasporic audi-
ences: studying the potential of exhibitions by examining the contribution of multi-
vocal, ­co-curatorial methodologies to the development of a distinctively ­Caribbean
approach to exhibition-making; or reflecting on the design and architecture of the
Virtual Museum of Caribbean Migration and Memory (VMCMM).
Opening the section, Natalie McGuire’s Chapter 9, ‘The case for a ­rhizomatic
research approach in Caribbean museology’ focuses on community inclusiveness in
museum theory and practice by putting community voice front and centre. Basing
her position in the theories of Martiniquan writer and philosopher Édouard Glis-
sant’s Poetics of relation (1990), McGuire sees the simile of the rhizome as para-
digmatic for processual community-focused museology in the Caribbean region, a
region with multifaceted identities. The author advocates for knowledge-sharing
(rather than knowledge-collecting) as a counteraction to top-down exhibition educa-
tion practices perpetuating colonial l­egacies and occluding histories and voices of
the local people, and particularly the Afro-­Caribbean experience. Through a rhizom-
atic approach, she argues, multivocality can ‘­de-linearise’ authority within meaning-
making. The final section of the chapter then reflects on the value of regional net-
working, especially through digital tools for the contemporary era, while Chapter
10, ‘Co-curating memory: deconstructing the silences around Caribbean migra-
tion to Britain’ then illustrates some of these ideas through a case study authored
by McGuire and Kaye Hall. Herein, they document how, as part of the EU-LAC
Museums project, they collaborated to facilitate a community-led composite his-
tory of post-World War II Caribbean migratory experience to Britain, and its role
in multi-regional exchanges. It traces the development of a VMCMM and panel
exhibition titled ‘The Enigma of Arrival: The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean
Migration to Britain’, both funded by the E ­ U-LAC Museums project, as ways of
mitigating silences or gaps in telling migration histories by C ­ aribbean migrants
to Britain. Participatory methodologies in exhibition-making are framed within
recent discourse led by Nina Simon whose work influenced exhibition practice by
encouraging a non-hierarchical approach to learning and exhibition-making in the
curatorial framework. In addition to targeted exhibition research, an open call in
the Caribbean region and its diaspora asked people to contribute their memories,
stories and unique perspectives on the Windrush migration. This process of co-
creation aimed to create meaning through engagement with relevant communities;
a process enabled by the VMCMM and discussed in the next chapter. Chapter 11,
12  Karen Brown

‘A case study of community virtual museums in the age of crisis designing a virtual
museum of Caribbean migration and memory’ by Catherine Cassidy, Alan Miller
and Alissandra Cummins, explains in more depth the technical development of the
VMCMM discussed in Chapter 10. The framework developed, using Omeka open
source software, brings together 3D models, 360-degree tours and migration stories
relating to the Windrush story. The chapter argues for the value of telling stories,
such as Windrush scandal and survivals in digital format, in response to the grow-
ing global trend of Internet connectivity and usage. This resource was tailored to
cater to a wide range of digital capacity and literacy within resource restrictions and
includes an upload facility for users to share their stories. The efficacy of the tool is
further underlined through the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on museums and
heritage sites. Considered together, Chapters 7–9 contribute to this book’s overall
aim to inform the shift in museology towards cultural decolonisation by support-
ing community participatory initiatives to reclaim their histories outside of narrow,
national narratives, and their underlying colonialist, imperialist assumptions.
In Chapter 12, ‘Ecomuseology in artistic practice: post-colonial strategies of
collective return in Latin America and the Caribbean’, Kate Keohane then creates
bridges between ecomuseology and art curation by centring her theorising in the
work of Glissant, and drawing synergies with recent discussions in ecomuseology
notably by Pappalardo. In so doing, she interprets ecomuseums as embedded in
a landscape in a way capable of re-activating memory and difficult narratives in
the realm of contemporary visual arts. Her case studies are Fresh Milk residency
(Barbados) and Semillero Caribe (Mexico and Cali, Colombia), and the BetaLocal
collective (Puerto Rico). Keohane’s chapter connects back to McGuire’s, through
its focus on imagined networks and alternative forms of community-making in
the region. By focusing specifically on what she calls artistic ecomuseological
practices, Keohane seeks to draw art history and museology closer together in the
realm of participatory practices relating to landscapes ‘damaged by the effects of
colonisation’. For example, through Annalee Davis’s art practice themed on pre-­
colonial seeds in Barbados, or the group experiences of the Semillero programming
designed to avoid colonially implicated strategies of knowledge dissemination
in the context of landscape and the diaspora, or BetaLocal’s initiatives around
‘­un-learning’ outside formal education spaces with a view to confronting difficult
heritage. Expanding on this discussion around contemporary art and its display but
looking specifically at the context of Mexico is Chapter 13, ‘Exhibition-making
as storytelling: the 14th Fomento Económico Mexicano S.A.B. de C.V. (FEMSA)
Biennial in Michoacán Mexico’ by Ana S. González Rueda and David A.J.
­Murrieta Flores. Investigating the roles of Mexico’s modern and contemporary art
in national history, and the stories that challenge and unsettle established narratives,
it focuses on the ways in which Inestimable azar (Inestimable chance), the 14th
FEMSA biennial (February 2020–February 2021), based in the Mexican state of
Michoacán, decentralised established curatorial positions. The analysis is situated
in relation to Mexican muralism of the 20th century, challenging official discourse
 Introduction: museum communities/community museums  13

through ­storytelling in the context of the biennial as a space located outside Western
modernities and the dominant neoliberal order. Identity and homogenising nation
building had been propagated among the early 20th century muralists by myths
and images illustrating key periods in the nation’s history leading to the eventual
liberation of Indigenous peoples. In the context of the biennale, the authors present
close readings of selected artists’ works to challenge and revise this system, by
drawing attention to the agency of Indigenous groups in contemporary mural and
art-making processes that craft counter-stories in response to their erasure.
Chapter 14‚ ‘Centring the Caribbean in the Global: Exhibiting Caribbean Art
from a Caribbean Perspective’ by Allison Thompson then tackles the geopolitics of
art curation, presenting the exhibition Arrivants: Art and Migration in the Anglo-
phone Caribbean World (2018) as a case study that moves beyond the familiar
trajectory of exhibiting Caribbean art in Europe or North America. Drawing atten-
tion to the role of curating for a Caribbean audience, this exhibition is highlighted
as paradigmatic for curating regional art from within, and of appeal to both local
and international displays and audiences, while also informing new discourse on
contemporary Caribbean visual practice. Closing our edited volume is Chapter 15,
‘The politics of change: new pedagogical approaches to Caribbean museology,
conservation and curatorship’ by Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft, which
maps a seminal history of museum studies in the Anglophone Caribbean region
since the 1990s in the frame of the decolonisation of museum practice and theory,
with particular focus on museum conservation and preservation as it relates to
resource-limited collections housed in tropical climates. This fascinating trajectory
is accounted for within the ecosystem of Caribbean heritage support organisations
and periodic recommendations and actions, including the first Artifacts, Museums
and Archives course initiated in Jamaica in 1992. However, the chapter makes the
point that the courses provided to the present day do not include specialist conser-
vation training to equip professional collections care management. This is a major
shortcoming in addressing the specific professionalisation needs of the region that
has only recently begun to be addressed, notably through the formation of The
­University of the West Indies’s Caribbean Heritage Network, as well as online
instructional training. This training, while useful and timely in the present day,
is limited in its ability to train professionals for object intervention because it is
not based on experiential learning alongside experts in the field. Moreover, ­in-situ
intervention must be invested in for the region in order to dismantle dependencies
on outside countries where the expertise and laboratories are located, and to enable
linkages between the training and personal experiences in locations ­increasingly
affected by seasonal hurricanes and growing climate crises/crisis events.

The aims and uses of this book

This book makes island and remote communities the focus of an international muse-
ological book for the first time. It focuses on partnership in co-creation as integral
14  Karen Brown

to the development of museums as generative rather than recipient knowledge

­centres. Far from being exhaustive, it will have achieved these aims if it becomes
a catalyst for further research and discussion within this interwoven field of inves-
tigation and informs museum studies pedagogy. It is anticipated that the contents
will appeal to museologists and museum practitioners interested in a broad range of
critical issues facing heritage, museums and galleries today, including migration,
the role of new technologies, sustainability and social inclusion. With its focus on
global societal challenges, this book will also appeal to scholars of heritage stud-
ies, cultural studies, memory studies, art history, gender studies and sustainable
development among other disciplines, as well as museum studies students as the
next critically engaged and potentially activist generation of museums profession-
als and academics. For those employees and volunteers, students and researchers
associated with museums in remote and island communities, it draws on the knowl-
edge and experiences of communities often marginalised from the mainstream by
virtue of the realities of their geographies, climates and resources. The book will
also have resonance through its focus on new research issuing from the Caribbean
and Central America, in particular, which have been virtually ignored as regions
in the current academic literature. It will also demonstrate ways in which research
questions affecting these regions are applicable to other territories, notably other
Small Island Developing States and remote communities, particularly those facing
the perils of climate change and unsustainable forms of development, for exam-
ple, by defining, developing and disseminating new museum ideas and models
of co-­curatorship/co-partnership to support disaster, health emergency and climate
change resilient communities in the contingent conditions of the 21st century. This
volume as a whole takes a people-centred approach to heritage interpretation,
memory and conservation, away from the tradition of object-centred institutions.
The book is evidence that no matter how academics may define their terms, it is the
perceptions of the people on the ground that matter for characterising community
museums for the 21st century.

Acknowledgements
Research for this introduction has been informed by a number of projects
­co-ordinated from the University of St Andrews. I wish to thank all of our funders
and collaborators for the field work experiences, cultural encounters, friendships
and networks they enabled in the process of research. They are: European Com-
mission Horizon 2020 grant number 693669-EU-LAC Museums (2016–2021);
Scottish Funding Council Global Challenges Research Fund – Community Crafts
and Cultures (2018–2021); and Royal Society of Edinburgh – Scottish Community
Heritage (2019–2022). Research has most recently been supported by the United
Kingdom Research and Innovation programme (UKRI) Engineering and Physi-
cal Sciences Research Council grant number EP/X023036/1 Shared Island ­Stories
Between Scotland and the Caribbean: Past, Present, Future (2022–2027). I am
 Introduction: museum communities/community museums  15

especially grateful to Jamie Brown for his meticulous project management skills
and endless good humour. I also thank Alissandra Cummins, Peter Davis, Ana
González Rueda and François Mairesse for providing their comments on drafts
of this introduction. Finally, this book would not have been possible without the
support of Aedín Mac Devitt and the editorial team at ICOM. Thank you for your
professionalism and patience throughout.

Notes
1 The EU-LAC Museums project (2016–2021) was funded by the European Commis-
sion Horizon 2020 Programme under Grant Agreement Number 693669. [Link]
[Link]/[Link] (Accessed 14 September 2022).
2 Brulon Soares (2021) has rightly noted that the role of community experiences is central
to the ICOM Definition of a Museum process.
3 The Shared Island Stories project (2022–2027) was selected for funding by the ERC
Consolidator Grant scheme and is now funded by the UKRI EPSRC under Grant Agree-
ment Number EP/X023036/1. See: [Link]
(Accessed 14 September 2022).
4 That said, some of Dana’s recommendations are not so utopian or egalitarian; for exam-
ple, ‘Centralize authority. A museum cannot be well managed by a board of directors.
No business can’ (p. 42).
5 Definitions of ecomuseums and distinctions between them and ‘community museums’
have evolved since 1970 to the present day. While this discussion is beyond the scope of
this introduction, Davis usefully defines ecomuseums as, ‘community-driven museums
or heritage projects that aid sustainable development’ (Davis 2007, p. 199).
6 This Resolution was one of the major outcomes of the collaborative EC Horizon2020
project EU-LAC-Museums. The Resolution was submitted under the auspices of ICOM
Europe and ICOM LAC who also supported the project Steering Committee. This intro-
duction has also been informed by our project online survey ‘What is a Community
Museum in your Region?’ found here: [Link]
SV_5oRFHE4ScQEOdNz.
7 The original Spanish reads: ‘Un museo comunitario es creado por la misma comunidad:
es un museo “de” la comunidad, no elaborado a su exterior “para”’ la comunidad. Un
museo comunitario es una herramienta para que la comunidad afirme la posesión física
y simbólica de su patrimonio, a través de sus propias formas de organización. Un museo
comunitario es un espacio donde los integrantes de la comunidad construyen un auto-
conocimiento colectivo, propiciando la reflexión, la crítica y la creatividad. Fortalece la
identidad, porque legitima la historia y los valores propios, proyectando la forma de vida
de la comunidad hacia adentro y hacia fuera de ella. Fortalece la memoria que alimenta
sus aspiraciones de futuro’ (‘Que es un museo comunitario?’).
8 Translation the author’s. De Varine later names André Desvallées (editor of the anthol-
ogy of new museology, Vagues), as the best theoretician of ecomuseums in France.
See A. Desvallées, ‘Introduction, Ecomusée: rêve ou réalité’, Special Issue, Publics et
musées 17–18 (2000): 11–31.
9 The new museology is described in Vagues by André Desvallées (1992 and 1994).
Established in 1985, the international Movement for the New Museology (MINOM) has
also produced a series of edited volumes on ‘Sociomuseology’ in Portuguese, French,
­Spanish and English. In Spanish, key reference texts include de Carli (2006), and
­Camarena Ocampo and Morales Lersch (2016).
10 In addition to the work of Davis, see that of other Anglophone scholars, including
­Boylan (1992), Corsane, Davis and Murtas (2008), Crooke (2015) of the UK (and
16  Karen Brown

Italy – ­Murtas) and Sutter et al. (2016) based in Canada. The shortcoming partly arises
from barriers of language and access: de Varine’s monograph is published in French
and translated into Spanish, and most other literature in the field is published in Latin
languages outside mainstream peer-reviewed journals, including early publications in
French through ICOM (de Varine 2017a, 66–7).

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PART I

Community museums
Nurturing identities and resilience
1
COMMUNITY MUSEUMS AND
DECOLONISATION
Reflections from the Network of Community
Museums of America

Teresa Morales Lersch and Cuauhtémoc

Camarena Ocampo

The importance of community museums as tools for the affirmation of collective

rights and the struggle for self-determination cannot be understood without consid-
ering the context of colonialism. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith has argued (2012, p. 8),
colonialism is realised in the multiple representations and ideological constructions
of the Other, which contain underlying rules and narratives regarding their identity.
Community museums follow alternative rules and create different narratives. They
contribute to the processes of decolonisation at several levels, questioning the logic
of the construction of colonial, Eurocentric knowledge and transforming the colo-
niality of self by creating sites where subaltern communities represent themselves,
drawing on their internal well-springs of historical struggle, communal practices
and ancestral memory.
The determinant nature of colonial relationships in the development of ­museums
was recognised as early as 1979 by Hugues de Varine (1987, p. 34):

Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the development of museums

in the rest of the world (the non-western world) is a purely colonial phenom-
enon. European countries have imposed on non-European nations their method
of analysis of the phenomenon and cultural heritage; they have forced the elite
of these countries and the people themselves to see their own culture with
­European eyes.

The extent to which colonial relationships have continued to permeate the social
and political context in countries such as Mexico was underlined in 1965 by Pablo
González Casanova, who developed the notion of internal colonialism (­Maldonado,
2011, p. 32). He characterised the manner in which the dominant classes subju-
gated indigenous communities to relationships of exploitation (combining a variety

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-3
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
24  Teresa Morales Lersch and Cuauhtémoc Camarena Ocampo

of economic relationships of a feudal, pre-capitalist and capitalist nature) as well as

discrimination (manifest in political, social and cultural institutions), which had all
the characteristics of colonial domination: ‘the indigenous community is a colony
within our national limits’ (Maldonado, 2011, p. 33). The concept of internal colo-
nialism was also developed by Rodolfo Stavenhagen in 1965 and Guillermo Bonfil
Batalla in 1972 (Garzón, 2013, p. 4).
More recently (1996–2007), the Latin/Latin American Network of Modernity/
Coloniality proposed a series of concepts and analyses that bring to the forefront
a new understanding of colonial relationships within the globalised society in the
21st century.1 Aníbal Quijano, Ramón Grosfoguel, Walter Mignolo, Enrique ­Dussel,
Santiago Castro-Gómez and others have concluded that the international division
of labour between centres of power and peripheries, as well as ethnic and racial
hierarchies within the population, developed during several centuries of European
colonial expansion, and did not change significantly with the formal political inde-
pendence of nation-states on the periphery. Rather, there has been a transition from
modern colonialism to global coloniality. The forms of domination of modernity
have undergone transformations, but the fundamental structure of the relationship
between centres of power and the periphery has endured. The subordination of
countries on the periphery to the centres of power of Europe and North America
remains constant. Power structures of long duration, entrenched since the 16th and
17th centuries, continue to play an important role in the present. Contemporary
global capitalism has re-signified, but not transformed, relationships of exclusion,
which result from persistent hierarchies of an epistemic, spiritual, racial or ethnic,
and gendered or sexual nature (Castro-Gómez and Grosfoguel, 2007, pp. 13–14).
The approach of the Network of Modernity/Coloniality draws a distinction
between colonialism and coloniality. Colonialism refers to the political, economic
and military domination and exploitation of one nation or people by another.
It is expressed in specific historical periods and places of imperial domination.
­Coloniality, on the other hand, denotes the grammar and internal logic of colo-
nial domination. Garzón López (2013, p. 4) sums it up as follows: ‘Colonialism is
the territorial occupation by coercive means (military, political, economic), while
­coloniality is the imposition of the European cultural imaginary’.
Moreover, coloniality is institutionalised and normalised in social practices and
the functioning of the state. It is present in the mass media, the educational system
and everyday language. Its matrix operates at three levels: first, as coloniality of
power (political and economic); second, as coloniality of knowledge (epistemic,
philosophical and scientific); and third, as coloniality of being (subjectivity, indi-
vidual and collective identity) (Garzón, 2013, p. 5).
This last level of domination has an impact of enormous consequences.
A ­self-image of inferiority, of incapacity to overcome obstacles or to struggle
against the bonds of oppression, nullifies resistance before it has even begun. The
power of this dynamic of subordination springs from the fact that it is exercised by
the colonised subjects themselves.
 Community museums and decolonisation  25

The effects of the imposition of a colonial imaginary on Mesoamerican peoples

were described by Laurent Aubague as follows:

This displacement of defeat in the imaginary dimension seals it as a practi-

cally permanent inferiority complex, and clearly shows how power operates at
the deep levels of symbolism and self-representation. The power conflict at the
level of the imaginary is transformed into an aggression against the conscious-
ness of self. The imaginary of power then becomes the will to annihilate the
identity of the Other […]. [T]he Western military victory has been prolonged
to become the conquest of one imaginary by another, the condensation of one
identity instead of another, the characterization as inferior of a whole system to
understand the universe and man’s place in it.
(Maldonado, 2011, p. 44)

It is important to recognise that museums have been, and for the most part still
are, institutions that manifest all three levels of coloniality. They came into being
as repositories for valuable objects and knowledge in the hands of the dominant
classes of Europe. Large museums were built with colonial economic and political
power, amassing collections through war, theft, expeditions and traffic in cultural
objects (coloniality of power). As vehicles to possess and exhibit this heritage,
they became instruments of power that have reflected, legitimised and reproduced
a Eurocentric and colonial world view, presenting its discourse as scientific and
universal truths (coloniality of knowledge). Through museums, colonial powers
have represented the native peoples of their colonies as inherently inferior and sav-
age. The elite groups of these colonies, through processes of internal colonialism,
later used museums to repeat these same narratives, influencing how native peoples
perceive themselves (coloniality of being).

Community museums, vehicles to contest coloniality

Within the community museum movement, and particularly within the Red de
Museos Comunitarios de América (Network of Community Museums of ­America),
we maintain that it is possible for communities to appropriate and transform museums,
contesting the manifestations of coloniality at these three levels.2 Non-hegemonic
communities are creating their own museums as tools of resistance and decolonisa-
tion, reversing their role as instruments of domination and colonial power. Instead
of repeating official histories, which interpret diverse communities and peoples as
objects, community museums are a vehicle for communities to construct knowledge
as subjects of their own history and way of life. Rather than presenting stories about
the Other, community museums represent their own communities, telling stories that
have been suppressed and denied, and speaking from their own collective experience.
At the level of the coloniality of power, community museums strengthen net-
works and promote a collective voice to defend cultural rights and community
26  Teresa Morales Lersch and Cuauhtémoc Camarena Ocampo

ways of life. They are able to develop methods for new forms of knowledge to
emerge, resisting the coloniality of knowledge by sustaining a process of collec-
tive construction of community history and culture. They are also instruments for
community members to develop initiatives regarding their own identity, through
which they may resist the coloniality of being. Community museums are vehicles
for community members to see themselves with their own eyes, through their own
categories, historical experiences and stories.
Developing a critique of the coloniality of knowledge is a fundamental compo-
nent of the approach of the Modernity/Coloniality Network.3 Quijano and Dussel
argue that the superiority assigned to European knowledge in many areas of life was
key to the development of coloniality throughout the world. Subaltern knowledge
was excluded, silenced and ignored: since the Enlightenment, it was typified as a
mythical, inferior and pre-scientific stage of human knowledge. As Castro-Gómez
and Grosfoguel (2007, p. 20) ask, how can knowledge be produced that does not
repeat and reproduce the assumptions of a Eurocentric vision? The Modernity/
Coloniality Network recognises that their analysis must take into account the prac-
tical knowledge of workers, women, racialised and colonised subjects, LGBTQ
groups and social movements that counter the dominant world system. This is
because all possible knowledge is embodied in subjects, linked to concrete strug-
gles, interwoven with social contradictions and rooted in specific perspectives.
However, Castro-Gómez and Grosfoguel (2007, p. 21) recognise that, in their view,
contemporary social sciences have not yet found an effective way to incorporate
subaltern knowledge into the dominant processes of knowledge production.
Tuhiwai Smith (2012, p. 21) has explored how research methodologies can engage
in processes of decolonisation. She argues that, on one level, decolonisation implies
a critical understanding of the underlying assumptions, motivations and values that
inform research practices. Speaking specifically of the Maori people, she states:

Research is implicated in the production of Western knowledge, in the nature of

academic work, in the production of theories that have dehumanized Maori and
in practices that have continued to privilege Western ways of knowing, while
denying the validity for Maori of Maori knowledge, language and culture.
(Tuhiwai Smith, 2012, p. 185)

She describes the Kaupapa Maori approach to research, which has provided a focus
‘through which Maori people, as communities of the researched and as new com-
munities of the researchers, have been able to engage in a dialogue about setting
new directions for the priorities, policies and practices of research for, by and with
Maori’ (p. 185). She details how Graham Smith characterises Kaupapa Maori
research, which

1 is related to ‘being Maori’;

2 is connected to Maori philosophy and principles;
 Community museums and decolonisation  27

3 takes for granted the validity and legitimacy of Maori, the importance of Maori
language and culture and
4 is concerned with ‘the struggle for autonomy over our own cultural well-being’
(Tuhiwai Smith, 2012, p. 187).

She further refers to a list of priorities that need to be discussed to set strategic
directions of Maori research:

• determining as Maori our own research needs and priorities;

• defining the ways research should proceed;
• training of Maori researchers;
• discussion of culturally appropriate ethics;
• ongoing development of culturally sympathetic methods;
• continued collaboration with our own diverse iwi and communities of interest;
• development and dissemination of literature by Maori on research;
• continued reflection, evaluation and critique of ourselves as a community of
Maori researchers;
• extending the boundaries for Maori (and for other indigenous peoples) of our
own fields and disciplines;
• education of the wider research community, including scientific, academic and
policy communities, and
• accountabilities to and outcomes for Maori (Tuhiwai Smith, 2012, pp. 194–195).

The integrity of the approach Tuhiwai Smith describes – consistently positioning

the Maori world view as a valid philosophical foundation for research, insisting
on culturally respectful practices and aligning research with the interests of Maori
self-determination and well-being – make it an important example for other indig-
enous peoples and communities. However, it does not seem to question the basic
separation between researchers and community, or the researcher and researched.
It stresses the training of Maori researchers, but if they are trained to consider their
own people as objects of study, the process of knowledge production is still based
on the separation of object and subject, both conceptually and methodologically.
The researcher is the subject with agency, the authority who controls the ques-
tions asked and the methods employed, while the community remains a passive
object whose fundamental role is to provide information. Even if there are meas-
ures to ensure culturally appropriate ethics, collaborations and accountability of
the researchers, the basic logic of the production of knowledge remains the same.

Communities constructing collective knowledge

To decolonise the process of knowledge production, it must be possible for all par-
ticipants to be active subjects in a collective effort to construct knowledge. The role
of researcher must be transformed into that of a facilitator who provides methods
28  Teresa Morales Lersch and Cuauhtémoc Camarena Ocampo

and guides the steps to be taken. The selection of the themes, the formulation of
questions to be asked, the gathering of material and documentation, as well as
interpretation, then all become steps in a collective process that is undertaken by
community decision-making bodies and groups.
This approach has been developed in the community museum movement that
emerged in 1985 through the initiatives of indigenous communities in the state of
Oaxaca in the south of Mexico. In this most ethnically diverse state of Mexico,
over more than 30 years, indigenous and campesino communities have been creat-
ing community museums as sites to safeguard, understand and represent certain
elements of their community heritage and memory. They have been mobilised by
the concern that heritage objects, traditions and historical experiences will other-
wise be lost or forgotten.
In these indigenous communities, a system of local governance known as usos
y costumbres (usages and customs) has been practised for decades. Developed
through a process of resistance and recreation of community life within the context
of colonial imposition, in 1995, it was officially recognised as the system to elect
municipal authorities through an amendment to the State Constitution. According
to usos y costumbres, the local community assembly is the main decision-making
body. Community members (initially all men but recently women as well) all par-
ticipate and voice their opinions in the community assembly. In addition, mem-
bers must perform community service without pay throughout their adult lives in a
variety of different committees, civil posts and ceremonial roles. The community
assembly discusses and makes decisions regarding collective projects and priori-
ties, as well as electing all the committees and officials who are held accountable
for carrying these initiatives forward.
The initiatives to create community museums came from different sectors,
sometimes community representatives, sometimes teachers or young people. How-
ever, they had to be approved by the community assemblies if they were to succeed
as community projects. At times, the community assemblies would decide that the
community museum was not a priority for the moment. At others, the community
assembly approved and gave its support. In this way, proposals to create commu-
nity museums became collective projects, recognised as efforts that would respond
to the collective interests and concerns of the community.
Community assemblies, sometimes in dialogue with councils of elders, or in
coordination with assemblies of barrios, determined the themes to be researched
and represented in the museum. They also decided on the buildings to be occupied
or constructed for this purpose. Soon, the community assemblies also elected com-
mittees to coordinate the process to create the museums, as well as to direct and
manage them. These community museum committees then became part of the local
system of governance and renewed periodically with newly elected community
members who serve without pay.
When the authors of this chapter, as research professors responding to the request
of these communities for the support of the National Institute of Anthropology and
 Community museums and decolonisation  29

History, began to collaborate with these efforts in 1985, it was clear to us that our
role was to contribute to their collective nature, respecting traditional community
practices and decisions.
Together with community members, we explored ways to consult the themes to
be researched. We asked different questions, such as: what do you think the museum
should talk about; what stories do you want to tell in the museum; what issues or
problems should be discussed and what stories of your community do you want
your children to know, to remember? Each community developed a somewhat dif-
ferent procedure. In Santiago Suchilquitongo (1988), meetings were organised in
each one of the nine barrios and agencias to discuss and select significant themes,
and the three most recurrent ones were chosen. In Santiago Matatlán (2004), the
community assembly of 140 people discussed themes to be researched in groups
of ten and wrote their proposals on cards that were then carefully tallied to deter-
mine which were of greatest interest. In San Juan Guelavía (2010), the proposals
that emerged from a community meeting of women were included in a survey
answered by hundreds of community members in order to arrive at a decision. In
Santo Domingo Yanhuitlán (2013), the community museum committee organised
a process in which elementary school children talked to their parents and grandpar-
ents about important themes to include, and the community assembly later voted
on the proposals. Sometimes the same assembly that was called to discuss the pos-
sibility of creating a community museum would approve the project and continue
with the decision on which themes to study.
The community groups organised by the community museum committees to
carry out the research have been equally diverse. In San Martín Huamelulpan
(1989), each of the smaller settlements constituting the community chose repre-
sentatives to participate in the research group. In San Francisco Cajonos (2012),
the council of elders guided the study of the territory, documented by elemen-
tary school children and younger adults, while a group of more than 60 women
recorded traditional healing practices, and a group of teachers developed a timeline
of local history.
Working with these community groups, we have developed a series of methods
to carry out the inquiry, including ways to define the fundamental questions used
to guide the research, or methods of exploring the parts of the story to be told. His-
torians, educators and community members have all participated over the years in
developing different tools and methods. Participatory oral history methods and ways
to arrive at consensus through brainstorming and categorising the ideas of the group
have been very important tools. For example, research groups brainstorm and organ-
ise the questions to ask in interviews or community dialogues and reiterate the fun-
damental importance of respectful listening. Sometimes the community dialogues
or conversations are held with one individual at a time; at other times, they take
the form of collective exchanges. The observation and documentation of communal
practices by groups of young people and children, as well as detailed observation
and ­documentation of communal sites and territories, have been extremely valuable.
30  Teresa Morales Lersch and Cuauhtémoc Camarena Ocampo

The aforementioned experiences of selecting and documenting themes have

distinct characteristics, but they all respond to the same objective: to build a col-
lective vision of community stories and memory through a process determined by
community decisions and carried out by the creative work of community members.
This collective vision is a body of shared knowledge built throughout its differ-
ent phases through a process controlled by the community. The community, that
is, determines the subject of study, develops the focus and questions to be asked,
organises who collaborates in the research and determines how it will be presented.
Eleazar García Ortega (2015), activist, educator and a member of the commu-
nity authorities when the Community Museum of San Juan Guelavía was created,
described the process as follows:

The themes that will be presented in the museum are also defined in a collective
process, through consultations and written surveys, as well as interviews with
elders.
(p. 16)

In the case of the Community Museum of San Juan Guelavía we chose two
themes: ‘the harvest of salt from the earth,’ which led us to walk through our
history, and the theme of the ‘planting native corn in humid soil.’ We organised
research teams, we developed the script of questions, we identified the people
who were most knowledgeable about our local culture. We began to work, to
locate sites within our local geography, where real and mythical events occurred;
we drew sketches, maps, we made a timeline.
(pp. 17–18)

That is to say, the collective subject that observes itself becomes the protago-
nist, participating in its own construction, interacting with other individuals who
share the same identity. And this subject begins to create a museum that is not
oriented to folklore, to the extravagant expectations of tourists, but a museum
that is a resource for the development of other community members in a process
of endoculturation. The positions of ‘subject’ and ‘object’ begin to fluctuate.
(p. 19)

Another case that illustrates this process is the ‘Määtsk Mëjy Nëë’ Community
Museum of San Juan Bosco Chuxnabán, a Mixe community of 120 families located
in the northern mountains of the state of Oaxaca. When community members dis-
cussed the themes for their museum in their general assembly in 2008, they agreed
to speak about a recent archaeological discovery, and the ‘agrarian problem’.
The community museum committee organised the process to carry out the
research on these themes with the participation of secondary school students.
Many elders helped the students to create family trees for the founding families of
­Chuxnabán. Civil and agrarian authorities were also very active working with the
 Community museums and decolonisation  31

students in documenting the agrarian problem. In the process of c­ onstructing the

questions to ask about this issue, it appeared that the story involved C ­ huxnabán’s
struggle to end decades of violent conflict with neighbouring communities over ter-
ritorial boundaries. In the 1990s, the community representatives had begun a process
of negotiating directly with their neighbours without intervention from the govern-
ment. As secondary school students and community representatives ­documented
their conversations, a different title to the ­exhibition emerged: ‘The importance of
the agrarian struggle and solutions through i­ndependent dialogue’.
When young people and adults came together in the workshop to develop the
design of the exhibition, they split into teams to propose how each part of the story
should be represented. One of the teams had the task of visualising the process of
dialogue. They proposed the recreation of a scene in which five people were sitting
at a table talking. These people represented one delegate from Chuxnabán and one
from each of the four communities with which they had had successful negotia-
tions. When the team presented their proposal to the other participants of the design
workshop, they were asked when this scene had taken place. Their answer was
that it had never actually taken place. The negotiations had developed with each
community separately. The team explained that this scenario was a symbol of how
the representatives of Chuxnabán were able to sit down together at the negotiating
table and peacefully come to agreements, with all of these villages.
When the students were listening to the testimonies, they commented that they
had heard references to these stories, but their vague notions were gradually clari-
fied as the process developed. The adults commented that the decision taken in the
assembly had been a good one, because it was essential to pass on knowledge to
their youth of how they had weathered a conflict that has cost many lives. It was
a sensitive issue, one that could only be authoritatively addressed from their own
experience. The facts were important, but so, too, were the lessons encompassed
in this story about the value of communities talking directly amongst themselves
without governmental support for any of the parties involved. This was evident in
the scene community members recreated – no officials were sitting at the table dur-
ing the symbolic dialogue they presented.
Since the museum opened to the public in 2011, several communities have
­visited it in the context of developing dialogues with their neighbours over land
disputes. In this way, Chuxnabán has been able to tell a story that has value for both
its own members and other communities. However, it would not have been pos-
sible if community members had not themselves constructed this vision in a col-
lective process. Throughout the research and the design process, what emerged
were their needs, their understanding of what had occurred and the symbolic truths
embedded in their experience.
As García Ortega states, the interaction between community members of differ-
ent generations and experience generates a collective learning process, and a shared
body of knowledge, in which the subject and the object of study are not divorced
but rather engage in a conversation. It is an internal process, in which participants
32  Teresa Morales Lersch and Cuauhtémoc Camarena Ocampo

are conscious of learning something about themselves and their collective identity.
They are aware of being part of an initiative to represent themselves.

In general terms we can say that the community museum is a participatory,

collective-communal process of construction, which allows us to [become] con-
scious of our role and situation in the world. Furthermore, most importantly,
this process of construction must be an endogenous process, an introspective
journey. As we intentionally develop the initiative to look within ourselves, we
recover, gradually, the self-esteem that has been denied us as subaltern or sub-
ordinate cultures. To accomplish this valuation of ourselves is to experience
a process of decolonisation.
(García Ortega, 2015, pp. 20–21)

When community groups come together to discuss and select themes to r­ epresent
themselves, elements of their unique experiences and traditions appear. They turn
towards their internal well-spring of tradition, communal practices and meaning
and discover sources of strength that have been obscured by the imaginary of domi-
nant culture. For example, when community members of Santa Ana del Valle dis-
cussed the themes to be included in their museum, they decided to portray their
experience of the Mexican Revolution and how they opposed the federal forces
of Carranza from 1915 to 1920. When the museum opened, some academics were
critical of this choice. Why did Santa Ana want to profile the counter-revolutionary
movement that proclaimed Oaxaca to be a sovereign state? The community
answered that this was an important experience for them. During the years covered,
their village was burned to the ground. The federal troops destroyed their homes
and pillaged their crops and cattle. The community took refuge in the foothills and
aligned with the guerrilla forces in the northern mountains which headed the move-
ment to declare sovereignty. They defended the pass that runs through their lands
and stopped the advance of the federal troops that were attacking the soberanistas.
Later, they rebuilt Santa Ana from the ashes. Although it occurred in the context of
national movements, the story they wanted to tell was about their experience facing
aggression and their capacity for resistance.
Some community museums have been founded precisely to denounce experi-
ences of aggression and violence. The Community Museum of Historical Memory
of Rabinal in Guatemala defines its objective as: ‘to recover and disseminate the
historical memory of the Maya Achí people, through a site of reflection, critical
analysis and consciousness concerning the grave violations of human rights and
genocide implemented by the military governments from 1980 to 1984’ (Museo
Comunitario de la Memoria Histórica de Rabinal, n.d.). This community museum,
the first of its kind in Guatemala, tells stories of extreme violence that had not
been fully acknowledged by the state when it opened its first exhibition in 1999.
It has been an instrument to demand justice and increase public awareness of the
­atrocities committed, telling a story that could no longer be denied.
 Community museums and decolonisation  33

The process of defining and telling community stories also implies processes
that reveal internal contradictions. Recognising these stories may contradict how
community members have adopted a self-image defined by dominant culture.
García Ortega (2015, pp. 26–7) shares an experience of what occurred when the
research group found a chest full of historical documents that had been forgotten:

As we were cleaning a storage space for the museum we found an old chest. We
gave notice to the Alcalde Único Constitucional: in his presence we opened the
chest and found documents that were hundreds of years old. We were amazed.
There was information about how San Juan Guelavía was a República de Indios
until 1820; that before, all its land had been communal; that some lands had
been rented to neighbouring villages and individuals to harvest salt; that the
community and the church owned communal cattle. They also documented how
everything was administrated by a ‘Gobernador’. There was a young secretary
of the municipality who was compiling the inventory. She couldn’t accept what
she saw. She said, ‘They were Indians before, but we aren’t anymore! Now eve-
rything is ­private property, everyone has their own property, communal things
are old!’
This young woman couldn’t accept this information. Immediately she put up
a barrier to understanding a fact of this magnitude, that neither her monocultural
education nor the mass media had provided. Here we enter into the other side of
this issue: decolonisation implies dismantling values, attitudes and knowledge.
In this case we had conclusive evidence. That is why the museum’s value is in
its context. It isn’t the distant hero from a textbook, but the people from our
community, who walked and suffered here, like us, but at a different moment.

The experience of examining their own history in a collective process offers com-
munity members the opportunity to make evident internal contradictions within
their attitudes and beliefs. Community members are confronted by how they have
accepted or been complicit in the denigration of their own culture by dominant
cultural norms. As they become more aware of the historical conditions that have
propitiated the imposition of these norms, they are better able to detach from them.
The experience of learning about their own struggles, and considering in greater
depth the meaning of their communal practices, strengthens their connection to
their communal identity while also enriching their sense of self-worth.

As we refuse to become homogenized beings, all cut in the same pattern, we

begin a slow process of decolonisation. As we affirm our right to be who we
are, we find the certainty to seek our own destiny. For this reason, even the most
remote villages now desire this re-encounter. The community museum is a tool
that helps us develop this exercise fully, so that our cultures can assert our right
to resist and survive, in a world where inclusive diversity prevails.
(García Ortega, 2015, pp. 27–28)
34  Teresa Morales Lersch and Cuauhtémoc Camarena Ocampo

Contesting the coloniality of self and the coloniality of power

The community museum is a tool to dismantle the coloniality of self because it
contributes to the creation of a self-image based on the autonomous source of col-
lective memory. It brings forth strength by recognising the lived experience of
resistance. It materialises images of concrete experiences, common experiences,
which unite community members. Importantly, it expresses the community’s own
narratives and sense of meaning: it depends on neither the approval of another
nor that of dominant society. Finally, the community museum provides a centre
around which community members can stand together, generate awareness and
build a collective alternative.
Telling their own stories empowers communities to open new perspectives with-
out the epistemic assumptions of colonial narratives. Colonial discourse no longer
determines narratives about the past or what is possible for the future. Recovering
stories and constructing a critical view of the myriad processes of colonial subjuga-
tion allows communities to build strength from within, identifying their own centre
and foundations of tradition, experience and meaning.
The Network of Community Museums of America brings together community
museums in eight countries that embarked on this process, in a joint commitment
to defend community rights in the context of the increasing destruction of their
natural resources and ways of life. Their collective reflection on the characteristics
of colonial domination, the importance of community memory and the relation-
ship between memory and self-determination has strengthened their vision for and
practice in the community museum. During the ninth meeting of the network, held
in Mulaló, Colombia, in 2018, the participants discussed and created the following
manifesto:

We make the following public statement because we understand our commu-

nity museums as key elements to articulate the voice and perspective of our
communities as they face current global processes. They are a collective tool
for our communities to defend our rights as peoples. They are sites of identity,
denouncement, reflection, construction and a place of encounter to strengthen
our own structures of community organisation.
Our community museums fortify the exercise of our own cultural practices
that sustain the identity and memory underlying the power of our community
and generating impact regarding public policies that affect us. They provide
a favourable environment to generate life plans according to our own mod-
els of development. They strengthen life projects born within our community,
opposing cultural impositions of the dominant power system. The community
museum creates consciousness of collective memory as a source of resistance
and survival of our peoples. Memory becomes a fundamental resource to build
our own pathway, and unites our communities in the struggle to recover and
dignify our identity and the living conditions in our territories.
(Red de Museos Comunitarios de América, 2018)
 Community museums and decolonisation  35

The network is not based on vertical hierarchies and does not depend on the
­recognition of any institution external to the communities. It is a nexus of mutual
support and solidarity, which helps transform relationships of subordination and
disempowerment by constructing horizontal bonds and autonomous projects. In
addition, the network helps project the capacity for community self-governance to
higher levels, expanding the reach of organised community action.
Networks of community museums oppose the coloniality of power, contributing
to the development of new forms of power from the grassroots, linking diverse com-
munities in a common purpose to overcome the injustices of economic and political
domination. As part of their daily practices, community museums empower commu-
nity members to be active subjects in building knowledge through a process driven
by community decision-making bodies and groups; in this way, they contest the colo-
niality of knowledge. Community museums also enable communities to contest the
coloniality of self, resisting the imposition of the dominant imaginary and offering
a way for community members to see themselves through their own eyes.

Notes
1 The Latin/Latin American Network of Modernity/Coloniality is a research group that
developed an influential body of work regarding concepts such as ‘decoloniality’ and
‘coloniality of power’. This transnational and transdisciplinary group includes profes-
sors from Duke University, the University of North Carolina, Universidad Javeriana
of Bogotá, Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar of Quito, the University of California
(Berkeley) and the State University of New York. It was formed in 1998 and by 2006 had
organised seven international meetings and numerous publications. The term M ­ odernity/
Coloniality Network is used to reference this group in the present article (Castro-Gómez
and Grosfoguel, 2007, pp. 7–14).
2 The history and focus of the Network of Community Museums of America has been
documented by Camarena Ocampo and Morales Lersch (2016). Current information
regarding the network can be found on its website: [Link]
org/somos (Accessed 24 March 2021).
3 One of the first, and most influential, publications of the Modernity/Coloniality
­Network is La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. Perspectivas
­latinoamericanas, edited by Lander (2000).

References
Camarena Ocampo, C. and Morales Lersch, T. (eds.) (2016). Memoria: Red de Museos
Comunitarios de América. Experiencias de museos comunitarios y redes nacionales.
Oaxaca: Red de Museos Comunitarios de América.
Castro-Gómez, S. and Grosfoguel, R. (2007). ‘Prólogo. Giro decolonial, teoría crítica y
pensamiento heterárquico’, in Castro-Gómez, S. and Grosfoguel, R. (eds.) El giro
­decolonial: Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global.
Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores, pp. 9–23.
García Ortega, E. (2015). El museo como recurso descolonizante. La experiencia del Museo
Comunitario de San Juan Guelavía. Mexico: Lxs Desechables Editorxs.
Garzón López, P. (2013). ‘Pueblos indígenas y decolonialidad: sobre la colonización
­epistemológica occidental’, Andamios, 10 (22), pp. 305–31.
36  Teresa Morales Lersch and Cuauhtémoc Camarena Ocampo

Lander, E. (ed.) (2000). La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales.

P­erspectivas latinoamericanas. Buenos Aires: CLACSO.
Maldonado Alvarado, B. (2011). Comunidad, comunalidad y colonialismo en Oaxaca: la
nueva educación comunitaria y su contexto. Oaxaca: CSEIIO.
Castro-Gómez, S. and Grosfoguel, R. (2007). ‘Prólogo. Giro decolonial, teoría crítica y
pensamiento heterárquico’, in Castro-Gómez, S. and Grosfoguel, R. (eds.) El giro
­decolonial: Reflexiones para una diversidad epistémica más allá del capitalismo global.
Bogotá: Siglo del Hombre Editores, pp. 9–23.
Marco, J. et al. (1979). ‘Entrevista con Hugues de Varine-Bohan’, in Marco, J. et. al (eds.)
Los museos en el mundo. Barcelona: Ed. Salvat, pp. 9–14.
Museo Comunitario de la Memoria Histórica de Rabinal (n.d.). Available at: [Link]
[Link]/museo-comunitario/ (Accessed 23 February 2020).
Red de Museos Comunitarios de América (2018). Proclama de la Red de Museos Comuni-
tarios de América. [Online]. Available at: [Link]
proclama-de-la-red-de-museos-comunitarios-de-america (Accessed 23 February 2020).
Tuhiwai Smith, L. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples.
London: Zed Books.
2
INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION
BETWEEN ECOMUSEUMS AND
COMMUNITY MUSEUMS
The experience of the EU-LAC Museums
Bi-Regional Youth Exchange in fostering identity,
building community sustainability and resilience

Karen Brown and Jamie Allan Brown

Ecomuseums and community museums: nature and culture

Understanding relationships between culture and nature has seldom been more
urgent for museum and heritage professionals. In recent years, cultural heritage
sites and their communities around the world have been acutely affected by natu-
ral disasters, conflict, lack of security, youth unemployment and related societal
challenges.
In Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, young people participate in
their respective societies under unequal circumstances and expectations. At
the most recent European-Community of Latin American and Caribbean States
(­EU-CELAC) Youth Day held in Quito, Ecuador (2015), it was reported that
youth unemployment is at 22.8 per cent in Europe, and 18.7 per cent in Latin
America (European Youth Forum, 2015). More recent reports produced by
Eurostat demonstrate that 28.8 per cent of young people in the EU face poverty
and are at risk of social exclusion, with young women at slightly higher risk
than young men, while the Economic Commission for Latin America and the
­Caribbean reports that 41 per cent in Latin America face the same circumstances
(European Parliamentary Research Service, 2018; Eurostat, n.d.; Youth Policy
Labs, 2007; CEPALSTAT, 2020).
The situation is exacerbated in low- to middle-income countries where main-
taining equilibrium, well-being and community resilience is an urgent necessity in
the face of global imbalances and rapid change. Social exclusion for young people
as they transition into adulthood has the potential to have ongoing consequences
for both individuals and society, as it often affects all aspects of young people’s
lives (UN DESA, 2016). Increased social exclusion and poverty can contribute
to an increased risk of inequality in terms of young people’s well-being, lifestyle,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-4
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
38  Karen Brown and Jamie Allan Brown

access to culture, education and employment opportunities (Eurostat, 2021). For

communities in remote rural and island locations, the challenges of globalisation
are also intensified by socio-political and environmental instability, lack of access
to resources, depopulation and unethical development. Viewed in this context,
museums and heritage organisations bear a considerable responsibility for the com-
munities they serve, and they need to invest in their young people through intergen-
erational dialogue to strengthen their roots because, in the words of one Scottish
ecomuseum director, ‘young people are us tomorrow’ (Ghilleasbuig, 2019).
Studies have shown that museums are among the most trusted public
­institutions around the world, and as such, they have an ethical obligation to
support social cohesion and development, as well as to maintain traditional
standards in collections care and management.1 Discussions about relationships
between nature and culture are also gathering pace, as museums—and especially
­ecomuseums—become increasingly appreciated for the work they do in attaining
a wide range of Sustainable Development Goals. Heritage Studies has always
been preoccupied with landscapes, but in recent years, the international museum
world has also begun to acknowledge its responsibilities towards cultural land-
scapes as a fundamental resource for a sustainable future (Mac Devitt, 2017;
Riva, 2017). Increased participation and access to museums and culture can facil-
itate a ‘sense of place’ (Davis, 2011) and belonging to a community, ­promoting
social inclusion and lifelong learning. In addition, museums are increasingly
addressing the climate emergency (Museums Association, 2020; Janes and
­Sandell, 2019). Within this emerging corpus, we focus on the integral role of
youth in maintaining sustainable museums through the example of the Horizon
2020 ­project’s Work Package 4, ‘Museum Education for Social Inclusion and
Cohesion’ ­Bi-Regional Youth Exchange.

EU-LAC Museums project background

Museums are important because they serve to remind us of who we are and what
our place is in the world. […] Museum professionals, with reference to their
visitors, frequently use the expression ‘museum community’, but can this be
defined? We also need to discover how museums interact with their community,
and the community with its museums, and place this in historical perspective.
(Davis, 2007, p. 53)

The EU-LAC Museums project at large seeks to carry out a comparative a­ nalysis
of small- and medium-sized rural museums and their communities in Europe,
Latin America and the Caribbean, and to develop an associated history and the-
ory. The basis of the project is that community museums allow under-represented
communities to stake a place in history, as well as to contribute to environmen-
tal sustainability and community empowerment. Funded by Horizon 2020, the
 International collaboration between ecomuseums and community museums  39

European Union’s most extensive research and innovation programme to date, the
project places emphasis on sustainable economic growth and industrial leader-
ship while tackling societal challenges.2 We have eight international partners from
Scotland (Coordinator), Portugal, Spain, France, Peru, Chile, Costa Rica and the
Anglophone Caribbean (Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago) (see EU-
LAC Museums, 2021b). Dr Karen Brown is the Project Coordinator; Jamie Allan
Brown is the Project Administrator and dedicated Youth Programme Worker.
A project Advisory Board and Steering Committee consists of world-­leading
experts in EU-LAC relations and selected for their distinct areas of expertise.
They include prominent ecomuseum and community museum specialists, Hugues
de Varine, Peter Davis and Teresa Morales. Luís Raposo, the former President
of International Council of Museums (ICOM)-Europe, and Samuel Franco Arce,
former President of ICOM-LAC and an expert in disaster management in cul-
tural heritage, were instrumental in helping us to plan the project, set goals and
measure impact (see EU-LAC Museums, 2021a). The project is rooted in a belief
in the potential for youth to transform society. It aims to help those young peo-
ple become tomorrow’s leaders with an awareness of their heritage and identity
and how these are changing, an understanding of the challenges they face, and
how these are perceived within a global context. EU-LAC Museums encourages
mutual understanding between the regions to build on existing and new partner-
ships and aims to overcome challenges for mutual sustainability and continuous
dialogue within our museum communities.
To reach the Horizon 2020 goal of ‘fostering inclusive, innovative and reflective
societies’, the EU-LAC Museums project sought to research state-of-the-art initia-
tives in museums and community empowerment and move beyond those initiatives
to implement actions in each partner country. The project also produced a number
of academic and scientific outputs, notably an extensive bibliography dedicated
to ecomuseology and community museology, and a new collection of essays, On
Community and Sustainable Museums (2019), in which many of the project’s guid-
ing principles are explained by our project advisers (Brown et al., 2019; EU-LAC
Museums, 2019b).

Recruiting young people in Europe, Latin America and

the Caribbean
Participants in the EU-LAC Museums Bi-Regional Youth Exchange were Druim
Nan Linntean (the Isle of Skye Ecomuseum), in Scotland; Ecomuseo de la Cerámica
Chorotega de San Vicente de Nicoya (San Vicente de Nicoya Ecomuseum),
Museo Comunitario Indígena de Boruca (the Community Museum of Boruca) and
Museo Comunitario Yimba Cajc de Rey Curré (the Community Museum of Yimba
Cajc de Rey Curré), all in Costa Rica; and Museu da Chapelaria (The Hat Museum)
in São João da Madeira, Museu de Olaria (the Museum of Pottery) in Barcelos,
and the Museu Municipal in Penafiel, Portugal. These locations and entities were
40  Karen Brown and Jamie Allan Brown

selected precisely for their remote locations, their precarious socio-economic

­sustainability and the significant work they are carrying out to maintain tradition
and foster resilience for the future.
The Youth Exchange project involved young people aged between 15 and 18 from
geographically rural communities and different socio-economic, ethnic, cultural and
religious backgrounds linked to museum communities in Costa Rica, Scotland and
Portugal. Through a tailored recruitment process, the young people were brought on
board according to their proven commitment and contribution to volunteering, local
heritage and community museum projects. During the programme the focus was on
raising awareness of their culture and their identity, how these are changing, and how
they are understood in the context of the wider world. In Scotland, a rigorous applica-
tion process was developed which required each young person to produce a video,
take part in assessed group work, complete a comprehensive written application and
attend an interview with a member of our team, a Scottish Gaelic language school-
teacher and a local ecomuseum representative. The programme’s local community
partner, the Staffin Community Trust, and Ecomuseum Druim Nan Linntean in Skye
advised that the project should involve young people learning or speaking Scottish
Gaelic to ensure an understanding of the local community and heritage. This process
was an opportunity for young people to display their skills and personality outside
their formal school education, and to demonstrate a commitment to their local com-
munity and the Scottish Gaelic language.
In the end, the project involved over 100 young people: 90 from Costa Rica
(11 selected for travel), 6 from Portugal and 6 from Scotland. Our project goals were

1 to empower each young person to learn more about their own community,
­language, identity, heritage and culture, and to locate similarities with the other
communities involved;
2 to foster confidence in each young person to take an active role within their
individual communities and
3 to encourage each young person to reflect on and document their journey as they
took part in the Youth Exchange.

Discovering nature and culture through the landscape and

intergenerational dialogue
Within the programme, the young people engaged in a range of activities that fostered
a ‘sense of place’, advocated by Peter Davis (2011) as the main role of ecomuseums,
through a greater understanding of nature and culture located around the ecomuseum
or community museum. The rural setting of the Isle of Skye in the north west of
Scotland was selected because of its unique and protected landscape, its investment
in the Scottish Gaelic language and its rural way of life. It is also home to Scotland’s
first ecomuseum, founded as Ceumannan (translated from the Gaelic as ‘Footprints’
and currently being re-branded as Druim Nan Linntean, ‘Ridge of Ages’).
 International collaboration between ecomuseums and community museums  41

In Costa Rica, La Red de Museos Comunitarios, the country’s network of

community museums, was identified as a strong partner because of its his-
tory of community participation and empowerment. The Costa Rican Youth
Exchange Programme was led by the National Museum of Costa Rica and oper-
ated within the indigenous village communities of Boruca and Rey Curré in the
south, and San Vicente de Nicoya Ecomuseum in the north. Monthly workshops
were facilitated in partnership with members of the local community, trained
by La Red de Museos Comunitarios de América (the Network of Community
Museums of America) using their programme first developed by Teresa Morales
and ­Cuauhtémoc Camarena in Oaxaca, Mexico, called ‘Our Vision of Change’
(Museos Comunitarios, n.d.).
Similarly, in Portugal, the project recruited young people from the rural com-
munities of Barcelos, Penafiel and São João da Madeira within the Porto region
to ensure that they had much in common with their fellow travellers; in this case,
the National Museum of Archaeology worked with a consultant from the Univer-
sity of Porto.3 Within Scotland, the development of the activities and workshop
programme, jointly led by the University of St Andrews, the Staffin Community
Trust and the Comunn na Gàidhlig (Gaelic language and culture society), fostered
an opportunity not solely for the young people but also for the professionals and
organisations working at grassroots level in the Isle of Skye. The ecomuseum fur-
ther consolidated its role as a hub of local knowledge, showcasing, safeguarding
and respecting the landscape, the way of life, the Scottish Gaelic language and
knowledge of traditional crofting (Scottish subsistence farming).
The monthly workshops in each country involved a number of activities that
encouraged young people to engage with their landscapes, heritage and identities,
and to think critically about the issues affecting them, such as over-tourism, depop-
ulation, globalisation and access to resources. During the exchange programme,
they took part in ‘Community Walkabouts’, in which each host conducted a guided
walk through the landscape of their community, identifying places of significance
such as sacred sites, buildings, natural features and animals. The young people
were encouraged to compare and contrast the host communities with their own.
Their tasks included mapping the various communities and exhibiting findings for
community elders and facilitators, highlighting significant sights, resources and
places understood to be relevant by the young people themselves.
These maps were also displayed in farewell celebrations and ceremonies and
recorded for the EU-LAC Museums Bi-Regional Youth Exchange video docu-
mentary produced by John Large. They are available on the project’s social media
platforms: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (Community Museums, 2019). The docu-
mentary was screened at the Byre Theatre in St Andrews, Scotland, in May 2019,
to celebrate International Museums Day. There was also a community screening in
Boruca, Costa Rica, during the La Red de Museos Comunitarios de América com-
munity facilitators exchange workshop in June 2019, which explored the world of
‘community museums’ in Europe and Latin America (Byre Theatre, 2019).
42  Karen Brown and Jamie Allan Brown

Another example of youth engagement in the programme involved ‘Community

Festivals’ that were organised in each community to celebrate the exchange and to
showcase the young people’s commitment and work. These gave the opportunity
to showcase traditional dances, such as the Fiesta de los Diablitos (Festival of the
Little Devils) in Boruca, cèilidh dancing in the Isle of Skye and ranchos in Porto,
as well as to share traditional food such as tamales (chicken in dough steamed in
a corn husk, Costa Rica), haggis (innards of a sheep with spices from Scotland)
and francesinha (a traditional sandwich from Porto made with roast meat, cheese
and tomato sauce), as well as folk stories from Boruca, the Isle of Skye and Porto.
Young people were encouraged to produce a mural of each community that high-
lighted their journey and progress as a group. In particular, the Costa Rican and
Scottish communities hosted young people so they could experience everyday life
in their respective communities by visiting community elders and meeting host
families, where they tried traditional food and music in their homes.
Working under the theme of ‘Community Crafts and Collective Memory’ f­ urther
helped young people to understand the importance of memory for each community,
promoting debate about young people’s identities. For example, various workshops
were held, facilitated by community elders and artisans, to involve the young peo-
ple in, and inculcate an appreciation for, the unique artisanal skills and industries in
each community. These included

• masks and textiles at Boruca and Rey Curré;

• pottery at San Vicente de Nicoya;

FIGURE 2.1 
Community Festival, Boruca, Costa Rica, August 2017. © Jamie Allan
Brown
 International collaboration between ecomuseums and community museums  43

FIGURE 2.2  Home visit, Isle of Skye, Scotland, July 2018. © Karen Brown

• crofting, textiles and fishing on the Isle of Skye;

• pottery at Barcelos and Penafiel and
• hats, shoes and pencils at São João da Madeira.

Through these activities, young people developed a greater appreciation of their

natural and cultural landscapes and of traditional crafts and practices. As a result
of the workshops, relationships between nature and culture became more fluid and
open for the young people, and they left the programme with a more profound
sense of place.
A commitment to hold on to tradition and community identity was also deepened
through the Youth Exchange process. One aspect shared by the young people from
Scotland and Costa Rica was a concern about the issue of over-tourism and how it
relates to questions of environmental, economic, social and cultural sustainability
in the context of the Isle of Skye. In Skye, the district of Staffin, where the ecomu-
seum is located, has been appointed a National Scenic Area and is protected by the
government. This poses a problem for the mass tourism that has grown on Skye,
which has been made popular by not only the ecomuseum’s marketing but also the
filming in the locale of popular movies such as Prometheus (2012), Macbeth (2012)
and The Big Friendly Giant (2016). In Costa Rica, tourism issues are slightly dif-
ferent: they concern the ethical economic development of their craft industries of
44  Karen Brown and Jamie Allan Brown

mask-making, textiles and pottery (see Brown, 2017). Both locations—Scotland and

Costa Rica—were seen to face threats to their traditional ways of life.
Linked to this discussion were workshops held on disaster resilience suitable
for community and ecomuseums. In Skye, Samuel Franco led a theoretical and
practical workshop with the young people on disaster preparedness and community
resilience. The group engaged in a range of activities, including writing a report
on risk-assessing their building and discussing what areas of the ecomuseum were
currently most at risk from erosion (caused both naturally and by humans) due to
the heavy footfall of tourism on the island.
A similar workshop was held in Rey Curré and neighbouring UNESCO site
Finca 6, also led by Samuel Franco in association with the National Museum of
Costa Rica and ICOM Costa Rica (then chaired by Lauran Bonilla-Merchav), and
supported by the University of St Andrews Scottish Funding Council Global Chal-
lenges Research Fund project, Community Crafts and Culture (2016–2021). In this
case, local first responders, such as firemen, police, first-aiders and community
elders, were recruited to take part in a workshop, initiated in direct response to the
severe floods that affected the c­ ommunity as a result of Hurricane Nate in 2017.
Rey Curré is located in a pre-Colombian settlement close to the Térraba River in
the south of Costa Rica, close to the Panama border. Called Diquis (‘great river’) in
the Borucan language, the Térraba is the largest river in the country. In the first week
of October 2017, Rey Curré suffered torrential flooding. Many lower-lying family
homes close to the river were ruined, and the school and community museum with
which we had worked so closely and which had been constructed from traditional
materials and using traditional techniques were flooded to roof height. The community
suffered degrees of disruption and trauma that affected community life and indig-
enous systems of governance. However, their response showed enormous commu-
nity resilience, as the entire community helped to rehabilitate the facilities and assist
neighbours whose homes had been most affected by the disaster. Thus, they turned
the challenges into opportunities through adaptability, flexibility and innovative
approaches. Heritage preservation and safeguarding in this context was not always the
priority of the community, and so the project needed to adapt to assist the community
on its road to recovery and preparedness for the future. Adhering to the Blue Shield
standards and promoting international standards in risk assessment and management,
the programme addressed how to coordinate the preparation work needed to meet and
respond to emergency situations and how to recover and store cultural objects until
they could be rehomed. Focusing on practical tasks, the training gave participants an
opportunity to reflect on past experiences and think of ways to secure their own com-
munity museums, especially to preserve local sites and artisan workshops.
In the monthly Youth Exchange workshops, young people were also encour-
aged to analyse and reflect on Community Resilience by assessing the strengths and
weaknesses of their heritage communities, along with any future opportunities and
threats they face. Prompted by community facilitators, young people led discus-
sions about what a community is, what a community museum is, its role within the
 International collaboration between ecomuseums and community museums  45

FIGURE 2.3 Community presentation, Isle of Skye, Scotland, July 2018. © Jamie Allan
Brown

community and how communities can be empowered to find solutions to problems.

Building on their previous workshop activities of interviewing community elders,
the young people debated community resilience and identity, with a view to deter-
mining how this could be achieved in an ever-more globalised world.
During reflection workshops, the young people were encouraged to document
their personal journey in an online blog, thereby building and enhancing their criti-
cal reflective skills. Blog tasks were set with various themes relevant to the topic
at the time. The group acknowledged that blogging for an international audience,
rather than for their local peers, community or school, boosted their creativity as
they thought critically about what they wrote and how they presented themselves
online through their communication and language skills.
The young people’s online blogs can be found here:

• Costa Rica: Blog de la Juventud de Costa Rica ([Link]

[Link]/)
• Portugal: Blogue de 6 jovens de Portugal participantes ([Link]
[Link]/)
• Scotland: Òigridh Air Iomlaid na Alba ([Link]
[Link]/)
46  Karen Brown and Jamie Allan Brown

Accreditation and international recognition

The young people taking part from Scotland were accredited through the Scottish
Government’s Saltire Award volunteering certification programme in accordance
with the framework of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence, which is intended to
encourage young people to gain knowledge, skills and attributes needed for learn-
ing, life and work in the 21st century (Scottish Government, 2008). This award
highlights their commitment to the project and their rural community and is signed
by the First Minister of Scotland. It can be used in university or further education
applications and fully adheres to the national high school curriculum. All six young
people have listed their Saltire Award in university or further educational CVs.
Large EU-LAC Museums project meetings were taken as opportunities to
develop and share the experiences of the Youth Exchange, and further develop the
young people’s skills of public speaking with confidence. The Saltire Awards were
presented to the group at the project’s Second General Assembly and International
Committee for Museology of the International Council of Museums conference
on ‘Defining the Museum of the 21st Century’, held in St Andrews, Scotland, in
November 2017.
The EU-LAC Museums Itinerant Identities: Museum Communities/­Community
Museums conference in 2018, coordinated by the project’s Caribbean partner, the

FIGURE 2.4 Presenting at the Itinerant Identities conference, the University of the West
Indies, Barbados, November 2018. © Karen Brown
 International collaboration between ecomuseums and community museums  47

University of the West Indies and by the Museums Association of the Caribbean,
explored critical issues researched within the project and beyond. These included
gender and migration, sustainable development, the role of youth and the role of
new technologies. Youth Programme Worker Jamie Allan Brown presented the
­Bi-Regional Youth Exchange alongside five of the Scottish young people. The pres-
entation stimulated interactive discussions from the international audience and
­highlighted the plight of young people’s daily lives within rural and island commu-
nities, touching on the cultural and colonial legacies between S ­ cotland and ­Barbados
as well as Spain and Costa Rica. The conference also offered an opportunity to run
additional disaster resilience workshops, with Samuel Franco leading a session in
the Barbados Museum and Historical Society for the museum’s ‘Young Curators’,
the Youth Exchange participants and museum professionals.4
It is hoped that the Youth Exchange will serve as a model to be applied in other
contexts and communities, such as at the parish of St Andrew in Barbados. To this
end, during the General Assembly, Kaye Hall from the Barbados Museum and
Historical Society arranged for Jamie Allan Brown and Karen Brown to visit a new
area of the island targeted for local development, with Jamie Brown also visiting
the local high school to initiate early discussions.
Finally, during the 25th ICOM General Conference, held in 2019 at Kyoto,
Japan, and entitled ‘Museums as Cultural Hubs: The Future of Tradition’, Jamie
Allan Brown presented the Bi-Regional Youth Exchange to the ICOM Com-
mittee For Education and Cultural Action. He and Karen Brown also presented
at the ICOM International Committee for Regional Museums before museum
­professionals, experts, educators and community leaders (see ICOM, 2019a).
During the general conference, ICOM members voted to adopt the EU-LAC
­Museums’ proposed resolution on ‘Museums, Communities and Sustainability’ with
its specific focus on building the capacity of ecomuseums and community museums, in
order to remain sensitive to local and regional differences, and to demonstrate aware-
ness of the geopolitical dimension of the concept of the museum, especially relating to
the resource needs of community-based museums in low- to middle-income countries
such as those involved in the project (see ICOM, 2019b). Future youth exchanges
would be one concrete way in which this resolution could be taken forwards.

Final reflection
The Bi-Regional Youth Exchange was developed in collaboration with communi-
ties around thought-provoking ideas on the challenges facing young people living
in rural communities across Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. It was based
on the broad EU-CELAC Action Plan themes expected by the funders, includ-
ing social inclusion, sustainability, gender and addictions (European Council,
2015), but was adapted to each context, such that in Costa Rica, the ‘Our Vision of
Change’ programme was implemented in full as the Red de Museos Comunitarios
de America works to strengthen the community for the future. Activities sought
48  Karen Brown and Jamie Allan Brown

to foster empathy between the young people and to nurture debate and critical
thinking, creating a mindset in which our young people believe that they have the
power to make a difference. In this way, it is in tune with our global project aim
for long-term, sustained societal change based on lasting institutional partnerships,
professional relationships and friendships beyond this project.
The programme was developed by the project but, most importantly, was led
by the communities involved, who took part in all the decision-making processes.
By creating a space for the community as a whole as well as the young people
to share their thoughts, debate solutions and physically visit each community,
­EU-LAC Museums has fostered mutual understanding, and cultivated shared expe-
riences and knowledge among the regions through intergenerational discussions,
traditional demonstrations and the empowerment of the young people for each
­community’s sustainability in an ever-more globalised world.
Here is what the young people themselves had to say.
Jonathan Smith (2018), Scotland:

Though many miles lie between them and us we all are brought together through
our shared passion for music, dance, art and community spirit. The exchange
changed me as a person in so many ways. It made me proud of my island back-
ground[, ] improved my confidence and gave me skills which will stay with
me forever. I want to stay in Skye, really make a difference to the island, chal-
lenge tourism and retain our way of life for both locals and visitors, like the way
the Boruca community does.

Yunieth Quirós (2018), Costa Rica:

It’s not every day you get to stay with people on the other side of the world, who
show you that they’re proud of their community, that they work as a team, and
it moves you, because you start to understand that you can do the same in your
own community. You can become more interested in your own culture, your
own heritage and in your own language.

Rita Leite (2018), Portugal:

I am very grateful for the friendships that resulted through the exchange. Of the
things I learned, I feel that the most important is to value and respect the differ-
ent ways of life in all our communities. Our history, our heritage is different, but
we are all the same, facing the same problems.

And here are some responses from the professional museum world.
Teresa Morales, Co-Director of La Red de Museos Comunitarios de América:

The testimonies of the young people who participated in this programme are evi-
dence that it is possible to share concepts, methods and experiences in Europe
 International collaboration between ecomuseums and community museums  49

and Latin America, in ways that enrich the practices of community museums
and ecomuseums in both regions.
(cited in EU-LAC Museums, 2019a)

Adriana Morales (2019), Community Museum Association leader:

For the Boruca people, it was very valuable for the school, the community,
very important because we have seen the change in them [young people]. We
have seen that they are more focused in culture, histories, and our memory. It
has been very important […] for us, it has been an achievement as a museum,
as a community and also personally […] [We are] very grateful that we had the
opportunity to strengthen our relationship and know that we can work together
and knock on doors so it doesn’t end here and this legacy grows and more young
people get involved and carry on this path.

In conclusion, young people in Europe and Latin America—as in the rest of the
globe—face many challenges today. The teenage years are an especially challeng-
ing period of transition in which young people seek to understand their family,
their heritage and their place within their ever-changing community and the wider
world. The EU-LAC Museums Bi-Regional Youth Exchange offered an alternative
way to empower young people through shared heritage.
Museums need to be seen as forward-looking and innovative, rather than as
institutions that look only to the past. In re-thinking the role of regional museums,
we would suggest that encouraging the sustainable use of cultural and natural her-
itage must include—if not begin with—youth and intergenerational transmission
of knowledge. Such an investment will promote positive cultural attitudes towards
the environment and re-interpret social and/or ecological issues with fresh eyes and
sustain communities with new ideas.

Acknowledgements
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 693669. For
­further information, please visit: [Link]

Notes
1 For the purposes of this essay, we are working with the ICOM (2007) Museum Definition.
2 The goal of Horizon 2020 is to ensure that Europe produces world-class research,
removing barriers to innovation, thus making it easier for both the public and private
sector to collaborate delivering innovation (see European Commission, n.d.).
3 The dedicated youth leader from Costa Rica is Ronald Martínez Villareal from MNCR,
and, from Portugal, Paula Menino Homem from Porto.
4 The Scottish youth group further presented at the “International Conference on Com-
munity Heritage” funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2019, organised by
the University of St Andrews, which provided a platform for grassroots initiatives
50  Karen Brown and Jamie Allan Brown

and organisations to better understand the community heritage landscape of Scotland

(Brown and Caezar, 2020).

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3
PASSION AS A MOBILISING TOOL FOR
COMMUNITY-BASED MUSEUMS
Case studies from southern Chile1

Karin Weil, Bárbara Elmúdesi Krögh, Laura Fúquene

Giraldo and Javiera Errázuriz Contreras

The role of passion and affection in the making of

community-based museums
Community museums are initiatives in response to many communities’ urgent
need to defend their identity and their very existence in this situation […]. They
are a response to the imposition of oblivion, an expression of the firm decision
to remember, to preserve memory, to build self-determination and dignity.
(Camarena and Morales, 2016, p. 10)

Community-based museums emerge from communities, from the people who inhabit
a territory and share a collective memory produced through dialogue and interaction.
Meaning, which is constructed from personal communication that is open to plural-
ity, is expressed through different languages and activities in museum exhibitions,
in the selection of the objects that represent community and trigger those memories,
and through the ongoing participation of the communities themselves.
Within the framework of the Europe-Latin America and the Caribbean (EU-
LAC) Museums project, an interdisciplinary team from Universidad Austral de
Chile studied the social role of community-based museums and their impact on the
sustainability of their communities, heritages and territories. The inquiry revealed
the central aspects of this social role in the traditional museological sense, both
from a theoretical standpoint and from the actual experiences and memories of
visitors—that is, those who bring community-based museums to life.
The main value of community-based museums lies in the ideas, actions, deci-
sions and emotions of the community members, along with their personal and
collective relationships. In such museums, the people who inhabit and share a ter-
ritory construct meaning from their collective memory, preserving and presenting

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-5
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
 Case studies from southern Chile  53

their own interpretations of their histories. They provide spaces for the collective
expression of subjective experiences, which may include uncomfortable narratives
often glossed over by official institutions. In so doing, they demonstrate the com-
munity’s determination and commitment to legitimise their own stories, rendering
them visible once more.
We investigated the role of five museums in Los Ríos, Chile, over the course
of three years. Through case studies, comparative analysis and a review of biblio-
graphic sources, we have found that social construction in community-based muse-
ums takes place through the affective bonds and enthusiasm of those community
members who bring these spaces to life and sustain them.
We have also been able to show, and thus problematise, the direct relationship
between, on the one hand, the sustainability of community-based museums and
the community, territory and heritage they protect, and, on the other, the implicit
motivation of those who bring them to life. In this relationship, affection and enthu-
siasm for one’s own community play fundamental roles in the 21st-century human
need to restore community life, in the political-cultural struggle for social change
and in meeting the challenges and objectives of sustainable development. In this
regard, issues such as gender equity, inclusion and equal representation, free access
to information and uncensored communication of local history are relevant.
Our research showed that the strength of community-based museums comes
from the passion and commitment of each member of the community; they are
bearers of knowledge, the ones who document the history and feelings attached
to the creative process as they decide what is to be told, how and for whom.
What gives community-based museums their identity and value is not related
to ­museography—that is, local themes, such as community characteristics and
territory—nor to regional or local funding. Rather, their identity and value are
rooted in the fact that they tell life stories and share history and community memo-
ries; beyond the topics they address, their existence is a testament to community
life, to actual living, breathing cultures. They exemplify the appropriation of an
institutional condition onto which a deep historical, political and cultural meaning
is imprinted. The perseverance of a community willing to create a space that allows
them to share their memories, stories and meanings, as well as to transform it into
a counter-hegemonic movement to raise consciousness, demonstrates that commu-
nity’s enthusiasm to build a sense of belonging.

From museion to community-based museum: passion

as a mobilising tool
Neltume is a museum characterised by writing what people have said as they say
it, how they think and feel it. We do not put the words forward from another more
enlightened field, but only as people speak and feel it; [thus] it is transmitted.
—Angélica Navarrete, Centro Cultural Museo y Memoria de Neltume
[Museum and Memory Cultural Center], Neltume, Chile, May 2017
54  Karin Weil et al.

Museums have long had the reputation of being temples of knowledge, repositories
of history and guardians of the past, spreading educational and hegemonic mono-
logues. Today’s museums are a product of the ‘new museology’ and trends that
emerged in the 1960s. As such, they aim to collect the past and the present, engage
in dialogue (rather than pronounce in monologue) and encourage debate and inter-
active learning. Communities are at the core of their mission and their institutions.
Taking on board the guidelines adopted at the 16th UNESCO General Confer-
ence, a transformation in museum practices took place in Chile with the so-called
Round Table of Santiago de Chile, 1972 (Mostny, 1972a, 1972b). The General
Conference took place at the GAM (Gabriela Mistral Cultural Centre), a building
constructed between 1971 and 1972 to host the Third United Nations Conference
on Trade and Development (UNCTAD III) held between 13 April and 21 May
1972. The General Conference was marked by the presence of delegates from the
developing countries who demanded fair global trade, as well as world solidarity
with the Chilean process led by President Salvador Allende. Allende’s government
invited a group of museologists from different Latin American countries to dis-
cuss ‘the importance and development of museums in the contemporary world’
(Mostny, 1972a, p. 5). It was not a coincidence that a democratic socialist govern-
ment such as Allende’s took on the principles of the new museology to propose an
inclusive Latin American response. The gathering, which took place over ten days,
was characterised by the participation of specialists from different disciplines—
urban planning, agriculture, education, and science and technology, with an
approach focusing especially on the region’s needs. The meeting reaffirmed the
perspectives already considered at the ICOM (International Council of Museums)
General Conference in Grenoble the previous year, deepening ICOM’s intention to
strengthen the commitment of Latin American museums to the social development
of their respective communities, and expressing the importance of the museum, as
well as its potential to contribute culturally to the transformative action of these
communities.
The Round Table’s main conclusions were articulated around the notion of the
‘integrated museum’, through which participants proposed a new image for the
institution, which should be closely linked to the present and future of the com-
munity (Varine, 2012). It ended by outlining ideas to subvert museum practices at
their very foundations, decentring the traditional role of museums and relocating
their value in their potential to reinvent themselves. Museums were to contribute as
developmental tools to provide a ‘social function’, thus anticipating today’s muse-
ologists’ professional practice regarding their political and cultural r­esponsibility
(Varine, 2012, p. 98).
In this way, the museum’s social role and its relevance for the present and future
of its communities not only upends the museum (considering its etymological ori-
gin, museion) and its nationalist burden but also powerfully connects the museum
to the present aspirations, challenges and pain of the communities it ­represents
(González, 2016). This social function involves affection and enthusiasm as
 Case studies from southern Chile  55

mobilising tools for museums, especially those with a community base, which
restores the agency and vibrant materiality of museum objects (Escobar, 2016).
This approach challenges the supposed inert nature of objects and turns them into
social agents that promote experiences in the social network, connecting with
those people who create, share, criticise or become part of the object´s ­meaning.
(Simon, 2010).

Affection effects
There is nothing more fascinating than examining how memory returns; for
some the trigger is a smell, for others, the line of a face, the colour of an object
or even a word that will make sprout an infinity of small moments that will con-
firm the whole of memory.
(Brousseau, 1991, p. 10)

The social role of community-based museums is imbued with not only history
and memory but also emotion and deep affection, since these museums are deeply
rooted in their own contexts, in what is shared, what unites them and what differ-
entiates them.
When we speak of community-based museums, we are talking about a group of
people who recognise themselves in others, and who have shared needs, desires,
territory, identity, affinities and so on. However, sharing certain attributes alone is
not enough to create a community; the relative strength of the connection between
members of the community is also important. We agree with John H. Falk (2009,
p. 147) who states: ’the stronger the emotional “value”, the more likely sensory
­information is to pass this initial inspection and be admitted into memory; and inter-
estingly, pleasant experiences are strongly favoured over unpleasant ones’.
In the context of our research, and especially with regard to community-based
museums, emotion and affection are historically and culturally contingent. Linked
to power and political relations, they are starting points when discussing issues of
heritage and local territory. Here, we follow Laurajane Smith, Margaret Wetherell
and Gary Campbell’s (2018, p. 19) assertion that:

heritage, as a practice of making meaning, draws heavily on affect/emotion to

legitimise the meanings and narratives produced and propagated. ­Heritage’s
emotional force is part and parcel of the power of heritage to stand in for
and ­legitimise claims to inclusion or exclusion based on identity, nation and
citizenship.

In this sense, the power struggle against hegemonic narrative discourses aimed
at decolonisation and equality in relation to indigenous peoples, gender equality,
human rights, guerrillas and natural resources, among others, materialises mainly
because of two great forces: (1) emotions that transcend individuality, commitment
56  Karin Weil et al.

and the need to give meaning to past and present situations and (2) the need to
establish membership of, and identification with, a community.
In this way, museums are vital to the societies in which they belong. By muse-
ums, we mean both the spaces (the museum as an institution at community, rural,
small or medium scale) and the people who give life to them. The latter includes
the visitors or users, and above all the museum workers themselves.2 Often, these
workers are those who not only manage the museum but have also played important
roles in its foundation. They have made the museum’s work their own, and their
involvement goes beyond its management. The museum’s story is their own story;
they are part of the narrative. A truly community-based museum is marked by the
affections and enthusiasm of the people who created it. We should understand that:

affection and emotion have a consequence for the way people understand and
experience the world in which they live [...] Emotions are not actions, but they
provide an inner energy that propel us towards an act, they provide the energy
for cognition and evaluation.
(Smith and Campbell, 2015, pp. 15–16)

Within the framework of the international research project ‘EU-LAC Museums:

Museums and community: concepts, experiences and sustainability in Europe,
Latin America and the Caribbean’, we have been able to share experiences around
museology specifically in community-based museums, and how they developed
from their own territorial and historical contexts to become spaces that encourage
dialogue, add value and make sense of their ‘places’. In each of our case studies,
the collections, narrative, research, actions and exhibits highlight the centrality and
reach of each community-based museum’s social role as fundamental to its sustain-
ability, linking it directly to the motivation, experiences, memory and affections of
the people in charge and those who participated in the process.
Each of these museums or community spaces illustrates the complexity and
diversity of individual and communal emotional relationships established with the
past. A significant insight offered by Margo Shea (cited in Smith, Wetherell and
Campbell, 2018, p. 21) is that ‘the contemporary social meaning constructed in
affective commemorative practices may at once be complex, contradictory and
ambiguous’, causing internal conflicts. Dynamic museum projects tell the story of
the individual and the social context of community-based museums, of how per-
sonal and communal affections must be collectively negotiated, and how the kind
of consensus achieved through such practices reconstructs the meaning of the past.

The passions behind the construction of the Neltume, Malalhue

and La Aguada museums
They [the Mapuche people] see us as a valuable addition, given the knowledge
that many of them in their homes are not able to continue replicating history, so
 Case studies from southern Chile  57

this space was built for that purpose [...] this is the basis of this museum. We are
not digging, buying or asking for things: they come on their own.
—Nerys Mora and Isabel Riveros, Museo Despierta Hermano,
Malalhue, May 2017

Within the framework of the EU-LAC Museums project, we investigated five cases
of community-based museums in the Los Ríos region. Based on interdisciplinary
work and exhaustive methodologies, we selected these cases for their diversity in
terms of locality, resources, theme, size and social role, among others. Shortly after
moving forwards with the study, we realised that the evolution of their social role
was marked by their founding principles.
For Museo Despierta Hermano de Malalhue (Museum awakens brother of
­Malalhue), the founding principle was discrimination; for Museo Escolar Hugo
Günckel de la Aguada (Hugo Günckel School Museum of La Aguada), it was
environmental conflict; and in the case of Centro Cultural Museo y Memoria de
Neltume (Cultural Center Museum and Memory of Neltume), it was human rights
violations. By contrast, the genesis of Museo Tringlo de Lago Ranco (Lago Ranco’s
Tringlo Museum) and Museo Histórico y Antropológico Maurice van de Maele
(Maurice van de Maele Historical and Anthropological Museum) reflected extrinsic
demands imposed over those of the community in a top-down, rather than bottom-
up, approach (Weil et al., 2018). The collections on which these five museums were
formed were officially legitimised as heritage, that is, recognised as traditionally

TABLE 3.1  Case studies summary

Museum Source Environment Institution Theme

Centro Cultural Community Andes Autonomous Socio-political

Museo y mountains Agrarian
Memoria reform
Neltume Human rights
Museo Despierta School and Andes foothills Autonomous Intercultural
Hermano community
Malalhue
Museo Escolar School Coast Municipal Environmental
Hugo Günckel Public School education
Corral
Museo Histórico y University Urban Universidad de Hispanic and
Antropológico Valdivian Austral, Chile German
M. Van de jungle (UACh) colonisation
Maele Native people
Museo de Tringlo Municipal Lacustrine Municipal Prehispanic
Lago Ranco valley and colonial
ceramics
Source: Karin Weil.
58  Karin Weil et al.

‘valuable’, and worthy of preservation and care. In these latter two museums, the
social role has historically been less obvious.
Among the five museums that make up the case studies, we can highlight the
coherence with which three of them create and recreate their social role. Despierta
Hermano de Malalhue, Centro Cultural Museo y Memoria de Neltume and Museo
Escolar Hugo Günckel de la Aguada play a prominent role in this analysis because
they are museums that, of their own volition, have taken over the socio-cultural,
political, environmental challenges and conflicts in their respective communities.
From the beginning, this function has given them deep roots in their territories, and
they have found solutions to the problems that affect them by using the language
of museology.
Today’s community-based museums, often located in marginal situations, are
spaces that seek to protect and offer relief to their communities through their own
memories and shared contexts. As institutions that carry threads from the past
through the present and to the future, they provide safe spaces for reflection in
resistance to the dominant powers and hegemonic institutions. The three museums
discussed here do this in different ways.
The Museo Despierta Hermano de Malalhue was established to emphasise
diversity as a value in a territory with a significant Mapuche population. This was
a reaction to the significant discrimination suffered by the children of those indig-
enous people. As Maori author Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012, p. 108) suggests, ‘[...]
the activities of indigenous peoples can be understood at one level simply as an
indigenous social movement […] [that] developed simultaneously out of the sur-
vival strategies and cultural systems’, values and beliefs that have nurtured these
communities in the past. Processes, like the ones referred, began under the radar of
the dominant society. Examples of this exist throughout 500 years of anti-­colonial
struggle. However, in the museum context, the new museology and its devel-
opment from the 1960s has generated new spaces in which this movement has
found new tools to express itself. Indigenous communities have been turning these
often isolated and marginalised spaces into places steeped in spiritual meaning
and indigenous identity, generating content from the communities, and traditional
knowledge from oral testimonies and stories. In the case of the Museo Despierta
Hermano de Malalhue, the community’s active participation, based on their com-
mitment and passion, validates new methodologies, celebrating survival through
resistance and a process of regeneration that creates connections among people
and represents diversity. The aim is to protect the people, communities, languages,
customs, beliefs and natural resources of the region, and to validate, value and rec-
ognise traditional knowledge in the context of the 21st century. This has become
a necessity in order to recover the values of the community, along with its social
relations, sense of well-being and balance within the ecosystem.
The Centro Cultural Museo y Memoria de Neltume, located in a ­Cordillera
town that was established in the 1940s as a result of forestry, aims to reconstruct
the workers’ social history and human rights during the Pinochet dictatorship.
 Case studies from southern Chile  59

FIGURE 3.1 Ojotas. Footwear made from tyre rubber used by wood farmers. Part of the
Museo Despierta Hermano collection. © Claudia Ordóñez for EU LAC
Project

Freud has affirmed the formidable existential power of the past, which we cannot
evade, and which continues to influence our mental processes and reality (Anton,
2014). The world is full of memories of repeated wars, genocides and violations of
individual and community rights, which we often repress or deny so that the group
can continue to move forwards into the future. However, hegemonic narratives often
manage to avoid the memory of trauma. Although we try to replace those memo-
ries considered negative with more benign and tolerable memories, the inescapable
presence of trauma impairs our vision of the present and prevents the future from
coming to life. It is not possible, from a psychological point of view, to displace
trauma altogether; people will at some point have to face and understand the trau-
matic events of the past. They can do this by recovering their own experiences and
memories, by rendering trauma visible, and by working on their s­ uffering to trans-
form and overcome it, thus preventing it from happening again and ­developing com-
munity resilience (Veneros Ruiz-Tagle and Toledo, 2009).
Finally, the Museo Escolar Hugo Günckel seeks to generate critical reflection
regarding the socio-environmental conflicts affecting a territory heavily degraded
by different extractive industries, such as forestry and siderurgy. The new museol-
ogy and the movements that emerged in the 1960s are committed to this kind of
integral museum, that is, one that considers the totality of society’s problems and
establishes itself as a dynamic instrument of social change. Setting aside traditional
museum roles, such as collecting and conserving, it proposes a flexible and dynamic
60  Karin Weil et al.

FIGURE 3.2 Presentation of the book Flor de la Higuera by Omar Rubio in the ­context
of the Memory encounter at the Centro Cultural Museo y Memoria,
­ eltume, February 2020.  © Karin Weil.
N

concept of heritage that is managed by the communities themselves. The committee

of experts who took part in the Round Table of Santiago de Chile concluded:

It is recommended that the museum intensifies its role as an excellent element in

the education of the community in general using all means of communication.
It is recommended that museums should intensify their function as the best pos-
sible agent of permanent education for the community in general by making use
of all the communication media.
(Fernández Guido, 2012, pp. 229–30)

School museums, in particular, seek to make students aware of the value and
­necessity of conserving and recovering the ecosystems and biodiversity of their
own territories. The museum is thus transformed into a laboratory in which chil-
dren gain knowledge of their environment, develop meaningful learning tools and
are mobilised to protect and deepen their knowledge of local heritage through
active and meaningful conservation. The space for democratic education provided
by museums is thus linked to the pupils’ own world, while at the same time tak-
ing advantage of the plurality of voices, latent in all classes, which enhances the
­educational potential (Dysth, et al., 2016).
 Case studies from southern Chile  61

FIGURE 3.3  Museo Escolar Hugo Günckel, La Aguada, 2019.  © Karin Weil.

Whether they are shaped or have been shaped by these museums, the people
who support these museums have done so because of their enthusiasm for, and
strong emotional connection with, the core principles behind them. The passion
and commitment that drives their work—their yearning and pain—is channelled
into preserving their communities, heritage and territory, and not only keeps them
aligned with the cause but also becomes part of their story.
From a classical economic standpoint, these museums exist thanks to the unpaid
efforts of the people in charge who feel a strong sense of commitment to the com-
munity. In Museo Escolar Hugo Günckel, the science teacher took over the running
of the museum as part of his role, including more responsibilities to his activities
and programmes. In the Neltume and Malalhue museums, this precariousness is
more extreme, since their managers receive no salary at all.

Unfair passion: inequalities in community-based museums

Here, I do not work to please the tourists, I work to meet the needs of my
­community. Here the tourist adapts to our activities.
—Lorena Carrillo, Biblioteca Municipal 332 BC1, Futrono, 2017

Even though the enthusiasm and strong feelings of those who brought these
­museums to life have caused these vibrant spaces to flourish and become the
62  Karin Weil et al.

cornerstones of their communities, this mobilising passion also promotes inequities

and inequalities. For example, they have perpetuated the marginalisation of these
spaces, along with already existing inequities and unequal gender roles. People
who saw the need for spaces that might resolve social, political, cultural and envi-
ronmental conflicts in their communities created the community-based museums
that we investigated. These people were driven by enthusiasm and emotion rather
than guided by the theoretical and practical knowledge associated with museum
disciplines (which, for the most part, they do not possess). Thus, through tenacity
and intuition, they have created spaces that are inadvertently marginalised from
official considerations of what a museum is.
Researchers at a community-based museum often do not document and follow
international guidelines and good practices; instead, they build the museum from the
personal and collective experience of their community. They do not investigate from
a place of academic or theoretical expertise, but from local histories and traditions.
Their administration practices developed from knowledge of the community, its
territory and heritage rather than a cultural management perspective. A community-
based museum recognises the value of its heritage and work in the community, its
experiences, its stories and memories. This work often sets such institutions apart
from formal museum practice, but not from the museum’s social role.
The marginalisation of community-based museums from national and interna-
tional public policies has serious effects on the perpetuation of inequities and ine-
qualities. Community-based museums exist outside the ICOM (2007) definition of
a museum; therefore, they are beyond official recognition. This marginalises them
from discussions on public policy, access to public funds and official recognition
of their collections—a situation that puts their heritage at risk and makes official
stories and memories even more dominant.
Researchers, curators and artists have been studying and bringing to light gen-
der inequalities in the cultural heritage context for decades. Since the 1980s, the
feminist group Guerrilla Girls has carried out many artistic interventions in the
world’s most popular cultural spaces and drawn attention to sexism in the world
of the arts and museums.3 Likewise, gender studies of heritage and museum cul-
ture have proliferated in recent years, revealing stereotypical representations of
women and a lack of representation in museum management positions (Turner,
2002). Even though the largest number of museum workers are women, the highest
leadership positions continue to be held mostly by men (Westerman, Schonfeld and
Sweeney, 2019).
Our study into community-based museums shows an opposite situation: most of
the managerial positions in the Los Ríos region are held by women. Although this
is good news, it obscures the perpetuation of associated injustices and stereotypes
in Western society in which the functions of caring and unconditional dedication
are typically carried out by women. The passion that helped to create these muse-
ums is the same passion that has perpetuated gender stereotypes and injustices in
the museums.
 Case studies from southern Chile  63

As Amaia Pérez Orozco and Sira del Río (2002) argue, in a system following
the logic of accumulation, social sustainability is not a priority. In such contexts,
women tend to act as agents of readjustment for the economic system, taking on
unpaid labour to ensure that needs are satisfied and living conditions improved.
Such gender inequalities have been maintained in the safeguarding of the identity,
memory and history of communities, like Neltume and Malalhue. In both cases,
Angélica Navarrete and Nerys Mora, respectively, have taken care of their commu-
nity, rescuing and strengthening their heritage, nurturing the relationships between
different actors, protecting traditions and keeping the community memory alive.
This ‘caretaker’ role is understood by them and their communities as a natural
and unconditional commitment. For years, the work they have carried out has not
been remunerated. At home and in the community, the work of those who care for,
protect, mediate and bring the community together seems taken for granted and
unvalued; yet, without their work, the museums would be less wide-ranging and
their communities less sustainable.
From a social sustainability perspective, in the Neltume and Malalhue territo-
ries, the effect of the community museums is undeniable. In Neltume, which was
deeply affected by human rights violations during the dictatorship, the museum has
pursued the healing of individual and collective trauma through various initiatives
that have broken the silence around the region’s historical trauma. During its early
years, Malalhue addressed the discrimination against Mapuche children, and once
that suffering had been healed, it dedicated itself to promoting intercultural values.4
These processes were only possible thanks to unpaid work. A sentimental
approach might celebrate the fact that the sustainability of a community museum
and its territory depends on passion and enthusiasm. From a more clear-eyed per-
spective, however, it can be seen as another expression of the sexual division of
labour, where care roles have historically fallen to women while the production
of goods for market is the domain of men. If care work is broadened beyond the
domestic sphere and if the care of sick people is to be understood as ‘activities
for the maintenance of life and health’ (Esteban and Otxoa, 2010), the work that
Angélica and Nerys carry out fits perfectly into this category of strong emotional
connection, invisibility and gratuitousness.
Considering that in geopolitically marginalised areas, such as Neltume and
Malalhue, museums must often transcend their traditional museological role to
bridge the social gap that neoliberal governments have failed to address, the role
of caring for a neglected community is even more demanding and inescapable. In
Malalhue, Nerys has alleviated the suffering of discriminated children, contributed
to the cultural recovery of the Mapuche people and pioneered intercultural educa-
tion practice. Angélica has created a space in Neltume where those who have never
been able to speak about the torture and death of their relatives are finally able to
do so; she has brought together a wounded community, vindicated the logging-
worker identity of the former inhabitants and made the value of women’s work
in the mountains visible. In community museums where the museum’s original
64  Karin Weil et al.

role has been transcended, therefore, women can be seen to have transcended their
stereotypical roles.
Besides not having intermediate objectives, such as obtaining benefits from
those mediated by the market, care work involves an emotional, affective and rela-
tional component, as Pérez Orozco (2014) explains: as long as a care work service
is provided, they include emotions. This emotional involvement makes it impos-
sible to find market substitutes; it requires managing multiple simultaneous tasks
and a versatility of knowledge (Pérez Orozco, 2014). In this sense, the gendered
inequality we have been discussing can also produce a position of privilege when it
comes to the construction of knowledge that has proven to be more in line with the
continuity of life. For this reason, any definition of sustainability has to take its lead
from women and take into account the culture of care (Pascual and Herrero, 2010).

The passionate communities mobilised by their museums

One time there was an oil spill in the fishery, which affected the entire bay
­coastline. There, for example, we went out to the field, we took samples and
linked them to the natural science class […]. This inquiry that was started by us,
which passed through the children, then reached the homes.
—Diego Oyarzo, Museo Escolar Hugo Günckel, La Aguada, 2018

Museums with a social role at their core are committed to their audiences; they
are inseparable from their territories and, therefore, from their communities’ con-
cerns. As we have verified in this research, the synergy between the museum and
its community arouses emotions that lead its members to commit deeply and pas-
sionately to these spaces. These passionate communities with their museums are,
without doubt, promoters of sustainability, adopting practices and defending their
territories, natural resources and community to promote harmonious coexistence
and generate spaces of trust and reflection. There are many examples of this in the
world, each with its own context. However, within the framework of this research,
we have observed that although there are many differences between community-
based museums, there is, at their core, an active commitment from the community
that stems from emotion.
For example, within the frame of the EU-LAC Museums project, we have col-
laborated with Valencia, Spain, where the team had prepared a proposal to develop
a project based on the Huerta de Valencia. The idea was to turn the territory, which
in symbolic, aesthetic, economic and cultural terms largely defines the Valencian
identity, into a museum. The Water Tribunal of the Plain of Valencia was included in
the proposal, along with the Council of Wise Men of the Plain of Murcia, which has
been defined as a relevant tourist attraction and was declared as Intangible Cultural
Heritage in 2007, thus acknowledging its status as one of the most deeply rooted
cultural traditions. The museum focuses on the distinctiveness of this regional
tradition of water management. It deals with locality from an interdisciplinary
 Case studies from southern Chile  65

approach, is the only space that can show the interaction between human culture
and natural environment over time and space, and illustrates the interdependence of
culture around a local model (Santacana i Mestre and Llonch Molina, 2008, p. 22).
Today, real estate speculation in the Huerta de Valencia region is a threat to the tra-
ditions rooted in agricultural activities, the distribution of water and farming fami-
lies. Industries have been closing down, and both human and animal migrations
are evident. The joint action between the community and the social organisations
has been key in making this threat visible, alerting the community and generating
a necessary movement to protect the community’s heritage. The local museum has
been the foundation of the so-called culture of campanilismo, that is, understand-
ing local history as ‘microhistory’. These museums have been transformed into
spaces of local struggle, starting with the recovery of the inhabitants’ stories and
memories in order that communities might understand the locality’s transformation
and respond to these changes. They provide meeting spaces, catharsis and local
reflection.
As the case studies of southern Chile and Valencia demonstrate, museums do
not exist in isolation from their territories. Rather, through active involvement in
their local contexts, they become instruments of social cohesion, networking and
vision for the future. They do this by taking into account the political and organisa-
tional ways in which new movements and identities are introduced, such as migra-
tion, cultural and social trends, and so on.
Turning to the case study of Peru (detailed in Chapter 6 of this edited book),
the museums selected for this research are mainly those related to archaeological
sites of great historical and heritage value, for which tourism and research are cen-
tral. They maintain a commitment to their local communities that has guided their
actions over the years, and although the situation in each institution is different, their
commitment speaks of a clear intention to create and strengthen regional identities,
to promote local development through education, and to enhance archaeological
and cultural heritage. To understand museum sustainability, we must remember its
relationship to how museums carry out conservation, research and the dissemina-
tion of cultural heritage. Their work is valued by local communities in a way that
helps them contribute to local development through direct action, which has an
immediate and tangible effect on the territory.
For our five selected museums from Chile, achieving sustainability is part of
a daily challenge to reconcile their responses to the challenges their communities
face, on the one hand, with their mission to preserve, communicate, investigate and
teach the various aspects of culture and local heritage, on the other. They can be
understood as agents of sustainable development and promoters of cultural change
in their respective contexts.
Emotions are expressed in the exhibits where objects effectively form a bond
with the community and have been established through different mechanisms,
including donation, the transference of stories and meaning, and the preparation
or documentation of objects. Our case studies illuminate this relationship. The
66  Karin Weil et al.

Museo Escolar Hugo Günckel in Aguada, Corral, works with science classes: the
students first encounter taxidermy exhibits of species, and then reflect on the ani-
mal, its habitat and value to the environment. The children themselves are guides
in the museum and are provided with technical knowledge related to conservation
or associated socio-environmental risks. In the end, they deliver a story with high
emotional content.
At the Museo Despierta Hermano in Malalhue, donations from the community
comprise the exhibits. Once someone makes a donation, the guide, Isabel Riveros,
registers not only its historical and technical characteristics but also the ‘feeling
with which the object arrives’.5 This is then transmitted to the public once the
object goes on display.

FIGURE 3.4 IsabelRiveros sharing the relevance of the objects at the Museo Despierta
Hermano, Malalhue, January 2019. © Karin Weil.
 Case studies from southern Chile  67

The community considers the museums that derive from the current wave of
new museology highly relevant, especially for living people and future genera-
tions. People donate objects to these trusted spaces, allowing them to build collec-
tions for the future. In response, these spaces support their communities, displaying
and valuing their significant objects. In February 2020, like every year, the Centro
Cultural Museo y Memoria de Neltume held a meeting of local guerrillas. This year
the meeting was particularly significant:

[the] first activity was an emotional reception ceremony, by the Centro ­Cultural
Museo y Memoria de Neltume, of some material fragments belonging to the
‘Pablo’ guerrilla, Raúl Rodrigo Obregón Torres, donated by the family to remain
in the museum’s memory and resistance room.
(Correa, 2020)

These are simple examples of how museums’ missions have changed profoundly.
Moreover, the traditional way of exhibiting objects and inviting the viewer to con-
template and inspect them has changed. What we observe in a museum today is not
unequivocally an object; rather, objects have been reconstructed as experiences in
themselves. Exhibits with an emotional value invite others to experience the com-
munities’ passions, promoting sustainability and the museum’s social function—
affection, enthusiasm and emotion encapsulated in a display case. H ­ owever, this
practice also raises questions about the value of objects, their legitimacy accord-
ing to different experiences. Today, museums proudly embrace an expanded
­educational mandate to stimulate and provoke curiosity (Hein, 2014, p. 6).
Those Latin American museums that are a product of the new museology
therefore fulfil a social role that also involves a degree of agency. In Norman
Long’s (2007, p. 50) terms, such agency is evident ‘when particular actions make
a difference in a pre-existing state of affairs or course of events’, with the under-
standing that ‘all forms of external intervention necessarily enter the ways of life
of the individuals and social groups affected, and in this way, they are mediated
and transformed by these same actors and their structures’. Thus, one would view
a museum as an agent of change and its related community as actors—‘active
participants who receive and interpret information and design strategies in their
relationships with various local actors, and with external institutions and their
personnel’ (Long, 2007, p. 43). The museum can then be understood as a place
from which to observe and analyse the structural dynamics at play in certain
territories, and the social outcomes delivered by museology. The case studies
we have discussed lead us to conclude that sustainability refers to the quality of
living systems. Moreover, these museums, examined using a new museological
framework, represent the heterogeneity, principles and practices promoted by
the New Museum movement. In effect, they reveal a social function empirically
developed: one which is not perfect, but instead acknowledges the fragility of
human experience.
68  Karin Weil et al.

This fragility, dependent on the affection and enthusiasm of its founders,

becomes a threat to the sustainability of community-based museums whose com-
munities are not as passionate as they are. The museums discussed in this chap-
ter were built on the stories and personal memories of those who brought them to
life. Their connection with their managers is not merely a professional relationship,
therefore, but a deeply personal one in which the managers’ own histories and per-
sonal experiences play a leading role in sustaining these spaces. What happens when
the future generations do not connect with the enthusiasm and the social needs that
gave life to the museum in the first place? What happens, furthermore, when the
museum reflects the emotions and passions of a generation, but not a community?
In short, the museum becomes weaker when its foundational managers are no longer
involved; this brings into question the museum’s endurance over time. We suggest
that when that happens, its social function will be lost, and the museum will cease to
contribute to the sustainability of its community, territory and heritage.

Transmitting and spreading enthusiasm for the sustainability of

community-based museums
We are our memory,
we are that chimerical museum of inconstant forms,
that pile of broken mirrors.
(Borges, 1974, p. 125)

Humans have a deep need to belong to and to identify with a community; they have
a need to share feelings. Museums, mainly small- to medium-scale institutions or
those in marginal sectors—including community museums, social museums, local
museums or community-based museums—develop local heritage initiatives with a
strong communal commitment to create their own narratives to reconcile the past
and the present. Each of these museums propose unique forms of participation
seeking to co-construct memories associated with the contexts in which they are
located, giving meaning to their territories and strengthening the polyphonic net-
works of history. Working with history, heritage and memory is, above all, an act
of interpretation. Determining and communicating the ‘truth’ of what has happened
is also an exercise of power over the past and future.
The invitation extended by the Round Table of Santiago de Chile in 1972, along
with the recommendations developed by the New Museum movement, called for
a commitment from the territories and their communities to respond to social and
political change. This call invested these museums with a social function, a cross-
sectional purpose to their activities, helping them to contribute to the building of
a better life for everyone.
The relevance of invoking the Round Table and its declaration about ‘the
importance and development of museums’ lies in conceiving and positioning the
museum as a living, dynamic space at the service of sustainable development. This
 Case studies from southern Chile  69

is necessary and urgent since, beyond the enthusiastic and committed efforts of
those who establish and run them, museums are subject to precarious technical,
institutional and financial conditions that undermine their ability to fulfil the noble
purposes laid out in Santiago in 1972. As we have argued, the same affections and
passions that give life to these spaces often render them uncomfortable for certain
sectors of the ruling classes because they are outside the official sphere. This dis-
comfort can prompt those with power to make these museums invisible, thus negat-
ing their social role and the effort, enthusiasm and dedication that the managers use
to keep their communities’ voices and memories alive.
Yet, even as affections and passions can pose a risk to the museum and its social
role, they also save them from oblivion, from disappearance. As these spaces spread
and transmit the passion that engendered them, the link between the community-
based museum and its community is renewed and strengthened. The museum’s
social role, as dynamic as societies and cultures themselves, is reaffirmed in the
affections of each community, in the memories that create and recreate history
and in the enthusiasm and sense of belonging that unite them. It is through these
dynamics that the centrality and reach of the museum’s social role is maintained,
and a museum becomes sustainable, as well as an agent of change in a territory.
The challenge, ultimately, is permanence. The mission of a community-based
museum must be constantly reviewed to incorporate means of sustaining and
renewing the bond with its community, and to consider the present as well as the
past. It must bring everyday experiences and challenges back to life, chart the his-
tory of the present, involve new generations of the community and remain open
to 21st-century solutions and formats. It should provide a space for dialogue and
reflection that might enable communities to face the ‘instant of danger’, that is,
to meet the challenges and commitment of sustainable and inclusive develop-
ment. These objectives should be central to the museum and its practices. Indeed,
a museum project’s success in this regard will determine the transformation of its
environment and its social sustainability.
Thinking about sustainability parameters such as economic, social and environ-
mental, alone may render invisible those mechanisms that have allowed c­ ommunity
museums to be sustained over time. Seeking to fulfil such criteria in isolation would
present many challenges since, by definition, the sustainability of these museums is
the product of shared interests and collaboration between communities and manag-
ers of natural, material and intangible heritage. Therefore, there should be as many
ways to define and measure sustainability as there are situations in real life that
perfect the art of living, rather than the march of progress.

Notes
1 Adapted from the authors’ presentation at Itinerant Identities, the International Museum
Conference, 7–9 November 2018, University of the West Indies, Barbados.
2 Audience has been a very well-researched topic within museum studies in recent years.
See McSweeney and Kavanagh (2016), Lang and Reeve (2017) and Longair (2015).
70  Karin Weil et al.

3 Their projects include their iconic and well-known interventions, ‘Do women have to
be naked to get into the Met. Museum?’ (1989) and ‘The advantages of being a woman
­artist’ (1988), which can be seen here: [Link] [­Accessed
23 August 2020].
4 For more information, see the video Museo Despierta Hermano here: [Link]
[Link]/watch?v=CDhzqQbmdN8 [Accessed 23 August 2020].
5 Isabel Riveros, conversation, 2018.

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pp. 210–31.
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11 November, 2021).
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4
MUSEUMS AND COMMUNITY
ENGAGEMENT IN BELIZE
Case studies for protection and active
participation of knowledge

Sherilyne Jones

Belize is a former British colony, geographically located in Central America, but

has its roots in the Anglophone Caribbean. With Mexico as a northern neighbour,
Guatemala to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the eastern border, the country has
a unique historical context. Historian Nigel Bolland (2003) asserts that Belize’s
history is intrinsically linked to the Caribbean, especially Jamaica, and that

the settlement at Belize was so small and dependent on Jamaica and the rest
of the British Colonial system, that its version of slavery was inevitably affected
by the cultural traditions and legal structures which has been well established
on the islands.

This perspective, combined with a recent surge in immigrants to the country, has sig-
nificantly altered the multicultural society, challenging its discourse on national iden-
tity. As the country embarks on its fourth decade of independence from Great Britain,
in the context of nation building, it is now home to an uncommonly large number of
very distinct ethnic groupings. It must therefore grapple with the difficult challenge
of integrating those differences into a single, homogenous society. Watson asserts that

As nations become more multicultural and governments struggle to balance the

need for national unity with the idea of the toleration of the differences, muse-
ums become arenas where concepts of what it is to belong with a nation are
explored and made explicit.
(2007)

This also applies to Belize, where there is a perceived erosion of cultural herit-
age and national identity. The values upheld by its residents are based on how

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-6
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
 Museums and community engagement in Belize  73

museums’ work contributes to historical consciousness, and attempts to construct

a nation are currently stymied.
A critical understanding of how best to curate its history through museums,
achieving a balance between cultures, nation building, and mitigation of the global
ecumene, becomes critical for the preservation and development of Belize’s cul-
tures. According to Watson, ‘National Identity has been one of the preferred and
privileged forms of identity in the modern world and continues to exert a powerful
influence in the way museums represents communities’ (2007). Communities and
the way the nation identifies, acknowledges and collaborates with these groups
becomes a critical factor which, in effect, determines the success of the museum
programmes and activities. Anderson alludes to this by suggesting that ‘Muse-
ums are tools by which nations “imagine themselves”’ (1983). Richard Fortey, the
­British palaeontologist and writer, stated in his book, The Secret Life of the Natural
History Museum, ‘I believe profoundly in the importance of museums; I would go
as far as to say that you can judge a society by the quality of its museums’. From
my experience, I concluded that museums validate the quality of our societies and
are repositories that assist humanity in its regressive reflection and self-validation,
while providing the ability to not only appreciate our past but also to hope for
a brighter and unified future.
The Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary defines culture as ‘… the customs
and beliefs, art, way of life and social organization of a particular country’. What
we refer to as culture, in the simplest sense, is essentially an account of people
and their collective values. With an increase in the immigrant population, added to
its unique collective history, Belize was forced into an identity crisis and culture
dilemma. Shoman (1995) writes,

our national culture is not defined simply by the fact that we are a people made
up of various ethnic groups who came to this land at different times in response
to various historical processes, but it is a direct result of defining effects of colo-
nialism and its citizenry’s reaction to colonialism.

He goes on to assert that ‘the colonial strategy of a divide, and subdivide rule
ensured, that on the one hand, our various cultures remained largely isolated and on
the other hand the “colonizer’s” culture remained dominant’. The need for change,
transformation and movement to transcend from a colonial society to that of an
independent nation would only be accomplished through the implementation of
an engaging educational and cultural programme. In this context, focus on the
ongoing narrative of how people lived, interacted with each other and expressed
themselves in a post-independent Belize became paramount. Culture and the com-
munities in which we lived defined the new citizens.
Prior to independence, avenues for cultural and artistic expression were mostly
missing in Belize. While a small number of Belizeans would rise to prominence
during the artistic revolution of the 1970s, this surge would be short lived. After
74  Sherilyne Jones

independence, the demands of nation building, addressing the social needs of the
country, poverty alleviation, providing housing and health care for people, over-
shadowed further investments in the arts. With the introduction of television in
1983, ‘the degeneration, devaluation and de-evolution of authentically Belizean
culture’ occurred (Shoman, 1995). Prior to independence, the country’s historical
records reflected the views of the coloniser, and post-independence, little or no
Indigenous art was available or on display for the citizenry to appreciate. Televi-
sion brought a new genre of entertainment for the citizens of the young nation
of Belize. The Western way of dressing, speaking, consumerism and proliferation
of a capitalistic society streamed into living rooms across the country. Traditional
entertainment, such as cultural and artistic representations at the annual Festival
of Arts, plays portraying everyday life and cricket games, was replaced with lei-
sure activities and TV programmes coming from the United States. The inundation
of US television programmes was swift and prolific, at a time when Belizeans
would have benefitted greatly from coming together to develop a national identity.
Youths began to emulate the MTV culture of North America, and little or no effort
was placed on safeguarding Belize’s authentic culture, nor were there community
engagement programmes for people to participate in.
The adverse effect of television would go unabated during the 1980s and 1990s,
until cultural pioneers started teaching drama in schools, collaborating with the
Ministry of Education to include art education in the school curriculum. In essence,
community engagement in Belize began in this rudimentary form given the fact
that the country did not have a museum. According to Dodd and Sandell, ‘Muse-
ums can deliver benefits to communities in specific neighbourhoods and locations,
as well as individuals. The outcomes in this area include community capacity
building, whereby communities learn competencies and develop both the ability
and confidence to change’ (2001).
Administering culture without the mechanisms in place would prove challeng-
ing but the individuals driving the cultural revitalisation would be undeterred.
Through initiatives like the development of the Museum of Belize, communities
became once again empowered to effect change in their society and the apprecia-
tion of culture increased into the late 1990s.
Museums play an important role as custodians of cultural heritage. Traditionally
their prime function has been to gather, preserve and study objects. Community
engagement then enables museums to get access to the community and become
sustainable through feedback, ideas, views, new insights and relevance. It provides
an opportunity for people living in such communities to find out about their own
heritage and to help them realise that their active participation in museum activities
helps to keep it alive for future generations. Museums are a relatively new con-
cept in Belize, with the National Museum of Belize opening in 2002 only. In fact,
given the low visitation to the museum and by extension the country’s archaeologi-
cal sites, the perception is that Belizeans are not in the habit of or accustomed to
­visiting cultural spaces.
 Museums and community engagement in Belize  75

Unlike its Caribbean counterparts, who were able to build on the foundations of
early preservation and museums establishment, Belize is in a precarious position
from which to develop the museum institution and guide the discourse necessary
for future museum developments in the 21st century. The pervasive ‘melting pot
dialogue’, questions of ‘cultural identity’ and ‘loss of heritage assets’ are a continu-
ous challenge for the young nation. Recognising the disparity of ideologies and
growing disconnect with the community, it became critical that avenues for cultural
and heritage expression be holistically addressed. This was achieved with relative
success in 2016 with the development and implementation of Belize’s National
Cultural Policy (NCP), whose objective is ‘fostering and providing an enabling
environment for the development of a cultural industry that can be harnessed to
address issues of national identity’. Ultimately, for cultural revival to be success-
ful, the process had to begin with an appreciation of one’s own unique culture. This
can be achieved by raising awareness among Belizeans of the importance of their
cultural heritage. This will lead to the development of values and allows for sys-
tematic safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage, promotion and preservation of
heritage assets.
In an effort to foster a cohesive environment for cultural development, the
Belizean government conceptualised the idea of Houses of Culture (HOCs) to
complement the national museum. HOCs are small eco-museums, which provide
open and accessible cultural spaces in district towns, where the responsibility of
preservation, transmission, promotion of art exhibitions and cultural characteris-
tics is community driven. HOCs act as intermediaries for the Museum of Belize,
which allows for community participation, access and engagement with resources
that promote cultural development, which may otherwise be inaccessible to local
communities. These spaces engage sectors of society who would not ordinarily
visit a museum or even understand or appreciate the traditional concepts. Due to
the grassroots nature of engagement, their level of support can vary, according to
community needs. With inspiration from the Cuban model of ‘Casas de Cultura’,
HOCs provided cultural spaces that were of benefit to the community and became
neutral spaces in which the constituents and cultural stakeholders accessed free of
charge arts and culture in all is forms. The mandate and mission of these HOCs is
to inspire artists, artisans and individuals to explore their creativity in the fields of
music, and creative and visual arts.
Similarly, the Gulisi Garifuna Museum is considered a cultural landmark for
the Garifuna people and the people of Belize. Garifunas are the descendants of
an Afro-Indigenous population from the Caribbean Island of St. Vincent, who
were exiled to the Honduran coast in the 18th century. Following their exile from
St. ­Vincent1, Garinagus2 migrated to the mainland of present-day Honduras, arriv-
ing at the coastal fort of Trujillo, Atlantic coast of Honduras, and continued to
populate the coastline of Guatemala, Belize and Nicaragua. In Belize, the original
­settlements were established south of the Sibun River, which until 1859 was the
southern border of the British Settlement at the mouth of the Belize River. By
76  Sherilyne Jones

the 1950s, there were five Garifuna settlements, including the towns of Dangriga
and Punta Gorda, and the villages of Barranco, Seine Bight and Hopkins, which
have remained predominantly Garifuna. In 1981, a non-governmental organisation
called The National Garifuna Council of Belize (NGC) was established. The NGC
promotes economic growth and opportunity for the Garinagu people in Belize
while also working to preserve, maintain and develop the Garifuna culture. To
protect and advocate on behalf of Garifuna people in the country, the mission of the
NGC is ‘to promote the cultural identity, economic development and general well-
being of the Garifuna People as well as interracial harmony, through means that
ensure the sustainability of the organization, being mindful of the responsibility to
protect the environment’. The NGC was instrumental in the development of the
Gulisi Museum, whose core mission includes the collection of Garifuna objects,
art, artefacts and literary materials that visually demonstrate the Garifuna history.
When the Gulisi Garifuna Museum opened in 2004, two years after the Museum
of Belize, it was heralded as groundbreaking. Not only did the country now have
a national museum but also the development of a Garifuna Museum was timely
because the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) had in 2001 declared Garifuna Language, Music and Dance ‘Master-
pieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’. There was every expec-
tation that this museum would bring new energy and vitality to the already rich
culture and traditions of the Garifuna people in Belize. The museum would be
a place to showcase Garifuna art, music and dance through exhibitions, workshops
and summer courses in the Garifuna language; a place where Belizean youth could
learn about Garifuna history.
The museum was named after ‘Gulisi’, the daughter of Paramount Chief Joseph
Chatoyer, who arrived in Dangriga from St. Vincent via Roatan, Trujillo and
Puerto Cortez. She was one of the first Garifuna women to arrive and settle in the
­Dangriga-Commerce Bight area. She came along with her 13 sons, who carried
the surname Lambey, some of whom were the first to settle in the many ­Garifuna
settlements in Belize. She would have arrived in the 1820s, and many family
groups in all Garifuna communities descended from her. Her story was transcribed
as oral history from her granddaughter’s granddaughter, Felicita Francisco, by
Dr. Joseph O. Palacio and was the inspiration for the naming of the Gulisi Museum
in ­Dangriga. To date, the Gulisi Garifuna Museum stands as the latest addition to
the expanding cultural landscape of Belize and a space accessible to all for expres-
sion and cultural understanding.
While the country did not have a national museum prior to 2002, it was not
totally void of cultural offerings. In efforts to express their own identity in a multi-
ethnic society, community members often explored and interpreted their history
through their own lens and voices to safeguard what was most important to them.
This was true of Luba Garifuna Museum, which was opened on 5 November 1999,
by proprietor Sebastian Cayetano or ‘Mr. Caye’ as he is affectionately known. He is
one of 13 siblings, is a retired historian, author, educator and linguist – fluent in five
 Museums and community engagement in Belize  77

languages – a fact very few people are aware of. Retiring after 27 years as a teacher
in 2004, his conceptual idea to develop a museum had taken root. The goal was to
use his 30-year collection of Garifuna implements and artefacts he had amassed
throughout his various travels abroad and in Belize.
The main goal of the museum was to provide the wider populace with knowledge
about Garifuna culture and to ensure that Garinagus keep their language and origins
alive given the growing multi-ethnic society. In visiting the tiny museum space, which
is situated on the ground level of his home, Mr. Cayetano passionately relays stories
from the elders about the Garifuna’s rich cultural history, and the resilience, strength
and perseverance of his people in the face of cultural genocide. This obscure museum
informs visitors of Garifuna culture through the display of items used in a typical
Garifuna household, effectively safeguarding their history by actively engaging the
community through grassroots activities, without any financial support from the
State. The success of Luba Garifuna Museums affirms what Karp (1991) asserts: it
is the individuals that are responsible for a museum’s mission, core values and work.
Mr ­Cayetano’s emic perspective and passion for his culture plays a significant role in
what is exhibited for public consumption and presented to the community.
This success is in contrast with the impact of the Gulisi Garifuna Museum.
While government funding was provided for showcasing the rich cultural herit-
age of the Garifuna people, this museum has failed to capture the interest of the
general public who believed that the museum ‘appeared static, cold and uninviting,
with the same displays from its initial opening in 2004’.3 While the museum does
provide an educational outlet to students on school visits or by Belizean diaspora,
the majority of the populace do not see its relevance to their lives, and many people
in the other district towns and villages have never visited. The location on the out-
skirts of the town of Dangriga also created a barrier for accessibility for individuals
who did not have transportation. Ultimately, for the Gulisi Museum a new relation-
ship with visitors and the community needed to be developed, from a top-down
model of management to a more community-driven partnership. While the Gulisi
provided exhibitions from the expert perspective, the community stakeholders
were missing from its curatorial practices. As the catalyst for regeneration initia-
tives, the agency responsible for culture partnered with Gulisi to establish a HOC
within the museum. The Stann Creek’s HOC enabled an ‘open dialogue between
people and engage their enthusiasm and commitment to a shared redevelopment
process’, while providing the necessary tools to successfully assist in ‘developing
the capacity of local communities to address their own needs’ (Sandell Karp 1992:
12, 2007). The HOC created an enabling environment for community members to
provide input into the programmes that were important to them, as well as collabo-
rating in heritage and preservation initiatives.
This model of community engagement demonstrates that community mem-
bers are actively involved in safeguarding their intangible and tangible heritage
in alignment with the Belize’s cultural policy, developed in 2016, which states
that the government shall ‘Provide information and facilitate access by national
78  Sherilyne Jones

and community organisations, custodians and practitioners of intangible cultural

heritage to the International Fund for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage
that provides international assistance towards effective safeguarding of the intan-
gible cultural heritage’ (Belize National Cultural Policy, 2006:7). The successful
engagement and participation that are at the core of HOCs infer that based on their
individual characteristics, they are more effective than the mainstream Western
concept of museums. While each HOC is unique in its conceptual development
and community engagement, as each represents different areas of the country and
the varying ethnicities of the community, they remain close to the eco-museum
concept developed by Hugues de Varine in the 1960s. Luba Garifuna Museum and
the HOCs have successfully empowered community leaders to be more active in
the dissemination of cultural traditions to younger generations. Theodore Low sug-
gests that ‘museums must be willing to alter and to modify their internal structures
and their ideas to fit a changing world and the advances of social thought’ (2004).
In the Dangriga, known as the ‘culture capital of Belize’, the Gulisi Museum
along with the HOC have been successful in preserving these cultural traditions
and creating a welcoming environment for the community, by working in tandem
with the Stann Creek HOC. This collaborative effort enabled the development of
empowerment initiatives for the community spearheaded by elders by facilitat-
ing ‘an enabling, creative, perhaps less threatening forum through which commu-
nity members could gain the skills and confidence required to take control and
play an active, self-determining role in their community’s future’ (Sandell, 2007).
The museum helps sustain Garifuna heritage through drumming and dance pro-
grammes, especially during summer camps and specialised workshops targeting
youths. The fact that these activities can take place outside the museum space aids
heritage preservation, in collaboration with the community, and increases the suc-
cessful retrieval and conservation of the local heritage, while maintaining tradi-
tional knowledge. These extra-mural activities are supported by the presence of
Gulisi Garifuna Primary School which is located adjacent to the museum and Gari-
funa monument grounds. The Gulisi Community Primary School is trailblazing
and unique, as it is the first school in Belize to combine traditional knowledge-
based programmes with the Curriculum of the Ministry of Education. This is done
through intercultural trilingual education programmes that teach English, Spanish
and Garifuna to students, which allows for active transmission of Garifuna cultural
heritage with that of the structured government system.
In these examples, by relinquishing control of how Gulisi’s programming is
administered, the State, through the Museum of Belize, grants community leaders
‘decision-making opportunities’ to promote their history and provides opportunities
where they became the collaborator rather than the agency of authority and allow
for structured guidance rather than control of community initiatives. The action of
teaching the Garifuna language and its cultural traditions to Garifuna youths has
become a source of community pride and will help to guarantee the safeguarding
of this heritage for generations to come. Other successful e­ xamples coming from
 Museums and community engagement in Belize  79

the Gulisi, and the HOC collaboration, saw the introduction of drum making
­­ and
drumming lessons to the children by the elders in the community (­Figure 4.1).
A significant part of Garifuna life and culture is music, song and dance, and this
is demonstrated in Garifuna celebrations and festivals. Most G ­ arifuna songs
and dances illustrate their history and culture. The drum is especially significant
because it is directly connected to their African ancestry and consists of two main
types: the Primero (tenor) and Segunda (bass). Roy Cayetano, Garifuna Linguistic
Anthropologist and former Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Rural Devel-
opment and Culture (2001–2007), explains that:

In ritual, we have three drums, and those drums symbolize the totality of
­ arifuna life: past, present and future. And they play their part in represent-
G
ing the Garifuna world view, the Garifuna cosmology, if you will. In secular
life we generally use the Primero and the Segundo to play the various types of
music that we use for festive occasions. And when I say festive occasions of
course I don’t just mean fun times because we also mask our grief, our sorrows,
our burdens in song and dance. […] The present incorporating the past and the
future emerging from the present.

These models demonstrate the direct correlation between the community and the
museum. The community saw the interest in developing these cultural revival ini-
tiatives, and actively worked and campaigned to ensure that elders were available
to teach not only how to make the drums but also the importance of drumming for
specific activities in their culture. This intangible culture is showcased through
events, outreach programmes, activities or museum displays in which the materi-
ality of the objects is downplayed, and their meaning, value or use is given prec-
edence (Varutti, 2013). This is also reflected in Luba Garifuna Museum where the
main aim is cultural preservation through practising heritage. This is obvious in
the relatively low priority given to the cataloguing or conservation of objects com-
pared to other museum functions. While there are displays in all the HOCs coun-
trywide, small eco-museums, like Luba, are focused on the stimulation of locally
based cultural and creative initiatives that benefit the community, empower partici-
pants and encourage curiosity, openness and tolerance towards different cultures
and traditions. Community engagement then bridges the gap between the govern-
ment and the constituents they serve by allowing a more participatory approach to
programmes and activities.
This symbiotic approach to managing authority and the community is demon-
strated in the revival of the Habinahan Wanáragua Jankunu Festival in the Stann
Creek District in southern Belize. This district has the largest concentration of
active Garinagu communities. Green asserts that:

today, the Garifuna exist as arguably the only people of African descent to
escape the physical and psychological chattels of slavery, intermix with Native
80  Sherilyne Jones

Americans in the Caribbean, develop and maintain an Indigenous language and

corpus of postmortem propitiation rituals and dance-song genres, and endure
numerous attempts at racial annihilation and cultural genocide.
(2018)

The Habinahan Wanáragua, which translates to ‘mask’, is a dance rite ritual also
known as Jankunu, usually performed during the Christmas season up until the
Epiphany on 6 January. According to Green, it is a unique synthesis of three
cultural traditions: (1) African harvest festivals, ancestor rituals and secret soci-
eties, (2) English mummer’s plays and (3) Amerindian (Arawak and Carib)
festivals.4

FIGURE 4.1  Habinahan Wanáragua Dancers. Image © JC Cuellar Photography

 Museums and community engagement in Belize  81

He further explains that this ‘masquerade dance is of great social and festive
importance and has evolved throughout the Caribbean for the last 200 years due to
its pomp, pageantry, elegance and finesse’ (Greene, 2018). The dance is tradition-
ally performed by men, whose mask and costumes replicated British militia. Their
costumes involve elaborate headdresses complete with feathers and mirrors, and
they wear bands of shells around their knees with white shirts and black or white
pants. Usually, black, green or pink ribbons cross their chests depending on the
time of year the dance is done (Figure 4.2).
The Habinahan Wanáragua is one of the few dances where the drummers follow
the dancer’s movements, and not the dancer dancing to the beat of the drum, which

FIGURE 4.2 
Male dancer at the annual Junior Habinahan Wanáragua Competition held
in the culture capital, Dangriga Town. Image © JC Cuellar Photography
82  Sherilyne Jones

allows for an exciting show of skill by both the dancer and the drummer. Accord-
ing to an article by Rommen and Neely, it is the most difficult of Garifuna dance-
song genres for both dancers and drummers. This significance was discussed by
Roy Cayetano, who highlighted the impetus for the development of the Wanáragua
­festival in a conversation he had:

When I approached the then President of the National Institute of Culture

& ­History (NICH) in November 2010 regarding some support to establish
­Habinahan Wanáragua she acceded saying that NICH was encouraging the
development of a major festival in each district.5

With funding from both the National Institute of Culture & History (NICH) and the
National Garifuna Council, the inaugural edition was critical to the establishment
of Habinahan Wanáragua, and the NICH has continued to fund the event. Cayetano
goes on to illustrate how NICH was able to provide participatory opportunities in
the community. He states,

The case of Habinahan Wanáragua illustrates that NICH can and does have an
impact on the development of Arts and Culture in Belize. It does this through
a judicious and strategic use of the resources available to it. In this case, the
art form or cultural phenomenon to be developed as well as the means to be
employed for its development and promotion was determined by the commu-
nity, not NICH.

In supporting the festival, NICH was successful in aligning its core values with its
mission, thus making the organisation relevant and essential to the community it
serves (Simon, 2010). Cayetano asserts that this type of civic engagement is the
reason for which NICH was first conceived:

This is in keeping with the conclusions of the series of consultations that eventu-
ally gave rise to the establishment of NICH. The thinking was that Government
had no business determining the direction that cultural development should take
and that it was the people, the community, that should do that. NICH would
therefore be removed from direct government control and be established with
a view to ensuring that the control, the choice, resided with the people, the
community.

This example and others from the various HOCs throughout Belize illustrate the
type of civic engagement that makes the Houses successful and true to the Cuban
model. It demonstrates that government should not determine the direction that
cultural development should take, but rather the people, and the community, should
be responsible for that. The safeguarding programmes illustrate how the approach
to museum management and community engagement differs in Belize compared
 Museums and community engagement in Belize  83

to its Western counterparts. There is greater emphasis on intangible heritage,

‘essentially the orality, transience, rhythm and vibrancy which overlays Caribbean
cultures’ (Cummins, 2012). Cummins advocates that ‘the majority of signifiers
of Caribbean identity, whether cultural or national, cannot be reflected through
the material culture or physical heritage alone […] but is perhaps most strongly
expressed in the intangible’ (2012). By decentralising access to culture, through the
development of the HOCs and in supporting small museums like Luba Garifuna
Museum and Gulisi Museum, government control was removed and the choice
resided with the people and the community. The very fact that these museums exist
and represent a marginally underrepresented portion of the population is signifi-
cant. Sebastian Cayetano notes that ‘while Belize has now fully embraced the Gari-
funa culture, there continues to be a strong need to address the economic plight of
our people’. Through his museum, he urges Garinagu, ‘never, ever to abandon their
language and their roots and to continue – to teach the language and to teach the
culture to all Belizeans and that way, we preserve everything for all of Belize and
for the world’ (Amandala Newspaper).
There is a varying degree of disparity as to the perception of what the muse-
um’s role should be in our society; definitions of the museum have evolved over
the years, and the current view of the museum is not static and varies around the
world. Christina Kreps remarks that the ‘non-Western models of museums and
curatorial practices have value as unique cultural expressions, and as examples
of human cultural diversity. But they also have much to contribute to our under-
standing of museological behaviour cross-culturally’ (2011). Kosinski expounds
by stating that ‘Museums and cultural institutions have long acted as a sort of glue,
binding disparate individuals together through a shared interest in art, culture, and
the humanities’ (2020). Boasting high visitation no longer suffices, and museums
must engage their constituents with innovative programming that is relevant to
the communities they serve. In Belize, the HOC model and the autonomy of pri-
vate small eco-­museums demonstrates this with remarkable success, as community
members actively participate in safeguarding the intangible and tangible aspects of
their ­history for the specific ethnic group or municipality.
In these examples, community engagement began at the grassroots level, and
there was a direct correlation with the community, the museums and the govern-
ment’s HOCs. Without the HOCs, a large portion of the population would not
otherwise visit the museum or have any interest or see relevance to their lives.
As museums move towards becoming more socially conscience agents, these
examples provide a good illustration in which the visitor’s role in the museum has
­transcended to that of ‘community activists’. In this context, the term ‘community’
refers to a group of individuals with a shared history and interest, a network that
offered a sense of belonging to its participants and is reminiscent of the 1960s,
when social institutions were challenged by Indigenous Peoples to have their
voices and views heard (Smith and Waterton, 2009: 13–14), and which gave rise to
the new concept of community and their role within museums.
84  Sherilyne Jones

As with the term museum, ‘community’ has posed as much of a challenge in

trying to determine a meaning. It is obvious that the meaning is difficult to define
given the broad range of what communities represent. Aside from being an abstract
grouping of people with shared characteristics, it also refers to a sense of belonging
to a group, common experiences and specific characteristics of language, religion,
ethnicity or other cultural markers (Crooke). Roy Cayetano considers community
in the Belize context to mean the

group of persons who have a common interest in the creation, preservation,

promotion or enjoyment of a particular art form or cultural manifestation. There
may be different groups/communities each with a different focus but combined
they also make up the wider community of stakeholders.

Yasser Musa, a Belizean visual artist, teacher, poet, publisher and former President
of NICH, is on the opposite end of the spectrum and views the community as

a destination we want to reach, not a just a state of being. Let me make an

­analogy. As a teacher, I see a 13-year-old youth in front of me, but his state
of mind, his spirit, and his attitude toward learning and life is not static. So,
I am not just teaching him for the now, but for what he can become. So, in my
mind, the real client in education is not the student, but the future student, the
future self-directed, self-motivated learner. And this is how I see community
and community engagement. We need to be open and expansive to the notion
of ­community. It is a wide sea, where many boats must be launched into. And
those floating vessels will best carry art into the imagination of society (YM).

Upon further examination, the term ‘community’ provides an enlightening exposé

into what it means to be a part of community. No longer can community be considered
simply as a homogeneous unit, that it is necessarily geographically based (‘local’),
that it has long established roots, with characteristics that are easily recognizable
or even that communities are ‘real’ (Anderson 2006: 6). Instead, communities are
more heterogeneous, ever-changing and dynamic. In a society, a person can belong to
multiple communities simultaneously, knowingly or unknowingly and ‘membership
of a community may be fleeting, partial, or innate, lifelong, and unshakeable, often
irrelevant of an individual’s wishes’ (Onciul 2013: 81). This is not to say that the term
has no value but that the notion is not one to accept uncritically (Crooke 2011: 183):

This range suggests that community is a word that alters in different contexts
in an almost chameleon-like fashion. For some, this point would be grounds to
dismiss the idea of community as outdated, vague, and of little use. However, no
matter how forcefully an argument of redundancy may be presented, one cannot
dismiss the frequency of the use of the word and therefore its importance.
(Ibid.: 173)
 Museums and community engagement in Belize  85

This importance is underscored in the way museums apply the term community.
Rather than narrowly categorising audiences on statistical data only (demograph-
ics of age, gender, local/tourist), museums must now apply community to a much
broader investigation of audiences. Understanding the constituents that make
up their audiences will assist museums in developing more targeted and inclu-
sive programmes and activities. Luba Garifuna Museum is well placed to apply
these ­principles as its mission is specifically geared to the transmission of knowl-
edge and engagement to preserve the craft techniques, music and dance of the
Garifuna people.
However, the knowledge of ‘the community’ does not necessarily make it easier
to plan museum activities, as many visitors ‘belong to many communities, often
simultaneously’, but if museums focus on specific communities, they will provide
museum services that are better suited to specific target groups. This is far from
a perfect model, and there is room for improvement, particularly in the manner
museums interact with communities. Several museums tend to focus on specific
ethnic groups while ignoring other, perhaps disenfranchised, local communities,
thus creating an imbalance in the voices that are being heard (Karp et al., 1992:
12). Additionally, a major judgement error by museums occurs in the assumption
that, in collaborating or co-curating with community members, those members or
individuals represent the collective whole, when this may not necessarily be the
case. Gulisi Museum addresses this through the partnership with Gulisi Commu-
nity ­Primary School, where the curriculum instruction is done in both English and
­Garifuna, thereby supporting the language programmes and connecting the wider
community with cultural knowledge and skills.
Given the Caribbean’s ethnic diversity, it is challenging to effectively represent
diverse communities invested in its museums. Rex Nettleford notes that:

the encounter of Africa and Europe on foreign soil and these in turn with the
indigenous Native Americans on their long-tenanted estates and all in turn with
latter-day arrivants from Asia and the Middle East, has resulted in a culture of
texture and diversity.
(2003)

Cummins (1992: 37–38) asserts that the problem many museums in the Carib-
bean face is a lack of focus on the Indigenous cultural heritage, and failing to
correlate that heritage with the descendants of the living communities. This rela-
tionship between museums and source communities must move beyond consulta-
tion and collaboration to that of partnerships in which both parties share power. In
other words, museums must ensure that their programmatic activities are inclusive
and pertinent and that their voices are reflected in the narratives. This will only
be achieved if communities are consulted and provided a platform to contribute
and provide input in the processes of exhibition development and safeguarding of
their culture. Both Garifuna museums in Belize demonstrate that this relationship
86  Sherilyne Jones

moved beyond consultations and illustrates the successes of individual and/or

­community interest in heritage preservation initiatives. The power relations within
the museum space were redefined, and their approach included shared authority
and a re-examination of ownership and curatorship. These spaces were not only
places where heritage is kept, and disseminated, but also are spaces for the com-
munity to recreate their heritage and memorialise histories for future generations.

Notes
1 St. Vincent is known as Yurumein in the Garifuna language.
2 Oliver Greene notes that the term ‘Garinagu’ is a term which refers to ‘the people as
a whole, whereas the term Garifuna refers to the language, the culture, and a person in
the singular form’ (2002: 189). Today, Garinagu are commonly referred to as Garifuna
in publications by outsiders.
3 Visitor comment cards – Museum of Belize (2011).
4 Ibid.
5 Dr. Roy Cayetano (2017). Email responses to Sherilyne Jones, 22 March.

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5
THE EU-LAC MUSEUMS PROJECT AND
COMMUNITY-BASED MUSEUMS
Karen Brown, Marie Claverie and Karin Weil

EU-LAC Museums project beginnings: defining terms

From September 2016 to January 2021, the European Commission Horizon 2020
project titled EU-LAC Museums: Museums and Community: Concepts, Expe-
riences and Sustainability in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean brought
together four institutions from the European Union and four from Latin America
and the Caribbean (LAC) ([Link] By carrying out a com-
parative analysis of small to medium rural museums and their communities in the
EU-LAC region, the project sought to develop the history and theory of museums,
communities and their territories. The project achieved this goal by navigating
between two impressive historic movements in museum theory and practice—
community museums and ecomuseums.
The project partners were tasked with exploring the role of small- to medium-
sized local museums in understanding cultural relations between the regions. In
designing the project, initially in consultation with ICOM Europe President Luis
Raposo and Hugues de Varine, our project theme had its origins in the historic
Round Table on the Importance and Development of Museums in the Contem-
porary World held in Santiago de Chile in 1972 (José do Nascimento Junior,
Alan Trampe, Paula Assunção dos Santos, 2012). The subsequent declaration
(UNESCO, 1972) and Latin ‘New Museology’ movement put forward the idea
of an ‘integral museum,’ a concept emphasising the primary responsibility of
museums to meet the needs of their communities. This anchoring of the museum
in a new ‘social function’ was integrated into the 1974 ICOM museum definition
and has continued to be included to the present day, bringing about a reconsid-
eration of the attitudes, roles and professional practices of museum researchers
in relation to their political responsibility (Brown and Mairesse, 2018; De Carli,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-7
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums  89

FIGURE 5.1  Initial Conceptual Model for the EU-LAC Museums project. © EU-LAC

2004; De Varine, 2017; De Varine, personal communication, 2000; Mostny

et al., 1972; Weil, 2019).

Lisbon, 2016: community-based museums as community-

generated initiatives
Our starting point was during the project kick-off meeting held in the National
Museum of Archaeology in Lisbon in November 2016. This was the first opportu-
nity we had to meet in person as a consortium, with members from the Caribbean,
Chile, Costa Rica, France, Portugal, Peru, Scotland and Spain, to begin discussing
what each of us thought a ‘community museum’ was. On this occasion, with the
assistance of our advisors Teresa Morales Lersch (Co-Director, Museos Comunitar-
ios de América network, and co-author of Memoria: Red de Museos Comunitarios
de América. Experiencias de museos comunitarios y redes nacionales, 2016) and
Ann Gunn (University of St Andrews), we asked our group three simple prompts:

• What are three questions you would ask to determine whether a museum is a
community museum?
• Think of three things that a community museum is not.
• What is a definition of a community museum that would be useful to you in your
work? Include three main aspects.

This collective process threw into sharp relief the fact that a certain lack of infor-
mation and context existed in each of the regions and that if we navigated between
the concepts of ‘community museum’ and ‘ecomuseum,’ we had the opportunity
90  Karen Brown et al.

FIGURE 5.2 Workshop on defining a community museum, EU-LAC Museums

­ ick-Off Meeting, National Museum of Archaeology, Lisbon, November
K
2016. © Karin Weil

to research meaningful initiatives in museums and community empowerment in

Europe and LAC. These gaps were areas where we could grow as researchers,
facilitators, teachers and trainers.
During this initial meeting and workshop, we found ourselves encountering,
for the first time, the challenge of developing modes of research that took into
account our differences, prejudices and diversity. From this workshop and the
group ­reflection in Lisbon, we were able to list areas of agreement around the con-
cept of ‘community’ (see Table 5.1).
Each of the aspects mentioned in the process of reflection refers especially to the
museum as a space created, managed and in direct relationship with the community
in which it is located. Despite the differences in social, cultural and environmental
contexts and values, these spaces seek to create options for those communities
that do not have space or a voice within traditional museums. In community-based
museums, the communities create a place to come together to articulate their sense
of identity based on their own stories and memory. However, in this same discus-
sion, it became evident that there was a need to deepen and define (a) a frame of
reference around the concepts of territory and its multiple connections, (b) what
we understand by community and how communities define themselves, (c) the
 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums  91

TABLE 5.1 Key components of a community-based museum: summary of reflections shared

during the workshop held at the first consortium meeting, November 2016,
Lisbon

Consideraciones para un museo Considerations for a community museum

comunitaria

1 Gestionado por y para la comunidad 1 Managed for and by the local community,
local, en el sentido del desarrollo directed to sustainable development
sustentable
2 Basado en una comunidad específica 2 Based in a specific community, to keep
para preservar, mantener y crear alive and to create community heritage
patrimonio comunitario
3 Surge como una solución para una 3 Arises as a solution to a community need
necesidad comunitaria
4 Creado y gestionado por una 4 Created and managed by a community,
comunidad más no exclusivamente but not exclusively
5 Un museo que involucre las actividades 5 A museum that involves activities of the
de la comunidad y su entorno community and its surroundings
6 Capaz de integrar varias visiones 6 Capable of integrating several visions
sobre la comunidad y que incluya un of the community, and that includes a
proceso continuo y en transformación continuously transformational process in
de la relación entre las varias the relationship between the generations
generaciones que son parte de esa in the community
misma comunidad
7 Un espacio de intercambio 7 A space of intergenerational exchange
intergeneracional
8 Una herramienta para la acción social y 8 A tool for social action and territorial
territorial action
9 Una herramienta organizada directa o 9 A tool organised directly or indirectly by
indirectamente por la comunidad the community
10 Un espacio para tratar temas que se 10 A site to address topics that relate to the
relacionan con la comunidad misma community itself
11 Comunica la historia desde el punto de 11 Communicates the history of a place and
vista de la comunidad its people from the community’s point
of view
12 Actor principal: la comunidad 12 Community: main actor
1 3 Definición abierta e inclusiva 13 Open and inclusive definition 

relationship between sustainable development and community initiatives and (d)

how to address issues of respect, interculturality and social inclusion. The use of
the term ‘territory’ also varied by country. Somewhat like ‘the new museology,’
the term has been reconsidered not only as a physical and environmental space but
also as a form of representation of the social, environmental and cultural fabric.
Although in each of the countries, the terms denote the same areas, certainly the
ancestral cosmovision of the pre-Hispanic peoples, the sense of belonging, diver-
sity and migration in the Caribbean islands, and the colonial aspects of history
92  Karen Brown et al.

with which a number of EU countries are burdened makes each of these countries
perceive the term ‘territory’ differently; however, the concepts of place, meaning,
community, social role and processes are used in all of them.

Developing research questions

At the same meeting in Lisbon, it was agreed that each principal investigator
would submit ideas based on their own country’s context, and from these, a start-
ing framework was to be proposed. The reflection on and development of these
concepts allowed the research team to make regional differences explicit and to
build the consortium methodology around a clear and more inclusive theoretical
framework in the context of regional diversity.
In general terms, the following questions emerged around the historical, envi-
ronmental and social contexts of each of the regions involved in the project.
Attempting to answer these questions allowed us to incorporate regional differ-
ences and the implications of these differences into the development of research
carried out in the years that followed.

How do we link the concept of territory? What is its relationship with

community-based museums?
Territory—I prefer the word ‘place’—is an essential component of the concept
of ‘belonging’, belonging to a landscape, a past; and having a link to the tangible
and intangible cultural and natural heritage of a place is an essential component
in defining a ‘community’. Places are powerful in that they hold memories and
help us interpret or understand our community.
(Researcher from Scotland, Lisbon workshop, November 2016)

Territory and community are an indissoluble binomial.

(Researcher from Peru, Lisbon workshop November 2016)

The community-based museum is a situated museum. It is located in a territory and

is sensitive, and potentially incidental, to the sociocultural dynamics that occur in
it. As a public space of a cultural nature, it can be a tool for strengthening com-
munity relations over time.
The community-based museum needs to pay attention to the ethical dimension
of the processes it works on. Like any discourse, the community-based museum
is in a position to make a statement, and it needs to keep its messaging consistent.
The main ideas and generalised reflection on this question can be summarised
as follows: in each country, the concept of territory is defined differently, as it
is a broad concept that considers tangible and intangible heritage. For many, the
community is strongly linked to territory, even though some communities are not
defined by their territory.
 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums  93

How do we define ‘community’? How does the community

define itself?
A group of people who agree to acknowledge certain characteristics (cultural,
political, etc.) and/or interests in common.
(Researcher from France, Lisbon workshop, November 2016)

The community must be defined from within, listening to and respecting its own
discourse of self-determination, territoriality, self-government, worldview, his-
torical memory and the relationships that connect it (communality). [Translated
from original Spanish.]
(Researcher from Costa Rica, Lisbon workshop, November 2016)

A community is defined by relationships of belonging and participation in common

codes. It is not necessarily associated with a geographical territory.
In most cases, community-based museums are created with reference to a
­territory or to a territorialised historical experience. In this sense, they constitute
an instance of mediation, a link, between the notions of community and territory
(a community that may have a relationship with a territory or its history but does
not currently cohabit in it).
The community defines itself by identity and difference. This act of definition
contains a dynamic potential; in other words, it can mobilise groups towards the
fulfilment of common objectives. It can also be defined ‘from the outside’ by those
who pay attention to common features. This responds to a descriptive register that
allows for the distinction of characteristics and limits.

What is the relationship between the community-based museum

and the concept of development?
A community museum can become an articulating element and even an impulse
for territorial development. And this is so, because in a community museum, one
can differentiate the basic keys to development: social innovation, the existence
of territorial resources and the set of relationships between territorial actors,
networks that take on various forms.
(Researcher from Costa Rica, Lisbon workshop, November 2016)

The community-based museum can be a tool to contribute to the development of a

territory or a community, since it contains a story about its past and with it a vision
about its present and even certain expectations about its future.
Communities can use the museum to influence political decisions that affect
their territories. The project proposed to work with local and regional museums
and with the international community of museums, taking into consideration that
communities are dynamic, self-defined entities that share common codes, needs
and characteristics. Community museums can also be tools that contribute to the
94  Karen Brown et al.

development of the community (depending on the objective and activities of the

museum), prompting the community to reflect on its own resources, its history and
its present situation as it prepares for the challenges of the future. Development can
be understood as economic and human (Brown, 2019).

How do we address respect and interculturality?

[…] the museum must be able to inform about the diverse cultural histories existing
in a geographical space through time without hiding the relationships or conflict that
may have existed between them, that is, in a historical framework that responsibly
and respectfully addresses differences in identity. The museums must be guarantors
of human rights, of the convention 169 ILO [International Labour Organization]
and of all the legal instruments subscribed by the states for the fulfilment, respect
and promotion of cultural and social diversity. They must generate conditions for
intercultural dialogue and promote actions under a formal framework of respect for
indigenous peoples, children, women and the community in general.
(Researcher from Chile, Lisbon workshop, November 2016)

Clear and respectful communication, ideally face to face at regular intervals.

Research across regions will also deepen understanding of other contexts, at
first hand.
(Researcher from Scotland, Lisbon workshop, November 2016)

The community exists as part of a mosaic of original histories and contexts. To

achieve peaceful intercultural relations within and between communities, muse-
ums must act in a respectful manner, fostering communication and building bridges
between people and communities; it must be a multifaceted space that promotes
respect and tolerance of differences.

Next research steps

At various points in the project, we returned to this topic of defining community
museums in the process of developing a shared bi-regional research methodology.
In 2017, a round table on the topic ‘What is a community museum in your region?’
was organised during the Carifesta XIII Symposium in Barbados, hosted by the
University of the West Indies. The round table garnered perspectives from Jamaica,
Barbados and Guyana and included a presentation by the then President of the
Museums Association of the Caribbean, Dr Sherene James-Williams.
At the round table, it was explained that community museums take many forms
in the Caribbean region, defying a fixed definition and allowing space for adapta-
tion and alternative histories outside the national museum model imported from
Europe (see also Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, 2018).1 The project compendium
On Sustainable and Community Museums (Brown, Davis and Raposo, 2019) then
 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums  95

aimed to provide reflections and pedagogic tools to suggest how a community

might go about conceiving and creating a new community museum or ecomu-
seum if they so wished. The book contains salient case studies of community-based
museums in each partner country and shares the experience and knowledge of our
EU-LAC Museums project advisors—Beatriz Espinoza, Hugues de Varine, Peter
Davis and Teresa Morales Lersch—concerning the key concepts and features of
community and sustainable museums.

Steering Committee meeting of EU-LAC Museums (Antigua

Guatemala, 2018)
Having reflected on community and sustainable museums in EU and LAC in the
book, and recognising the need to broaden the discussion geographically, the sub-
ject of community-based museums was taken forwards into the steering committee
meeting of EU-LAC Museums held in Antigua Guatemala in March 2018.2 On this
occasion, we decided to grapple with the question of definition in a more concrete
way and to create a survey on the subject, called ‘What is a community museum
in your region?’ This survey was hosted by the University of St Andrews Qualtrics
system and attained the university’s ethical approval. It was originally designed in
Antigua in collaboration with the steering committee members, and it was subse-
quently edited by the entire consortium and its advisors, notably Peter Davis. The
survey results (analysis to follow) have shown that while the community museum
is largely about the story of a local community and is a place that caters to that
local community, the community welcomes outside expertise in fostering sustain-
ability as long as there are clear terms and parity of esteem between the entities. In
contrast to the ICOM museum definition (2007), community museums give promi-
nence to ‘people,’ ‘place,’ ‘territory’ and ‘identity,’ as well as many definitions
reflecting on the intrinsic relationship between the past and the future.3 In short,
community museums are an inclusive and dynamic way of appropriating a com-
munity’s memory and experiences in the 21st century. They are not only important
but also essential for fostering peaceful and resilient societies.
Based on the project research involving community consultations, another mile-
stone was reached when the EU-LAC Museums consortium researchers prepared
policy recommendations during two strategic meetings, held first in the Univer-
sity of the West Indies, Barbados (November 2018) and second in Brussels (April
2019). These recommendations were presented to different European Commission
and European Union services, including the European External Action Service and
the Commission’s Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Develop-
ment, as well as to some invited staff from UNESCO and the United Nations dur-
ing a policy round table in Brussels in April 2019. These recommendations were
subsequently developed into a public report (Brown et al., 2019). This collabora-
tive round table marked a significant moment of recognition that the project could
serve as a model for cultural cooperation with LAC.
96  Karen Brown et al.

From theory and practice to policy: EU-LAC Museums policy

round table and report (Brussels, 2019)
Reflecting on thematic axes with a balance between the perspectives of Europe
and LAC, the report highlights that EU policy can consider and include EU-
LAC Museums’ project findings. A great deal can be achieved in and through
community-based museums, as distinguished from mainstream museums, which
are often associated with certain demographics and funding structures that receive
state attention and support. Community-based museums offer a lens through
which to interrogate both macro and micro, global and local relations. However,
community-based museums are often under-represented in policy, while our pro-
ject findings demonstrate that social engagement and proactive strategies advanced
through community-based museums have the potential to challenge and enhance
existing EU policy that seeks to contribute to development in LAC, thus making
those museums more relevant and sustainable for the future.
Through the vehicle of the policy report, the project consortium aspired to cre-
ate a bridge between policy and practice, allowing community voices to speak
through the project outputs to the policy makers and funders whose priorities are
implemented by the project.
The EU-LAC Museums policy report includes, but is not limited to, the follow-
ing key recommendations:

• ‘Community-based museums and heritage initiatives […] merit more visibility

and agency to work through the critical issues affecting human life in different
parts of the world.’
• ‘Museum activities with social impacts are truly important for cultural diplo-
macy and should be recognised and supported. In particular, community-based
museums have a special role to play as they are, by their very nature, deeply
rooted at local level; the engagement of communities is embedded in their core
functioning.’
• ‘Taking the socio-economic situation of local as well as national areas into
account in their strategies, museums and policy makers can contribute to local
development. Incorporating museums into local/national development strategies
can prove a useful method of medium to long-term partnerships and ensure the
meaningful contribution of museums and their policies to local development.’
• ‘Policy makers should put the protection of cultural heritage protection (tan-
gible and intangible) at the heart of youth participation and engagement
­strategies […].’
• ‘Grass-roots understanding should be given the opportunity to inform and affect
policy in a bottom-up manner locally, nationally and bi-regionally.’
• ‘Museums should be enabled to lay the groundwork for sustainability by rec-
ognising the right to self-determination and by making visible the full range of
community voices.’
(Brown et al., 2019. Report, p. 19)
 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums  97

Building on the high-level visibility of the project results and recommendations

noted above, on 7 September 2019, the 34th General Assembly of ICOM, held in
Kyoto, Japan, adopted Resolution No. 5, entitled ‘Museums, Communities and
Sustainability,’4 conceived as part of the EU-LAC Museums project and submit-
ted by the two ICOM Regional Alliances in Europe and LAC. It marked a historic
moment for bi-regional and international cultural cooperation concerning the role
of community-based museums in today’s world.

New ICOM Resolution ‘Museums, Communities and Sustainability’

(Kyoto, Japan, 2019)
Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly—the decision-making body of
ICOM—mark the path of the organisation’s actions and missions in the years that
follow. Over the past few decades, ICOM has adopted resolutions supporting com-
munity museums and highlighting the notion of museums going beyond the for-
mal definition (for example, ICOM 1997, 2010, 2019). Previously, these concepts
included key elements such as the recognition of ‘the importance of museums in
promoting harmony, mutual understanding and exchanges between communities
locally, regionally and nationally’ (ICOM Resolution 5, 2010, p. 5) and the role
of museums as ‘fundamental tools for the individual and collective development
of critical minds, of self-awareness, of the sense of citizenship and of commu-
nity’s identity’ (ICOM Resolution 1, 1995, p. 2). In this same 1995 Resolution,
the museum community had already noted that ‘some local museums all over the
world which are undertaking innovative activities focusing on everyday topics of
community life, trying to challenge traditional models and reaching beyond the
limits of exhibition spaces, are facing threats of closure and lack of support from
their governing bodies,’ and it urged ‘local and national governments to recognise
and support museums as cultural mechanisms in the service of communities, in
the valorization of their particular identities, and as unique tools for the collective
management of their cultural heritage’ (p. 2).
Resolution No. 5 (2019) extends this legacy by acknowledging and recognising
the challenges faced by museums as well as their communities in the 21st century.
Indeed, it not only advocates for more support and recognition of community-based
museums, which today continue to face threats of closure and lack of recognition,
but it also takes community-based museums into account in the global reflections
on the definition of a museum and the role of museums in sustainable development.
Following the 2016 ICOM General Conference in Milan, ICOM created a new
Committee for Museum Definition, Prospects and Potentials (MDPP) to study the
current definition of museums. They explored similarities and differences in val-
ues and practices of museums in diverse and rapidly changing societies. Combin-
ing wide-ranging dialogue across the membership with dedicated expert forums,
the committee addressed the ambiguous and often contradictory trends in society
and the subsequent new conditions, obligations and possibilities for museums. The
EU-LAC Museums project engaged in this process through its symposium, held
98  Karen Brown et al.

at the University of St Andrews on 25 November 2017, on the topic of ­Defining

the Museum of the 21st Century.5 Hosted in association with ICOM’s Interna-
tional Committee for Museology, the symposium followed on from one held in La
­Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, and dovetailed similar symposia held in the Universi-
dad Nacional de Avellaneda, Buenos Aires (9–10 November) and the Universidade
Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (16–17 November) (Brown and Mairesse,
2018; Brown, Brulon Soares and Nazor, 2018).
Following the processes of active listening and collecting and collating alterna-
tive definitions, work done by the MDPP Committee, in July 2019, the Executive
Board of ICOM voted for a new, alternative museum definition to be included
in the ICOM Statutes instead of the current museum definition. Subsequently, in
­September 2019, the 26th ICOM General Conference, in Kyoto, Japan, hosted
numerous sessions, round tables and debates around this topic, after which the
Extraordinary General Assembly, on 7 September 2019, decided to postpone the
vote on the new museum definition.
In this context, the EU-LAC Museums project, through the Resolution No. 5,
made a significant contribution to this global reflection among museum profession-
als by highlighting the ‘vast number of community-led organisations’ with a focus
on the fact that the latter ‘do not currently fulfil the ICOM Definition of a Museum
(2007),’ while recommending the museum community to ‘remain sensitive to local
and regional differences and demonstrate awareness of the geo-political dimen-
sion of the concept of the museum, especially relating to the resource needs of
community-based museums in lower- to middle-income countries.’6
It is worth noting that another pressing theme addressed at the ICOM 2019
General Conference was sustainable development. In addition to opening the
conference with a plenary session entitled ‘Curating sustainable futures through
museums,’ another resolution was adopted during the ICOM General Assembly
on this specific topic. Resolution No. 1 ‘On sustainability and the implementation
of Agenda 2030, Transforming our World’ was developed by the ICOM Working
Group on Sustainability and submitted by ICOM UK and ICOM Norway. This
resolution recognises the role of museums in creating a sustainable future and calls
for empowering museums, their visitors and their communities in this regard.
The first recommendation of Resolution No. 5 echoes and complements it by
underlining that community-led museums further the ‘sustainable use [of natural,
cultural and intangible heritages] for environmental, social and economic devel-
opment of communities, towards achievement of the UN 2030 goals and climate
justice.’

The impact of COVID-19 on community-based museums

More recently, and responding directly to COVID-19 and other environmental
and political challenges faced by project partners during the years 2016–2020,
­EU-LAC Museums organised a webinar series, ‘Community-based Museums in
 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums  99

Times of Crisis’ (12 June 2020, 29 June 2020 and 10 July 2020), which involved
21 invited speakers and reached approximately 905 people from 35 countries via
Zoom and Facebook. This global online engagement shows how the research into
community-based museums developed by EU-LAC Museums has empowered
communities and museum professionals to tell their own stories and address chal-
lenges facing the preservation of their heritage and cultural identity.
The COVID-19 crisis has not only exposed us to an epidemiological crisis,
but also, above all, it has demonstrated how humanity has abused finite natural
resources and voraciously appropriated life-sustaining systems that leave no room
for nature. These environmental problems have been mirrored—and arguably
exacerbated—by social and economic inequalities that have also been exposed by
COVID-19, which has made clear that there is a need for people to reconnect with
nature and one another. In this way, the concept of ‘community’ could lead to
progress for the common good of communities and the environment. The need for
change is urgent.
The work carried out as part of the EU-LAC Museums project connects in many
ways with these contemporary challenges faced by society. Our findings indicate
that there is an important role for the global museum community. The project has
shown that strong bi-regional relationships and mutual learning are key assets to
bring to the global reflection on the roles and definition(s) of museums in different
regions. During a second round table in January 2021, we proposed and recom-
mended community-based museums as tools through which many of these needs
can be addressed.
Our analyses of community-based museums are based on our own experiences
as researchers and professionals working in Europe and LAC, and these analyses
have been tested widely through debate and promotion in our ICOM networks and
survey. Our project has shown that by working closely with communities and link-
ing with local governments, community-based museums can contribute to sustain-
able development in different contexts and promote development of peaceful and
­resilient societies.

Survey: ‘What is a community museum in your region?’

(2018–2020)
By the census date of 19 April 2021, the survey attained 528 responses from
70 countries written in English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French (mainly in
English and Spanish).7 The responses have proven insightful in qualitative terms
for the continuing process of honing our research questions as academics and for
taking practical steps to increase international recognition for community muse-
ums through our partner, ICOM.
In this survey, 16.4 per cent of the participants reached were from the LAC and
13.4 per cent from the EU, with 70.2 per cent of participants coming from the rest of
the world. The largest number of participants were from the UK (largely thanks to
100  Karen Brown et al.

the community heritage network in Scotland), followed by Japan (thanks to ICOM

Kyoto advertising and dissemination through Japan’s network of community muse-
ums), then Costa Rica, Peru, Chile, Portugal, Canada, the United States, Italy (thanks
to the network of Italian ecomuseums), Spain, Greece and others. Targeted adver-
tising through project networks of community museums and  heritage, as well as
through social media and our project webinar series, meant that the survey reached an
appropriate demographic, with the majority responding that the ‘organisation/group
interested in local or community development’ and that they are part of is a commu-
nity museum, as shown in Figure 5.3.
In general, respondents engaged well with the survey questions, providing addi-
tional comments and reflections where prompted. At times, the specific wording of
individual questions or the use of terms such as ‘community’ or ‘sustainability’ was

FIGURE 5.3  Survey response to the question, ‘If you are part of an organisation/group
or individual interested in local or community development, what is its
type?’
 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums  101

questioned by one or two respondents, especially those identifying as academics,

who helpfully qualified their responses in the comments. The majority of respond-
ents, especially those identifying as working for community museums, engaged
generously with the free-text questions, yielding useful data for thinking around
the characteristics of community museums on a global scale.
In response to the question ‘Which of the following criteria help to define what a
community museum is? (Please select any number of answers. Rank your answers
in order of priority with 1 being the highest priority),’ the option ‘a geographical
territory’ received the most selections, followed by ‘a local sense of community,’
‘a  local sense or spirit of place’ and ‘a shared local history.’ These findings are
in harmony with responses to the next question: ‘The purpose of a community
museum is to provide (please select all relevant fields).’ The majority selected in
response ‘a sense of belonging’ (236 selections), followed by ‘community par-
ticipation in heritage matters’ (231 selections) and ‘heritage preservation’ (213).
Interestingly, ‘collection of objects’ received only 124 selections and ‘lobbying’
had the lowest score, at 50 selections.
Responses to the question, ‘In the community museum(s) that you know, whose/
what story (past, present or future) is—or should be—being told? (Please select all
relevant fields),’ are illustrated in Figure 5.4. These responses were supported with
free-text comments reinforcing the importance of members of the community tell-
ing their own story, especially elders, though occasionally comments suggested

FIGURE 5.4 Survey response to the question, ‘In the community museum(s) that you
know, whose/what story (past, present or future) is—or should be—being
told? (Please select all relevant fields)’
102  Karen Brown et al.

that a local government or ministry of culture should tell the story if the museum
were municipal rather than private or independent.
The question ‘Who is the main public for the community museum?’ had the
clearest response of all, building on the evidence that the community museum is
characterised as created, governed and used by the local community. The major-
ity, 56.8 per cent, saw the local community as the main public, while 9.8 per cent
selected school groups and students, and only 9.5 per cent prioritised tourists. In
these free-text comments, many people commented that all options were relevant;
the following comment is especially indicative of the answers to this question:
‘The community museum serves the community in focus first, and expands out-
ward.’ One Scottish respondent commented: ‘in [the] Highland region we are
pushed more and more to service tourists and I think that this is [to] the detriment
of the contemporary relevance and social potential of the museums.’
Answering, ‘Do you think that a community museum should best be run
by …,’ yielded data revealing that respondents thought a combination of commu-
nity members, local associations, volunteers and professionals should run a com-
munity museum, bringing their various expertises together for the local heritage
community.

FIGURE 5.5 
Survey response to the question, ‘Who is the main public for the c­ ommunity
museum?’
 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums  103

FIGURE 5.6 Survey response to the question, ‘Do you think that a community museum
should best be run by…?’

For example, one free-text response read: ‘Community members provide the
substantive material, professionals help to curate and preserve for promotional and
archival purposes, volunteers help make it sustainable over time.’ Another stated:

I think it helps to be as professional as possible, but what that means will vary
by context. An all-voluntary museum can be more professional than one with
paid staff if they have the right expertise on the board and amongst the volun-
teers. And while its best to have most of the board drawn from the community
being represented, some fresh eyes and fresh perspectives can be hugely
beneficial.

Several responses in Spanish agreed:

Comunitarios que estén capacitados como profesionales del patrimonio.

Un museo comunitario es un pacto entre todos los agentes implicados.
Se necesita a los miembros de la comunidad que la conocen, las asociaciones
que pueden apoyarlo y los profesionales para darle el contexto y organización.

Respondents made clear through the free-text comments that they saw the need for
community agency, supported by professionals where useful, although a minority
felt that museum professionals should be in charge, with input from the commu-
nity. This comment in Italian is indicative of that view: ‘la gestione in senso stretto
104  Karen Brown et al.

deve essere svolta da soli professionisti, ma appoggiandosi anche ai membri della

comunità e/o a volontari’.
The debate was then continued through the next question, ‘What makes a com-
munity museum sustainable? (Please select any number of answers. Rank your
answers in order of priority, with 1 being the highest priority).’ ‘Capacity build-
ing for staff/volunteers/community’ ranked highest at 25 per cent, followed by
‘substantial start-up funding’ at 13 per cent, and ‘formal community agreement’
and ‘competent organisation and financial administration,’ both at 12 per cent, as
­visualised in Figure 5.7.
Clearly, the biggest need for local communities is investment in capacity build-
ing on the ground, as well as a defined system of governance made in the com-
munity. Once this structure is in place, the participants were very open to external
engagement, especially on the international level. For example, 88.9 per cent of
respondents thought that ‘community museums should engage with international
cultural institutions, networks and activities,’ with 2.3 per cent responding ‘no’ and
9.1 per cent indicating ‘don’t know.’ A large number of respondents (222) com-
pleted the free-text question ‘In what ways should community museums engage
with national cultural institutions, networks and activities?’, demonstrating an
overwhelming positivity towards this type of engagement. In general, respondents
saw this type of activity as useful for, among other things,

• the value of networks for strengthening community museums (especially

n­ etworks between community museums themselves, which national cultural
institutions can engage with),
• creating equality in partnership working,
• recuperation or preservation of indigenous community histories,
• sharing between national museum priorities and community voice,

FIGURE 5.7 
Survey response to the question, ‘What makes a community museum
s­ ustainable? (Please select any number of answers. Rank your answers in
order of priority, with 1 being the highest priority)’
 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums  105

FIGURE 5.8 Word cloud generated from the question, ‘Can you offer a definition of a
community museum?’ © Karen Brown

• validation and recognition of community museum practices,

• creation of seminars and online resources and
• sharing skills, expertise and resources such as preservation, handling and
display.

A word cloud (Figure 5.9) visualises the main ideas in all languages received.
Several respondents referred to the link between strengthening the local and
connecting community museums at national or regional levels. But they also
understood that local distinctiveness is at risk in a global and increasingly intercon-
nected world. One Italian respondent summarises it thus: ‘without comparison, it
is not possible to recognise the specific characteristics of the community and to
progress with a coherent development,’ while a Spanish respondent writes that
‘[t]he exchange of experiences strengthens cultural management.’ Looking spe-
cifically at national networks, a respondent from Ecuador states that ‘[t]he net-
work of community museums in Ecuador has allowed the different communities
to listen and put into practice the various experiences that each community space
has raised.’ Another Spanish respondent, commenting on regional networks, notes
that ‘[r]egional networks have real value, since they require permanent collabora-
tive work and transfer of capacities, to establish or project a joint future project.’
Another respondent notes in Spanish that such community museum connections
‘can teach others their own history and ways of management, creative solutions
to everyday problems and an approach to heritage that does not necessarily align
106  Karen Brown et al.

with public policy.’ These latter values echo strongly those of the Latin American
Museos Comunitarios movement through greater awareness of networking and
support mechanisms. Several comments also mentioned the role of engagement in
the promotion of European citizenship.
These findings on the perceived value of networks and visibility were made
even more granular in the light of responses to the next question, which revealed
that almost half of the respondents did not benefit from these types of actions,
highlighting a clear need for capacity building and networking in the sector. Asked
‘If you are involved in a community museum, have you experienced collabora-
tion with other community museums nationally or internationally?’, 51.3 per cent
answered ‘yes,’ and 48.7 per cent ‘no.’ As a follow-on question, participants were
then asked if they would consider the possibility of twinning with another commu-
nity museum (in the way in which cities have twins), and 83.7 per cent said ‘yes,’
and 16.3 per cent ‘no.’ However, free-text comments warned about the capacity
of time and resources available for other activities in a volunteer-run organisation
and also a potential lack of interest among community members to look elsewhere.
The question ‘Why do you think that community museums are important?
Please comment below on the attributes that they have and what they might achieve
that more traditional museums cannot,’ attracted answers mainly focused on com-
munity voice, storytelling and local history, genealogy, traditions and artefacts, as
well as agency over these attributes. In general, the comments demonstrated the
belief that, because community museums are close to the local community, they
create the best conditions for bringing people together to build community agency
and collective endeavours, especially around ideas of identity and among under-
represented groups. These attributes are contrasted with ‘traditional’ museums,
which have, according to one response in Spanish, ‘high state or private subsidies
and are subject to governments of the day and budgets conditioned to the type of
discourse that is established.’ Another summarised (in Spanish): ‘Unlike traditional
museums where pieces of materials that were produced by people are exhibited to
create a connection with visitors, community museums involve people in the com-
munity.’ And in English, another responded:

They are less intimidating and ‘authoritarian’ than the nationals, and communi-
ties often feel connected to them rather than excluded by them. They usually
link to local and regional shared places, identities, and even things in living
memory, giving a very close and tangible sense of belonging.

And again, ‘They closely connect with the grassroots, with the owners and crea-
tors of heritage. Community museums also offers [sic] a platform for previously
marginisalised [sic] and excluded voices to be heard in museums and museology.’
A respondent in French also pointed out that, while traditional museums may seek
to transform the macrocosm into a microcosm, community museums do the oppo-
site, by transforming the unique character of the community into heritage, thus
 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums  107

contributing to human diversity. The respondent implored: ‘Do not reduce ­diversity
(spirit of place) to an “identity” (fixed, defined and determined).’
Of all the survey questions, ‘intangible cultural heritage’ was most mentioned
in response to the above question; for example, one person responded: ‘Sense
of community; social bonds; inter-age/gender/class cooperation; preservation of
intangible heritage (not ‘freezing’ it, using it) [emphasis mine]’ and simply, ‘Indoor
and outdoor experiences of indigenous practices […] Intangible has more space.’
As summarised in one Spanish comment: ‘Being managed from communities in
conjunction with other people or organisations, they have the ability to tell a story
in a unique way and help preserve their own narrative.’ Two others added to this
idea: ‘above all, they generate bonding strategies with the community and neigh-
bours that traditional museums cannot succeed in exercising,’ and ‘the community
through the museum affirms its material and symbolic identity through its own
forms of organisation.’ Characteristics apparent from these comments include

• the ability to tell one’s own story,

• an understanding of the past at local level in order to plan for the future,
• the freedom to narrate stories on the margins away from state-led narratives
found in national museums and
• preservation of local memory, for the next generation and for self-determination.

On the few occasions that tourism was mentioned, it was in connection to ideas
of sustainability. For example, one ecomuseum representative commented

FIGURE 5.9  Word cloud of responses to the question, ‘In what ways should ­community
museums engage with national cultural institutions, networks and
­activities?’ © Karen Brown
108  Karen Brown et al.

on how, in contrast to traditional museums whose collections are sited inside

a building, an ecomuseum can increase an area’s attractiveness as a location
to live, visit, work and invest in. These findings affirm the definition of a com-
munity museum that our project advisor Peter Davis formulated in 1999 that a
community museum is a local museum based in the communities of interest that
govern it: ‘that is, a small museum with limited collections that serves those
people in a defined geographical area’ (Davis, 2011, pp. 36–37). Davis explains
how such a museum can provide a ‘sense of place’ for local identities, having
affinities with the ecomuseums where local people designate their own territory,
encompassing aspects of landscape (geology, scenery), built heritage (architec-
ture), natural heritage and intangible heritage (dialect, songs, stories) (Davis,
2011, p. 81. See also Davis, 2008). The final free-text question of the survey,
‘Can you offer a definition of a community museum?’, is so topical today in the
light of ICOM debates around the museum definition that it merits close analysis
of both the geography of the answers and the most frequently used words in the
definitions offered.
Notable in the definitions offered is the prominence of the words ‘people,’
‘place,’ ‘space,’ ‘culture’ and ‘future,’ contrasting with, for example, the 2007
ICOM museum definition.8 Other than the words ‘heritage’ and ‘intangible,’ most of
the words from the survey responses were absent in the ICOM museum definition.

Conclusion
By creating a space for people to connect with their culture and tangible and
intangible heritage, and by finding a balance between understanding the past
for building a future, community museums are well placed on the international
stage to answer many societal questions from the grassroots. It is for this rea-
son that, in our first EU-LAC Museums Policy Round Table report, the team
recommends that ‘Community-based museums and heritage initiatives […] merit
more visibility and agency to work through the critical issues affecting human life
in different parts of the world’ and that ‘Museums should be enabled to lay the
groundwork for sustainability by recognizing the right to self-determination and
by making visible the full range of community museums’ (Brown et al., 2019).
Resolution No. 5, adopted on 7 September 2019 at the 34th General Assembly of
ICOM held in Kyoto, Japan, further reinforced this point, building on past ICOM
resolutions (1995, 2013, 2019). The resolution, drafted by EU-LAC Museums
supported by ICOM Europe and ICOM LAC, highlighted the ‘vast number of
community-led organisations’ and the fact that these ‘do not currently fulfil the
ICOM Definition of a Museum (2007),’ while recommending that the museum
community ‘remain sensitive to local and regional differences and demonstrate
awareness of the geo-political dimension of the concept of the museum, especially
relating to the resource needs of community-based museums in lower to middle
income countries.’
 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums  109

Defining may always prove contentious, but in the process of discussing

­differences in relation to a space for community museums, however they may be
defined, has opened to inform discussions around ecological museology in an age
of decoloniality through needs-based and co-produced participatory research prac-
tices, interviews in the field and the EU-LAC Museums survey.

Appendix
In what follows, a number of the proposals are listed where the respondent named
their country and occasionally the community with which they identified. They
are all reproduced verbatim, without correcting any spelling or grammar, and
English translations are included directly following the original response where
relevant. The proposals are listed by region to compare and contrast regional
responses.

Europe
Bernera, Isle of Lewis, Scotland: ‘A local run museum that collects and preserves
local heritage, be that history, archive documents, traditions, stories or artefacts.
The collection should be available for the local community and visitors/research-
ers from further afield to see and access so that they can all learn more about the
community and place. Where volunteer run it should always try to use the best
practice for preserving and presenting the collection and be able to make use of
new techniques where possible. A museum while showing the past must not be
stuck in the past itself.’
Isle of North Uist, Scotland: ‘Celebrates, affirms and sustains all the languages
and modes that make communities distinctive and help them to survive and develop
organically and holistically.’
France: ‘A community museum is a place that reflects the history, habits, culture
and ways of life of a specific area, or a specific group of people, allowing to con-
nect people through stories, memories and objects of a common past, present and
towards a future to build.’
Thessaloniki, Greece: ‘A community museum exhibits material culture of
specific identity groups usually determined of a specific geographic area. They
include all kind of collections that depict the community, so they really can be very
dynamic. Community museums function as a place where local people can gather.’
Valdostana, Italy: ‘Un museo diffuso che preserva e condivide il patrimonio
immateriale e materiale della comunità.’
Comunitá di Salbertrand (TO), Italy: ‘Condivisione di luoghi, saperi, modalitá
di gestione di risorse, conservazione e valorizzazione del proprio patrimonio.’
Comunidad Valenciana, Spain: ‘Museo que nacen de la comunidad y no
de una administración.’ (‘Museum born from the community and not from an
administration.’)
110  Karen Brown et al.

Caribbean
Village Artistique de Noailles, Croix-de-Bouquets, Haiti: ‘Musée appartenant
à une population et géré par celle-ci avec l’aide de professionnels.’
Diego Martin, Trinidad: ‘It is a community-owned place that organises and cele-
brates the objects, stories, and artwork that is important to the residents of a community.’
Lethem, Guyana: ‘A Community Museum is a place of artefacts, physical and
virtual, that reflects the local cultures of a socially inclusive demographic and geo-
graphical boundary.’
St James, Jamaica: ‘Space to share tangible and tangible cultural heritage and
stories in the padt [sic] present and enable reflection and discussion on positive
chage [sic] for future.’
San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago: ‘A formal or informal museum that reflects
the history and heritage of a particular community or community groups whether
localised or dispersed.’

Latin America
Bolivia: ‘Museo Comunitario. Es un espacio cultural creado por los miembros de
una comunidad, en el sentido no restricto de su significado, donde se construye
autoconocimiento colectivo, propiciando la reflexión, la crítica y la creatividad,
reafirmando los valores materiales y simbólicos de su Patrimonio Cultural, recono-
cido según sus usos y costumbre.’ (‘Community Museum. It is a cultural space
created by the members of a community, in the unrestricted sense of its meaning,
where collective self-knowledge is built, fostering reflection, criticism and creativ-
ity, reaffirming the material and symbolic values of its Cultural Heritage, recog-
nised according to its uses and custom.’)
Comunidade Vozes de Mestres, Brazil: ‘Um lugar comum, com pessoas comuns,
a contarem suas histórias comuns, sua cultura, seus modos de fazer, ser em todas as
áreas, de forma simples e verdadeira.’
Comunidad vulnerable, Colombia: ‘Museo Comunitario, es el arte para y por la
Vida.’ (Vulnerable community, Colombia: ‘Community Museum, is the art to and
for Life.’)
Colombia: ‘Museo comunitario es un espacio de expansión patrimonial mate-
rial e inmaterial local que permite la participación de la comunidad en temáticas,
objetos y acciones.’ (‘Community museum is a space for the expansion of local
tangible and intangible heritage that allows community participation in themes,
objects and actions.’)
Placilla de Peñuelas, Valparaiso, Chile: ‘Museo comunitario es una institución
al servicio de su propia comunidad que permite a través de la autogestión, aso-
ciatividad y redes de apoyo local, nacional e internacional, desarrollar proyec-
tos y acciones para cuidar, educar y difundir el patrimonio e historia de la propia
comunidad con la comunidad. Es un espacio abierto, inclusivo y democrático.’
(‘Community museum is an institution at the service of its own community that
 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums  111

allows, through self-management, associativity and local, national and interna-

tional ­support networks, to develop projects and actions to care for, educate and
disseminate the heritage and history of the community itself with the community.
It is an open, inclusive and democratic space.’)
Antigua, Guatemala: ‘Es un museo que aportaa comunidad. espacio donde los
integrantes de la comunidad construyen un autoconocimiento colectivo, propi-
ciando la reflexión, la crítica y la creatividad. Fortalece la identidad, porque
legitima la historia y los valores propios, proyectando la forma de vida de la comu-
nidad hacia adentro y hacia fuera de ella. Fortalece la memoria que alimenta sus
aspiraciones de futuro.’ (‘It is a museum that contributes to the community. Space
where community members build a collective self-knowledge, fostering reflection,
criticism and creativity. It strengthens identity, because it legitimises history and
their own values, projecting the community’s way of life inwards and outwards. It
strengthens the memory that nourish their aspirations for the future.’)
La Merced, Ecuador: ‘Son espacios que han sido creados en asambleas de la
comunidad en busca de un beneficio de asociación y representación de su pueblo
a la sociedad en la cual no se ve representada, con el fin de promover sus costum-
bres, tradiciones, memoria oral, saberes que han sido transmutados en la historia
de la comunidad que busca continuar con su legado.’ (‘They are spaces that have
been created in community assemblies searching for a benefit of association and
representation of their people to the society in which they are not represented, in
order to promote their customs, traditions, oral memory, knowledge that has been
transmuted into the history of the community that seeks to continue its legacy.’)
Altiplano, Peru: ‘A heritage-focused space that focuses on decentralised groups
of people and decentralised cultural narratives and includes a high level of com-
munity participation.’
Caracas, Venezuela: ‘Aquella institucion organizada en un espacio con una
coleccion que representa a su comunidad, un espacio para la educación y el cre-
cimiento de a población que se encuentra mas lejos de las ciudades principals.’
Another from San Vicente, Nicoya Costa Rica: es el escenario vivo de un territo-
rio, con tradiciones y diario oficio de sus habitants.’ (‘That institution organised in
a space with a collection that represents its community, a space for education and
the growth of the population that is further from the main cities.’)

Asia-Pacific
Tuwali tribe of Ifugao, Philippines: ‘A community museum is an important tool for
the collection, preservation, and exhibition of material and non-material culture of
a group of people which can be opened for innovation as to its handling so it can
reach out to wider patronage.’
Municipality of Murcia, Negros Occcidental, Philippines: ‘Community Museum
is a living cultural hub that is being maintaned [sic] by the locals and is being
shared to other communities for mutual knowledge and understanding.’
112  Karen Brown et al.

Urban, India: ‘Community museums can be defined as the place of ­conservation

and preservation of local traditions, customs, history and heritage involved in doc-
umentation, display and dissemination of the same with an aim to generate interest
and livelihood enough to support and sustain these communities and their heritage
from vanishing through appropriation and assimilation.’
Suwon, South Korea: ‘A place that embodies the values of people, life, and places’
Academic museum and museums practitioners, Thailand: ‘Museum that runs by
community member. Inclusive all members to be engaged.’

Africa
City, Egypt: ‘Community museum is the museum in which all local culture,
­intangible heritage, crafts and hand made could be shown and preserved for pur-
poses of tourism or studying and developing.’
Tirana, Albania: ‘Community museums are important because depending on the
mission, goals and visionary projects they may have the easiest and most practi-
cal way to encourage, educate and inspire people. We need to help the community
understand the value of community when they collaborate with each other this way
many problems can be solved easily.’
Songhoy, Mali: ‘Le musee communauté est le lieu de préservation de la mémoire
de l’identité d’une communauté.’
Oko-Anala, Nigeria: ‘A community museum is an exhibition center that shows
a specific cultural identity of a particular people.’
Nemana, one of the Great Zimbabwe World Heritage Site’s local communities,
Zimbabwe: ‘A museum established by the community, about the community and
for the community.’

North America
Ontario, Canada: ‘I have worked in community museums for over 35 years. I would
not dream of offering a definition.’
Région du Kamouraska au Québec, Canada: ‘Une institution culturelle
auto-gérée qui est animée par le désir de créer du lien localement sur une base
humanitaire.’
Tequesta, US: ‘A Museum focussed on local history, tradition, crafts, and or
culture. In our case, the preservation of extinct peoples, battles, following growth
with inclusion of local celebrites.’

Acknowledgements
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 693669. For
further information, please visit [Link]
­
 The EU-LAC Museums project and community-based museums  113

Notes
1 ‘What is a Community Museum in your region?’ Carifesta, 2017, The University of the
West Indies, chaired by Karen Brown.
2 EU-LAC Museums Steering Committee meeting held in Antigua Guatemala, March
2018, consisted of Karen Brown (Project Coordinator), Jamie Brown (Project Youth
Programme Worker and Administrator), Lauran Bonilla-Merchev (then President
­
of ICOM Costa Rica), Samuel Franco (then President of ICOM-LAC), Luis Raposo
(­President of ICOM Europe) and Gustavo San Roman (Professor of Cultural Identity,
University of St Andrews).
3 See the updated ICOM Museum Definition (2022) here: [Link]
resources/standards-guidelines/museum-definition/ (Accessed 14 September 2022).
4 Find more information about the 34th General Assembly here: [Link]
news/resolutions-adopted-by-icoms-34th-general-assembly/
5 Find more about the Defining the Museum of the 21st Century conference here: https://
[Link] (Accessed 12 August 2020).
6 Quote from Resolution No. 5.
7 Participants came from the following countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra,
Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan,
Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan,
Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, B ­ ulgaria, Burkina Faso,
Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic,
Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Republic of the Congo, Costa Rica, Côte
d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, D ­ ominica, Dominican
Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, E ­ ritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia,
Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada,
Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong (S.A.R.),
Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel,
Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan,
Lao People’s Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,
Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives,
Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Federated States of
Micronesia, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar,
Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria,
Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru,
Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian
Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal,
Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands,
Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland,
Sweden, Switzerland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Thailand, The Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago,
Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates,
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United Republic of Tanzania,
United States of America, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
8 ICOM museum definition (2007):
A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its
­development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communi-
cates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environ-
ment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment.
(ICOM, 2007)
114  Karen Brown et al.

References
Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, Csilla E. (2018). The Social Museum in the Caribbean.
­Grassroots Heritage Initiatives and Community Engagement. Leiden: Sidestone Press.
Brown, K. E. (2019). ‘Museums and local development: An introduction to museums,
­sustainability and well-being’. Museum International, 71(3–4), pp. 1–3.
Brown, K. E. and Mairesse, F. (2018). ‘The definition of the museum through its social role’.
Curator: The Museum Journal, 61(4), pp. 525–39.
Brown, K., Brulon Soares, B. and Nazor, O. (eds.) (2018). Definir los Museos del Siglo XXI:
Experiencias Plurals. Paris: International Committee for Museology.
Brown, K. E. et al. (2019). Report on a Policy Round Table by EU-LAC-MUSEUMS held
at the European Commission Offices, Brussels, 29 April 2019. [Online]. Available at:
[Link] (Accessed 14 September 2022).
Brown, K. E., Davis, P. and Raposo, L. (eds.) (2019). On Community and Sustainable
Museums. [Online]. Available at: [Link] (Accessed 1 September
2020).
Camarena Ocampo, C. and Morales Lersch, T. (eds.) (2016). Memoria: Red de Museos
Comunitarios de América. Experiencias de museos comunitarios y redes nacionales.
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Davis, P. (2008). ‘New Museologies and the Ecomuseum’. In Graham, B. and Howard,
P. (eds.) The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate,
pp. 397–414.
Davis, P. (2011). Ecomuseums: A Sense of Place, 2nd ed. London: Continuum.
De Carli, G. (2004). Un Museo Sostenible: Museo y Comunidad en la Preservacion Activa
de su Patrimonio. Heredia: EUNA; ILAM; UNESCO.
Fúquene Giraldo, Laura, Blanco Wells, Gustavo and Weil G., Karin (2019). ‘Redefiniendo
la sostenibilidad desde una perspectiva situada:desafíos de museos comunitarios del
sur de Chile’. Polis, 18(53), pp. 127–144. DOI: 10.32735/S0718-6568/2019-N53-1389
(Accessed 15 September 2022).
ICOM. (2007). Definition of a Museum. Available at: [Link]
museum-definition/ (Accessed 17 May 2018).
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ICOM Resolutions. (1997). Stavanger, Norway. Available at: [Link]
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2022).
ICOM Resolutions. (2010). Shanghai, China. Available at: [Link]
content/uploads/2018/07/ICOMs-Resolutions_2010_Eng.pdf (Accessed 14 September
2022).
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ICOM Resolutions. (2019). Kyoto, Japan. Available at: [Link]
uploads/2019/09/Resolutions_2019_EN.pdf
Lisbon workshop. (2016). EU-LAC Museums Kick-Off meeting at Lisbon Museum of
Archaeology, November 2016.
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[Link] (Accessed 18 November 2019).
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Nascimento Junior, José do, Trampe, Alan, Assunção dos Santos, Paula (eds.) (2012). Mesa
Redonda sobre la Importancia y el Desarrollo de los Museos en el Mundo Contemporáneo.
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­Contemporary World. Available at: [Link]
(Accessed 14 September 2022).
de Varine, H. (2017). Interview with Karen Brown, Paris.
6
MUSEUMS AS TOOLS FOR
SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY
DEVELOPMENT
A study of four archaeological museums
in northern Peru

Luis Repetto Málaga and Karen Brown

Understanding museums as tools for sustainable community development is one

of the priorities of the international research project Museums, Community and
Sustainability in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean (EU-LAC) Museums
(2016–2020). This ambitious project has been explicitly designed in response to
the European Union Horizon 2020 Work Programme call INT 12 (2015), ‘the cul-
tural, scientific and social dimension of EU-LAC relations’. The project seeks to
carry out a comparative analysis of small- and medium-sized rural museums and
their communities in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean (EU and LAC) and
to develop associated history and theory. By researching state-of-the-art initiatives
in museums and community empowerment, and then moving beyond these initia-
tives to implement actions in partner countries, our aim has been both to transform
individual lives within museum communities and to create a method of implemen-
tation and evaluation that will be applicable to wider regions.
The basis of the project is that community-based museums allow under-
represented communities to stake a place in history, as well as to contribute to
environmental sustainability and community empowerment. Our project partners
are The University of St Andrews in Scotland (Coordinator), International Council
of Museums (ICOM), The Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, The National
Museum of Costa Rica, The University of Austral in Chile, The University of
the West Indies, The University of Valencia in Spain and The National Archaeol-
ogy Museum in Lisbon, Portugal. Our research themes are derived from the EU-
CELAC Action Plan, namely:

• technology and innovation for bi-regional integration,

• museums for social inclusion and cohesion,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-8
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
 Museums as tools for sustainable community development  117

• fostering sustainable community museums,

• exhibiting migration and gender.

We are supported by an eminent Advisory Board and Steering Committee, ­including

the Chairs of the ICOM Regional Alliances ICOM Europe and ICOM LAC (www.
[Link]).
A number of collective outputs could prove useful to local governments
alongside the OECD-ICOM Guide, namely, On Community and Sustainable
Museums, a Report on Policy Recommendations from a Round Table held at the
­European Commission and a new ICOM Resolution on Museums, Community and
Sustainability.1
Though many miles lie between us, working together as a bi-regional team
has brought about cultural understanding, including: a transformative bi-regional
Youth Exchange between Scotland, Costa Rica and Portugal; the launch of an art
exhibition, Arrivants: Art and Migration in the Anglophone Caribbean World; a
bespoke Virtual Museum; a YouTube channel; a Manual on Integral Museums:
Experiences and Recommendations; researching traditional water heritage prac-
tices in southern Spain and northern Peru.
Sustainability has become fundamental to the work of museums. Since the
early 1970s, ideas advanced by the ‘ecomuseum’ movement initiated by Georges-
Henri Rivière and Hugues de Varine have questioned the concept of the museum as
a repository of collections, challenging institutions to look beyond the confines of
their physical buildings.2 In the Latin American context, authors such as De Carli
stress the need for museums to contribute to community development; to achieve
this goal, institutions must get to know their communities. They should familiarise
themselves with the local people and their beliefs, customs and values, as well as
with other aspects of local cultural heritage (De Carli 2004b). One central idea that
informs the EU-LAC Museums project in several countries is that of a museum
whose core initiatives and actions are anchored in local communities. The pur-
pose of this chapter is to summarise the initiatives and findings of the EU-LAC
Museums Peru Case Study—developed within four museums in two regions on
the Peruvian north coast—to nurture ties among these museums, their communities
and local territorial development.
The discussion is divided into five parts: the first explores four museums where
the project was developed, highlighting their shared history and the important
relationships they have fostered with surrounding communities. The second part
describes the project’s approach and the development of two intervention models
that it applied, emphasising the challenges and reorientations the project faced due
to the impact of the El Niño weather phenomenon. The third part describes the
pilots (or ‘demos’) that were carried out in the countryside of the Chan Chan and
Huacas de Moche Site Museums, both in the region of La Libertad. These served
to verify the effectiveness of implemented actions. The fourth section describes
118  Luis Repetto Málaga and Karen Brown

FIGURE 6.1 
Location of the four museums that participated to the project, in the regions
of Lambayeque and La Libertad (Peru). © Luis Repetto Málaga

the activities carried out to strengthen relationships between museums and com-
munities, particularly with regard to sustainability, regional integration, education,
use of new technologies and climate change vulnerability. The fifth and final part
highlights the preliminary conclusions of the project (Figure 6.1).

Case studies in the northern coast of Peru

The social vocation of museums was highlighted for the first time in the ICOM
Declaration of 1972 in Santiago, Chile.3 With the advent of New Museology dur-
ing the 1980s, some questioned the authority of museums as institutions, instead
calling for them to become instruments of representation and political power for
the communities they serve (Rivière 1985; Fernández 1999; Palomero 2002). The
incorporation of this criticism transformed the notion of the traditional and hegem-
onic museum into one ‘at the service of society and its development’, as stated
in the resolutions of the 22nd General Assembly of ICOM in Vienna (Austria)
in 2007. This concept has been especially relevant in Latin America, owing to
its colonial history and diverse identities that, as a result, share a common social
and political backdrop. In this context, the impact of international tourism has
moreover prompted a reassessment of archaeological, cultural, natural, tangi-
ble and intangible heritage, which is now widely viewed as a resource for local
development.
It is important to note that museums on Peru’s northern coast emerged in the
aftermath of late 20th century discoveries and were influenced by ideas around the
 Museums as tools for sustainable community development  119

social and educational vocation of museums. During this period, the decentralisa-
tion of neoliberal policies by Alberto Fujimori’s government led to the strong for-
mation of regional identity, bolstered by the spectacular archaeological discoveries
of the Muchik culture (Asensio 2013).4
This was coupled with strong investment from regional authorities seeking to
develop the tourism potential of this archaeological heritage, resulting in the financ-
ing of spectacular excavations and museums. Since their creation, museums on the
north coast of Peru have been influenced by the notion that museum institutions
should more actively guide the public’s understanding of the meaning, use and
protection of archaeological remains (Elera and Shimada 2006, p. 217). Moreover,
they have become important engines for attracting tourism, which in turn enhances
local economies.

Selection criteria and institutional initiatives

The choice of the four museums (Túcume, Sicán, Chan Chan and Huacas de
Moche) discussed in this chapter was influenced by our interest in strengthening
the ties that had previously been forged between these museums and their commu-
nities, and that have had a significant social and economic impact on a local level.
The criteria informing the selection of these four museums also align with ICOM
Peru’s objective of decentralising its discourses and actions within the Peruvian
context.

The Sicán National Museum

In the case of the Sicán National Museum, for example, its community-oriented
approach began with an initial archaeological excavation in 1978. The Sicán
Archaeological Project (SAP) envisioned the Sicán National Museum as a centre
for research, conservation and promotion of archaeological heritage, as well as an
agent of sustainable development for the communities of the Ferreñafe province.
This vision finally came to fruition in 2001 when the museum was inaugurated. Its
community-oriented programme has materialised in a wide variety of initiatives.
This included the establishment of a long-term collaboration with the Local
Educational Management Unit (Unidad Local de Gestión Educativa, ULGE),
which helps develop school curricula in the province, promotes school visits and
participation in the museum’s cultural activities, all with the aim of developing the
knowledge and value of the museum’s archaeological heritage. One of the activi-
ties organised by the museum is the annual festival, ‘Ferreñafe sings and dances for
Peru’, which was created in conjunction with the local community to celebrate the
cultural diversity of the province.
The museum has also consolidated its position as a reference for political
and community agents in Ferrenafe, who work in the fields of conservation and
environmental heritage defence. Sicán National Museum is currently a member
120  Luis Repetto Málaga and Karen Brown

of several provincial committees and has taken on a mentoring role with regard
to territorial planning, education, the study of heritage and conservation and the
development of tourism (Elera 2017). The north coast is an exceptionally fertile
landscape, and pressures on local arable land have been constant, consequently
affecting the relationship between museums and surrounding communities. This
is precisely the case of Sicán National Museum and its archaeological zone in the
Pómac Forest, which have both been confronted by occupation and land traffick-
ing.5 Having fostered a relationship with the communities that live in the buffer
zones of the Pómac Forest, the museum has played a fundamental role in address-
ing this conflict, facilitating the recovery of lands for this now-protected natural
and cultural reserve.

The Túcume Site Museum

The Túcume Site Museum opened in 1992 and was renovated in 2014 as part of a
community-oriented programme initiated by the Túcume Site archaeological pro-
ject. The primary objective of the project was to involve the surrounding commu-
nity in the ongoing preservation of the archaeological site and in revitalising local
cultural traditions. This community-oriented approach led the museum to create a
dedicated Office of Conservation Education (Oficina de Educación para la Conser-
vación); the new office was designed to foster community involvement in museum
activities, and in the ongoing preservation of local cultural heritage (Figure 6.2).
This new office has allowed the museum to:

• promote community participation in the planning and activities of the museum,

• organise a series of meetings with local authorities to discuss urban and rural
planning and heritage conservation,
• participate in the development of local school programmes to foster an appreci-
ation for archaeological heritage and strengthen a sense of local identity among
younger generations.

In addition, the museum’s onsite shop functions as a space for showcasing and
selling works created by various groups of local artisans and has become an impor-
tant marketing platform for craftspeople in the community. Initiatives like these,
among others, have facilitated the creation of enduring ties among the museum,
local archaeological heritage and surrounding communities (Narváez 2017, p. 32).

The Chan Chan Site Museum

The Chan Chan Site Museum, which was created in the 1990s, and the Santiago
Uceda Castillo Huacas de Moche Museum, which was associated with a research
project at the National University of Trujillo in 2010, have both proven pioneers in
integrating technologies for conservation and in disseminating the importance of
 Museums as tools for sustainable community development  121

FIGURE 6.2 Heritage Identity Workshop at the Túcume Site Museum. © Luis Repetto
Málaga

the heritage they protect. As such, these museums have become genuine emblems
of regional identity. The Chan Chan Site Museum is currently undergoing renova-
tions: it is once again incorporating new technologies into both its exhibitions and
the onsite restoration and conservation of works.
Within this framework, these museums are notably developing projects and
actions aimed at young people in surrounding communities—including school-
age children in the capital city of Trujillo and other nearby urban areas—to reas-
sess their link to heritage as a key factor in local development. Carrying out such
projects during renovations was, moreover, presented as a unique opportunity for
museums to strengthen relations with their communities, and this is reflected in
how these institutions approached refurbishment projects.

Promises and challenges

The four museums selected as case studies have been working to strengthen the
historically marginalised identities of rural populations in the territory, notably
through activities that raise awareness around daily and traditional practices that
are key to the cultural heritage of local populations. In this regard, these institutions
have the advantage of existing relationships with local communities, working with
122  Luis Repetto Málaga and Karen Brown

them to promote the development of the territories or regions in which they are
located. However, museums also face challenges arising from these same relation-
ships: these include constant changes in the social, political and economic fabric of
local territories, as well as climatic instability on Peru’s northern coast.
While such problems and challenges are certainly worth noting, the four muse-
ums discussed in this chapter greatly benefit from strong links to surrounding
­communities. In their respective contexts, these institutions have played key roles in
transforming the attitudes of local populations, especially in relation to conservation
efforts, encouraging locals to identify with their archaeological heritage, and increas-
ing their capacity to generate economic income through tourism and other associated
activities. This experience is also reflected in the four museums’ thorough knowl-
edge of the economic, political, socio-cultural and environmental concerns of their
communities. This local expertise has allowed the institutions to further strengthen
community ties and formulate clear guidelines for their institutional work.

Project methodology: territorial management and the El Niño

phenomenon
The first year of the EU-LAC Museums project was dedicated to coordinating
and harmonising the proposal within the museums selected, which identified the
relationships they had established with surrounding communities and articulated
strategic approaches to reinforce these ties in areas of sustainability, regional inte-
gration, education and the application of new technologies. This initial planning
phase began in September 2016 with the aim of being completed within seven
months.
However, it had to be suspended between February and April 2017 due to the
impact of the El Niño phenomenon: torrential rain caused landslides and serious
flooding, which led to a state of emergency being declared in 12 regions of Peru.
The project resumed in May 2017 and concluded in August of the same year. As a
result of El Niño, the project design incorporated new elements, taking into account
both the vulnerability of north-coast populations to this weather phenomenon and
the pressing need to involve museums in territorial management. At this stage,
two intervention models were also defined, one to be applied to museums in Lam-
bayeque (Sicán and Túcume) and the other to those in La Libertad (Chan Chan and
the ‘Santiago Uceda Castillo’ Huacas de Moche Museum).
During the El Niño phenomenon, small-scale subsistence activities such as agri-
culture and artisan fishing were severely affected in rural communities. Even ser-
vice activities such as micro-commerce or transportation were severely impacted
by the destruction of road infrastructure. The number of people affected by this
event exceeded one million. A third of the affected population, some 315,000 peo-
ple, was located on the north coast, mainly in the regions of Piura, Lambayeque
and La Libertad. These regions were subject to the catastrophic climatic alterations
caused by El Niño until the end of April.
 Museums as tools for sustainable community development  123

Prior to the El Niño events, it was common knowledge that museums and local
communities were inadequately prepared to mitigate the effects of a climatic phe-
nomenon of this magnitude. Any project based on Peru’s north coast should always
take into account a recurrent and catastrophic phenomenon as part of its sustain-
ability strategy. Accordingly, we consider it essential for museums to participate in
coordinating disaster risk management actions, since they are institutions familiar
with the characteristics and needs of the local environment.

Two intervention models and new initiatives

Two different coordination models were implemented for each respective region:
in Lambayeque, interventions were to be carried out through an external and local
actor, the University of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo (USAT); this corresponds
to the civil society actor approach. Meanwhile, in the region of La Libertad, the
coordination model drew on the intervention of a more active local authority, the
Decentralised Directorate of the Ministry of the Culture (Dirección Desconcen-
trada de Cultura del Ministerio de Cultura). The design of these two intervention
models, conceived during the first year of the project, arose from a seven-month
research period carried out by the EU-LAC Museums project team from the
­Pontifical ­Catholic University of Peru. The result of these processes is discussed
in the following two diagrams, which refer to how the Peru team will carry out its
approach in each of the selected regions and their corresponding museums for the
Peru Case Study (Figure 6.3).

Pilot studies: archaeological sites and nearby rural surroundings

From September 2017 to August 2018, the project initiated activities and work-
shops to strengthen ties between museums and communities, and two pilots were
conducted at museums in the region of La Libertad to assess the feasibility and
effectiveness of these actions in compliance with the aforementioned objectives.
They pilot studies also aided in identifying opportunities to improve institutional
best practices around sustainability, particularly with regard to their relationships
with local communities and environments. Pilot 1 was conducted in the nearby
rural surroundings of the Chan Chan archaeological site, while Pilot 2 was con-
ducted in the countryside of the Huacas de Moche site, both between March to
August and December 2018.

Pilot 1: raising awareness around local ancestral knowledge

Pilot 1 consisted in a series of workshops focused on raising awareness around

local ancestral knowledge. These workshops were developed and carried out by
the Chan Chan and Huacas de Moche museums within their local communi-
ties. They notably discussed the traditional preparation of chicha de jora and the
124  Luis Repetto Málaga and Karen Brown

FIGURE 6.3  Model 1: Diagram describing the work scheme of the EU-LAC Museums
project for the Lambayeque region in Peru.

cultural knowledge associated with this drink. After the workshop, participants
learned about the process of preparing chicha de jora and were encouraged to
understand how this drink forms part of complex cultural knowledge associated
 Museums as tools for sustainable community development  125

with picanterías (restaurants serving spicy lunches), traditional gastronomic

spaces and daily life.
Throughout the workshop, it became apparent that most local residents perceive
local traditions as disappearing or in danger of extinction. For the participants of
this workshop, communities and museums must act in partnership to preserve the
local traditional culture, including the preservation of objects and raw materials,
by promoting local practices associated with their use. Over the course of evaluat-
ing this pilot, we were able to conclude that the goal of achieving project sustain-
ability would depend on our ability to strengthen the museum’s role in reviving
popular traditions, as well as fostering the knowledge that is fundamental to the
­construction of local identities—ensuring these are not forgotten.

Pilot 2: heritage preservation and environmental conservation in Moche

Pilot 2 was carried out in the countryside of Moche and consisted of a series of
interventions to raise awareness and encourage local communities to participate in
the preservation of their environment and local cultural heritage. These interven-
tions involved carrying out a series of meetings, at which both local authorities
and members of their communities were invited to discuss and exchange ideas on
how to promote the sustainability of museums and their communities. Discussions
revolved around how to improve the relationship between archaeological projects
and the local community, as well as how to promote water care to ensure the agri-
cultural prosperity of Moche’s rural areas.
The pilot yielded a proposal aimed at establishing strategic alliances among the
Huacas de Moche Museum, local educational authorities and the cultural, religious
and youth associations of the Moche countryside. The proposal’s primary aim was
to plan and carry out actions designed to improve the environmental, economic and
socio-cultural conditions of the local environment, favouring the preservation of
local heritage with an emphasis on archaeological heritage.
During the pilot, a TV programme involving local schools was recorded at
the Chan Chan archaeological site on 28 April 2018. As the highlight of our
second ‘demo’, our team was in charge of recording a promotional spot at the
archaeological site, with the support of site museum supervisors and the Chan
Chan archaeological complex. The objective of this spot was to raise aware-
ness among the local population around the conservation of cultural heritage—­
especially cultural assets built from mud architecture, of which the citadel of
Chan Chan is an outstanding example. We toured the archaeological site of
Chan Chan with children and young people from local schools, as well as their
families and teachers, and stressed the value and validity of oral traditions sur-
rounding this emblematic place; these are still alive in the collective memory of
the community (Figure 6.4). The first TV programme was broadcast nationwide
on 26 May 2018, at 11:30 a.m. by TV Peru as part of the ‘Museums Open Doors’
programme.6
126  Luis Repetto Málaga and Karen Brown

FIGURE 6.4 
Aerial view of the Chan Chan citadel. © Dirección Desconcentrada de
Cultural La Libertad

Conducting these two pilots proved crucial: they allowed us to evaluate how
selected museums and their communities responded to initiatives and actions we
implemented to carry out our project. Moreover and above all, they allowed us
to assess whether these actions succeeded in achieving the objectives that were
initially set and contributed to our goal of promoting more sustainable museum
practices in relation to their local communities. Both pilots ultimately allowed us
to reflect on how to improve the implementation of our project.

Project development: objectives and activities

The development of the EU-LAC Museums project in Peru is based on the premise
that museums have the capacity to significantly contribute to the cultural, edu-
cational and economic development of their communities through the recovery,
assessment and conservation of their collective heritage and identity. Moreover,
this contribution must be carried out through close collaboration between museums
and the communities to which they belong. The four museums discussed here all
enjoy strong relationships with their respective communities. The activities carried
out as part of our project have sought to strengthen these relations in areas pertain-
ing to sustainability, regional integration, education, technology and territory.

New models for sustainable museum practices

In Peru, the lack of a political framework defining the concept of sustain-
able museum practices from a top-down dynamic has forced local and regional
 Museums as tools for sustainable community development  127

museums to approach sustainability on their own terms. They have adapted the
notion of sustainability to local contexts and forged their own set of good practices
not only based on trial and error but also based on intimate knowledge of their
communities, territories and heritage. Accordingly, we designed activities to ensure
that the four museums improved their contributions to the long-term development
of their communities, strengthening and promoting the sustainable use of heritage
as a resource to jointly address situations of local vulnerabilities and challenges.
Existing relations between museums and communities have been strengthened, in
part thanks to the participation of local authorities in the development of long-term
policies and initiatives that benefit communities.
The only museums that we consider sustainable are those that recognise the
economic, political, socio-cultural and environmental concerns of their territory as
fundamental considerations in institutional management, and that involve and sup-
port community members in actions of preservation, appropriation, capacity build-
ing and the responsible use of heritage resources. Accordingly, the actions carried
out within the framework of this project are geared towards generating processes
that encourage museums to transform the way they work, their relationships with
local communities, and their social and institutional contexts.
In the case of Lambayeque, Local Heritage Defence Workshops were conducted
at each of the region’s museums. These were aimed at local authorities, leaders and
public figures and promoted citizen participation in the assessment and defence
of local cultural heritage. As a result of these activities, participants committed to
forming a System of Heritage Defence Brigades (Sistema de Brigadas de Defensa
del Patrimonio) in collaboration with regional museums and with supervision from
local authorities. The latter are dedicated to protecting archaeological sites through
patrol actions, as well as identifying and promoting the most emblematic cultural
expressions in their respective area.
In the case of La Libertad, local museums conducted Local Knowledge Assess-
ment Workshops, including one that focused on the use of totora reeds (scirpus
californicus) and mate calabash (lagenaria siceraria) in the production of handi-
crafts. Another highlighted the practice of fishing and the traditional preparation
and consumption of chicha de jora, while a micro-enterprise training workshop
aimed to formalise the economic initiatives of participating communities. The
overall purpose of the workshops was to highlight the importance of maintaining
and continuing these traditional community practices. This empowered the local
population to transmit ancestral knowledge in collaboration with the museums,
which engaged several generational groups in the process.

Regional integration for social inclusion and cohesion

Actions pertaining to Regional Integration for Social Inclusion and Cohesion
­(Integración Regional para la Inclusión y Cohesión Social) sought to promote
regional participation by helping local populations gain confidence around their
128  Luis Repetto Málaga and Karen Brown

regional identities and their ability to assess ancestral knowledge. The influence of
the work of museums on their territories typically generates diverse impacts that
reach beyond local contexts and may affect regional dynamics around identity and
heritage in both positive and negative terms.
We emphasise here the process of transforming relations among the four selected
museums and their communities to establish a sense of belonging within the popu-
lation. The overall purpose of this project is to foster greater cohesion between
regional populations through the work of museums. It also aims to promote local
cultures by creating more integrated regional societies in the long term, with indi-
viduals finding common ground by assessing their past and present heritage.
In the Lambayeque region, for example, the Túcume Site Museum is notable for
its particular management model: one that involves the community surrounding the
archaeological site in the institution’s decision-making process. However, it still
struggles to involve sectors of the population mostly associated with the district’s
urban centre, who seem less interested in preserving the cultural values that the
museum promotes and protects. Moreover, while the Sicán National Museum is
recognised by the communities of the La Leche river basin as an unconditional
ally in the defence of local culture—thanks to its long history of working on multi-
ple research, educational, tourism and heritage promotion initiatives—the museum
still finds it difficult to fully commit to the specific needs of the multiple territories
and communities under its jurisdiction.
The situation is similar in the region of La Libertad. In the case of the Chan Chan
Site Museum, its efforts to preserve and disseminate information about the World
Heritage Site have succeeded in elevating the mud citadel as an undeniable symbol
of local cultural identity for all inhabitants in the region. Nevertheless, the museum
still struggles to change the mindset of communities living nearby the archaeologi-
cal site, so that they have an interest in preventing plundering at the site.
Meanwhile, by working closely with certain local artisans, the Huacas de Moche
Museum has managed to position a certain type of handicraft—inspired by the
results of archaeological investigations at the site—as a hallmark of the region’s
own quality. However, this has not lessened tensions between site archaeologists
and the inhabitants of rural Moche: the latter continue to perceive the museum as
an entity that has restricted access to and use of resources in many areas of the
territory.
The activities developed at this above-mentioned museum aimed to bolster pos-
itive ties between museums and the local population by encouraging them to high-
light the importance of their own territorial references, natural resources, cultural
landscapes and artistic expressions inherited from the pre-colonial past, thereby
consolidating their own local identities. These identities can, in turn, be grouped
under the same regional identity component that consolidates the common past of
all these communities, and that contributes to their unification as a collective peo-
ple inhabiting the same territory: one that possesses common values and traditions
based on cultural heritage, and that also faces common problems.
 Museums as tools for sustainable community development  129

Systematising local knowledge and heritage

To that end, several Local Heritage Diagnostic Assessment Workshops were con-
ducted by UNESCO expert Ciro Caraballo Pericci, who sought to identify, sys-
tematise and evaluate local knowledge and heritage values recognised by the
population within the territorial scope of our four selected regional museums. The
workshops led to a recognition that the local population plays an important role as
transmitters of knowledge, ensuring the continuity of certain traditional local prac-
tices such as cooking, sewing or handicrafts production. They also spurred local
authorities to commit to developing a training programme on participatory citizen-
ship for younger generations: one that seeks to transmit the idea of the permanence
of their community identities and cultural traditions. We firmly believe that these
workshops, coupled with the other activities considered in our project, will con-
tribute to achieving our objective of regional integration for social inclusion and
cohesion. They do so by promoting unity among the population and instilling con-
fidence in their cultural institutions, particularly through the recognition of heritage
values common to inhabitants of the same territory.
To conclude this process, each of the regions staged a fair in which the experi-
ences and results of the EU-LAC Museums project were showcased. The region
of Lambayeque held the EU-LAC Museums Intercultural Fair, which involved the
Túcume and Sicán museums, together with members of their communities: these
included artisans, artists, producers, local authorities, managers and inhabitants.
The fair showcased products that were created during the various workshops and
project activities: new artisan designs, organic horticultural goods. It also staged
video art presentations based on the local heritage of communities surrounding the
Túcume and Sicán museums.
Meanwhile, the La Libertad region organised the first Cultural Identity Renais-
sance Week in the Moche countryside, for which the Huacas de Moche Museum
created a programme to showcase rural Moche’s various culinary, artisanal, artistic
and cultural expressions, developed within the framework of the project activities
through fairs, parades, guided visits to the archaeological sites and festivals.

Collaborations with the Chile Case Study

To complement these efforts, the EU-LAC Museums project has shared insights
from the Peru Case Study with the Chile Case Study, allowing the project’s
Chilean colleagues to apply their sustainability initiatives and documentation,
which were developed for museums in the Chilean region of Los Rios to coun-
terparts of the Peruvian regions of Lambayeque and La Libertad. This provided
the latter institutions with in-depth knowledge of the quotidian impacts of the
programme’s proposed interventions on museums. The Chilean team’s method-
ology was implemented by the Peruvian team at the end of July 2018, allow-
ing them to use the methodology developed by their colleagues in the Local
130  Luis Repetto Málaga and Karen Brown

Heritage Diagnostic Assessment Workshops once these were completed in the

four selected museums.
Based on the information collected on Peru’s northern coast, the Chilean team
found that knowledge about water management is one of the most valuable cultural
resources of the communities on Peru’s northern coast: it allowed them to adapt to
hostile desert conditions and transform the territory into a fertile valley, ensuring
the survival and prosperity of local culture up to the present. In addition, carrying
on from the bi-regional integration goal discussed in the working meetings of the
EU-LAC Museums project in May 2018, water was acknowledged as an essential
element of cultural and heritage contexts, both in the case of Valencia, Spain (also
an EU-LAC Museums partner) and in the cases of Peru and Chile.
Accordingly, the consolidation and organisation of a joint programme among
teams in Spain, Peru and Scotland was proposed, with the aim of sharing the expe-
riences, knowledge, best practices and weaknesses of the organisations and rele-
vant players involved in water management. Moreover, a proposal was put forward
to discuss how the contribution of interdisciplinary knowledge from universities
associated with the project can promote actions to link territories in bi-regional
contexts. The overall purpose of this is to improve the sustainability of museum
practices at all institutions participating in the EU-LAC Museums project.
On World Water Day in Moche and following the initiative, judges from local
utility companies Water of Valencia (Spain) and Water of Corongo (Peru), which
are both recognised as intangible heritage of humanity, met with the irrigation board
of the Moche countryside. This resulted in an exchange of enlightening knowledge
and prompted self-reflection on the part of members of both countries.

Education as a key social function of museums

Education is one of the key social functions of museums and is central to their
commitment to local communities. One key objective of this project concerns dis-
seminating the research and work carried out by museums in their communities.
However, it also inspires promoting dialogue between locals and experts regarding
the interpretation of heritage in the territory they share. Through their educational
work, museums effectively represent and transmit the cultural values of their com-
munities, which serves to both raise the confidence of local groups around their own
identity and inform the rest of society of the importance of preserving this heritage.
For the Peru Case Study, our four selected museums maintain a commitment
to their local communities by continuously developing initiatives designed to
strengthen learning and knowledge about local traditions: ones based on the prac-
tices of the territory’s pre-colonial culture. This commitment translates into a clear
intention to promote the creation and strengthening of regional identities, as well
as a desire to promote local development through education and the appreciation of
local heritage. By implementing actions that focus on education and disseminating
knowledge about local culture, regional museums can help make their communities
 Museums as tools for sustainable community development  131

and territories more resilient in the face of any economic, political, socio-political
or environmental challenges.
In the region of Lambayeque, the Túcume and Sicán museums worked to establish
themselves as true centres of local culture by keeping their doors open to the com-
munity, and particularly through continually offering training workshops on a variety
of topics. The central theme of the first workshops focused on the performing arts and
self-expression through movement, as well as the use of audiovisual media and vis-
ual anthropology. These workshops were conducted in response to the local popula-
tion’s need to increase their abilities to represent and therefore contribute to preserve
various expressions of local culture. These include dances, stories and performances
linked to the oral memory of their community and the region’s pre-colonial past.
The central objective of the second set of workshops was to support local ven-
tures and traditional practices, such as producing handicrafts, gastronomy and
organic horticulture geared towards the tourism market. These workshops provided
locals with a space for learning and sharing knowledge, with a view to improving
their craft production processes—basketry, weaving and embroidery techniques—
as well as updating their knowledge of agricultural production, much of which is
passed down ancestrally. The workshop also addressed ways to specifically adapt
to the local tourism market targeted by regional museums (Figure 6.5).

FIGURE 6.5 
Horticulture workshop at the Sicán National Museum. © Luis Repetto
Málaga
132  Luis Repetto Málaga and Karen Brown

FIGURE 6.6 
Cleaning campaign in the countryside of Moche, La Libertad. © Luis
Repetto Málaga

In the region of La Libertad, the Chan Chan and Huacas de Moche museums
carried out activities aimed at strengthening the identity of communities living
around nearby archaeological sites. These activities mainly centred around heritage
identity workshops, in which students from local schools participated by visiting
the archaeological sites associated with museums, learning more about the daily
work of these institutions and the latest research on local heritage. As complemen-
tary activities, community cleaning days of the buffer zones near these archaeo-
logical sites were also carried out, in order to preserve the environment and the
landscape setting of the Chan Chan and Moche countryside; recreational activities
were also conducted such as competitions, guided tours and painting murals, in
order to increase the population’s knowledge of the work of local museums and the
dissemination of main cultural and iconographic references at the archaeological
sites of Chan Chan and Moche (Figure 6.6).

Memory preservation and the use of technologies

The educational work carried out by our four selected museums contributes to
collecting, safeguarding and treasuring regional and territorial memory, which is
essential to their cultural, educational and economic development. But to fulfil
this mission, it is also necessary to ensure that communities have the necessary
means to safeguard these memories. This is the only way that communities can put
 Museums as tools for sustainable community development  133

cultural knowledge to use, allowing them to understand who they are, remember
where they come from and consider where they want to go in the future.
This is precisely how the use of technology can greatly contribute to the work of
museums in relation to communities and their heritage. Ensuring the sustainability
of museums’ educational work implies strengthening their means of disseminat-
ing knowledge by incorporating new and modern technologies. Through these, all
community members can strengthen their confidence in their local identity, cultural
values and regional heritage as well as develop a critical and reflective mindset to
help them face daily challenges.
For this reason, the Peru Case Study chose to use the web portal of the EU-LAC
Museums project, as well as mobile and 3D technologies, to improve the educa-
tional experiences provided by the four selected museums. These experiences were
complemented with technological tools allowing users to access information about
objects, oral histories and audiovisual material about their territorial cultures.
In terms of activities, the Túcume and Sicán museums in Lambayeque partici-
pated in the 3D Digitisation and Spherical Technology Workshops as part of an
initiative spearheaded by the team at the University of St Andrews (Scotland). This
initiative led to the publication of an open-source manual that can be used by any
community museum in the world. As a result of this collaboration, part of these
two museums’ collection of cultural assets were scanned using this technology and
their 3D models can be seen on the EU-LAC Museums project website. The previ-
ously mentioned workshops on audiovisual media and visual anthropology were
also part of the project activities, designed to link the educational work of museums
to the use of modern technologies.
In the region of La Libertad, the Chan Chan Site Museum developed an app
and a new website to promote this World Heritage Site. It also allows users to take
a virtual tour of the museum’s facilities, with updated information on the latest
research with respect to this heritage and the ancestral knowledge still present in
the practices of local communities.
The Huacas de Moche Museum, in collaboration with the National University
of Trujillo, created a video to promote the activities of the project among the com-
munity of rural Moche, disseminating the results to the citizens of the region.
Additionally, two TV programmes were produced on the subject of community
museums—one for the region of Lambayeque and the other for the region of La
Libertad—which were broadcast on free-to-air TV nationwide. These programmes
detailed the current progress of the project, with a focus on its participatory
approach and the importance of collaboration between museums and communities
in achieving regional sustainability.

Natural disaster risk prevention

In addition to the objectives initially set, our project necessarily had to take into
account a feature that characterises the two regions in which our four selected
134  Luis Repetto Málaga and Karen Brown

museums are located, and which affects the entire northern Peruvian coast in
­general: the El Niño phenomenon. The impact of this phenomenon in 2017 led to
the interruption of project activities during part of the design phase. It also served
as a stark reminder of the vulnerability of the northern coastal territories, whose
social-change processes have been shaped by natural disaster events of this magni-
tude since pre-colonial times. Accordingly, we committed to developing activities
related to natural disaster risk prevention as part of the project. The aim was to
make the relationship between museums and their communities more sustainable
by reducing the vulnerability of local territories, human groups and heritage that
are impacted by natural phenomena.
In view of these objectives, each of our four selected museums conducted
natural disaster risk prevention workshops with local authorities, in order to raise
awareness around the importance of preventing risk in the face of recurring natural
phenomena, such as El Niño. Another aim was to prepare citizens to respond in
case of emergency through mobilisation efforts, allowing them to protect their her-
itage and safeguard the integrity of their communities and livelihoods. As a result
of these workshops, participating authorities signed a memorandum on integra-
tion with the local communities, committing to arrange future meetings to jointly
develop community risk maps.

Conclusion
The museums and communities discussed have demonstrated their potential to
­promote actions and consolidate working models that strengthen museum institu-
tions and their relationships with local communities and environments. More sus-
tainable spaces can be achieved by improving relations between museums and their
local communities, schools, families and the visiting public. Museums can only
become true platforms that bring about sustainable development in their local envi-
ronments by fostering in-depth knowledge of local realities, as well as recognising
the history and heritage of local populations. Our project involved creating a series
of activities, including joint learning workshops with specific objectives, method-
ologies and proposals; however, the overall goal of these was from the outset to
strengthen ties between museums and their communities. Cultural heritage and
local development represent the starting point and fundamental strategy at work in
this endeavour.

Acknowledgement
This research received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research
and Innovation programme under grant agreement No. 693669.
© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor &
Francis Group
 Museums as tools for sustainable community development  135

Notes
1 Available at: [Link] [Accessed 29 November
2019].
2 Founding museologists of the ecomuseum movement and directors of the ICOM from
1948 to 1965 and from 1965 to 1974, respectively.
3 See [Link]
[Link].
4 This denomination was first popularised by the anthropologist and activist Richard
Schaedel (1920–2005) in response to ethnographic work carried out by Enrique ­Brüning
(1848–1928) on the indigenous people of Lambayeque. The term Muchik was used to
refer to the mestizo-peasant communities descended from the indigenous people that
inhabited the north coast of Peru since pre-colonial times, and to underline the continu-
ity of their cultural traditions to date: approximately 2000 years. Although the use of
their native language (the Yunga language or Muchik) was already extinct, Schaedel
(1996) argued that the ‘essence’ of this people’s ethnic identity would remain associated
with their continuous use of technology (including the management of traditional crops
such as native cotton) and with the cognitive processes underlying their customs and
beliefs (as in traditional medicine and curanderismo). Currently, this hypothesis is being
explored further by researchers of the Sicán National Museum, who have also pointed
out the importance of the influence of the Quechua people in the history of the north
coast civilisations, having introduced the concept of a ‘Muchik and Quechua ethno-
cultural matrix’ (Elera 2014, 2017).
5 Land trafficking can be defined as ‘the usurpation, illegal appropriation, and com-
merce of lands. It is closely linked with rural–rural and urban–rural migration and can
be seen as an activity that organizes and facilitates migration’ (Shanee and Shanee
2016). See [Link] [Accessed
25 November 2019].
6 The programme’s official trailer is available on YouTube under the video enti-
tled ‘Museos Puertas Abiertas (TV Perú) – Ciudadela Chan Chan y Huacas Moche’.
While the official version of the programme has not yet been published on YouTube,
an unofficial upload can be found at the following link: [Link]
watch?v=jTPxr1rbzjg&t=2s [Accessed 25 November 2019].

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pdf/10.1177/1940082916682957 [Accessed 18 November 2019]
7
CONNECTING MUSEUMS THROUGH
CITIZEN SCIENCE
Jamaica/US partnership in environmental
preservation

Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell

Introduction
The term ‘citizen scientist’ encompasses the collaboration between members of
the public and science professionals in tasks such as species monitoring, collecting
and transcribing data, with the aim to increase understanding and management of
the natural world (Ballard et al., 2017). The combination of specimen collections,
scientific and public education expertise and wide audience reach make natural his-
tory museums ideal vehicles for driving conservation science and education using
the citizen science concept (Ballard et al., 2017). Natural history museums have
the potential to educate the general public about science and environmental issues.
Newmark and Rickart (2007) proposed several ways in which natural history
museums can build on this potential. Natural history museums have historically
embarked on collaborations with community naturalists, ranging from amateurs to
experts in the field, with many museums founded by naturalists who support their
development and maintenance (Andrea Sforzi et al., 2018). This is supported by
Dorfman (2019), who documents the relevance of museums in the past and outlines
how their roles have changed over the years. Recently, museums have changed
drastically from merely displaying artefacts and specimens to allowing visitors to
relate to issues beyond the objects and focus on matters of universal importance.
The project discussed in this chapter allowed both museums to work with the gen-
eral public to address an environmental concern.
While a plethora of literature explores natural history museums and citizen sci-
ence in the context of European museums, the experiences of Caribbean museums
have rarely been documented. Notwithstanding, the challenges of maintaining rel-
evance in changing times, limited financial resources and support and the need to
continue the museum’s traditional role of specimen conservation and collections

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-9
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
138  Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell

access are not unique to Jamaica and other Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
SIDS claim to contribute the least to climate change but are the most vulnerable to
its effects (Wong, 2011). SIDS have high percentages of endemic species and are
recorded as biodiversity-rich areas, with their biodiversity being highly threatened.
As repositories of specimens representing a country’s biodiversity, natural history
museums play a critical role in raising awareness about biodiversity and document-
ing species that may be affected or driven to extinction by climate change and other
threats.
We at the Natural History Museum of Jamaica (NHMJ) collaborated with the
Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science (Frost Science) based in Miami,
Florida (US) to engage young citizen scientists between 2014 and 2015 in restor-
ing degraded habitats. Before the project, we were not familiar with the concept of
citizen science and its potential for successful conservation programmes. However,
through public engagement, research and education, staff of the NHMJ recognised
the inherent value of the museum and its offerings. The challenge of biodiversity loss
and the associated environmental degradation added to the museum’s recognition
of the need to engage the wider society in building awareness of the importance of
nature and the need to conserve its valuable components. The project offered wide-
ranging opportunities for students to gain knowledge on scientific concepts such
as biological diversity, taxonomy and environmental conservation. The knowledge
gained helped them to better understand the interrelationships among species in
two types of ecosystems and the value of conservation. The participants were also
exposed to various types of museum research and conservation activities relating to
wildlife observation and identification and ecosystem restoration, including plant-
ing trees and the removal of solid waste. Many participants were introduced to the
museums for the first time, and others worked towards travelling out of the country
to visit the partner museum.
The project was considered a success and its results were subsequently shared
at the Institute of Jamaica’s Research Symposium in November 2017. Prior to this,
our early experiences during the project were shared at the 2014 symposium of the
Museums Association of the Caribbean. Both the Frost Science Museum and the
NHMJ used the project to show how museums could use the concept of citizen
science to address environmental issues over a short period of time. This project
highlighted the creativity of a museum in a SID in dealing with limited resources
versus the assumptions of a museum with much ‘at its fingertips’. In addition to
our similar practices in museum displays, using various technologies and envi-
ronmental stewardship, participants from Jamaica and the US, particularly the
citizen scientists, were exposed to each other’s cultures, through social media and
exchange trips where they met in person. The cultural differences and similarities
were enlightening to both parties.
All participants significantly contributed to the success of this project, but we
wish to especially highlight and acknowledge the citizen scientists. The project
was conceptualised and implemented without prior knowledge of the principles
 Connecting museums through citizen science  139

of citizen science. We support and recommend other museums to follow the ‘Ten
principles of citizen science’ (­Robinson et al., 2018, pp. 29–30). In addition, we
would recommend reading Davis and Klein’s (2015) ‘Investigating high school
students’ perceptions of digital badges in afterschool learning’ for an outline of the
opportunities and challenges of using digital badges as incentives.

The Natural History Museum of Jamaica

The Institute of Jamaica, established in 1879, founded the NHMJ as one of its
first divisions. The museum fulfils the scientific component of the organisation’s
mandate ‘For the Encouragement of Literature, Science and Art’. The NHMJ has,
for many decades, been involved in educating the Jamaican people on the island’s
unique biological diversity. Programmes range from teaching sessions in-house
and outreach activities to the use of displays utilising specimens representing
Jamaica’s plants and animals. The science museum has been a centre of attraction
for many Jamaicans, from its days of displaying live fauna in the 1960s to the more
recent exhibition gallery that showcases a variety of specimens depicted in their
unique habitats. The museum is located in the heart of downtown Kingston, where
many inner-city communities are found. In spite of the challenges associated with
limited funding, insufficient parking for visitors, the aversion by many potential
visitors to venture downtown, and keeping up with technological advances and
societal demands, the museum has been able to successfully attract and engage the
surrounding community and the wider public through its innovative programmes
and activities. The museum uses programmes, such as Afternoon with a Scientist,
to bring large numbers of students to the museum, where they are introduced to
professions in science by in-house and external scientists and given tours of the
facilities. Environmental expositions also provide opportunities for the museum
to showcase its collections while sharing current global messages about protecting
species and the environment. In more recent times, the museum embarked on a
renovation exercise to upgrade the displays. Real-life models and state-of-the-art
interactive displays were developed to attract a technology-savvy audience.

The Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science

The Frost Science Museum located in Miami, Florida was formerly known as the
Miami Science Museum. Established in 1949 as the Junior Museum of Miami
inside a local residence, the museum mushroomed into a 4,500 m2 facility by 1960,
located on a 12,000 m2 site in Coconut Grove. In 1966, the Space Transit Plan-
etarium was added to the property, and by 2017, the new 23,000 m2 facility in
downtown Miami added the 1,900,000 L aquarium housing fish, rays and sharks.
The museum’s mission is to inspire people of all ages and cultures to enjoy science
and technology and to better understand ourselves and our world. Recognising
science as a pathway to understand the wonders and challenges of the universe
140  Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell

and to navigate a sustainable future, the museum has a vision to create compelling
STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education that inspires learn-
ing and innovation and enables people to explore real, rigorous science (Phillip and
­Patricia Frost Museum of Science, n.d.).
Frost Science has embarked on several activities to achieve one of its goals,
which is to effectively share the power of science with as many people as possi-
ble. These activities include research partnerships, youth programmes and projects
that focus on expanding access to science learning. Partnerships include schools,
universities, research institutions and other museums. Additionally, Frost Science
builds partnerships with community-based organisations, local government and
­private businesses throughout Miami-Dade County and beyond.

Museums Connect
Museums Connect was an initiative of the US Department of State’s Bureau of
Educational and Cultural Affairs and administered by the American Alliance of
Museums (AAM) from 2007 to 2017 (American Alliance of Museums, 2018).
This initiative focused on strengthening connections and cultural understanding
between people of the United States and people abroad through innovative projects
facilitated by museums and executed by local communities. Nine projects were
funded in 2014 and Jamaica was the only recipient from the Caribbean. The pro-
gramme encouraged museums to have a significant impact on local communities
and their citizens, outside the physical walls of the museum. In less than a month
after posting its profile on the programme website, the NHMJ was approached
by Frost Science, and following a series of online exchanges through emails and
Skype meetings, the project entitled Citizen-Led Urban Environmental Restoration
was conceptualised. The project was crafted in alignment with the AAM themes
‘Investing in Green Practices’ and ‘Developing Amateur Experts’. Project activities
served the main aim, which was to create communities of informed, environmen-
tally active citizens, with the understanding that each individual can effect change
in their environment. It was proposed that the citizen scientists would participate
in urban habitat restoration and outdoor discovery, learn about conservation issues
critical to both Miami and Kingston and ultimately take action to improve their
environments and contribute meaningfully to their communities.

The NHMJ and Frost Science partnership

Jamaica and South Florida share similar environmental issues, including envi-
ronmental degradation, pollution, sea level rise and urban sprawl. Both museums
are located in urbanised communities with limited access to green spaces. The
communities are mainly mixtures of businesses and low-income families. The
NHMJ and Frost Science recognised the similarities of the institutions’ goals and
related activities. Both shared a common goal to educate the public while fostering
 Connecting museums through citizen science  141

environmental stewardship, especially among the youth in local communities. The

museums’ outreach programmes focused on youth and young adults through many
programmes that involved some level of community participation.
The goals of the project were crafted by the partner organisations after careful
examination of the mandates of the museums and the guidelines provided by AAM.
The overall goals included

• developing protocols for environmental restoration involving citizen science,

• establishing a relationship between museums and individuals,
• building a network of environmentally knowledgeable young citizens,
• restoring different yet similar ecosystems and spaces in Jamaica and the United
States through the participation of citizens and
• fostering cultural awareness and exchange.

The expected project outcomes included

• well-rounded citizen scientists with increased knowledge of local and interna-

tional environmental issues,
• citizens with a greater understanding of cultural differences in terms of attitudes
and perspectives on environmental issues,
• young people with more knowledge about access to environmental services and
opportunities,
• citizen scientists with an understanding of scientific protocols and a developed
sense of environmental stewardship for their own communities,
• project scientists with an understanding of environmental issues and restoration
strategies relevant to both project locations,
• project scientists with improved skills on strategies for communicating environ-
mental science to the general public, using traditional and current technological
methods, including social media platforms,
• partner museums and project scientists with increased knowledge of the flora
and fauna important to both sites, in the context of broader conservation issues
unique to and shared by each partner site (i.e. invasive species, urban sprawl) and
• communities that maintain and enjoy their restored natural spaces and develop
an increased sense of pride and appreciation for their environment.

The sites
The NHMJ identified a space facing the building of the IOJ Programmes
­Coordination Division (IOJ Junior Centre), located in the Portmore municipality,
as an ideal location in need of conservation. The Junior Centre engages the youth
(aged 6–18 years) from surrounding communities in afternoon and weekend pro-
grammes in the visual and performing arts. The Junior Centre served as an ideal
source for potential project participants. The space was a dust bowl functioning as
142  Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell

a major thoroughfare for pedestrians, who used it to access the nearby major bus
park and transportation centre. The space was littered with solid waste and had
sparse vegetation, including a few palm trees and small shrubs. Portmore is an area
originally populated by mangroves, coastal ponds, marshes and some dry-forest

FIGURE 7.1  Site preparation at the Virginia Key North Point, Miami, Florida.

FIGURE 7.2 Rock Garden developed during restoration of the Greater Portmore site,
Jamaica.
 Connecting museums through citizen science  143

vegetation. Since the 1950s, the area has been increasingly transformed by urban
housing schemes. The original vegetation of the site was considered during the
restoration activities.
Frost Science, through its Museum Volunteers for the Environment (MUVE)
programme, was already working on restoring 17 acres of coastal habitat in Virginia
Key North Point (VKNP)1 and decided to expand their efforts at that site. VKNP
is an uninhabited, 1,200-acre barrier island located a few miles from downtown
Miami; it has a diverse matrix of native habitats, including mangrove wetlands,
tropical hardwood forests, dunes, active sea turtle nesting beaches and a freshwater
wetland, and it is surrounded by healthy seagrass beds and isolated coral reefs.

Project activities

Scientists and their training

Three scientists were recruited by each museum to serve as mentors for the c­ itizen
scientists during the life of the project (see details under ‘Recruitment’). The six
scientists (and their affiliations during the project) were Dr Kathleen Sullivan-­
Sealey (Associate Professor of Biology, University of Miami); Benjamin ­Wilson
(PhD candidate, Marine Science, Florida International University); Danielle Ogur-
cak (PhD student in Earth Systems Science, Florida International University);
Keron Campbell (Botanist, NHMJ); Elizabeth Morrison (Zoologist, NHMJ) and
Damion Whyte (Terrestrial Biologist and Environmental Officer, Urban Develop-
ment Corporation).
Frost Science led a series of three 4-hour workshops using the research-based
Portal to the Public approach. Portal to the Public is a professional learning com-
munity that facilitates work in the fields of science communication and public
engagement (Advancing Research Impact in Society, n.d.). Organisations can use
the framework to design programmes that fit their goals and prepare scientists
for face-to-face interactions with the general public. Portal to the Public, used by
several museums, is an innovation of the Institute for Learning Innovation, with
support from the National Science Foundation and the Institute of Museum and
Library Services.
Skype was used to facilitate meetings between the US-based scientists and part-
ners and their counterparts in Jamaica. The training sessions for the scientists were
aimed at arming the scientists with the skills to communicate efficiently and effec-
tively with young participants and other non-scientists. The training focused on
creating interactive and hands-on experiences using strategies that included shar-
ing personal stories, the pleasure of discovery and the avoidance of jargon.
As part of their deliverables for the workshop, scientists were required to
document the various research techniques in developing the project’s field guide.
The field guides were then used by the citizen scientists recruited for the pro-
ject restoration events, during field observations, data collection and monitoring
activities.
144  Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell

Stakeholder engagement
The engagement of community members, including organisations and businesses, was
integral to the success of the project.2 The Portmore Municipal Council (PMC) played
an integral role in ensuring that the project adhered to the Government of Jamaica
guidelines relative to protocols concerning the engagement of citizens, the erection
of signs and restoration activities. PMC staff provided information on existing water
facilities for the maintenance of the green space and the engagement of approved busi-
nesses for the purchase of benches, signs and other project-related materials. Notable
participants included the acting mayor, PMC staff, the counsellor for the area and
associates, who were actively involved in the project activities, including the recruit-
ment of student participants, site restoration and the official opening of the restored
space. The Public Affairs Section of the US Embassy also provided support in expos-
ing the project participants to their on-site facilities, which include a research library
with computer stations, and in issuing temporary visas to all the participants who
qualified for travel to the United States. Successful students and citizen scientists who
were selected to participate in the travel exchange programme included some individ-
uals who were receiving a passport and visa for the first time. Members of the diaspora
community based in Florida were also involved in the cultural exchange component of
the project. Persons of note included Jamaica’s Consul General to Miami, who partici-
pated in an official tour of the new Frost Science facility in downtown Miami, which

FIGURE 7.3 Mayor Leon Thomas and project participants from Miami planting trees at
the Greater Portmore site.
 Connecting museums through citizen science  145

FIGURE 7.4 Jamaica’s Consul General to Miami, Franz Hall, with project participants
from Jamaica at the Virginia Key North Point site, Miami, Florida.

was undergoing construction. The Consul General, along with influential members of
the diaspora in Miami, also participated in an official event hosted by the Frost ­Science
Museum. The event was a fundraiser for NHMJ gallery renovation and served also to
recognise the partnership of the NHMJ and the Frost Science Museum. Students from
Jamaica who travelled to Miami had the opportunity to share their experiences with
a wide cross-section of audience members, including the heads of both museums and
other leaders of the Miami community.

Recruitment
The NHMJ partnered with the Programmes Coordination Division (IOJ Junior
Centres) to recruit committed candidates for the project. Since the focus was on the
space in front of the Greater Portmore Junior Centre, high school students (citizen
scientists) from the immediate location were targeted. Citizen scientists would be
challenged with the task of identifying suitable plants for greening the space while
ensuring that they would attract fauna such as butterflies and birds. Specific walk-
ways would be established and benches for pedestrians would be added so that
people would have the opportunity to enjoy their surroundings.
The NHMJ used its experience with its Afternoon with a Scientist programme to
engage in-house and external scientists in training secondary school students (citi-
zen scientists) in species identification, conservation and environmental restoration.
­Secondary school students were sourced from the IOJ Junior Centre programmes,
which focus on engaging children and teenagers in the visual and performing arts.
146  Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell

The Frost Science Museum was engaged in MUVE, a volunteer-based habitat

restoration project that used social media, eco art and science exhibits to engage
local residents in restoring coastal environments that once thrived in Miami. To
ensure a healthy environment, local volunteers would learn about environmental
stresses and actively participate in projects and activities. The student volunteers
would become the project citizen scientists engaged by education and project staff
of the Frost Science Museum.
The recruitment process aimed to have students who would participate in all
aspects of the project for its duration of 8–12 months. In the letters to schools and
community organisations, the NHMJ requested individuals who were passionate
about the environment, were pursuing science subjects and had an interest in envi-
ronmental restoration and preservation. The NHMJ developed an application form
for students and used this to help in the selection process. Students were asked why
they were interested in participating in the programme, what they expected to gain
from the experience, how they thought they might use the experience in the future
and what their planned majors were for college. Thirty student citizen scientists
(aged 14–18) from each country were recruited. Participants were invited to com-
plete a questionnaire developed by the partners and secure the consent of parents
or guardians.
Additionally, pre-surveys were issued to the students to gather data about their
levels of understanding of biodiversity and environmental conservation. The pre-
survey also aided to assess content and cultural knowledge and included asking
students to list ways that humans can destroy or restore natural environments, name
any flora or fauna they knew to be native or invasive to either country, describe
their impressions or knowledge of the partner country and rate their use of and
comfort with social media.
The scientists recruited for the project also went through an application process
but using a designated application form. Their forms included similar questions to
those included in the student application, but applicants also had to indicate what
level of education they had received, their research areas, their philosophies on
science communication and their experience, if any, in informal science educa-
tion activities with the public. As part of their application process, they committed
to attend restoration events and actively engage with students at the events and
via project social media. A pre-survey was also administered to project scientists,
which included similar questions to those in the student survey, as well as ques-
tions about their experience and comfort with engaging with the public about their
research, in person or via social media. The latter response assisted with structuring
the science-communication training.

Restoration activities and virtual meetings

Restoration of the Greater Portmore site was the main focus for the NHMJ and
Jamaican participants, and the challenges were faced with energy and determination.
 Connecting museums through citizen science  147

The aim was to reform the space into a useful, aesthetically pleasing oasis in the
middle of a bustling community.
The service of a landscape architect was retained to redesign the site, bearing
in mind the main issues of concern which included improper disposal of garbage
by pedestrians and the dry, dusty landscape overrun by weeds. The resulting layout
included designated areas for plants, walkways, rest stops and garbage receptacles.
Approval from the mayor of Portmore and the councillor for the area were signals
for work to commence.
The project followed the six-step model for environmental restoration as
­outlined in the proposal:

1 identify site,
2 prepare logistics,
3 conduct assessment,
4 prepare site,
5 restore site and
6 monitor site.

Heavy machinery and workers removed dangerous objects and vegetation before
the citizen scientists took charge and contributed to restoration activities.
Activities in both countries relied heavily on the involvement of volunteers.
The core participants for the events were the citizen scientists engaged under the
project, but other volunteers also participated. The monthly activities had scientists
working closely with the young participants to share knowledge in practical and
hands-on activities.
Site preparation included the removal of garbage and identification of plant and
animal species. During these activities, invasive species were removed and benefi-
cial species retained. The project scientists guided the citizen scientists to collect
and identify specimens of plants and animals from the site. The museum staff also
encouraged the collection of specimens and gave practical demonstrations on pres-
ervation techniques. Early in the process, the soil quality was assessed and topsoil
was acquired and spread over the site.
The field notebook designed for the project was mandated to be used during
these activities as participants documented all activities, including introducing
plants, removing invasive plants, surveying bird and planting native flora. The
Frost Science and the NHMJ worked together to design and organise the structure
of the field guide, which included

• an overview of the project,

• a description and photo of each of the sites to be restored in the US (VKNP
coast) and Jamaica (Greater Portmore urban green space),
• images and descriptions of some of the most common native and invasive flora
and fauna in both areas,
148  Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell

• science process skills3 in a step-by-step format (e.g. plant collecting, sweep net
sampling, bird surveys, biomass estimation, sieving sand and plant growth and
abundance),
• blank grid pages with instructions on mapping the restoration site and docu-
menting observations,
• blank pages for notes and
• one page for each of the six project scientists, which included their education
histories, descriptions of their research and goals for their experience in the
project.

Project scientists were instrumental in creating the field guide, as they ­contributed
lists of key flora and fauna, outlined science process skills important to their
research and wrote their own scientist page. These field guides were printed on
all-weather, waterproof paper in professional-style field journal booklets, and each
student had their own field guide for the project. The project exposed students to
several other skills that they would not have learned in the classroom, such as bird
watching and identification, laying transects and water-quality monitoring.
The virtual meetings were the most exciting parts of the monthly restoration
events during the life of the project. These virtual meetings were facilitated through
Skype and allowed for participants from both countries to meet to share their expe-
riences and ask questions related to culture, science and the environment.
The comment below was posted on the project’s blog by one of the citizen
­scientists following a restoration activity:

When we had our first event on Virginia Key this January, I learned and saw so
many new things. With my group, we were picking up sea beans that washed up
on shore from other islands. There were so many different colours, shapes, and
sizes along the shoreline. I believe it is imperative to have projects like these
to save the environment and keep it intact. I encourage others to try and join to
participate in many other projects similar to this one.
(Lakayla Moody, US citizen scientist)

Another citizen scientist remarked during a virtual meeting:

I totally enjoyed myself at the event, and based on the expressions on the faces
of my peers, they seemed to enjoy it too. It was extraordinary. We had a great
and superb time learning, but most of all, I made new friends, too.
(Andrew Henry, Jamaican citizen scientist)

Exchange visits
Each museum conducted three sets of exchange trips to the partner country.
The first exchange trip involved two project staff from Miami who travelled
 Connecting museums through citizen science  149

to Kingston and two project staff from Kingston to Miami. These trips were
reconnaissance activities where project ‘kick-off’ meetings were held to out-
line project plans in more detail. Project staff from each location met project
partners and scientists, and they toured the restoration sites to gain an under-
standing of the partner environments and develop defined plans of action for
each site. Local project scientists were present at each meeting to discuss the
conditions and needs of each site. Frost Science project staff Lindsay Bar-
tholomew and Fernando Bretos travelled to Jamaica, and NHMJ project staff
Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell travelled to the US. In addition to work-
ing together on details of event timelines and participant recruitment strate-
gies, it was essential that each trip involved visits to each partner’s identified
restoration site. This resulted in creating an outline of goals for each site as
well as specific activities in which citizen scientists could participate. Pro-
ject staff were able to identify and acknowledge the similarities and differ-
ences between the two sites and this helped to determine successive project
plans. These trips also provided an opportunity to meet community partners
and officials in both locations, including the Acting Ambassador of the US
Embassy in Kingston, Lee Martinez, and Jamaica’s Consul General in Miami,
Franz Hall.
Midway through the project, one Frost Science staff member (Chelle King), one
project scientist (Danielle Ogurcak) and four citizen scientists (Dayna Richardson,
Lakayla Moody, Kenyartha Clark and Khalif Muhammad) travelled from the US to
Jamaica. This was followed by the exchange trip, where one NHMJ staff member
(Dionne Newell), one project scientist (Keron Campbell) and four citizen scientists
(Delano Ellis, Shemar Spence, Joelle Vidal and Oshane Somers) travelled from
Jamaica to the US.
As the project progressed, a second set of exchange trips took place: two Frost
Science staff members (Lindsay Bartholomew and Chelle King) and four citizen
scientists (Minerva Olazabal, Brianna Cineus, Wayne Holmes and Robinson Wag-
nac) travelled from the US to Jamaica. Conversely, one IOJ staff member (Kerri-
Ann Palmer), one project scientist (Elizabeth Morrison) and four citizen scientists
(Andrew Henry, Cesar Buelto, Tara-Chin Benloss and Tajh Reynolds) travelled
from Jamaica to the US.
These exchange trips were reported as enormously successful and exciting.
They represented the result of efforts of citizen scientists, as well as scientist men-
tors who actively participated in project activities. Participants learned first-hand
about the partner’s restoration activities and country, met new friends as well
as community leaders, officials and the media and actively participated in their
­restoration efforts.
During trips to Jamaica, the visiting scientists explored the Blue Mountains,
where many of them saw mountains for the first time. The visitors also met then
serving US Ambassador to Jamaica, Luis G. Moreno. They described the ­Jamaican
cuisine as delicious, and the students worked and socialised with new friends
150  Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell

through planting trees at the restoration sites and socialising at the nearby beach.
During one of the trips to Jamaica, the visitors were able to see the local frenzy
associated with the annual staging of the Boys and Girls Athletic Championships.
They were awed by the show of school spirit at every level of the society. The
culminating event in Jamaica involved an official ceremony where government
representatives, community leaders and project participants opened the restored
site in Portmore.
The trips to the US were firsts for a few of the citizen scientists. Many were
awed by the Miami cityscape, defined by its high-rise structures. The differences
in landscape were highlighted in a blog written by Tracy Commock and Dionne
Newell following the November trip to Miami:

We finally got a chance to see the project site, Virginia Key and crossed the
highest elevation in Florida, the bridge of maybe 2 metres high, WOW. We
could swap some of these fantastic views of the skyline with some of the moun-
tains in Jamaica.

The Jamaican students were exposed to the many fascinations of the science
museum, including the numerous interactive displays and the planetarium. One
highlight was the fundraiser event hosted by the Frost Science Museum, which
was held to benefit NHMJ during their trip to Miami. The Jamaican contingent
contributed to a final event, during which they and other volunteers, joined by
Jamaica’s Consul General in Miami Franz Hall, collectively planted over 900 trees
on Virginia Key.
The participants’ experiences underscore the role of museums in exposing them
not only to more than just scientific principles but also to social and economic
activities and their linkages to the environment. The citizen scientists were truly
fascinated by the exchange in both countries and expressed their experiences as
follows:

The fun, adventure and everything—every single detail of this trip, has been fan-
tastic! Miami is beautiful and diverse. The people are just as colourful and grand
as their city. I have made friends with the scientists and students in the MUVE
programme who will not be forgotten. I definitely look forward to returning to
see my legacy grow and change an environment for the better.
(Cesar Buelto, Jamaican citizen scientist)

There I learned that one of the endangered butterflies in Jamaica was the
f­ ascinating Giant Swallowtail Butterfly. I also learned that one of the endemic
butterflies of Jamaica was the breathtaking Clear Winged or Glass Winged
­Butterfly. While being in Jamaica and also doing our restoration project in
Miami on Virginia Key, I learned that the Periwinkle Plant grows in both areas,
and in Jamaica it is called Jamaican Vinca. I one day hope to return to learn
 Connecting museums through citizen science  151

more and reunite with my Jamaican friends, because this was an experience that
I will never forget, and forever it will remain in my heart.
(Dayna Richardson, US citizen scientist)

On the second night in Miami there was a function hosted to observe the
museum connection between Frost Museum of Science and the Natural History
Museum of Jamaica. The JahMaians [Jamaicans + Miamians] were all asked to
do a briefing about the programme and what we have learned. We all gave var-
ied comments concerning the operations and progress of the site and group as
a whole. When it was my time to speak, I was nervous but I held my composure
and nailed it. The applause came raining like raindrops from a category five hur-
ricane when I remarked that ‘the project is a team effort and I strongly support
the saying that “Teamwork Makes the Dream Work”’.
(Shemar Spence, Jamaican citizen scientist)

Social media… #jamuve

NHMJ and Frost Science used basic ‘tools’ to implement the project but have
since become aware of researchers who think that citizen science projects need
to adopt new technologies to allow participants and organisers to communicate,
participate and interact effectively (Bonney et al., 2014; Newman et al., 2012, p. l;
Sturm et al., 2017).
The use of social media was one of the means by which citizen scientists were
engaged, which proved highly successful throughout the project. The project team
coined the term #jamuve for all online platforms. Frost Science has an existing
programme called Muve, and it was agreed that ‘jamuve’ would highlight activi-
ties related to the Museums Connect project. Social media was the means by which
many of the participants were introduced to each other, maintained contact and
eventually became friends. Through social media outlets, the project created a net-
work of concerned active constituents in both countries. Citizen scientists were
encouraged to document activities, accomplishments and challenges by posting
pictures, videos, blog posts, questions and comments for scientists and their col-
leagues. They were further encouraged to act by a digital badge incentive system
that awarded them for accomplishments and participation. Citizens would earn dig-
ital badges by attending restoration events, submitting to photo and essay contests,
writing blog entries, posting questions to scientists or collecting the most data.
These incentives were used to help determine which citizen scientists would earn
a place on exchange trips to the partner country. Recognising potential limitations
for some participants, citizen scientists who did not have easy computer or mobile
access were allowed to submit media to project staff at restoration events so that
they could receive hard copy digital badges and become eligible to participate in
the trips. Computers were set up at NHMJ to assist these constituents in partici-
pating virtually. Data collection sheets and field guides for flora and fauna were
152  Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell

provided in hard copy form as well as in digital form on the project’s web portal.
A hard copy pen pal exchange was also initiated between those citizen scientists
with limited access to the internet or mobile technology.
Through the use of platforms such as Instagram and WhatsApp, all project
­participants from both locations were encouraged to communicate as well as post
live updates on activities, including restoration events as they occurred. This was
a means to facilitate real-time interaction. Although some of the citizen scientists
used platforms such as Twitter, for most people, especially the Jamaican contin-
gent, WhatsApp was the preferred platform. There was a constant stream of posts
daily: citizen scientists communicated with each other as well as with project sci-
entists, posting photos and seeking help in identification of plants and animals.
Interactive training sessions for project scientists in both locations were held using
Skype.

My absolute most favourite part of this whole restoration project was talking
to the Jamaican students via Skype! I loved asking them questions and talking
about what I was learning. They are so intelligent and kind, which is why I hope
to go there and personally meet them.
(Minerva Olazabal, US citizen scientist)

FIGURE 7.5 
Citizen scientists conducting restoration activities at site in Greater
­Portmore, Jamaica.
 Connecting museums through citizen science  153

FIGURE 7.6 Citizenscientists planting sea oats and other native plants at Virginia Key
North Point, Miami, Florida.

Challenges
In spite of the overall success of the project, challenges faced during
­implementation became learning experiences that strengthened efforts to suc-
ceed. Both museums shared common experiences in collaborative projects where
institutions have varying roles and responsibilities in project implementation.
However, there were delays in the transfer of funds as well as the signing of
related documents due to limitations in communication. The delay in the signing
of the project charter actually caused the delay in the start of the project, giving
it an official start date of 24 September 2014 and end date of 31 July 2015. The
museums therefore had 10 months to implement a project originally designed
to be implemented over 12 months. Both institutions were unaware of each oth-
er’s operational cultures and procedures, and this created initial barriers to its
smooth implementation. Bureaucratic requirements for importation of equipment
resulted in delays in acquisitions; however, the museums were able to overcome
this by finding more suitable (lawful) methods. Many of the local citizen scien-
tists had limited access to computers or reliable internet service, which prevented
them from participating in social media activities. The project, however, pro-
vided computer equipment, which was used during training and other exercises.
We were mindful of the time commitments by our citizen scientists, who were
all full-time students who also had to balance regular co-curricular activities and
154  Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell

family commitments with the requirements of the project. During the restoration
phase, Jamaica was in the midst of a drought, which resulted in significant delays
in planting native species in the area.
This project benefitted logistically by Miami and Kingston being in the same
time zone (or just one hour difference, depending on daylight saving time),
having English as an official language and being on a similar academic school
calendar. However, a few challenges have been identified and were addressed
throughout the development and implementation of this project. Although no
translation was required, some citizen scientist students had difficulty under-
standing Jamaican dialect, but project staff were present to assist. One chal-
lenge was that NHMJ citizen scientists did not have easy access to computers
or mobile technology. Miami students had access to computers at school, at
Frost Science’s Best Buy Teen Tech Center and personal mobile devices, while
computer facilities at NHMJ and Jamaican schools existed but were limited.
In Jamaica, the Junior Centre, through their Saturday opening hours, facili-
tated the execution of the project when activities were held during the school
year. Advanced Training Opportunities Programme (ATOP) students met on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, and commitment was sought from parents regard-
ing students’ participation on days when project activities competed with
family time.

Impact and outcomes

The project documented the following outcomes:

• Citizen scientists gained increased knowledge of and involvement in their envi-

ronments, both locally and regionally, including flora and fauna before and after
restoration and scientific protocols.
• Scientist mentors gained skills and strategies for communicating environmental
science to the public, in person and via social media.
• Project staff from both partner museums learned how to better engage citizens
in environmental restoration in urban spaces.
• The target audience learned about flora and fauna in both locations.
• Participants increased their appreciation of restored natural spaces.
• The target audiences in the US and Jamaica developed a broader knowledge
about and understanding of one another’s cultures.

Lessons learned and other observations

Several important lessons were learned during the implementation of the project.
Sensitivity to cultural differences was high on the list. Both museums are
located in urban communities, with participants from various ethnic groups and
social standing. The Jamaican participants interacted mainly with persons of the
 Connecting museums through citizen science  155

same ethnicity. That was not the case for the students in Miami. The students from
Miami who were of Jamaican descent were happy to share their cultural simi-
larities. Through the WhatsApp group, the students shared jargon and the use of
Jamaican dialect. Experience with understanding flexibility in implementing pro-
jects was one of the main lessons for both partners. As a museum from a SIDS with
the ongoing challenge of insufficient resources, it was easier for us to adapt to the
situation and quickly develop solutions.
Visits to the Frost Museum highlighted the possibilities and reach of museums
and museum professionals when resources are available. The Frost Museum was
also in the process of building a new museum space, which members of NHMJ
also had the opportunity to tour during the project. It was heart-wrenching but
encouraging nevertheless to see what could be achieved locally if even a fraction of
the resources observed in that context were made available. Museums in Jamaica
could benefit from more financial support and access to learning resources, includ-
ing interactive exhibits.
One of the most important lessons learned was to be adaptive in our approach
to project implementation, and this was vital to the success of our project. At the
Greater Portmore restoration site, for example, we encountered logistical prob-
lems related to how we would deliver water to the plants after planting. This was
exacerbated by an ongoing drought affecting Jamaica at the time. Our collabora-
tion’s efforts would be futile if the plants planted by eager volunteers failed to
thrive without water. NHMJ took quick action by contacting the mayor of Greater
Portmore to request his support. In Miami, this approach would be more complex,
given that politicians in such a large metropolitan area are more detached from this
type of issue. But the Greater Portmore officials kindly offered their assistance and
assured water delivery throughout the project. The lesson is to try every potential
solution when building a community project and take into account every factor,
whether it is varying access to technology, involvement of community officials,
changing physical conditions or new ideas.

Sustainability
The NHMJ recognised the need to know what aspects of the project could be
­sustained after the life of the project. The continued monitoring of the restored site
in Jamaica was one of the key priorities. During the implementation of the project,
soil quality and access to water were major challenges. Although new soil and
drought-resistant plants were introduced to the site, there has been a major problem
with stray animals and insufficient water. The NHMJ received written commitment
from the PMC for their assistance with the site throughout the project and has
maintained good working relations to date.
As outlined in the project document, the museum seeks opportunities to use the
site in other IOJ programmes, especially if there is an opportunity related to climate
change, biodiversity and native versus invasive species monitoring.
156  Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell

Current projects
The NHMJ has been implementing the Biodiversity Awareness Project with
­TransJamaican Highway (TJH) 2000 East–West since 2011. This environmental
education project is an example of partnership with a private sector organisation to
achieve awareness of science and environmental issues.
The project involves the participation of five schools that are situated in the
­parishes and communities traversed by the highway built and managed by TJH
2000 East–West. The students are exposed to lessons on important plants and ani-
mals in their communities, and they conduct practical exercises that include the
development of vegetable gardens. Project outcomes to date include the construc-
tion of a biodiversity centre, trips to the museum and its field stations as well as
participation in special events hosted by the NHMJ.

Reflections and conclusions

The project provided students with the opportunity to interact with their peers
locally and internationally on environmental stewardship. This experience cre-
ated a baseline for the development of future leaders in environmental conserva-
tion. Activities such as bird watching and identification, preparation of insects and
plants for permanent, preserved collections, and restoration activities expanded
their minds and opened up a new world of possibilities for them.
The Museums Connect project allowed the scientists and other project partici-
pants to have closer interactions with students and the general public, which, for
many persons, was a new experience outside of their routine job functions. The
project also allowed museum professionals to dispel the myth that natural history
museums are cemeteries with old preserved specimens in drawers and jars. Museum
professionals were challenged to think outside the box and develop c­ reative ways
of engaging the public, especially the young citizen scientists.
The activities undertaken throughout the project worked towards national
and international goals relevant to environmental conservation and sustainable
development. Jamaica’s Vision 2030 was built on seven guiding principles that
put people at the centre of national development and four national goals towards
achieving first-world status (Planning Institute of Jamaica, 2012). Partnership and
sustainability were two of the guiding principles that were central to the success
of the project, which placed people at the centre of fulfilling its overarching objec-
tives. Jamaica and the United States, through science-based museums, embarked
on a cultural exchange programme facilitated by sharing financial and technical
resources. This partnership resulted in the creation of environmental conserva-
tion stewards empowered with increased knowledge of environmental issues and
possible solutions. Jamaica recognises that economic, social and environmental
problems and solutions are all interconnected and that an integrated approach,
underpinned by good governance, in addressing these issues will ensure that the
country’s ­development is sustainable.
 Connecting museums through citizen science  157

Goal one of Vision 2030 speaks to the empowerment of Jamaicans to achieve

their fullest potential. The positive response and enthusiasm displayed by the citi-
zen scientists throughout the restoration activities and training exercises were good
indicators of their heightened interest in the environment and the need for its pro-
tection. Additionally, the interactions between the citizen scientists and the pro-
ject scientists and staff exposed the students to the various careers that could be
undertaken in science, environmental conservation and museums. This increased
exposure fostered the ability of the citizen scientists to recognise that they can
achieve their fullest potential using their talents and abilities to elevate their stand-
ard of living and quality of life (Planning Institute of Jamaica, 2012). Goal four
of Vision 2030 outlines Jamaica’s plan for a healthy natural environment. Several
challenges were outlined in the Vision document, including poor management of
solid waste and loss of biodiversity. The activities undertaken during the project,
such as the replanting of indigenous plants and trees to encourage birds and flying
insects as well as the removal of solid waste, fulfilled the project’s aim of address-
ing these issues. The restoration of the space in Greater Portmore supports this goal
by way of creating a green space that creates harmony among development activi-
ties and fosters environmental conservation and sustainability (Planning Institute
of Jamaica, 2012).

FIGURE 7.7 Jamaican and American project participants at site in Greater Portmore,

Jamaica.
158  Tracy Commock and Dionne Newell

Internationally, several nations have been consciously working since 2015 to

achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the year 2030. Jamaica
is among the committed nations. The experiences from the project contributed sig-
nificantly to attaining three of these goals, namely 4, 11 and 17. Goal 4 addresses
better education, and the project provided the opportunity for all participants to
gain experiences in such a way that they developed increased knowledge and were
equipped to educate others. Goal 11 focuses on building sustainable cities, which is
in line with the component of sustainable urban and rural development, a guiding
principle of Jamaica’s Vision 2030. The efforts to create an oasis in an urban ‘desert’
to improve the natural environment, improve aesthetics and create a usable space
for the residents were addressed in the project. The project also allowed the commu-
nity to see that they could contribute significantly to sustaining their own city. Goal
17 speaks to partnerships focused on attaining the SDGs. Building and sustaining
partnerships to achieve common goals was definitely an achievement of the project.

Notes
1 Read more about the Virginia Key restoration project here: [Link]
[Link]/citizen-science/virginia-key-restoration/
2 Community partner organisations in Miami included Miami-Dade County, the City of
Miami, Miami-Dade College, Florida International University, the University of M
­ iami,
Miami-area high schools, Council for Opportunities in Education and the Stokes Insti-
tute, The Mission Continues, Wounded Warrior Project and HandsOn Miami. ­Notable
individuals who partnered with the project included Dr Gregory R. Frederick. In
­Jamaica, community participants included the PMC, Greater Portmore Joint Council,
Jamaica Urban Transit Company, Urban Development Corporation, Mico University
College, high schools in Greater Portmore and neighbourhood youth clubs.
3 Skills used by scientists when conducting research that include observing, measuring
and communicating.

References
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[Link]/portal-to-the-public (Accessed: 25 April 2020).
American Alliance of Museums (2018). ‘Interested in International Museum Partnerships?
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2020).
8
EVOKING WONDER TO INSPIRE
ACTION AROUND CLIMATE
CHANGE—A COLLABORATIVE
EXHIBITION PROJECT IN THE
ISLANDS
Natalie Urquhart1

In a world plagued by fake news, museums are considered to be one of the most
trustworthy sources of information. According to recent American Alliance of
Museums (2018) statistics, museums are more highly rated by the public than local
papers, non-profit researchers, the government or academic researchers. Millions
of people visit US museums annually, and millions more use their online portals
for research and information. In the Caribbean, our visitor numbers (and opera-
tional budgets) may be smaller, but we are well positioned to inform and inspire
our diverse audiences and to revitalise public pedagogy around pressing local and
global challenges.
A question that we must now ask ourselves as Caribbean museum ­professionals
is: in light of the intensifying socio-environmental pressures we face, how can
we evolve beyond our traditional position as keepers of memory to become
curators of future stories, or agents of change, to provide both the spark and
the tools? There is no doubt that the role of museums has transformed over
the past few decades, with our core functions and social responsibilities having
become increasingly interconnected. Today’s museums can no longer function
simply as windows to the past but, as Jette Sandahl (2019, p. v) proposes, they
must ‘become inextricably part of and active agents in society’. They must, that
is, ‘engag[e] visitors in dialogue surrounding contemporary social issues, and
in shaping the way we see, think about and act towards others and the world
around  us’ (Janes and Sandell, 2018, p. xxvii). To succeed within this new
framework, we must also adapt as professionals and engage our public through
inspiring  exhibitions and programming, revisit how we provide access to our
collections and strategically build genuine and lasting collaborations with our
communities.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-10
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
 Evoking wonder to inspire action  161

FIGURE 8.1 National Gallery of the Cayman Islands. © NGCI, 2018.

Each of our institutions has different priorities around what constitutes an

‘urgent issue’ within our communities. At the National Gallery of the C ­ ayman
Islands (NGCI), as a regional art museum on a small island in the Carib-
bean, our programming is increasingly concerned with climate change. Grand
­Cayman sits at an average height of 7 feet, making it particularly vulnerable
to rising sea levels. As islanders, we are all deeply aware of how shifts in cli-
mate, even subtle ones, affect us. From rising seas and coral bleaching to the
loss of fresh water, islands are among the nations most vulnerable to climate
change impact (Cameron, Hodge and Salazar, 2013) with many Small Island
Developing States (SIDS) already experiencing the drastic impacts of climate
change (United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Devel-
oped Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and SIDS, 2015). Following
a decade of increasing storm surges and hurricanes—the damage and economic
losses associated with Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, alone were larger
than the annual gross domestic product of several of the smaller islands that
were impacted (Nurse and Edwards, 2019, p. 37)—there can be no doubt that
the violent hurricane seasons we have recently experienced are directly related
to raising global temperatures. For all of us in the Caribbean, this climate con-
versation will be a defining issue of our times; as trusted public spaces and sites,
Caribbean museums have a unique opportunity to emerge as key players in the
shaping of local narratives around this topic.
162  Natalie Urquhart

Museums, art and climate change

Museums the world over are actively engaging with the climate change c­ onversation
and reinterpreting older permanent collections or creating new programming and
artistic collaborations to engage their public in this conversation. There are many
innovative projects from which we can draw inspiration. In Washington, DC, for
example, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History has installed an
impactful digital gateway to its traditional Ocean Hall that urges viewers ‘To dive
in… to discover to make a difference’. In addition to cutting-edge technical dis-
plays, it features a remarkable coral reef installation made entirely from found
plastic objects, entitled Turtle Ocean (2016), which provides a wonderful example
of how artistic interventions in the traditional museum environment can inspire
wonder and reinforce messaging.
Plastic Ocean (2017), an art installation created by Tan Zi Xi and displayed at
the Sassoon Docks Art Project, addresses similar issues to Turtle Ocean. Visitors
find themselves in a situation unnervingly like being underwater—except that the
surface is completely covered in a layer of plastic waste. Another inspiring exam-
ple is the work being carried out as part of the artist-led Cape Farewell (2012–)
project. The project has invited artists and creatives to join expeditions to explore
arctic science, sustainable island communities, urban regeneration and the clean-
tech industry. The results are presented in innovative exhibition collaborations with
museums around the world. At the National Building Museum in Washington, DC,
the interactive installation ICEBERGS (2016) by James Corner Field Operations
similarly addresses concerns about melting polar ice caps and material waste by
constructing the work out of reusable materials such as scaffolding and polycar-
bonate panelling.
In the contemporary art sphere, we find equally compelling public art and
­exhibition projects that seek to inspire audiences to engage in conversations on
climate change. For example, UK artist Chris Bodle’s Watermarks (2009) involved
projecting future water levels onto buildings, thereby transforming abstract sci-
entific data into a stark visual reminder about potential flood levels. Rethink –
­Contemporary Art & Climate Change (2009–) is a joint project of the National
Gallery of Denmark, Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center and the
­Alexandra Institute, which travelled to several European museums. It invited
30 artists to use the subjective and immediate qualities of art to engage the public
in climate discussions in a variety of ways. Don’t/Panic (2012), an exhibition in
Durban, South Africa, curated by Gabi Ngcobo, sought to create a dialogue around
culture and climate change from a uniquely African perspective. Meanwhile,
Weather Report – About Weather Culture and Climate Science (2017), developed
by the Deutsches Museum, Munich, and supported by UN Climate Change, used
historical European artworks to create a sense of understanding around our com-
plex climate systems and the increase in extreme weather conditions.
The thread that joins these projects is the notion that artistic interventions can
create positive reinforcement. This builds upon Gary Braasch’s (2013, p. 38)
 Evoking wonder to inspire action  163

observation that ‘a sense of connection with the causes and consequences of climate
change in a positive manner [...] tend[s] to create more possibilities for engagement
and action’. For example, speaking about the Weather Report exhibit, Nick Nuttall
(spokesperson for the exhibition patron, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary
Patricia Espinosa) noted the importance of going beyond economic arguments in
communicating about climate change. He emphasised how such exhibitions can
inspire people to take climate action:

Some people need to be moved by art to think differently and see their perspec-
tive change. We need a broad movement of different perspectives to shape a
broad response globally, nationally in our homes, in our schools.
(United Nations Climate Change, 2017)

Much research has been done on how to connect people to climate communica-
tion (see Braasch, 2013; Cozen, 2013; Guy, Henshaw and Heidrich, 2015; Lyons
and Bosworth, 2018). As a topic, climate change is viewed by many as a very
abstract problem that is hard to visualise in a way that relates to everyday life,
especially in regions not yet being affected by extreme weather. This can result
in individual disconnection and a failure to act (Weber, 2006). In their work on
visual art as a way to communicating about climate change, Roosen, Klöckner
and Swim (2018, p. 91) write that much of the climate communication we engage
with fails to inspire due to a lack of relatable narratives and metaphors. Further
compounding this issue is negative imagery—which fails to create an emotional
response or, worse, promotes a sense of despondency—along with a lack of the
kind of storytelling that makes information memorable (Roosen, Klöckner and
Swim, 2018). Several studies have shown that emotional reactions to environ-
mental risks such as climate change can trigger a tendency to act (Böhm and
Pfister, 2000; Klöckner, Beisenkamp and Hallmann, 2009; Roosen, Klöckner
and Swim, 2018). If powerful experiences are created for people to experience a
narrative about climate change personally, these experiences can be more mov-
ing and ultimately may trigger a process of changed behaviours and actions on
an individual level (Bullot, 2014). Inspiring experiences, such as those refer-
enced above, enable visitors both to access information and to draw connections
between the work’s content and their own lives, encouraging an engagement in
the climate conversation long after the museum visit ends. It remains for us as
museum professionals to create more of these types of ­experiences for our local
audiences.

Developing Coral Encounters at the National Gallery

In 2017, the NGCI began developing a project based on this notion of positive rein-
forcement as a way of communicating about climate change. An art exhibition and
community programme entitled Coral Encounters was designed around the concept
164  Natalie Urquhart

FIGURE 8.2  Coral Encounters promotional poster. © NGCI, 2018.

of ‘evoking wonder to inspire action’, encouraging viewers ‘to ­discover, and dive
in, to make a difference’. The following description of this exhibition, from design
to programming and partnerships, serves as an example of how smaller Caribbean
museums and galleries can have a large impact on local and regional conversations
and actions on climate change.
Coral Encounters, a collaborative project by NGCI and the Central Caribbean
Marine Institute (CCMI), in conjunction with the International Year of the Reef
(IYOR) initiative, explored coral reef health and its relation to climate change
through the work of 30 photographers and six partner organisations. Positioned
at the crossroads between art and science, it brought together artists, marine pro-
fessionals, scientists, curators and educators to inspire dialogue, support ongoing
research and management efforts and strengthen long-term collaborations for coral
reef conservation—a critical conversation for low-lying island nations.
This project was designed around a collaborative programming model, which at
its core was built on our partnership with CCMI, a leading global marine research
centre located on the smallest of the three Cayman Islands. Based on an island
steeped in maritime heritage, the National Gallery’s education programme is heav-
ily focused on this aspect of our history, including maritime heritage, ocean con-
servation, coral health, plastics and recycling. Sustainability as a theme, however,
fell largely outside the traditional expertise of our art museum staff (Hebda, 2007,
p. 335). The initial partnership was designed to enable NGCI to draw on CCMI
research and programming support, with NGCI in turn providing lecture facilities
for the CCMI schedule in Grand Cayman. By 2017, discussions were underway to
 Evoking wonder to inspire action  165

launch the CCMI’s Reefs Go Live project (discussed further below) at the National
Gallery in early 2018 to coincide with the IYOR. This launch quickly developed
into a wider exhibition project which would draw upon local partners while ben-
efiting from the IYOR scope and resources.
The vision for the project was to use the subjective and immediate qualities
of art to engage the Caymanian population in climate discussions (Hulme, 2010,
p. 22). These would be centred around Cayman’s world-renowned coral reef sys-
tem, which is at the heart of the local water-based tourism industry. From the start,
NGCI’s curatorial team were keen to avoid a purely documentary-style exhibition,
given the organisation’s primary mission as an art museum. We sought to create
an experience that would engage visitors in a fresh way rather than offer up tra-
ditional marine images that they had experienced before. This was achieved by
focusing on the natural design elements found in the corals themselves. As land-
based beings, most of us struggle to understand the unique processes of the ocean.
To many islanders, the underwater environment is a distant place beyond their
reach, brimming with alien lifeforms: stinging corals, glowing anemones and giant
carnivorous clams that are bizarre, beautiful and otherworldly. The idea that began
to germinate was to create an entry point into this ‘weird and wonderful world
beneath the waves’ (Urquhart, 2017), and to inspire students to care enough to get
involved in the efforts to save it. Building upon the premise that climate-related
messages should aim to be inspiring (Roosen, Klöckner and Swim, 2018), and that

FIGURE 8.3a-d  Coral Encounters installation views. © NGCI, 2018.

166  Natalie Urquhart

inspiration may be a motivating factor in the process of change (Thrash and Elliot,
2003, p. 96), we settled on science fiction to tell our very serious story. The concept
of ‘a galaxy far, far away yet ten feet from the shore’ thus formed the basis of the
exhibition brief.
Once our core project partners had been established, an open call was developed
and shared with local and international photographers through the IYOR, NGCI
and CCMI websites. Of the multiple entries, 30 photographers were selected from
7 countries, and a total of 72 images featured in the exhibition. Importantly, the
decision to feature predominantly macro photography enabled us to focus attention
on the remarkable patterns and colours found in the natural environment, which
helped us avoid presenting a more typical documentary-style exhibition of larger
reef systems. This stunning collection of images offered a unique chance to glimpse
one of the world’s most diverse environments and to get up close with some of the
species that inhabit it.
In an effort to create an environment that would evoke a sense of wonder,
the exhibition design drew heavily upon the popular science fiction film Close
Encounters of the Third Kind. Sci-fi fonts, wayfinding graphics, bold neon ­colours
and large vibrant grid systems were used to create visual impact, while lumi-
nous lighting created an otherworldly feel. Sectional headings extended this with
titles that included other science fiction references, such as Stranger Things and
Between Two Worlds. Ultimately these well-loved popular cultural references and
the vibrant design helped to provide an access point for visitors of all ages and a
chance to engage them in a more serious conversation around coral reef health
(Gough, ­Berigny and Dunn, 2016, p. 16). For example, the activity sheets created
for school tours focused on exploring pattern and design and included conversa-
tion prompts through which wider themes of coral bleaching, sustainability and
recycling could be discussed. In addition, an important part of the exhibition design
also included a pop-up education space that sought to create space for reflection.
Labels provided information and facts about coral growth, healthy reef ecosystems,
threats to the reef and so on, concluding with suggestions about ways in which
visitors could begin protecting our reefs both at the community level, through
­advocacy, and individually, through recycling efforts.
Once the backdrop for the wider conversation had been established through the
exhibition itself, a larger programme of workshops, lectures and events was devel-
oped. Again, we drew upon several long-standing partnerships to help provide
content, ranging from government departments, other NGOs, small marine-based
businesses as well as individual celebrities who were championing the conversa-
tion locally. They included the Cayman Islands Department of the Environment,
the Cayman Islands National Trust, Plastic Free Cayman, Eco Divers, Sustainable
Cayman as well as individual environmentalists. Each of these groups and indi-
viduals came forward with ideas for lectures, screenings, panel discussions and
even underwater workshops. The scientists provided educational facts and ensured
that exhibition labelling was correct, and the divers helped us identify mysterious
 Evoking wonder to inspire action  167

FIGURE 8.4 Students participating in a Coral Encounters tour exercise in the pop-up

‘Exploration Station’. © NGCI, 2018.

species unknown to our museum staff, as well as where these creatures were
located in Caymanian waters.
All of this information fed into our ‘Minds Inspired’ schools programme, which
sought to maximise the context of the exhibition and optimise the opportunity for
young visitors to engage in the topic beyond the museum field trip. Schools started
their visit to the exhibition with a guided tour that introduced the science behind
coral reefs, including a scavenger hunt worksheet that encouraged students to find
certain corals based on their unique shape, pattern and colour. This was followed
by time in the pop-up lab, which reinforced the fact that coral reefs were at risk
from climate change and explained how students could each make a difference.
168  Natalie Urquhart

FIGURE 8.5 Students completing activity sheets during a guided tour of Coral Encoun-
ters. © NGCI, 2018.

Students were then invited to participate in an activity that illustrated how coral
bleaching occurs. Finally, classroom resources were provided to all visiting schools
that included information from the exhibition, several suggested classroom art
activities and a bibliography for further research.
A second component for schools was CCMI’s Reefs Go Live project, which
was piloted during the exhibition. Reefs Go Live uses Virtual Live Experiences
(VLEs) to connect students and the public to real-time coral reef activity. S
­ tudents
were able to watch CCMI scientists deliver live lessons from the underwater
 Evoking wonder to inspire action  169

FIGURE 8.6 A father and son discuss Coral Encounters at a National Gallery Family
Fun Day. Photo by Carol Lee, © NGCI 2018.

FIGURE 8.7 Visitors enjoy the Coral Encounters opening reception. © NGCI, 2018.
170  Natalie Urquhart

environment and to ask questions in real time as the underwater camera moved
over the living reef. This groundbreaking work opened up the underwater world to
students and helped to reinforce the exhibition narrative that they had encountered
at the museum.

FIGURE 8.8a&b Young students interpreting their Coral Encounters experience onsite

and back in the classroom. © NGCI, 2018.
 Evoking wonder to inspire action  171

The wider community programme also featured screenings of Reefs Go Live in

addition to a wide range of events around coral reef health and related topics. These
included ‘Recycled Art Workshops’, ‘Under the Sea Family Fun Days’, lectures on
‘Coral Reefs 101’, ‘Photographing & Protecting Coral Reefs’, ‘The Value of Restor-
ing Cayman’s Reef Fish’, ‘The Repopulation of the Nassau Grouper’, ‘Coral Reef
Farms’ and others. In addition, we held special teacher appreciation evenings with
resources on how to teach students about the importance of coral reef health, and
panel discussions around wider sustainable living approaches and single-use plastics.
Importantly, a ‘Call to Action’ was included during each event. This featured ways
in which visitors could connect directly with local organisations working in this area
and provided a pledge that visitors could make to protect our coral reefs.

Conclusion
With a record number of schools engaging with the exhibition and strong uptake
of the related community programming, Coral Encounters was considered by the
core partners to be an overwhelming success. As Semmel (2019, p. xix) notes in
her introduction to Partnership Power, ‘today’s challenges are complex and mul-
tidimensional requiring different organizations to come together […] in order to

FIGURE 8.9 Little Cayman Museum Coral Encounters Travelling Exhibition Installa-

tion. © NGCI, 2019.
172  Natalie Urquhart

“move the needle” on effective change’. Despite our limited budget, the project
made a big impact locally due to the collaborative exhibition model with multidis-
ciplinary partners (museum staff, designers, artists, marine biologists and educa-
tors), and the open sharing of knowledge and resources. This enabled our message
to have a greater impact and attract new audiences. Moreover, due to the wide
scope of the community programming, the project drew extensive local press cov-
erage, in addition to international exposure through our strategic alignment with
IYOR. This in turn has helped draw attention to local advocacy efforts around
reef health, recycling initiatives and single-use plastics and has also contributed
in part to the growth of youth climate protests that we are currently experiencing
in the Cayman Islands. The project has subsequently travelled to Grand Cayman’s
Sister Islands, with plans to develop the exhibition for regional travel. Talks are
also underway to establish a formal artist residency programme focused on climate
change and ocean health, which will be co-hosted by NGCI and CCMI.
Coral Encounters illustrates that, given our unique position as a trusted informa-
tion source (Cameron, Hodge and Salazar, 2013, p. 9), even the smallest museums can
become ‘ideally placed to foster individual and community participation in the quest
for greater awareness and workable solutions to our global problems’ (Janes, cited
in Cameron, Hodge and Salazar, 2013, p. 380). By joining with partners outside our
sector and through the creative and innovative use of available resources—whether
photographs on foam board or big-budget installations—we can create engaging
experiences that inspire our audiences to action and help them find solutions to the
issues our communities are facing. Perhaps collectively, we might eventually inspire
‘a billion people’ and, by doing so, help enact urgent and effective change.

Acknowledgements
The author extends thanks to all of the participating photographers and e­ xhibition
partners: Emma Camp, Tracy Candish, Eleanor Chalfen, Cathy Church, Tim
­Codling, Martin Colognoli, Julie Corsetti, Ellen Cuylaerts, Chase Darnell, S­ haron
Davies, Darvin Ebanks, Laura L. Fall, Carl Hawkes, Lucy Janes, Aubri Keith,
Lauren Knuckey, Yuri Korchynski, Jim MacCallum, Elena McDonough, Lindsay
McGill, Dusty Norman, Courtney Platt, Elizabeth Riley, Peggy Sinclaire, Brooke
Sipple, Monte Lee Thornton, Mark Tilley, Jason Washington, Dale Williams, Bryan
Winter, the CCMI, the Cayman Islands Department of Environment, the National
Trust for the Cayman Islands, Eco Divers, Plastic Free Cayman, Cathy Church’s
Photo Centre, Courtney Platt and Stacie Sybersma.

Notes
1 This chapter was originally developed for the opening plenary session at the 2018
­Museums Association of the Caribbean Conference, Barbados, held in conjunction
with the EU-LAC Museums project and the University of the West Indies. Having re-
cently returned from Washington, DC, where I had been privileged to attend a Global
 Evoking wonder to inspire action  173

Leadership Forum for museums hosted by the Smithsonian Conservation Commons’

Earth Optimism initiative in conjunction with the Earth Day Network. Those gathered
spent the day brainstorming ideas and plans to activate programming around Earth Day
2020 and some of us left believing in the impossible. Perhaps it is our institutions—big
and small—that are collectively best poised to make a difference in this very urgent
conversation. For more information, see Smithsonian Conservation Commons (2021)
and [Link] (2020), respectively.

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sity Press.
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Semmel, M. (2019). Partnership power: essential museum strategies for today’s networked
world. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
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PART II

Connecting regions
Communities and museums ­
co-curating heritage and memory
9
THE CASE FOR A RHIZOMATIC
RESEARCH APPROACH IN
CARIBBEAN MUSEOLOGY
Natalie McGuire

Introduction
Community inclusiveness in museum theory and practice can take many forms,
from considering different physical and learning abilities to ensuring equal rep-
resentation and openness across racial and socio-economic barriers, and having
publics lead cultural projects in museum spaces. Yet, the underlying connection
between these outputs is arguably recognition of the value of putting ­community
voices and participation at the forefront of museum design and practice. This is
particularly significant in a Caribbean context. In Caribbean Discourse (1989),
Édouard Glissant disrupts Western hierarchies of national unity in identity through
a series of interventions into Westernised philosophy. He challenges the con-
finements of postcolonial meaning-making by suggesting that identities in the
Caribbean are not fixed to a singular essence, unity or place but rather involve
multiplicities and continual cultural encounters (Ostrander, 2015).
A concept with which to navigate this comes in the form of the rhizome. For
his concept of a rhizomatic approach to identity, Glissant draws primarily on
Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) work in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia. They construct frameworks of meaning-making that are analogous
to root structures of plants, suggesting that there has been a conditioned perception
that knowledge is passed from the root upwards in a linear fashion (Deleuze and
­Guattari, 1987, p. 5). They then argue that meaning-making is in fact rhizomatic,
in that meaning is created through multiple points of communication, each with a
multitude of multiplicities; ways of knowing are therefore produced through a pro-
cess of assembling, moving away from the hierarchical notion of interpretation as

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-12
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
178  Natalie McGuire

a linear act (p. 11). Glissant (1989, p. 11) summarises his use of Deleuze and Guat-
tari’s rhizome as follows:

The root is unique, a stock taking all upon itself and killing all around it. In
opposition to this [Deleuze and Guattari] propose the rhizome, an enmeshed
root system, a network spreading either in the ground or in the air, with no
predatory rootstock, taking over permanently. The notion of the rhizome main-
tains, therefore, the idea of rootedness but challenges that of a totalitarian root.

Glissant’s (1997, p. 142) writings in Caribbean Discourse and Poetics of ­Relation

posit creolisation as a rhizomatic process, as relational, and involving multiple
and constant processes of transformation. Museology is also arguably relational,
given that it is essentially an interdisciplinary field that studies the relationships
among people, objects and scenarios (Rússio, 2010). Waldisa Rússio, writing in
1981, described the museum as ‘comprised of [people] and by life, which allows
the museological process and its method to be substantially interdisciplinary, since
the studies of man, nature and life are related to different branches of knowledge’
(Soares, Valentino and Limoeiro, 2019, p. 103).
This chapter assembles inquiries into community inclusiveness within museo-
logical practices in the Caribbean. It does so by assessing current museology within
the Anglophone Caribbean countries of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, ter-
minology used in practice, and research outputs in museum spaces, as well as by
investigating a new tool for museological research based on Glissant’s concept of
the rhizome.

Towards community-focused museology

What is understood as museology, and how has that been interpreted in the
­Caribbean? In 1989, Vergo (p. 1) began his introduction to The New Museology
with the line: ‘What is Museology?’ At the time, academics and practitioners had
already been struggling for decades to agree on a concise and universal definition.
Vergo presented a set of critical essays charting a ‘new’ direction for what museol-
ogy could be, stressing that his inquiry sought a definition not only for a theoretical
or philosophical function, but also to determine who should be concerned with
matters of museums. Would museology just be a concern for those working within
a physical museum site? Or is the impact of a museum such that it intertwines
with other aspects of the social, academic, economic and environmental fabric of
society?
This question would be addressed again almost three decades later in the most
recent International Committee for Museology (ICOFOM) monograph, A History
of Museology: Key Authors of Museological Theory. Like Vergo, editor Bruno
Brulon Soares (2019) began his introduction by questioning the current state of
museology and went on to classify three distinct types of museology. These are
 The case for a rhizomatic research approach in Caribbean museology  179

normative museology, which was marked by a ‘“dictionnarization” of museum

knowledge’ and aimed to shape the field in its early years, when it was solely con-
nected to museum practice; theoretical museology, which refers to the establish-
ment of ICOFOM as a committee to pursue the theory of museology with a view
to aligning it with the social sciences; and reflexive museology, which marked
the shift from museology as a science to museology as an interdisciplinary field
(Soares, 2019, p. 26). In addition, Soares (2019, p. 33) recognised that museology
is being developed through different schools of thought in different geographical
regions: for example, Latin America, France and Germany are more inclined to
consider museology a science, while the United Kingdom and North America tend
to explore the humanities aspect of museology, which has led to the emergence of
museum studies as a discipline.
Although the field of Anglophone Caribbean museology has been growing,
modes of representation within Caribbean museums have often fixated on either
retaining colonial stories or constructing postcolonial national identities (­Cummins,
2004; McFarlane, 2012; Farmer, 2013). Museums as modern institutions have
a policy history tied to colonialism. They emerged in late 18th- and early 19th-
century Europe as a means of showcasing objects that had been plundered—an
analogy, perhaps, with the nations that were themselves plundered (Bennett, 1995).
With movements of independence sweeping across Anglophone Caribbean coun-
tries in the mid to late 20th century, the postcolonial museum in these spaces devel-
oped, in part, to become an institution used to construct national identity, which
strove to integrate the changing cultural context while serving communities in
order to remain relevant (Bennett, 1995; Farmer, 2013). But how have narratives
around community agency in museology been reflected within Caribbean museum
research?
The increased interest in community museum research, as well as significant
events such as the 1972 Round Table of Santiago de Chile sparked a shift in
museum praxis, where the emphasis on internal aspects, such as collection size,
diminished and the consideration of external aspects, such as how they function
to serve the communities they represent, increased (Beans, 1994). This prompted
museums not only to demonstrate community inclusiveness through constructions
of an arguably still colonial sense of national or cultural identity but also to incor-
porate the voices of both indigenous and migrant communities in interpretative
materials within national museums (Witcomb, 2003).
The contemporary museum as an institution, however, can still be seen as
a  space with a significant degree of social power, having responsibilities as the
gateway to the cultures of its communities (Sandell, 2002). Within new museology,
one aspect of the perceived relationship between museum staff and communities is
the emphasis on curators who have the authority to define people and space:

Their role is a more demanding one which involves responsibility for actually
defining the community being represented […] Such an understanding of the
180  Natalie McGuire

curatorial role does not assume that there is a community ‘out there’ that the
museum can represent.
(Witcomb, 2003, pp. 153–4)

Here, the knowledge hierarchy is disguised as ‘responsibility’, with the s­ uggestion

that the curator can be the only figure to define the community, as opposed to facili-
tating communities’ self-determination. This argument also avoids addressing the
issue that the institutions creating guidelines for representing these ­communities
often perpetuate a colonial ideology that generates a sense of universal internation-
alism without accountability of provenance, thus masking the continued imperialis-
tic agenda of retaining the cultural property of ‘others’ (Busse, 2009). As Szekeres
(2002) points out, striving to create ‘belonging’ actually risks contestation around
ideas of cultural ownership.

Definitions of community
How, then, are definitions of the term ‘community’ articulated within contemporary
museology? In Ecomuseums, Davis (1999) states that these tend to include: shared
geographical location, shared religious practices, a common political system, shared
culture (tangible and intangible heritage) and a notion of community identity. Watson
(2007, pp. 3–4) recognises the multiplicities and self-determination involved in the
museum space around the concept of community but nonetheless prefers to apply neat
categorisations of community museum approaches to public engagement. Classifying
the experiences of individuals from the outside in this way arguably reduces people’s
agency, as the individuals are not always aware of, and may not agree with, the cat-
egorisations of community used. In a survey text of museum–community practice by
Golding and Modest (2013), an attempt to further stratify the concept of community
is evident, whether it is described as a ‘community of communities’ (Golding, cited
in Golding and Modest, 2013, p. 20), a ‘nation not a neighbourhood’ (Gable, cited in
Golding and Modest, 2013, p. 41) or ‘porous, multifaceted, ever-shifting loosely con-
nected groups of people’ (Onciul, cited in Golding and Modest, 2013, p. 81).
When extending the definition of the community museum, Morales Lersch and
Camarena Ocampo (2018, p. 224) draw on the Latin American context to argue that:

The key component of the concept in this context is the decisive action of the
community, developing a collective initiative to strengthen its identity and capac-
ity for self-determination. Community actors, expressing themselves through
a variety of consensus-building processes, create the community museum. In
this sense the community is not one of many local actors – it is the determinant
force, the protagonist and the creative motor of the museum.

In this understanding, the notion of community identity is directly correlated to

indigenous identity. Within the Caribbean, however, identity is multifaceted, and
 The case for a rhizomatic research approach in Caribbean museology  181

with histories of migration (whether forced or voluntary) into and out of the region,
a more relational approach to defining community and the community museum is
better suited. Brown (2018, p. 115) has spoken specifically of the challenges for
the regions involved in the EU-LAC Museums Project (European Union, Latin
America and the Caribbean) when seeking an agreed-upon definition for use within
the project:

As is the case for the ecomuseum, defining the community museum in this
b­ i-regional forum is proving a contentious task, mostly because of stark differ-
ences between our lived realities. In grassroots community museum contexts, it
is more a matter of principles and the role of the community in decision-making
within the museum than a concrete definition, just as for ecomuseums it is more
a question of a process, rather than defining a fixed and transportable model.

When Brown talks about ‘grassroots community museum contexts’, she may be
alluding to the persistent issue that museological terms are still often defined from
the top down, where people are described by outsiders, rather than being offered the
opportunity to describe themselves. As discussed in the scholarship arising out of
the EU-LAC Museums Project, this may not be a relevant approach to community-
run museum spaces.

The case for a rhizomatic research approach

Recently, the recognition that new museology still carries a hegemonic metanarra-
tive, despite claiming community inclusivity, has shifted the theoretical discourse
into examining relational turns. Dewdney, Dibosa and Walsh (2013) developed the
term ‘post-critical museology’ to describe an alternative framework that addresses
the concern about metanarratives or agendas. Post-critical museology couples
researchers with practitioners, bridging the theoretical gap between traditional
museology and museum studies. It is collaborative, transdisciplinary and reflexive
and works further to decentralise authority and create multiple avenues of meaning-
making. As such, it is a framework that could lay foundations for a rhizomatic
research approach within museology.
Post-critical museology takes a democratic approach to collaboration with commu-
nities in the research and development of museum projects. The notion of knowledge-
sharing as opposed to knowledge-collecting is of interest in conducting this research
in the Anglophone Caribbean to counter the top-down approach usually adopted. In
the Caribbean particularly, ‘education’ isn’t always considered an inclusive tool, as
it reinforces hegemonic ideologies, and has historically erased ­Afro-Caribbean expe-
riences (see Freeman, 2005). In her 2004 article, Hickling-­Hudson (2004, p. 294)
called for the Caribbean to decolonise education and move towards ‘knowledge-
societies’ facilitated by ‘activist educators’ who contribute ‘to the breaking down of
neo-colonial barriers which kept the Caribbean societies insular and trapped in the
182  Natalie McGuire

language and isolationist education traditions of the former c­ olonizing powers’. This
aligns with Freire’s (1973, pp. 66–8) concept of ‘critical pedagogy’ as a learning
technique to dismantle colonial authority and empower people through ownership
of their own histories. My research explores how humanising research in Caribbean
museology, by challenging the way data is collected and interpreted, can allow for
more inclusion and agency in community participation.
According to Dewdney, Dibosa and Walsh (2013, p. 226), post-critical muse-
ology ‘locates itself in the everyday and in spaces “outside”, “between”, and
“beyond” those of the foundational boundaries of knowledge disciplines’. This
suggests that museology should exist in museum practice and work to democratise
the power structures inherent in curatorial approaches. George Abungu reflected on
a similar ethos during the plenary session at the ICOM General Conference, held
in Kyoto in 2019:

It brings us back also to […] the role of the curator, and I think especially in the
western world. The curator knows it all, the curator interprets it, the curator […]
prepares it and has a big day […] On the other side, we are saying the museum
should be a hub, it should be a place of dialogue. Which means the communi-
ties and everybody of concern, everybody should actually be able to play a role.
(ICOM, 2019)

With these issues in mind, I now turn to how museological scholars have responded
to community-focused approaches adopted in Caribbean museums.

Current mappings of Caribbean museology

There has not been much museological theory produced from the Anglophone
­Caribbean, as quite often the museum spaces themselves have been implicated
in the colonial project as instruments for racist, oppressive power structures and
nation building. This has meant that current Eurocentric models of museology are
often imposed onto museums in the region, rather than the region generating its
own models out of localised practice. Thus, there is a profound absence of Carib-
bean voices influencing the development of international museological policy. This
status quo has also resulted in several centuries of people of African descent in the
Anglophone Caribbean being denied opportunities to represent their own stories
in local museums, silencing shared heritages that span a far longer timeframe than
the 400 years with which museums often begin Caribbean social histories and also
extend far beyond the geography of the Caribbean basin.
For the most part, museums have been consciously tackling what Vergo (1989,
pp. 2–3) describes as the “subtext of voice” that derives from conscious or sub-
conscious political, social and economic agendas and biases of the museum board,
which, via directors, curators, scholars, designers and sponsors, goes out to society
and the education systems that influence these cultural practitioners.
 The case for a rhizomatic research approach in Caribbean museology  183

McFarlane (2012, p. 14) comments on the Eurocentric bias in museum ­exhibition

display in postcolonial Jamaica that:

One can only surmise that, either visitors themselves have been the subjects
of colonial educational paradigms which have been accepted as truth; visitors
lack critical analytic tools with which to question historical representation; or,
­visitors to museums see no need to question the veracity of exhibitions.

Similarly, Cummins (2013, p. 3) points to the need to address Caribbean-based

practices within new museology:

Museums and collections that had their origins in the colonialist era […] existed
and still exist in a number of Caribbean island nation states, as they do else-
where in the world. Coupled with this tendency in the Caribbean context is
the legacy of slavery which, even now, is in danger of being submerged and
obscured in museums and heritage sites by narratives that occlude or diminish
the histories of the enslaved.

Both Modest (2012) and Cummins (2013) draw attention to imperial collecting
practices that focused more on nature than culture and ultimately informed the
growth of museums in that manner. Cummins (2013, p. 33), for example, notes
that ‘for colonial institutions in the Caribbean, natural history continued to be
equated with national history in the first half of the twentieth century’. Favour-
ing the collection of objects related to natural landscapes can be interpreted as
active oppression of contested histories in order to uphold colonial identities tied to
the landscape. Therefore, museums in the Anglophone Caribbean, in their display
of ‘natural history as national history’, have perpetuated a version of Caribbean
history that has submerged and erased human stories, particularly narratives of
enslavement, ­African heritages prior to enslavement and modern indigenous cul-
tures. This aligns with Haitian writer Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s (1995, p. 22) notion
that there are silences of history imposed by Eurocentrism.
Within Anglophone Caribbean historical discourse, there have been epochal
transitions as the society shifted from being based on ideologies of enslavement
to those of the postcolonial moment; this was particularly marked in the early
period of independence from Britain in the 1960s. The social, economic and cul-
tural changes brought about by the independence movements from the mid-1950s
onwards affected both the museum as institution and the establishment and sus-
tainability of grassroots initiatives. Hume and Kamugisha (2013, p. xxiii) suggest
that, alongside ‘discourse on the dynamic process of cultural change and identity
formation, emerged a related and somewhat localised preoccupation with articulat-
ing a Caribbean aesthetic, and by extension an independent, non-alienated sub-
jectivity’. Tancons (2012, p. 39) proposes a shared Caribbean cultural practice or
­aesthetic—Carnival—under the institutional framework of the museum, suggesting
184  Natalie McGuire

that it could be pivotal in shifting Caribbean practitioners from an ‘exhibitionary

complex’ that hinders curatorial potential. Farmer (2013, pp. 172–3) explains that,
post-independence,

existing museums in the region were co-opted by postcolonial governments to

become agents of identity creation. This saw existing institutions, such as the
Barbados Museum and Historical Society (BMHS), change focus through gov-
ernment intervention to facilitate the creation of a new national identity.

However, Freire (1974, pp. 3–18) indicates that this type of project, which ­essentially
asserts a linear progression from the colonial to the postcolonial moment, is marked
by contradictions between a perpetuation of past ideologies and the demands of a
choice-based future. Museums as spaces have arguably encouraged these epochal
reflections through displays that rely heavily on chronological narratives and time-
lines of human history that clearly separate the ‘then’ from the ‘now’, reinforcing
centres of colonial power and creating peripheries of marginalised communities.
This approach has been described as a ‘contact zone’ in which museums are ‘an
asymmetric space where the periphery comes to gain some small, momentary and
strategic advantage, but where the centre ultimately gains’ (Boast, 2011, p. 66).
Therefore, museums have, for the most part, actively contributed to the absence
of critical discourse on race and colonialism in the Anglophone Caribbean and
­perpetuated the narrative of the colonial ideological centre. Recently, there have
been calls for museums to dismantle their ostensible neutrality and acknowledge
their role in shaping social ideologies and discussions on contested histories.
Museology is not separate from these discussions, and the dominance of museum
theory from European countries needs to be addressed. How, then, can museology
in the Anglophone Caribbean be developed to allow for deeper analyses of histori-
cal and contemporary events, particularly of the Afro-Caribbean experience? And
how can this analysis provide the surrounding communities who encounter these
spaces with opportunities for engagement?
The Caribbean is in some ways still working through structural racism in insti-
tutions, as we see with the retention of colonial politics in the representations and
display of culture in the region. McFarlane (2012, p. 40) proposes that one way to
counter these inherent biases in meaning-making within the museum display is to
apply Critical Race Theory to exhibition design to ‘facilitate examination of the
veracity of underlying historical premises of exhibition narratives; explore whose
interests is served in utilising Eurocentric narratives; and open the door to the work
of Afrocentric historians who present oppositional perspectives’.
The forging of connections across the Caribbean region has also had an impact
on the way that museology is articulated. Jean-Philippe Maréchal (1998) called
for an ‘island museology’: that is, a specific framework to link Caribbean museum
practice and help foster awareness of cultural heritage protection. The notion of
connecting the archipelago is significant within Caribbean museology, and from
 The case for a rhizomatic research approach in Caribbean museology  185

the 1980s, there have been important developments in sharing scholarship. These
have mainly taken the form of ICOM-affiliated regional meetings, such as those
held by the Museums Association of the Caribbean (established 1989), ICOFOM
LAC (established 1989), and the International Association of Art Critics—­Southern
Caribbean (established 1997). Regional exchange has been a way to share museo-
logical developments as well as to strengthen contributions at international meet-
ings. This has extended into the diaspora, particularly through the Black Diaspora
Visual Arts programme (established in 2007). Recently, regional exchange has
been brought online through the EU-LAC Museums Project and the establish-
ment of a Virtual Museum of Caribbean Migration and Memory, which includes
capacity-building through the digitisation of artefacts, firmly situating Carib-
bean intellectual practice in the development of digital museology (Brown, 2018;
Cassidy et al., 2018).
Support for, and interest in, museological developments within the Anglophone
Caribbean is therefore evident. However, there is a risk that the museological nar-
ratives of Caribbean museums might be co-opted for international projects. There
has been a trend of external museum study and museological surveys done on
the region from international tertiary institutions who have Museum Studies or
Museology departments or programmes, which has framed, in part, the Caribbean
within international museum theory development. Quite often, these take the form
of European researchers or institutions creating maps or databases of museums in
the Caribbean, ‘mining’ intellect from local practitioners with very little benefit to
those in the Caribbean itself. For agency of these sites to exist within these projects,
elements of co-curation and demonstrations of sustainable relationships with local
partners should arguably be evident.
My research offers a museological study that, while in conversation with larger
international bodies, is grounded in a Caribbean-based tertiary programme and cre-
ated out of local voices, using a multi-vocal approach. It draws on the work of
Glissant to explore the possibilities of museology as rhizomatic. In doing so, this
work eschews claims to authority or epistemological superiority over work done
within museology but hopes to broaden the possibilities of how museum work in
the Anglophone Caribbean can be theorised beyond already existing Eurocentric
models or frameworks.

A rhizomatic approach to museology

Rhizomatic thought is the principle behind what I call the Poetics of Relation,
in which each and every identity is extended through a relationship with the
‘other’.
(Glissant, 1997, p. 11)

There is a case in post-critical museology for employing transformative action

research in implementing qualitative methodologies to shift paradigms and
186  Natalie McGuire

approaches to practice. How can a rhizomatic research tool be used within

a ­transformative action research approach to put community voices at the forefront
of practice? Britton (1999, p. 18) describes how the work of relation (la relation)
by Glissant has enabled resistance through language for communities living in
creolised societies, and how the ‘rhizome becomes a figure for identity in cre-
olized culture’. Yet, the questions raised by creolisation processes are complex
beyond Glissant’s reflection. Indeed, Kamugisha (2019, p. 101) argues that theories
of creolisation as Caribbean cultural identity have often negated its complicated
role in ongoing racism: ‘haunting creoleness still is its association with antiblack
racism, elite domination, and its inability to provide a true—and as important—­
continuous—reassessment of the place of “blackness”’.1
The basis for using a rhizomatic research approach to museology is the recogni-
tion that knowledge production is not apolitical. Actively developing a methodology
to decentralise authority within the creation and archiving of museum theory there-
fore presents alternate possibilities for knowledge-sharing within the case studies
of the Anglophone Caribbean. Academics in the (broader) Caribbean museological
field have recognised the importance of Glissant’s influence on museums (Golding,
2009; Ostrander, 2015). Golding (2009, p. 82) applies Glissant’s concept of rela-
tions in her interrogation of poetics in museology because ‘Relation is understood as
a space where the poetic and the political are intertwined’. As an example, in 2015,
the Perez Art Museum in Miami held an exhibition, including Caribbean artists,
entitled Poetics of Relation. The museum stated that Glissant’s theories on relation
‘can be used to understand the investigations of each of the artists exhibited, how
through their works they address their own centered identities as responsive to vari-
ous sites simultaneously, across the diverse homelands that form their personal root
system’ (Ostrander, 2015, p. 25). This statement attests at once to the possibilities
of inclusivity and the gaps in theoretical discourse. It also suggests the risk that
museology could still be a tool for colonial retentions in the Anglophone Caribbean,
when considering which knowledge system is being drawn on and who created
those epistemologies. All of these are key elements in understanding a rhizomatic
approach to museum work, both in their application and in the gaps they highlight
in debates around the Anglophone Caribbean social context, to which they claim to
contribute. In my research, I take this one step further by investigating the notion of
rhizomes as an accessible tool for community inclusion in museum practice.
When considering a practice-based approach to research or the creation of
a research framework, we often encounter Glissant’s rhizomes in pedagogi-
cal theory. For instance, in identifying a ‘heterogeneous (and open)’ assemblage
system for reading research data, Yu and Lee (2008, p. 255) ‘call it a “rhizome”
or rhizomatic system’. Clarke and Parsons (2013, p. 36) suggest a ‘research as
agency’ model by becoming ‘rhizome researchers’ to dismantle binaries in edu-
cational research. Masny (2014, p. 351) has proposed a disruption of ethnography
in educational research by ‘rhizoanalysis’, which is described as ‘not a method; in
other words, there is no one way to do rhizoanalysis’. These previously structured
 The case for a rhizomatic research approach in Caribbean museology  187

research frameworks that have utilised a rhizomatic lens provide insight into how
the ­rhizome could be translated to the conducting of museological research.
With these frameworks in mind, I argue that a rhizomatic approach to muse-
ological research best aligns with post-critical museological theory and can be
­outlined through the following principles:

1 Multi-vocality in museum research and practice through assemblage. Within

a rhizomatic approach, multi-vocality functions to distribute authority within
meaning-making. Knowledge exchange among museologist, researcher, cura-
tor, publics and communities occurs in a manner that is lateral and relational,
rather than hierarchical and fixed. Contributions to museum projects from pub-
lics and communities are visibly integrated as assemblages, with little or no
interpretations by curators or researchers.
2 Research methodology as a relational ecology rather than a linear framework.
A rhizomatic approach suggests that museological research be relational and
transformative, rather than aiming to carve out linear frameworks for museum
research and practice. It facilitates micro-level case study research over large-
scale survey projects, interrogates definitions and demonstrates sustainable
relationship-building within museum theory rather than data collection.
3 Accessible research outputs. A rhizomatic approach articulates academic writ-
ing within museology through accessible, ongoing projects, contributing to
ecologies of museum theory intersecting practice that are continually relational
and participatory. Ideally, these are community-led and reflexive. Such prac-
tices include the creation and continual revision of toolkits and aids for museum
practitioners and communities as active products of research projects, which are
shared across open access platforms.

Glissant (1997) speaks of the Caribbean experience as a continual process of

­transformative creolisation, a multitude of relationships extending through inter-
secting identities. A consideration of the notion of Caribbeanness suggests a case
for flexible tools in qualitative research analysis; a rhizomatic research approach
in museology is just such a tool and could facilitate further understanding of the
Caribbean within this field.

The research project: methodology

The principles of a rhizomatic approach in museology were implemented in my
ongoing doctoral project in the PhD Cultural Studies Programme at the University
of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus (2016–). The central focus of this research
is on community inclusiveness within museological practice in Barbados and
­Trinidad and Tobago, and the applicability of rhizomatic research principles.
Sites of research included postcolonial institutions as well as artist-led initia-
tives and community-run cultural spaces. This range of subjects was chosen to
188  Natalie McGuire

examine the notion of a relational cultural ecology not only within each country
but also in the networks that exist across them. Moreover, this research investigates
these connections beyond the content of public-facing exhibitions or surveying
activities, asking further how the museum space creates connections in its relation-
ship with the communities who encounter these representations.
Although there are limitations to examining only two Caribbean countries, the
multifaceted nature of Caribbean identities enables this process to align with the
rhizomatic research principle of preferring micro case study research to large sur-
veys. Given the methodologies used in this study to gather in-depth, individual
vignettes of data, any attempt to span the entire Caribbean would risk subject-
ing the territories to generalisations. As outlined in the rhizomatic approach, this
research did not aim to generate definitive conclusions in any way, even within
the Anglophone Caribbean context. Rather, it hoped to act as a springboard for
discussions about agency in these spaces, both within other Anglophone Caribbean
countries and in future research in other linguistic territories.
In the following subsections, I address each principle used in this rhizomatic
approach through the knowledge-sharing sessions, community-based projects and
toolkits.

Participation: knowledge-sharing sessions

In a rhizomatic approach, the notion of an interview was shifted to a knowledge-­
sharing session, placing the researcher on the same level as the participant. P
­ articipants
in the knowledge-sharing sessions generally comprised those that use the museum
spaces detailed in the case studies, both staff and visitors. The research project would
be discussed with them usually in an informal setting, with a follow up interview
being organised at the expressed interest of participants to take part. The interviews
were all video recorded and had three base questions posed to participants:

1 Please introduce yourself and your practice/interests.

2 Is there a cultural space in Barbados/Trinidad that you feel connected to, and if
so can you expand on the nature of that connection?
3 What does the term community mean to you?

These questions were selected as examples of entry points into discourse regard-
ing community voice in understanding museology in the Caribbean. An aim of this
research is to explore the use of the ‘discursive’, which describes approaches to
meaning-making in representation and culture (Hall 2003). Or, put differently, how
are we formulating meanings about places and objects with the knowledge sets we
bring, and what is being enforced or excluded by museum spaces? This study also
sought to engender reciprocal participation, with benefits to contributors as outlined
in Yu and Lee’s (2008, p. 255) ‘cascade’ approach, which allows for the creation of
‘virtual multiplicity, defined by the “many” constituting an “assemblage”’ of data.
 The case for a rhizomatic research approach in Caribbean museology  189

FIGURE 9.1 
QR code. Video sample of responses to the term ‘community’ from
­knowledge-sharing sessions in Trinidad and Tobago, March 2018.

The sessions allowed for each participant to direct responses to aspects relevant to
their experiences and interests. Under the principles of a rhizomatic research approach,
the aim of the knowledge-sharing sessions was not to construct any definition of com-
munity relations in the museum space. Rather, it was both to show that the researcher
valued their interpretation of terminology and to indicate that, with such a vast diver-
sity of terminology, it is impossible for museum practitioners to create viable pro-
gramming that uses these terms without first engaging with their communities and
publics about them. Here, following the principle of multi-vocality, community voices
were prioritised in generating understandings of the term ‘community’—a word that
is heavily saturated with meanings related to inclusion and agency in museums within
scholarly literature. Participant responses were incorporated as assemblages into the
research project through direct quotes, rather than interpretations or summaries.
There was also an attempt to reduce any authority ascribed to the researcher to
unpack participants’ responses to this term; instead, they were given the agency to
interpret the term themselves. The invitation to participants, especially those from
traditionally marginalised communities, to evaluate the meaning of terminology
has a precedent in focus groups by museums such as the Immigration Museum
in Melbourne, Australia (The Immigration Museum Consultancy Group 1994,
pp. 2–6), which asked participants ‘what does “museum” mean to you[?]’ How-
ever, these archives of community voices are often filed away or shared only in
internal reports. What discourses could arise by sharing these interpretations more
publicly and within the museum spaces themselves? Taking into consideration the
post-critical museology notion of collaborative research as being democratised,
with participant and researcher as equal stakeholders, all footage from videos was
shared with those interviewed, as was the copyright.

Participation: community-based projects

As part of the study, I implemented a rhizomatic approach to museology through
three projects that were co-created with communities as accessible research out-
puts. These comprise the community-informed international video art programme
190  Natalie McGuire

Transoceanic Visual Exchange (TVE), installed in 2017 and 2019; Research Yard,
a pop-up community reading room held in Alice Yard, Trinidad and Tobago, in
2018; and Artistic Interventions, held at the Barbados Museum & Historical Soci-
ety (BMHS), Barbados, 2018.

Transoceanic Visual Exchange

TVE aimed to negotiate the in-between space of cultural communities that exist
­outside of the traditional geopolitical zones of encounter and trade. The exhibition
was centred on developing a survey of recent film and video works by contemporary
artists (screenings, installations and expanded cinema) that were shown in multi-
ple participating regions in every edition of the programme, with an accompanying
digital exhibition space. A key aspect of TVE was the introduction of a community
of curatorial practice to integrate community voice into its curatorial framework
(McGuire, 2015). Public round tables made up of artists, curators, researchers and
interested members of the local communities were held in each participating country
to discuss themes and practices in current new media, film and video art works. The
outcome of these discussions then formed the curatorial framework for each iteration

FIGURE 9.2 ‘For Peace’ (2019) by Barbadian artist Versia Harris on display in Cache
Space, Beijing, November 2019.
Image courtesy of the TVE project, China Residencies and the artist.
 The case for a rhizomatic research approach in Caribbean museology  191

and the selection of works from the open call. This procedure was used in order to
explore the effectiveness of a lateral approach to curatorial practice, as opposed to
the traditional hierarchical approach where the curators alone decide the theme that
informs the curatorial framework and invite relevant artists.2 Within a rhizomatic
research approach, each iteration of TVE shifted in its curatorial methodology, based
on the interests of each participating space and community, and ownership of the pro-
ject by these spaces was encouraged. As a result, this process saw shifts in the logo,
installation approaches and media associated with the project.

Research Yard
Research Yard was a pop-up community reading room that I facilitated during
my time as a doctoral researcher in residence at Alice Yard, Trinidad and Tobago
(March 2018). The project was born out of informal conversations in the yard
around the (lack of) access to critical texts within arts and culture in the Caribbean
and internationally. This prompted a collaborative idea for an open day at Alice
Yard. Cultural practitioners, artists, cultural collectives and academics were invited
to share texts from their personal libraries, selected by them based on cultural top-
ics in which they were currently interested.3 A similar community reading room
was installed at the BMHS in May 2019.

Artistic Interventions
In Artistic Interventions, the intersection between theory and practice is prominent.
This project was developed within my role as both PhD candidate and curator at the
BMHS. Members of the creative community were invited to critically engage with
the BMHS’s collections through a series of interventions. Six artists responded,
and their works were interwoven throughout the museum’s galleries, interrogating
and recontextualising the historical narratives on display. These interventions were
accessible in the BMHS from May to June 2018. This project avoided entrenching
dichotomies between the grassroots and government, and art and history; instead,
it engaged with the experience of living the practice in these entities, encouraging
a museological ecosystem (see Davis, 2017, pp. 152–3).
Artistic Interventions also aligned with what Golding (2013, p. 97) describes as
an ‘affective museum’, which ‘works with poetics to assist visitors to look through
that which was hidden and rendered opaque in traditional linear displays, such as
the colonial histories that have disadvantaged Black people and women, but which
creolised voices can bring to the fore’. For example, in the knowledge-sharing ses-
sions at the BMHS, one of the key issues raised was the enduring perceived lack of
equitable representation. Llanor Alleyne, one of the artists, stated:

I was really affected by the Cunard gallery, 4 because it represented plantation

life across the region. And that stuck with me […] I didn’t feel like the prints
FIGURE 9.3 
‘Burst’ by Katherine Kennedy installed in the Military Gallery of
the ­Barbados Museum & Historical Society (BMHS), May 2018.
Image courtesy of the BMHS and the artist.

FIGURE 9.4 ‘King’ by Adrian Richards installed in the Jubilee Gallery of the Barbados
Museum & Historical Society (BMHS), May 2018.
Image courtesy of the BMHS and the artist.
 The case for a rhizomatic research approach in Caribbean museology  193

and lithographs included in that collection really reflected the life of the slaves,
or the enslaved or even the free mulattoes that were in that society. So I wanted
to just give another side to that, where these enslaved people in these lithographs
did have a life, did have a sexual life as well, and a hidden life.5

Participation: toolkits
The community projects were generative in terms of implementing a rhizomatic
research approach. However, how can these projects and the data collected be sus-
tainable and inclusive? Under a rhizomatic research approach, one avenue might
be through toolkits. One of the outputs from the interviews and community-based
projects was the creation of toolkits that combine practitioner and community
voices, which can be shared and adapted by users to fit their particular context and
content. These are available in centralised locations online, such as the website
Caribbean Museum Toolkits (n.d.), which was created in 2018. Post-critical muse-
ology includes the use of new media, or digital tools, as a viable avenue for foster-
ing a more democratic relationship between researcher and researched. Dewdney,
Dibosa and Walsh (2013, p. 195) state that digital tools and content ‘places the pro-
ducer and the consumer in the same position in relationship to all that ­metadata has
so far remediated’. Barrow (2017) speaks of the significance of digital networking
as a way of connecting Caribbean cultural spaces across new cartographies. How-
ever, even with heavy engagement in the digital sphere, consideration still needs
to be given to who is participating and at what level. How many of the community
participants also created online content from their encounters in this research? How
are the products of this research being interpreted in the digital realm? These are
ongoing investigations as the project develops.
The year 2020 and the global COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a rethinking
of what a museum is. Almost overnight, thousands of museums worldwide had to
shut their doors in national lockdowns and shift their programming and collections
online. In April 2020, the Museums Association of the Caribbean conducted a sur-
vey into how COVID-19 was affecting Caribbean museums. One striking finding of
this survey was the high interest among respondents in webinars for digital strate-
gies (89.8 per cent) and in internet access as a human right (53.06 per cent) (Muse-
ums Association of the Caribbean, 2020). These results seem to reflect ­accelerated
museum engagement in the digital realm and may have promoted inclusivity and
intersectionality in museum-related programming. A wealth of museum organi-
sations began to offer free webinars on current museum issues and o­ pportunities,
which, although they existed prior to the pandemic, now increased. This, arguably,
has charted a path for more democratised access to international museological dis-
cussions, particularly for practitioners in the Global South. C
­ aribbean Museum Tool-
kits, in turn, also adapted its platform to further serve the needs of communities by
providing a calendar of webinars and possible funding opportunities available to Car-
ibbean organisations (Caribbean Museum Toolkits, n.d.).
194  Natalie McGuire

In the eventual development of policy around crisis recovery, it is important that

a full understanding is obtained of how museums are shifting their perspectives due
to the COVID-19 pandemic. This means that the voices, open access initiatives and
qualitative data must be as prominent as surveys and statistics. Indeed, what has
been clear is the accelerated interest by museums in inclusivity and engagement
with communities in multi-vocal ways, which has countered the near silencing
of narratives that might have been the outcome of physically shutting museums.
Here, the possibilities for alternative ways of conducting research within museol-
ogy become even more apparent, including the possibility for a rhizomatic research
method.

Reflections
The most important thing is that we take responsibility for our research and
explain where we’re coming from, because not everyone sets out on museum
research from the same place or arrives at the museum using the same terms of
reference.
(Grewcock, 2014, p. 166)

This research has developed out of an aspiration to understand museological

approaches in the Anglophone Caribbean in relation to community agency. The
focus on case studies in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago was aimed at exploring
these approaches at a micro-level as well as offering a tangible outlet to apply theo-
ries of institutional responsibility in terms of cultural inclusion and sustainability.
Mason (2002, p. 177) states that, within qualitative research practice, employ-
ing multiple voices ‘shows a sensitivity to a range of interpretations and voices,
and a willingness to critique and question [our] own as well as others’. With that
in mind, I am aware that I am both a researcher and a museum practitioner, and
that my own position and voice may persist in the research and have influenced
my perspective and use of case studies. Under a rhizomatic research approach,
it is important to ensure the accountability of the researcher and document their
perspective in the work.
It is difficult to try to draw concrete general conclusions about the relationships
of museums with communities (especially postcolonial communities) from a case-
by-case analytical perspective, as each process is a product of a particular time
and institution. As the discipline of museology continues to develop, i­nstitutional
understandings of community needs and the role museums play in shaping national
identity through representation will no doubt expand. What is commonly evi-
dent from the cases presented in this research is that Caribbean communities find
strength in being part of the exhibition development process. Practitioners and
communities therefore have an opportunity to think critically about cultural iden-
tity and forge collaborative relationships with museum spaces or strengthen those
that had previously been fragile.
 The case for a rhizomatic research approach in Caribbean museology  195

Yet, I do not intend to suggest that a rhizomatic approach to museology should

be held up as a singular or ideal framework. Rather, it provides another possibil-
ity for broadening the scope of our understanding of Caribbean museology. The
sustainability of rhizomatic research practices, and their efficacy in developing a
post-critical museology in the Caribbean as well as encouraging greater inclusivity
in museums, will be charted as the project develops. There is no all-encompassing
model for better inclusion that can guarantee an idyllic museum–community rela-
tionship. Instead, curators and community representatives learn through interpret-
ing individual case studies and listening to, rather than analysing, data. It may be
that the future of understanding museology lies not in the boundaries of museum
practice, but in a shifting ecology of multiple entry and exit points of encounter
between museums and communities.

Notes
1 Original author’s emphasis.
2 Please see [Link] for more information on the 2017 and
2019 editions of the programme, as well as the 2021 edition.
3 For more on Research Yard, please see [Link]
[Link].
4 The Cunard Gallery is one of the permanent exhibitions at the BMHS, showcasing
­historical prints, paintings and maps.
5 Knowledge-sharing session with the author, June 2018.

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­Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
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­communities. London: Bloomsbury.
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10
CO-CURATING MEMORY
Deconstructing the silences around Caribbean
migration to Britain

Kaye Hall and Natalie McGuire

In 2018, the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the Barbados Museum &
Historical Society (BMHS), with funding support from EU-LAC Museums,
­
embarked on a project coordinated by the University of St Andrews to facilitate
a community-led composite history of the post-World War II Caribbean migratory
experience to Britain and its role in multi-regional exchanges. Its importance to
world history and politics at the time could not be overstated, given the ongoing
Windrush migration scandal within Britain and the worldwide outcry of the Carib-
bean diaspora communities beyond. The project therefore set out to move beyond
the political and the sensational to get to the real histories—the real experiences
and the implications of those experiences for the diverse communities affected in
both Britain and the Caribbean—and the cultural impact of those experiences on
these affected communities.
Within this framework, it becomes critical to reconsider models of museum
practice, especially exhibition development, to explore what could empower more
­Caribbean ways of knowing by making visible historical narratives that have pre-
viously been submerged. The two projects considered in this chapter, the Virtual
Museum of Caribbean Migration and Memory (VMCMM) and the exhibition The
Enigma of Arrival: The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean Migration to Britain,
are both o­ utputs from the ‘EU-LAC Museums: Museums and community: con-
cepts, experiences and sustainability in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean’
group—a consortium of eight institutions investigating the social, technological and
cultural relations between Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean through com-
munity museology (Cassidy et al., 2018). In this chapter, we argue that the participa-
tory methods used to implement these projects encourage ethical museum practice
through multi-vocality and community inclusion, contributing to the development
of a best practice in the decolonisation of the Caribbean museum as an institution.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-13
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
 Deconstructing the silences around Caribbean migration to Britain  199

Trouillot (1995, pp. 26–7) notes:

Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the
moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly
(the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narra-
tives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in
the final instance) […] To put it differently, any historical narrative is a particu-
lar bundle of silences, the result of a unique process, and the operation required
to deconstruct these silences will vary accordingly.

Our approach combined multi-vocal, co-curatorial methods with ‘poetics’—­

language and cultural expressions through literature, music, theatre and visual
art—in the development of these exhibitions.1 This arguably allowed for the further
development of distinctly Caribbean ways of knowing in exhibition-making and
agency in the sharing of the Windrush generation narratives, thus mitigating these
silences or gaps in the telling of these histories (see Cummins, 1992, 1994, 2004,
2013; Cummins, Farmer and Russell, 2013; Farmer, 2013).

The Windrush generation and importance of memory

The Windrush migration phenomenon is named after the Empire Windrush, the
famous decommissioned troop ship that featured in the first widely publicised land-
ing of West Indian migrants to Britain in 1948. It refers to a period of history
between 1948 and 1980 that saw a mass migration of communities from the Anglo-
phone Caribbean to Britain. This period represented major shifts in the economic,
cultural and social landscapes of both Britain and countries within the Caribbean,
culminating in the 1981 British Nationality Act, whose implementation and inter-
pretation have been responsible for the unethical deportation of Caribbean people
in Britain as recently as 2018.2 Overviews of the Windrush generation as part of
Britain’s history have been shared through media and scholarship. However, they
have not been as prominent in the field of memory for local Caribbean narratives.
When approaching the sharing of stories from this era, the question arises of how
a museum-based reading of this history for an international project can demon-
strate empathy and inclusiveness for the communities involved as well as ethically
collaborating with the living communities who continue to experience that history
and memory.
Trouillot’s (1995) perspective on the entanglement of silence and history holds
particular significance for Caribbean museum practitioners because it speaks elo-
quently of the Caribbean’s particular historical context, which has been shaped
by the experiences of enslavement and colonisation. In fact, it could be argued
that any authentic representation of a historic phenomenon that forms part of the
Caribbean experience must always bear the legacy, or the taint, of that experi-
ence. Migration, by its nomadic nature, is poignantly a part of this experience of
200  Kaye Hall and Natalie McGuire

colonisation. The deliberate separation of the colonised from their cultural roots;
the overlay of Eurocentric systems of law, governance and process; and the adher-
ence to a binary perception of being and power, with the empire at the centre and
the colonies and colonial subjects on the margins, created circumstances so unique
that they must be a primary consideration in any interpretation of history origi-
nating from these regions. This is so both in terms of inherent bias within these
systems and any attempt to redress the imbalance of power and presence histori-
cally. We cannot tell our history unless we examine how it has been shaped by past
‘outside’ interpretations.
In the light of Trouillot’s silences, a crucial component of mitigating these
imbalances in historic power is the telling of untold stories from our pasts that
render visible, new historic information that has been previously overlooked in the
historical narratives originating in the colonial centre. Indeed, Trouillot is not alone
in his analysis of the relationship between the centre and margin, which places
the imbalance of power between the two at the crux of our modern understanding
of our historic circumstance. The margins, and their access to history, continue
today at the pleasure of the centre and it is only an equalisation—as it were—of
this imbalance that will see a more equitable recounting of history at the margins,
devoid of the psychic and emotional burden of lesser representation in histories
emanating from the Global North. Earlier texts by Frantz Fanon (1952, 1961) and
C. L. R. James (1938), for example, identify this paradox of being—expressed
daily in our culture, our literature and our very values created within this state—as
problematic at best and critically destructive at worst.
The telling and retelling of Caribbean stories of migration experiences in colo-
nial centres, and the effects on these distinct but parallel cultures at the centre
and margin, have previously remained largely unexplored by museums throughout
the Caribbean region. They must therefore form a key part of any new explora-
tions and alternate perspectives or narratives. As we shall see, the two outcomes
of the ­ EU-LAC Museums project discussed here—The Enigma of Arrival:
The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean Migration to Britain and the VMCMM
(VMCMM, n.d.)—offered an opportunity to examine in detail the influence of a
specific instance of the Caribbean past, beyond peripheral and superficial British
interpretations most recently coloured by the Windrush scandal, to the lives of the
nations, families and individuals who were the key actors in the story: the Carib-
bean migrants.

Social responsibility of museums

The question of the social responsibility of museums is imperative when consider-
ing exhibition development in the Anglophone Caribbean. The new museology has
brought about a series of philosophical shifts regarding the role of the museum,
specifically pertaining to policies around the display, to inform and expand museum
practice (Hooper-Greenhill, 1992). Cummins, Farmer and Russell (2013) and Vawda
(2019) have explicitly addressed the implications of these shifts in a postcolonial
 Deconstructing the silences around Caribbean migration to Britain  201

context and, in particular, the necessity of addressing aspects of power and social
responsibility within Caribbean-based practices. They emphasise the need to move
away from colonialist motives governing approaches to collections.
Within the EU-LAC Museums project (2021), there have been many layers of
community inclusion and engagement, including a database of community muse-
ums, digital technologies for collection preservation and democratisation, youth
exchanges and a significant contribution to museological scholarship and policy
on frameworks for community museums. In reporting on the recommendations
arising from a policy round table, Barriteau, Cummins and Keohane (2019, p. 16)
outline the significance of considering migration and memory for the Anglophone
­Caribbean EU-LAC Museums partners:

The conditions under which post-Columbian Caribbean societies were forced

into being constructed a vastly different psychic profile for the women and men
from Africa and Asia who peopled the region. The confluence of the forced,
unfree or conscripted conditions of Caribbean arrivals, the hybridity of cul-
tures and the brutality of their existence over four hundred years of slavery
and indentureship left Caribbean people with a deep sense of uprootedness.
They existed but never felt settled. Many Caribbean people therefore operate
with a discernible ideology of return, coexisting with an easy willingness to
roam. While we agree with Brian Hudson that migration fosters ambiguity,
ambivalence and destabilises conventional notions of identity, it can also foster
conditions of solidarity and the constructions of more radical notions of identity
and belonging.

The BMHS has worked to enable the UWI, and the project at large, to develop
capacity around project activities and outcomes, especially in the digital realm.
The BMHS was established in 1933. However, Cummins (2004) situates the insti-
tution as central to debates around nationalism and cultural identity in the post-
independence era, detailing ministerial involvement in the shift in the BMHS’s
role in society and advocacy for more locally oriented content within its permanent
galleries from 1980. This shift resulted in an expansion of the historical and cul-
tural narratives within the Museum to be more reflective of the wider Barbadian
population’s experiences and interests. Given the context described above, it was
essential to actively pursue integration of migration stories through:

1 an exhibition that could travel and contribute to wider narratives within the
­permanent galleries of museums in the Anglophone Caribbean; and
2 that this integration also occurred in a ‘living’ form through a virtual platform,
allowing for independent, ongoing contributions to these narratives.

Sandell (2002, p. 6) provides a positive outlook on the role of museums within

communities, arguing that they ‘have provided an enabling, creative, perhaps less
threatening forum through which community members can gain the skills and
202  Kaye Hall and Natalie McGuire

confidence required to take control and play an active, self-determining role in their
community’s future’. Morales Lersch (2019, p. 40) also states the importance of
this form of participation for communities within the EU-LAC Museums project,
stating that:

The act of collective self-interpretation is a creative act, which is both affirming

and transformational. It affirms the existence of a way of life, with its unique
development and significance, and it affirms community members’ connection
to this way of life.

This is an important guiding ethos in the transition from passive to active museum
practice. One of the methods of facilitating this shift is to employ a participa-
tory methodology, which we utilised in different ways in the development of the
VMCMM and the Enigma exhibition.

Participatory methodology in exhibition-making

One of the most significant developments regarding the role of museums has been
a move towards more reflexive and people-centred spaces, like the ‘living’ muse-
ums introduced by Davis (1999), Karp (1992), Sandell (2007), Simpson (2001) and
Watson (2007), which often emphasise the importance of community inclusion.
Recently, the American Alliance of Museums has acknowledged a need for what
it describes as ‘community engagement curators’ who can respond ‘to changing
demographics, climate change, and the need to be relevant to their full communi-
ties’ (Berlucchi et al., 2018). It is thought that this can be achieved by personnel
who can ‘engage local communities in an open dialogue about their needs, elevate
the museum’s connection to local communities, and effect meaningful change
through educational programming’.
Nina Simon (2010) has proposed a similar process that uses a participatory
methodology, stating that, within museums, all participatory projects are based on
three institutional values:

• Desire for the input and involvement of outside participants

• Trust in participants’ abilities
• Responsiveness to participants’ actions and contributions

She suggests four models for best practice participation by communities in

­museums. These are contributory, collaborative, co-creative and hosted (Simon,
2010). Contributory participation consists of participants from the public submit-
ting limited material towards a larger project, which is controlled and interpreted
by the curator or researcher. Collaborative projects often include community
groups who inform the direction of an exhibition of programming; they commonly
involve focus groups and other behind-the-scenes data collection. The third model
 Deconstructing the silences around Caribbean migration to Britain  203

in participatory practice is co-creation. This goes a step further than collaboration:

participating individuals and groups from communities work with a museum from
the inception of a project and assist in its design, interpretation and development,
as well as being visible in the project itself. In the fourth hosted model, the museum
hands over a space and resources to a group or individual for an exhibition of
their choosing. While acknowledging that focus groups constitute an attempt at
participation, Simon emphasises that more can be done for visible exchange and
input both through the tools of technology and by creating tangible, safe spaces for
visitor participation. According to Simon (2010), these participatory techniques
of inclusion are able to ‘address particular institutional aspirations to be relevant,
multi-vocal, dynamic, responsive, community spaces’. As seen in the discussion
regarding the Enigma exhibition, collaborative and co-creative techniques from
Simon informed participatory aspects of the community of curatorial practice.
With regard to implementing a participatory methodology in museum practice,
Diamantopoulou, Insulander and Lindstrand (2012) suggest that the best tool for
community inclusion is a social semiotic approach to visitor experiences in muse-
ums. In their case, they asked visitors to draw maps of what they encountered and
then analysed the content to gauge visitor agency in the interpretation of collec-
tions. Although the researchers collected data across a range of exhibition media
and visitor demographics, this methodology arguably still does not allow the forma-
tion of conclusions regarding co-creation (using Simon’s model). First, their theory
continues to position the institution as the centre of power for driving diverse social
conditions (Diamantopoulou, Insulander and Lindstrand, 2012, pp. 12–13), which
arguably removes a fundamental aspect of agency from the community of visitors.
Second, although visitors are given only loose instructions for constructing their
maps, the interpretation of the content still lies with the curators or museum pro-
fessionals (Diamantopoulou, Insulander and Lindstrand, 2012, p. 14). They draw
connections and postulate meanings, thereby running the risk of not correlating
with the narratives of those who created the maps. With these two points, then, the
‘inclusion’ of community voices remains superficial and only at the direction and
control of museum staff or researchers.
How then can assessing community voice through co-creation challenge author-
ity in the collection and analysis of data? One example of this can be seen in critical
pedagogy, for example, the learning maps model developed by Annan et al. (2014),
which employs a strong community-of-practice ethos. Learning maps involve
a series of ongoing documentation by participants on their current learning envi-
ronment. What is different, however, is the emphasis on a community of practice
through the map. Drawing on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) concept of community of
practice, Annan et al. (2014, p. 18) extend its application to learning environments,
giving equal value to the participation of the learner, teacher, leader and commu-
nity in the process of learning. This idea departs from a hierarchical approach to
learning, where an individual (teacher, leader) holds the knowledge and passes it
on to a receiver (learner, community).
204  Kaye Hall and Natalie McGuire

The Enigma of Arrival: The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean

Migration to Britain
In 2018, UWI Cave Hill Campus in partnership with EU-LAC Museums ­developed
a travelling exhibition on Caribbean migration, facilitated by the BMHS. The
Enigma of Arrival: The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean Migration to Britain
aimed to create awareness about the active migration crisis in Britain by focus-
ing on Caribbean migration from the 1940s to the 1970s. Designed in the year of
the seventieth anniversary of the Empire Windrush’s landing, it sought to inform
the general public across both the Caribbean and Caribbean communities in the
United Kingdom about the current state of affairs concerning Caribbean migrants
in ­Britain, as well as the origins and circumstances under which these conditions
had developed. The title, The Enigma of Arrival, was loosely linked to V. S. Nai-
paul’s novel of the same title in order to align with his exploration of West Indians’
disillusionment with ‘Britishness’ and their survival as a migrant community.
Using interpretive panels and interactive audio-visual materials, the audience
was introduced to the historical parameters and scope of post-war Caribbean
migration to Britain and its legacy among later generations, both at home and
abroad. The exhibition themes were developed by the researchers at UWI Cave
Hill ­Campus as follows:

• Caribbean Conditions Pre-migration

• Arrival in the United Kingdom
• Accommodation
• Settling-in Conditions
• Cultural Integration
• Caribbean Resettlement
• Generational Experiences

In developing the Enigma exhibition, the project team adopted a curatorial

­framework that incorporated aspects of both a co-creation approach and a commu-
nity of practice.3 Here, they were informed by the paradigm of museums as respon-
sible social actors that necessarily evolve as they seek to improve their engagement
with community concerns and global challenges. They therefore sought to provide
new opportunities for the region’s museums and communities to collaborate in the
­co-curation and co-creation of previously unarticulated national and regional nar-
ratives by inviting these groups to add relevant local content. These experiences of
working together to establish curatorial content and text, and to share images and
(digital) artefacts, allowed for a design process that yielded a richer experience
for local and diasporic communities as well as host museums, as together they
explored new ways to acknowledge their routes to their roots.
The project team for this exhibit was jointly headed by the BMHS’s key per-
sonnel who are engaged in community activities on a day-to-day basis: the
­Education and Community Outreach Officer and the Curator—Social History and
 Deconstructing the silences around Caribbean migration to Britain  205

Engagement. These two officers are fully committed to community co-curation

as a means of actively engaging the BMHS’s audiences in the dissemination of
these new historical perspectives, which promote greater inclusivity in museum
and heritage studies. Under their direction, the exhibition offered opportunities to
take inclusivity beyond the mere (re)telling of histories via a single curatorial or
institutional voice to a multi-vocal approach via a community of practice. This was
aimed at allowing those who actually lived through the experience of migration to
contribute their stories and therefore their voices and direction to the evolution of
the research and exhibition development. Several approaches were implemented to
encourage this, which we will now explore in turn.

Collaborative research
A preliminary research team from UWI Cave Hill Campus established the key
areas of interest for the project. They, alongside the BMHS, worked on devel-
oping a framework for themes that might be key in sharing the histories of the
­Windrush migrants. This process drew on diverse resources within the Anglophone
­Caribbean region that might allow the voices of those involved in the migratory
movement to emerge.
One of the significant stakeholders in this process, the West Indies Fed-
eral Archives at UWI Cave Hill Campus shared a collection of correspondence
between the central government in London and the various colonial offices across
the region. The collection addressed many of the themes that later appeared in the
exhibit and its corresponding education programming, including policy-making,
accommodation conditions and the effects of the Windrush migration on local
Caribbean communities. Through this content, researchers were able, for instance,
to trace the migration movement from post-war recruitment through to reports of
racial tensions. The documentary story also highlighted the resulting enactment of
restrictive legislation to stem the flow of migrants, followed by the consequences
of these developments in both the metropolitan centre and the colonies.
Another significant collaborator for research, as well as media content, was
Claude Graham and the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation. While working as
a freelance journalist in the period 1990–2000, Graham had developed a series
of television programmes that investigated the Windrush generation and particu-
larly the experiences of the ‘second generation’ (the migrants’ children).4 These
programmes tackled topics of cultural identity, racism, economic mobility, repa-
triation and social integration. Although they focused primarily on Barbadian expe-
riences, the breadth of programming also included diasporic stories of Antiguan
and ­Jamaican communities. This content contributed greatly to humanising the
historical and political aspects of the Windrush migration.
The collaborative research for the Enigma exhibition also extended into the
documentation and examination of the roles of notable migrants and people of
­Caribbean descent who have contributed significantly to the development of
206  Kaye Hall and Natalie McGuire

modern Britain and the Caribbean beyond their migratory experiences in Britain.
This aspect of the exhibition was proposed by a community participant as a nec-
essary area to cover. It was developed as an open-ended and constantly growing
resource, whereby anyone working on the project, regardless of their place within
the diaspora, could identify a person who met the relevant criteria, and their biog-
raphy would be added to the database. The primary entries included more compre-
hensive biographies of people already featured prominently in historical narratives,
which were documented for the development of the exhibit. This preliminary group
was supplemented and expanded to include those who had been formally recog-
nised by either the British or Caribbean governments for their contributions, as
well as those similarly highlighted through social media by professional or other
meritorious institutions or entities from the diaspora.

Co-creation and co-curation of content

The co-creation and co-curation of exhibition content were implemented in four
layers. First, a public call was made to the Caribbean region and diaspora ask-
ing people to contribute their memories, stories and unique perspectives on the
­Windrush migration. The community was invited to submit content digitally, loan
or donate artefacts, contribute oral histories in person and, of course, comment on
all content shared publicly prior to the completion of the exhibit.
Second, as the VMCMM developed, this was shared as an accessible tool for
communities to contribute and engage with migration stories. Using a simple form
on the VMCMM website, individuals in communities could write personal histo-
ries, share images or video recordings and then pin the location in the Caribbean
from which they had migrated and where in Britain they had migrated to. The aim
of this was to encourage organic contributions beyond the curatorial vision of the
project team alone.
Third, the project team employed a community-of-practice approach shaped by
lateral learning within the shared domain of the Windrush period and associated
scholarship. Drafts of the interpretive panels were shared with local, regional and
international colleagues with a range of relevant expertise in the historical, cul-
tural or poetic context as well as museum expertise. The process was intended not
just for feedback but also for the co-creation of the content as it developed. This
resulted in the final interpretive panels being a product co-created by a community
that extended well beyond the initial research team.
Finally, co-creation existed within the exhibition itself, as installed at the
BMHS. Visitors to the exhibition could contribute to its content in various ways:
there was a feedback board where comments, reactions and ideas could be shared,
and the VMCMM was installed in the exhibition on a touchscreen for visitors to
view uploaded stories, upload their own or contact the project team for a more for-
mal interview. A children’s activity booklet was also created for younger visitors
to draw or write about their experiences through guided activities in the exhibition.
FIGURE 10.1 Community-of-practice cycle based on Lave and Wenger (1991).
Source: EU-LAC Museums and BMHS.

FIGURE 10.2 Community of curatorial practice for The Enigma of Arrival exhibition.

Source: EU-LAC Museums and BMHS.
208  Kaye Hall and Natalie McGuire

FIGURES 10.3  Visitor engagement in the Enigma exhibition, January 2020.

Source: EU-LAC Museums and BMHS.

This booklet could be taken with them or left in the exhibition as part of the con-
tent. Additionally, a slideshow based on the database of notable Caribbean immi-
grants was also created, which provided contact information for the project team
so that visitors could make suggestions for additional figures to be researched and
added. In these ways, the exhibition emerged as an interactive, living space in
which a growing collection of community stories was encouraged.

Reflexivity in the design process

Co-creation and co-curation also extended as a reflexive practice during the
­exhibition design process. As the ultimate aim was for the exhibition to travel,
the project team piloted a draft format for the exhibition that included mainly
interpretive panels and video interviews with the VMCMM—that is, emphasis-
ing the human stories of the Windrush rather than the object histories. This pilot
was installed digitally at the International Museums Itinerant Identities: Museum
Communities/Community Museums conference (7–9 November 2018, UWI Cave
Hill Campus). Museum colleagues attending the conference as well as community
audiences volunteered anecdotes and feedback. The panels also remained visible
on the VMCMM as they were developed. This allowed for an arguably deeper
 Deconstructing the silences around Caribbean migration to Britain  209

exploration of a co-curation process, as public feedback was given during the

development period, rather than after the exhibition had launched.
This feedback informed the use of image content within the exhibition design
and gave the project team a better understanding of the public’s engagement with
the interpretive panels, which led to a more integrated approach to the poetic
aspects of the written content. Quotations from literary arts of the period—songs,
poems and novels—were combined with journals, speeches, letters and memo-
randa, top-secret telegrams and migration manuals to more effectively structure
the story according to the loose sequence we had initially devised. These elements
were brought together to tell a comprehensive narrative that acknowledged not
just facts and figures but also the lives and lived experiences of our people, their
thoughts and feelings expressed in literature, which helped to set the scene and tell
our stories.

FIGURE 10.4 Exhibition panel for Enigma, displaying use of literature, January 2020.
Source: EU-LAC Museums and BMHS.
210  Kaye Hall and Natalie McGuire

The resulting panels were richly interpretive. Each began with a quotation
from a literary work or experiential oral history to set the thematic and emotive
tone for the panel, which then provided a concise and evocative snippet of an
aspect of the whole that was being described and examined. Pictures, charts and
diagrams were interspersed with the text where appropriate and most impactful.
In addition, videos and other interactive elements, along with the few objects
we obtained, were placed closest to those areas where they could best comple-
ment panel text. The overall impact was of a dense and vast story that encour-
aged multiple visits to absorb all of its elements but which proved fascinating to
visitors from all backgrounds, given the pervasive contemporary influence of the
Windrush migration.
The arguably unusual incorporation of literature (that is, deliberately creative
and fictional content) into the exhibit made for an interesting twist on the com-
munity co-curation approach. We had noted on many occasions that the stories
shared by migrants often paralleled fictional accounts so closely that they were
indistinguishable in terms of the history they documented. However, one key dif-
ference and advantage of the fictional and creative accounts was the emotional
and ­emotive, and therefore humanising, nature of the language utilised in them. It
was felt that this ‘human-feeling’ language would, if used effectively, form a gate-
way for connecting audiences with the more formal aspects of the exhibit content.
This strategy proved more successful than anticipated and was perhaps the most
 Deconstructing the silences around Caribbean migration to Britain  211

FIGURES 10.5 TO 10.7  Enigma exhibition installation at the BMHS, June 2019.
Source: EU-LAC Museums and BMHS.
212  Kaye Hall and Natalie McGuire

commented-on feature of the exhibit, both by the audience at the launch and in
­successive feedback received.
The physical exhibit was formally launched at the BMHS on 21 June in time for
the public to view it on Windrush Day on 22 June 2019.

Educational programming for the exhibition

Utilising museums as an educational resource originates in constructivist ­pedagogy,
which is based on a concept of actively engaging learners in the process of creat-
ing meaning and knowledge. While constructivism is itself not a new concept in
education, having roots in the work of Dewey (1938), Piaget (1936) and Vygotsky
(1978), it has experienced some resurgence in more recent times due to support
from the field of cognitive psychology (Hein, 1991, p. 1). Hein (1991, p. 7) notes:

The principles of constructivism, increasingly influential in the organization of

classrooms and curricula in schools, can be applied to learning in museums. The
principles appeal to our modern views of learning and knowledge but conflict
with traditional museum practices.

This framework accorded well with the community co-curation model that we fol-
lowed in developing a number of creative public education programmes for the
Enigma exhibit. Our process of creating narratives relevant to the community,
which would also engage and mitigate the silences in the existing histories, was
also compatible with this constructivist education outlook and worked well within
the key aims of the project. These were:

1 to provide another avenue for public engagement with, and co-curation of, the
exhibit; and
2 to disseminate the emerging research content and historical narratives in ways
that actively engaged informal audiences in the process of managing and build-
ing their own knowledge and that of others.

A constructivist pedagogy encouraged a great deal of flexibility in devising inno-

vative and customisable educational solutions that complemented the project, and
its audiences, as it developed. Public education therefore began well prior to the
launch in order to facilitate the first aim. It then continued throughout the pro-
cess of exhibition development and display, with new ideas for engagement and
­dissemination being developed right up to the writing of this chapter.

Theatrical representation
The BMHS is actively involved in an applied theatre programme collaboration
with the Barbados Community College (BCC) that is aimed at preserving aspects
 Deconstructing the silences around Caribbean migration to Britain  213

of heritage and culture, particularly intangible cultural heritage, through theatrical

exploration. Prendergast and Saxton (2009, pp. 153–4) describe the use of museum
theatre as an effective medium for ‘mediating knowledge and understanding in a
museum setting’, including a number of opportunities for development:

• first-person interpretation or role-playing by exhibitors or guides

• theatre performance aimed at understanding a particular time period or issue
• historical re-enactments allowing participation by large audiences of persons
• role-playing or second-person interpretation

The community theatre programme actively utilises all the above techniques
except historical re-enactments in order to connect with multiple historic voices
and audiences. Much of the content developed in these activities feeds directly into
exhibition development and community practices. The programme also operates as
a way to increase youth engagement and access audiences who would not ordinar-
ily be drawn to a museum except via its entertainment value. In this instance, it
was thought that allowing the students to interact with the content being developed
would provide them with the opportunity to connect with that particular aspect of
our history with which they were largely unfamiliar, as well as provide young peo-
ple’s feedback as part of our community co-curation process.
The group was provided with not just raw data content but also a list of the literary
content that we had identified as relevant to the period. In addition, the students were
encouraged to do their own research online as well as in the local community with
those of their elders who had been a part of the Windrush migration experience. They
then worked to develop a theatrical performance based on their own interpretations of
these composite inputs. The resulting theatrical work consisted of a series of loosely
linked vignettes that explored the themes of the exhibition through the associated
existing literature as well as some original work. It was performed at the Association
of Caribbean Historians conference held in Barbados in June 2018 and then again at
the Itinerant Identities: Museum Communities, Community Museums conference in
November of the same year, where it was also recorded. The work was well received
by both audiences, who took the opportunity to interact with the students and garner
their unique perspectives on this history. Feedback from both audiences and students
was incorporated into the exhibition development.
The students shared their experiences in conversation with the exhibition devel-
opment team. These involved both the discovery of family history through the
informal oral histories that they gathered from within the community and their own
journeys of self-discovery as descendants of those who would have lived through
the Windrush experience, both at home in the Caribbean and abroad. Many of them
commented that they appreciated having been exposed to this previously unknown
or hidden aspect of the historical narrative that is not linked to the stories of enslave-
ment, rebellion or independence that characterise the general Caribbean history cur-
riculum in schools. Students’ comments also highlighted the opportunity to connect
214  Kaye Hall and Natalie McGuire

with history in a more direct, personal and meaningful way, outside the typical class-
room or guided tour session. They further indicated that ‘living history’—interacting
with those who have lived history—was far more engaging than history learned from
books. They also commented that their theatrical practice was enhanced by being
able to engage directly with the subject matter through the community. In fact, they
identified this as a process that would inform their practice and craft going forward,
which would add additional dimensions and complexity to their portrayals.

Public lecture series

A public lecture series, entitled ‘From Importation to Deportation: 70 Years of the
Windrush Generation’ and produced by the BMHS and UWI Cave Hill Campus,
was held from March to May of 2019. The series consisted of a programme of
expositions by academics and professionals, such as journalists and diplomats, as
well as other persons from within the community. The topics of their presentations
included various aspects of the migrants’ experiences that were considered of inter-
est to the community in light of the burgeoning public interest engendered by the
Windrush scandal. The series was well attended with over 100 audience members
on its best night. The Question-and-Answer sessions in the series sparked commu-
nity debate and encouraged many Windrush returnees in the audience to share their
stories as part of the activity.
The lectures were also livestreamed to increase public dissemination and feed-
back. Although the series ended in June 2019, these livestreams continue to be
watched online and receive feedback. In addition, one of the presentations from the
lecture series was adapted in volume LXV of The Journal of the Barbados Museum
& Historical Society (December 2019) under the title ‘The Windrush Scandal: An
Insider’s Reflection’ by Guy Hewitt. In this chapter, Hewitt (2019, p. 151) dis-
cusses the premise of the Windrush scandal and the role of Caribbean governments
in highlighting what he regards as ‘a blot on Britain’s socio-political landscape’.

Children’s exhibition workbook

An interactive workbook developed around a play-and-learn model was designed
to facilitate young visitors’ engagement with the exhibition’s content. It encour-
aged them to think about the specific activities in which their ancestors would have
taken part when preparing to migrate. The book was also designed along construc-
tivist lines, allowing children to learn and engage with the exhibit on their own
terms and at their own pace, utilising the activities within the booklet as a guide.

Museum internships
The BMHS also takes a constructivist approach to learning within its internship
programmes, allowing interns to freely engage with the development of content
 Deconstructing the silences around Caribbean migration to Britain  215

and programming activities for its exhibitions. Over time, this tactic has resulted
in the development of some engaging interactive programming content created by
interns, who bring varying experiences and skill sets to each development process.
In the case of Enigma specifically, the Museum benefitted from the creativity of
a UWI History major with an interest in creative writing, which resulted in the
production of a serialised story entitled Barrel Child, which was illustrated by yet
another intern, a Sociology and Psychology major. The story was targeted at young
audiences visiting the exhibit who may not have been able to engage with the
weightier content and presentation of the main exhibit. It chronicles and explores
the experiences of Caribbean families, parental migration and family separation,
which led to the existence of so-called barrel children who were left behind in
the Caribbean to be raised by grandparents and other relatives when their parents
migrated for better opportunities.
The book was published internally and added to the exhibit as a free takeaway
for interested parties. The BMHS received mainly positive feedback from visitors,
including requests for further instalments of the story. It was therefore considered a
necessary tool for engaging young audiences with the material and a good alterna-
tive to Western-centred storytelling narratives in general.
The two interns subsequently worked on a series of poems, a colouring book
and an interactive workbook for older children. Both indicated that they valued
the opportunity to make concrete contributions to the exhibit content, as well as
to engage directly with history in a creative fashion. They, like the theatre group,
were encouraged to interact not only with the research material but also with the
­members of the community who had experienced the Windrush phenomenon
directly. The pair reported that it allowed them to forge stronger familial and
­community bonds.

Social community-based activities

The final major activity accompanying the exhibit was aimed at encouraging inter-
active engagement with the exhibition content in a social setting. The Museum
therefore hosted an event entitled ‘Tea and Conversations’, which took the form
of an afternoon tea party. The goal of this event was to encourage members of the
Windrush generation and their families to come and share their stories with one
another, and also hopefully with the VMCMM, further expanding the scope of the
exhibit content. The proceedings, which were intended to encourage conversation
and discourse, included snippets of Windrush story narratives, as well as readings
of poetry by one of the Museum’s interns, which were based on her interactions
with the exhibition content as it developed. Those who attended the event came
ready and prepared to share stories and connect with one another, rendering the
preparation of the narrative story somewhat unnecessary, although they did listen
and make comments and ask questions. The poetry was very well received by the
audience and they passed several hours in companiable discourse (though they still
216  Kaye Hall and Natalie McGuire

proved reluctant to have their exchanges recorded), which encouraged the Museum
to extend the event past the originally intended closing time. Some exhibition visi-
tors indicated that they would share their stories directly with the VMCMM at
a later date.

Challenges in the participatory method and reflections on

Enigma as a travelling exhibition
One early challenge with implementing a participatory methodology in this
­exhibition process was doing justice to the many voices and stories within Win-
drush history, and how they could be effectively developed into a coherent yet fluid
whole that would be accessible to the regional and diasporic audiences for which
it was being prepared. Inundated with facts, figures, photographs, original docu-
ments, oral histories and the various paraphernalia of one of the greatest move-
ments of people across the globe, the team struggled to find a way to connect
with intended communities and audiences. It was then that we realised that the
very cultural traditions through which our peoples have always carried their stories
could be utilised to link their experiences and that they would enable us to pro-
vide a pathway to understanding the layers of this history. The development of the
VMCMM then provided opportunities for the exhibition to be ‘living’, with stories
and subthemes continually added as the exhibition travelled.
A second challenge was that although in the exhibition the visitor feedback
board was well utilised, there seemed to be a particular reluctance among members
of the public to share their stories in an international digital format. We attempted to
counter this reticence through educational programming. Nonetheless, while those
who had experienced the Windrush migration were willing to talk—­oftentimes
passionately—about their experiences at in-person events, they were challenged
when faced with online sharing facilities. This public reticence is something of
a cultural norm in Barbados, where the bulk of the interviews were conducted.
However, it is hoped that, over time and with further community interaction, the
observed culturally learned ‘shyness’ and technology bashfulness could be over-
come in order to increase the recorded archive of these stories.
The exhibition is fulfilling its aim to travel both within the Caribbean and in
the United Kingdom. There has been a digital iteration at Goldsmiths University5
(October 2019), and an installation at Birmingham by the 2nd Generation Barba-
dian & Friends6 Association (December 2019–January 2020). In February 2020,
the exhibition opened at the UWI Museum,7 Mona Campus, Jamaica, and in June
2020, it was launched on Windrush Day at Reading Museum in England.8 The
Reading Museum iteration in particular has yielded significant new content in terms
of interviews with Windrush migrants still living in Reading and their descend-
ants. This will be added to the VMCMM and will also become part of a­ dditional
­interactive content and online materials for both young and old audiences.
The UWI Museum has also sourced additional content which, while too vast
for inclusion in the exhibit in the limited space in the museum, may be suitable for
 Deconstructing the silences around Caribbean migration to Britain  217

inclusion in the VMCMM. This continued scholarship is encouraging and bodes

well for the sustainability of the project and the history it represents.

Conclusion
As the exhibition travels, communities will be encouraged to share their stories and
contribute to the content, furthering the ethos that Enigma is a living and co-curated
platform, as well as developing and expanding the VMCMM as a growing and self-
sustaining project. The project’s realisation of a community of curatorial practice has
yielded significant results. Most significantly, it has opened possibilities for museums
in the Caribbean region, and those with diasporic communities, to effectively devise
exhibition frameworks that draw on Caribbean ways of knowing. The model of
­co-curation has been successful enough that almost every exhibit displayed thus far
has resulted in an increase in the knowledge collected, developed and archived by the
project as well as unplanned extensions in the public’s interaction with the exhibit.
This particular method shows potential for such frameworks to be established
and formalised by Caribbean museum professionals seeking to develop exhibitions
that put community voices at the forefront of the design and that revisit historical
narratives from the perspectives of those living in Caribbean countries. The BMHS
has made good use of the methodologies developed in this project. Co-curatorial
practices have informed several of its projects going forward, with visible gains in
public interaction and interest, as well as community engagement with the Museum
and its interpretive projects. For the team, this is a heartening indication of the
validity, future success and further development of this model. It also suggests
that Caribbean museology is on the right path with regard to relevance, signifi-
cance, representation and engagement within its communities as we fill Trouillot’s
silences in our (hi)stories. Research and development of previously undocumented
or poorly documented histories from within the Global South provide many oppor-
tunities for the (re)writing of heritage discourses to include more holistic and inclu-
sive visions and versions of history. In addition, techniques such as oral history,
and interpretation based on artistic expression of the period under study, expand
the scope of the telling of history beyond traditional methodologies for a more
inclusive, multi-focal and multi-vocal recounting. This is especially important for
Caribbean peoples, who, as descendants of forced migration and enslavement, are
largely dependent on stories inherited through oral traditions. In order to continue
to make space for such methodologies in exhibition-making, research and interpre-
tation must be open to these new inputs into historical discourse. In turn, these can
function as new means of engaging with the community to establish relevance and
provide new ways of seeing and understanding the politics and poetics of our past.

Notes
1 This project involved the primary curatorial team at the BMHS (Cummins, ­McGuire-
and Hall), with collaborations from the UWI departments of Cultural Studies and History
218  Kaye Hall and Natalie McGuire

and Philosophy. It utilised a number of research resources including, but not limited to,
the West Indies Federal Archives, the Sidney Martin Library, the UWI (Mona) Museum
and the University’s Office of Research as well as the performing arts ensemble from
the BCC. Also involved were a number of independent researchers with an interest in
migration history (Emerita Mary Chamberlain, Rosalie Mayers, Marcia Burrowes and
Kenneth Walters), as well as journalist Claude Graham. The project also benefitted from
the influence of the project team at St Andrew’s University in Scotland, whilst the exhi-
bition has also expanded to include content from the venues to which it has travelled,
particularly Reading Museum and the UWI Museum, as well as contributors to the lec-
ture series, Henderson Carter, Alan Cobley and others.
2 Further reading on this can be found in Hewitt (2019).
3 Although adapted and formalised for the EU-LAC Museums project, a ‘community of
curatorial practice’ was first designed and implemented in a Caribbean exhibition con-
text by McGuire (2015) for Transoceanic Visual Exchange. More on this can be found at
TVE 1: A Community of Curatorial Practice. [Link]
com/tve-1, Accessed 20 January 2022.
4 Such as Second Generation (1997–2000), London Link (1982) and Unshackled?
(1997–2000).
5 Advertised at this link [Link]
6 This exhibition page can be located at [Link]
enigma-arrival-exhibition
7 The virtual exhibition links can be seen here, although the physical exhibition has since
been decommissioned [Link]
and-poetics-caribbean-migration-britain
8 This exhibition page can be located at [Link]
online-exhibitions/windrush-day-2020

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11
A CASE STUDY OF COMMUNITY
VIRTUAL MUSEUMS IN THE AGE
OF CRISIS
Designing a Virtual Museum of Caribbean
Migration and Memory

Catherine Anne Cassidy, Alan Miller and

Alissandra Cummins

The Virtual Museum of Caribbean Migration and Memory (VMCMM) tells stories
of migration from a Caribbean perspective and is focused on the experience and
impact of the Windrush generation. The VMCMM was created in part to commem-
orate the 70th anniversary of the HMT Empire Windrush’s landing in the United
Kingdom, carrying approximately 600 migrants from the Caribbean.
This chapter places the VMCMM within a wider context of future capacity and
challenges for virtual museums in the Caribbean by reporting and reflecting on
the round table held at the MAC Annual Conference in 2018. The panel included
the University of West Indies (UWI) Museum, the Barbados Museum & Histori-
cal Society (BMHS), the Museums Association of the Caribbean, the Universidad
Austral de Chile and the University of St Andrews. We discuss our experiences
in developing digital architecture to support workshops held in communities and
museums in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. These were organised
through the EU-LAC Museums project and involved hundreds of participants,
including school students, museum volunteers and professionals. The workshops
streamlined and simplified photogrammetry for community museums to create,
archive and curate representations of heritage using 3D and 360-degree media.
In the discussion that follows, we detail the design and architecture of the
VMCMM, a virtual museum, based on experience of working with community
museums. At its core is the open-source Omeka archive and exhibition-building
content management system framework for museums and collections. The virtual
museum framework supports interactive mapping, digital galleries, timelines and
digital panels that can be integrated into web narratives. The framework connects
with Social Archive sites, the World Wide Web and mobile applications. It makes
use of open standards and provides powerful but simple metadata and archives.
Our design philosophy sees virtual museums as an active resource, supporting

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-14
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
222  Catherine Anne Cassidy et al.

content generation as well as enabling content to be deployed in multiple ­exhibition

contexts.
The chapter discusses how the virtual museum architecture was developed and
combined with content to create the VMCMM. The mapping capabilities of the
VMCMM enabled spatial visualisation of migrations, showing the scale of depar-
ture, movement and final terminus. Spatial context visualisations help viewers to
understand the significance of a people in transition and the effects that migration
has on society and culture. The combination of virtual maps, historical narratives,
first-person accounts and digital heritage generates an understanding and appre-
ciation of humanity during major events. In addition, its integration of emergent
media, such as 3D models, 360-degree images and virtual reality (VR), adds depth
and authenticity. The VMCMM infrastructure connects interactive mapping with
media through a content management system to achieve synthesis between the two.
The VMCMM was unveiled as part of The Enigma of Arrival exhibition at
the Museums Association of the Caribbean’s 2018 conference and continued as a
touring exhibition across the Caribbean. The Enigma of Arrival: The Politics and
­Poetics of Caribbean Migration to Britain mixed physical exhibits with projec-
tions of historical audio-visual recordings, digitised 3D objects and interactive pan-
els with embedded associated media. It created an immersive space that allowed
visitors to experience Caribbean perspectives on migration. The virtual museum,
available online as well as within the exhibition site, further became an active
platform where users can upload personal migration stories, adding to the breadth
of co-curated content and known cultural narratives. The online element of the
exhibition supported the transition to strictly virtual content during the COVID-19
pandemic and has bolstered the digital content and resources on this topic that are
available to a global audience.

The Virtual Museum of Caribbean Migration and Memory

When the HMT Empire Windrush docked in the Port of Tilbury outside London
in June 1948, it carried one of the largest groups of West Indian migrants to the
United Kingdom. Its journey has become an iconic symbol of Caribbean post-war
migration to Britain. The impact of West Indian migration was transformational
for ­British society, touching all aspects of life, including work, culture, politics
and sport. The following case study examines the practice of designing a virtual
museum to capture and communicate the Windrush migration experience from
a Caribbean perspective.
The design for the VMCMM began in 2017 as part of the EU-LAC Museums
Horizon 2020 project. Three motivations were key in its development:

• The topic of migration goes to the heart of cultural and political issues around
the globe. The Caribbean experience, from the Panama Canal, through the Win-
drush generation to today, provides a complete insight into both the long-term
 A case study of community virtual museums  223

benefits to the receiving localities and the challenges posed to communities left
behind.
• There are abundant museums, archives and resources relevant to migration and
gender but are often difficult to locate, presenting a challenge to gaining an
overall sense of the resources available. A virtual museum on the topic offers
a single destination and framework for those interested in the subject.
• New methods of presentation and associating data are regularly emerging,
which herald the potential of a qualitative enhancement of virtual museum
experiences. Through 3D digitisation processes, digital artefacts produced pre-
serve and enhance the original physical media. Digital objects can fill a digital
gallery, replicating a physical gallery, with associated interpretation and meta-
data to provide dissemination. They can be placed into scenes that situate the
artefacts within real or virtual representations of their original context.

The virtual museum was paired with a complementary physical exhibition

designed by the BMHS and the UWI. The exhibition travelled to key locations on
main ­Caribbean migration routes, as well as prominent final ports of call, in order
to encompass the totality of the migration experience, obtain stories from those
affected and show connections with modern immigration topics.
The virtual museum combines physical and digital exhibits, offering greater
audience accessibility and participation in order to develop a collection of previ-
ously undocumented individual stories. It uses an archiving system designed spe-
cifically for the project, which aligns with open heritage aggregators and schema.
It also supports the creation of new media, such as video entries, photogrammetry
for the preservation of tangible heritage and virtual tours of locations associated
with stories. A focus on telling individual stories of the Windrush generation using
images, text and video allows previously unheard voices to contribute to a sig-
nificant historical moment. Collected stories, associated media and resources and
featured individuals are accessed by search, galleries and an interactive mapping
interface, displaying the virtual museum’s collection in a comprehensive design.
As access to digital technologies and growth of digital literacies progress, exper-
imentation to discover novel ways to preserve and record history is paramount for
heritage organisations, and within reach (Cassidy et al., 2018). The VMCMM mod-
els an innovative approach to collecting memory while disseminating academic
research and narratives and offers support for further media creation to enhance
the overall understanding of Caribbean migration. The VMCMM provides a rich
framework for exploring the lack of representation of the past and present diaspora.
It does so by curating migration narratives, reclaiming diasporic community expe-
riences and illuminating the social and cultural dynamics of retelling national sto-
ries. In the COVID-19 era, it became the only means to access the exhibition The
Enigma of Arrival, while the physical exhibition was no longer available. The global
switch to digital media that occurred during the pandemic led to the VMCMM’s
expansion through additional content as well as redesigned infrastructures.
224  Catherine Anne Cassidy et al.

This shift in focus enabled the virtual museum to become the principal resource
highlighting individual stories from the Windrush generation during the project.

The Enigma of Arrival: The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean

Migration to Britain
With its arrival from Jamaica to London in 1948, the HMT Empire Windrush
brought one of the first large groups of post-war West Indian immigrants to
the United K ­ ingdom—approximately 600 of the 1,027 total passengers. Post-
emancipation migration out of the Caribbean had occurred prior to this timeframe,
notably to Britain and Europe in response to the call for recruits in the First World
War and to Panama during the construction of the Panama Canal (1903–1914).
However, the choice to focus on the Windrush generation came from an iden-
tified gap in the collections and narratives of museums across the Caribbean
region. Although this theme may have been accessible to diasporic communi-
ties in the United ­Kingdom, UWI’s research revealed limited opportunities in
­Caribbean museums to share the significance of this migration’s impact on the
economic, social, academic and cultural landscapes of the United Kingdom and
the ­Caribbean. In a fluid, regional space, where so many Caribbean people have
come from somewhere else over centuries, whether by force or freely, UWI’s
research into the collection h­ oldings in Caribbean museums revealed that those
institutions had so far made little effort to reflect on past and present experiences
of migration and diaspora.
The exhibition The Enigma of Arrival: The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean
Migration to Britain focused on Caribbean migrations from the 1940s to the 1970s
in order to highlight and provide a comparison for the modern migration crisis in
Britain. Alongside the VMCMM, it aimed to serve as a medium for informing the
general public across the Caribbean and in the United Kingdom about the current
state of affairs for Caribbean migrants. Through interpretive panels and interac-
tive audio-visual materials, the audience was introduced to the historical param-
eters and scope of post-World War II Caribbean migration to Britain and its legacy
among later generations, both in the Caribbean and abroad.

The growth of access to technology

Access to technology is at an all-time high and surely set to rise. In 2018, for every
100 people globally, there were 107 mobile and 69.3 mobile broadband subscrip-
tions, compared to 63 and 12 per hundred in 2010. According to ITU (2021) sta-
tistics, Barbados saw an increase of 16.66 per cent in internet use in seven years,
from 65.1 per cent in 2010 to 81.76 per cent in 2017. Jamaica saw a rise as well,
from 26.67 per cent in 2010 to 55.07 per cent in 2017. Greater still, the growth of
mobile broadband subscriptions allows access to the internet through social media
platforms and search engines. Barbados had significant growth from 2000 at 10.48
 A case study of community virtual museums  225

subscriptions per 100 people to 124.08 in 2010 and a slight levelling out of 114.74
in 2019. Jamaica saw a similar increase from 13.82 subscriptions per 100 people
in 2000 to 113.22 in 2010 and 102.56 in 2019. These figures are consistent with
previous experiences working with communities and their museums during the
EU-LAC Museums project. In each country and region, the digital infrastructure of
mobile phones, computers and digital literacy in communities across Latin Amer-
ica, the Caribbean and Europe was sufficient to facilitate community engagement
in digital heritage.
Digital technologies have seen qualitative transformations in recent years in
terms of fidelity, usability and presentation. These have allowed digital technologies
to represent heritage in a myriad of ways, making mobile and immersive interac-
tions available on commodity devices while promoting accessibility, since potential
audiences have both the required digital literacy and the access to devices that are
capable of delivering immersive content. This potential coincides with strategies
pushing for the creative use of digital technology, such as the UK government
report Culture is Digital (Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, 2019)
and Digitising Collections: Leveraging Volunteers & Crowdsourcing to Accelerate
Digitisation, which stresses the importance of museums adopting a digital strategy
(AXIELL, 2017). The relevance and importance of digitising collections as part
of collections management is demonstrated in the European Union (2017) report
Promoting Access to Culture via Digital Means.
Digital technologies are not only important tools for improving accessibility to
museums’ resources but can also introduce new methods of gathering digital data.
If a museum has the capacity to go digital, it is able to expand from being locally
rooted to having a global footprint. Through digital technologies, museums can
contribute to the growth of global knowledge, promote social cohesion and inclu-
sion and promote a better understanding of different cultural roots within societies
in ways that go beyond direct contact with audiences.

Virtual museum innovations

Virtual museums have typically focused primarily on providing remote access to
interpretation of collections held physically by a museum. In recent years, consid-
erable technological progress has been made, allowing virtual museums to advance
from simple image galleries, to support 3D and other immersive media and now
VR with fully explorable environments. As a result, their scope has undeniably
changed, as new media and resources have had to be made compatible with plat-
forms already familiar to heritage professionals to improve interoperability (Fabola
et al., 2017).
In order for virtual museums to deliver content, narratives and experiences that
adhere to the same principles as their physical counterparts, multiple processes must
take place to ensure interconnectivity with known curatorial procedures, schemas
and databases. Exhibitions require research into collections as well as interpretation
226  Catherine Anne Cassidy et al.

of materials; these processes rely on the capacity and skills of museum staff,
­volunteers and community members. This is also the case when curating an online
exhibition using objects and stories held in a physical museum. Moreover, data and
media should link with larger digital libraries for better global accessibility and
should be comprehensible to different types of audiences using the content.

Perspectives from a Caribbean round table on virtual museums

The above issues were at the centre of a discussion held during the Museums
­Association of the Caribbean annual conference in 2018 held within the ­Itinerant
Identities conference at UWI Cave Hill Campus in Barbados. A round table discus-
sion was organised during the proceedings, in which participants included com-
munity and university museum leaders, as well as digital heritage experts. The
members of this ‘Caribbean Virtual Museums: Opportunities and Challenges’
round table discussed the design, functionalities and specific requirements of future
virtual museums for the Caribbean.
The panel was an opportunity to consider how new media might help in the
process of learning to create and archive digital heritage, and develop mixed virtual
exhibitions in a digital format. The potential for drawing connections and sharing
perspectives through digital heritage is perpetually growing. Advances in technol-
ogy have improved general digital literacies to the point where museums and their
audiences can use these technologies for both engagement and dissemination. The
panel also addressed common challenges and misconceptions related to digital

FIGURE 11.1 
Panellists in the round table discussion ‘Caribbean Virtual Museums:
Opportunities and Challenges’ during the Itinerant Identities conference
at UWI Cave Hill campus, Barbados.
 A case study of community virtual museums  227

heritage and virtual museums and shared solutions with one another. All partic-
ipants agreed that the rich heritage spread geographically across the C ­ aribbean
means that virtual museums have great potential to enable its interpretation and
communication.
The panellists began by deliberating and establishing the place of virtual muse-
ums within regular museum programming and discussing whether they expand
or restrict the museum’s ethos. The risk that a virtual museum could overexpose
a museum’s collections and divert physical audiences exclusively online was raised
as a known concern, mostly in organisations that did not already have a prominent
online presence. In this regard, the expenses of smaller community museums may
not be as large as those of national museums, but these institutions still require
patronage. It was agreed that new technology does not threaten to replace a unique
in-person museum experience but should run conjointly with existing processes
and frameworks to enhance the museum’s message. This was said succinctly by
anthropologist Karin Weil: ‘[the museum] wasn’t created to bring more people. It
was created for identity, memory, human rights, native population […] it is impor-
tant to attract more people […] but also you have to have a balance’ (Cassidy, 2018,
p. 2). It was agreed that, if community museums are part of their communities, and
intended to contribute to their social sustainability, the digital domain can broaden
and bolster these aspirations, as well as boost visits to physical exhibitions.
Moreover, as Geology lecturer and museum curator Sherene James-Williamson
noted, a virtual museum can change and evolve with both online and physical audi-
ences. James-Williamson observed that ‘[her] visitors [were] participating more in
making [her] virtual museum a virtual museum’ (Cassidy, 2018, p. 3). She argued that
this could be achieved by allowing visitors ‘to take their images […] and they have
their own narrative […] when visitors come, they also come with information […]. So
I see our online museum environment more interactive and more informative in the
next couple years’ (Cassidy, 2018, p. 3). Crowdsourcing and co-curation have been a
part of museology for the last few decades, but the digital domain can cast a wider net
than has been previously accomplished. The internet has facilitated access to a global
audience that can contribute to narratives and knowledge, and these contributions could
be furthered by a virtual museum. Computer scientist Adeola Fabola confirmed that

there are so many opportunities here, so many possibilities that our technology
would allow, no doubt there would be challenges, but if the interest is there, the
tech circles and the heritage experts could work together for a viable solution.
(Cassidy, 2018, p. 5)

Within the context of sharing in the digital domain, an issue was raised regarding
travelling exhibitions, which is both a distinctly Caribbean challenge and a wider
contextual issue. Collections are shared externally through libraries and commu-
nity centres as well as with other museums throughout the islands, but the process
is still difficult. It also presents physical risks to objects that are eliminated through
228  Catherine Anne Cassidy et al.

publication as digital models in a virtual museum. Such models could be exhibited

with interpretation and metadata, as well as the capacity for viewers to examine the
object more closely than they might in person. Rather than printed and sent panels,
interpretative material could be included as a digitally packaged exhibition that
either remains completely digital or can be printed at the host’s discretion. How-
ever, it was remarked that converting a physical exhibition to a digital form in a
virtual museum is not a ‘one size fits all’ approach; the resourcing and goals of each
exhibition require consideration. Yet, as James-Williamson argued, the addition
of an online element to a physical exhibition need not replace it but rather might
enhance and augment the experience, leading to different types of engagement and
reactions: ‘the borrowing and the booking of the exhibition […] but doing it in an
online environment is really really exciting’ (Cassidy, 2018, p. 4). Researcher and
curator Natalie McGuire could also see the potential for ‘these community centres
instead of relying on us to bring panels to them, they could download interpretative
material provided by institutions and share reach and build agency within their own
spaces’ (Cassidy, 2018, p. 2).
A common challenge observed by the panellists was the requirement to educate
current staff in digital skills and terminology, acquire new digitally conversant staff
who could manage a virtual museum and its components and pass down knowledge
gained by an individual to other staff. Weil wondered ‘if I got out of museums, not
working anymore there, who’s going to continue, who’s going to get training from
whom’ (Cassidy, 2018, p. 8). The work required to create and add digital content to an
online resource, as well as access to technical support when needed, seemed daunt-
ing. A few members of the round table had been a part of the EU-LAC ­Museums pro-
ject and had experience of helping to generate and manage digital content for a larger
project but may not have done so by themselves. A discussion between the museums
and technology experts led them to agree that building capacity within museums
was valuable, as was utilising the digital literacy of their communities. Tapping into
the community as a resource can provide insights, skills and perspectives needed to
design a virtual museum that meets the community’s needs and interests. This was
a frequent observation made during the digital workshops that were run as part of the
EU-LAC Museums project and hosted across nine countries. Each participant’s skills
benefited the digital content created as well as the museum, as new connections were
made that could lead to future collaborations.
One aspect of digital collections that was enthusiastically acknowledged was
their potential to aid global research. The value of digitised collections is undeni-
able. Researchers were once required to either travel to an object or request that
an item be shipped to them. Barriers that may prohibit or restrict this fundamental
part of research can be removed if the object is digitised. Speaking of her museum,
James-Williamson commented that

[it] would benefit a lot, some of our collections people want to study them but
Jamaica is quite far away from where the people are. So I’m seeing, in terms of
 A case study of community virtual museums  229

a virtual space, making my collections accessible, whether by database initially

[…] there are a bit more intricacies to get things going, but to provide an online
kind of a catalogue.
(Cassidy, 2018, p. 3)

Primary sources were considered. An accurate and accessible digital representa-

tion of an object allows research to continue and for comparative analysis and new
inquiries to be made. Digital representations allow access for anyone who would
not be able to see the physical object in person, which could be as a result of dis-
tance, disability or financial strain. Digitisation is then mutually beneficial to the
researcher and the museum. Once collections are digitised, their uses are infinite.
A digital object is a single file—or, in the case of 3D models, a few file types—that
can promote museums, their collections and exhibitions in the form of digital or
printed media. It can increase the visibility of the object, museum and associated
community. Additionally, digitisation captures an object at a certain point in time,
which allows it to be examined as it once was. This is imperative in case of damage
or loss. Digitally safeguarding collections is a method for museums to be actively
sustainable and to future-proof themselves against unforeseeable incidents.
Participants in the round table also acknowledged the misconception that tech-
nology has a high barrier to entry in monetary terms and the skills required for use.
When asked how a museum can fit a new technology into its practices, Fabola rec-
ommended that museums should rather ask: how can this technology ‘supplement
how we do things? This technology could walk hand in hand with your existing
processes and your existing infrastructures’ (Cassidy, 2018, p. 1). Fabola argued
that new technologies should not be considered merely for the sake of their novelty
or flashiness but must be able to contribute and assist within the museum’s existing
framework. He also asked that practitioners ‘consider the notion of the resource
spectrum […] where as we know there are hundreds of thousands of museums
across the world with varying resource availability’ (Cassidy, 2018, p. 2). His
research suggests that, in order for all museums to take advantage of what emergent
technologies can offer, ‘it’s possible to have some sort of framework where you can
use some subtle technology with varying levels of cost and availability irrespective
of the resources at the museum’s disposal’ (Cassidy, 2018, p. 2).
Developments and outcomes in the EU-LAC Museums project demonstrate that
even with resource restrictions, the commodity technology held by the commu-
nity was enough to produce new types of digital content, such as 3D models and
360-degree virtual tours. The threshold to new technologies is lower than com-
monly thought. Moreover, once established, the use of these technologies can be
expanded and adapted in museums’ practices.
The question of who virtual museums are for, and what their roles are, was
raised as a response regarding resourcing and capacity-building within museums.
Uncertainty about staff availability was prominent, especially since a majority
of small or community museums have limited resources. Practitioners noted
230  Catherine Anne Cassidy et al.

that the role of a virtual museum needs to be resolved before staff a­ llocation
can be considered, as the responsibilities of a virtual museum depend on its core
function. If it is primarily to increase visitor numbers and promote footfall, then
a staff member with tourism and public relation skills could be best placed to
manage it. If it is to be a resource for digital collections and exhibitions, how-
ever, then a curator may lead its development. A clear understanding of what
programme the virtual museum supports can assist in evaluation, which aids in
proving its effectiveness to authorities. As Weil suggested, one of the questions
to ask before developing a virtual museum is: ‘who is going to be in charge of
the virtual museum, for what, and maybe [moving forward], you can use it for
a lot of things […] but each one has to be directly in touch with that’ (Cassidy,
2018, p. 7).
In the discussion, the possibility of sharing a pan-Caribbean vision for the island
nations with the world was an exciting proposal that overrode trepidations. Preserv-
ing and sharing knowledge using new technologies and methods was understood as
having the potential for sustainability that small museums strive to achieve. Histo-
rian and curator Suzanne Francis-Brown observed that the UWI museum’s focus
on a ‘pan-UWI complete Caribbean perspective’ is what it was created to pursue
(Cassidy, 2018, p. 8). She stated that ‘from that perspective of knowledge creation
and knowledge sharing, it would be something useful and possible, and perhaps
pull in many elements of the university’s teaching and learning endeavours, as well
the level of students as lecturers’ (Cassidy, 2018, p. 8). This involvement would
in turn link to capacity-building within the museum, as sustainability for virtual
museums depends on the proficiency of a team of staff and volunteers. In cases
where a virtual museum relies on only a single person, it must be of the utmost
importance to disseminate their knowledge so the management and upkeep of such
a resource are continuous.

Summary from the round table discussion

As agreed upon by heritage and technology professionals during the round table,
virtual museums are in a unique position to offer local communities, as well as
regional and international audiences, access to and inclusion in museum collec-
tions and narratives. In a Caribbean context, the functions and capacities of such
a resource could solve familiar challenges faced by island museums. The round
table discussion, with its variety of panellists, illuminated the possibilities and
prerequisites for the success of virtual museums. Drawing on this conversation,
we determined that the crucial requirements for a pan-Caribbean virtual museum
resource would include:

• community-sourced content and narratives

• access and creation beyond the walls of the museum
• guidance in the use of commodity hardware to create new digital content
 A case study of community virtual museums  231

A prototype virtual museum, the VMCMM, was developed and trialled at the
­opening of The Enigma of Arrival exhibition, which occurred during the same
event as the round table. The VMCMM was created using a practice-based meth-
odology such that user needs and perspectives identified at the exhibition opening
were incorporated into the design process The main points made by the panellists
were considered and served to shape future iterations of the VMCMM. In turn, this
process has informed the design and practicalities of virtual museum resources in
subsequent initiatives, including the CINE (2017), CUPIDO (2018) and STRATUS
(Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme, 2019) projects.

Engaging with migration and memory

The digital domain enables stories and media to be shared without the constraints
presented by the physical world. A transatlantic event such as the Windrush migra-
tion includes those from multiple communities in various countries, and its effects
resonate with other migration stories all over the globe. It is therefore an ideal
topic to explore within the digital domain and to test the technical range in which a
­virtual museum platform can be developed.
The design for a migration-themed virtual museum would need user journeys to
include the following in order to educate the audience:

• an exploration and understanding of the communities involved

• where in the world the event took place
• why it is a significant part of history
• the human connection

These social elements feed into design decisions based on the content available
and the best method for dissemination. The virtual museum, as a digital online
platform, collates exhibition materials, as well as the primary resources used to
create the exhibition, in one location. A comprehensive collection of digitised con-
tent is at users’ fingertips, with the potential for increased interaction compared to
a physical visit. With these intentions, the conclusion that a virtual museum would
complement an EU-LAC Museums history-based exhibition was acknowledged
and developed.
The mixed-media exhibition for The Enigma of Arrival opened at UWI Cave
Hill Campus in Barbados in 2018. Curators from the BMHS implemented a com-
munity practice approach for co-curating content for the exhibition, a community
peer review system and sustainable exchanges of content between the museum and
its communities (Cummins et al., 2020).
For the exhibition and the VMCMM, the information panels were converted
into interactive digital displays on touchscreens, as well as projections for the
physical exhibition. Additional content—such as recorded songs, and historic
performances and images—was embedded in the panels, thus enabling a rich
232  Catherine Anne Cassidy et al.

FIGURE 11.2 
Digital poster panel from The Enigma of Arrival online exhibition,
­available on the VMCMM.

multimedia environment. Poignant interviews and archival videos were projected

on the ­exhibition’s walls. In addition, a mobile application was developed for the
exhibition that facilitated interaction with 3D models created from the BMHS and
UWI collections; this was available on provided tablets. The process of photogram-
metry was shown on the opening night as a sustainable entry into 3D digitisation,
and the VMCMM’s 3D queue system for remote processing was demonstrated. To
complement the curators’ intentions for community co-curation of content, a video
capture area offered attendees the ability to share their own migration stories and
add them to the VMCMM. Participants filled out an upload form with information
associated with their stories, including the location of departure and arrival. This
information was added to the archival database and then appeared on the mapping
interface. Entries to the database in turn contributed to a wiki platform, which built
upon and connected multiple contributions. Whether contributing from the physi-
cal exhibition or from their own homes, audiences were encouraged to tell their
personal stories, adding to the breadth of cultural narratives and co-curated content.
Available online as well as within the exhibition, the VMCMM reaches beyond
the physical barriers of the exhibition space and provides a platform for further
investigation, research and uploading of personal migration stories. It is designed to
be an active resource for content collation and generation, informed by evaluation
 A case study of community virtual museums  233

from the EU-LAC Museums’ digital workshops and strong ties between the ­content
curators (BMHS and UWI) and their community.
In the VMCMM, an interactive map is the main navigational tool used to
display audience-provided stories as well as spotlighted narratives and notable

FIGURE 11.3 3D model of a suitcase from the BMHS collections, digitised during their
3D Summer Intensive. The physical object was on display at The Enigma
of Arrival exhibition at the BMHS in 2019 alongside the 3D model.

FIGURE 11.4 
The homepage of the VMCMM, which allows users to view digital
­exhibition panels or continue to the map interface.
234  Catherine Anne Cassidy et al.

figures. The map is organised into layers that connect digital resources together:
for example, Caribbean carnivals, which have spread globally and are evidence of
migration. It also enables users to explore the social media presence and w
­ ebsites
of related organisations, making external resources for further research available.
Layered within the map are 3D digitised objects that link personal accounts or
events with physical objects, most of which originate in BMHS collections. The
panels from the physical exhibition, including the embedded media, are availa-
ble digitally. These provide access to users who could not visit the exhibition and
proved the exhibition’s resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Virtual museum design and implementation

As the conceptual framework was established, design of the VMCMM was
­motivated by the state of technology accessible to the heritage sector. The internet,
World Wide Web, social media platforms and mobile applications are today part of
the everyday practice of museums. There is constant disruption caused by techno-
logical developments that are making new functionalities available.

Design priorities
The design of the VMCMM was informed by our previous experience of ­workshops
on creating digital content, from the ‘Caribbean Virtual Museums: Opportunities
and Challenges’ round table discussion, and through practice-based research into
developing and using virtual museums. The VMCMM would:

• provide support for emergent media, such as 3D, 360-degree and aerial
­photography, and integrate it with established support mechanisms for tradi-
tional digital media forms, including audio, video, images and text
• allow for the straightforward uploading of personal migration stories, text-based
and/or in video format, from the physical exhibition or remotely, with necessary
metadata for archiving and analysis
• serve as a platform for the digital panels from the physical exhibition, with embed-
ded media, such as 3D models and videos, associated with the selected themes
• supply a photogrammetry service that automates the creation of p­ hotogrammetric
models from sets of photographs
• provide a wiki interface that enables community participation in the c­ onstruction
of narratives.
• The design priorities informed the functionality that the VMCMM would
require. The VMCMM would need to:
• connect to existing open-source resources to create the functionality needed:
leaflet for mapping, Open Street Maps, Omeka, MySQL, MediaWiki, Word-
Press and the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), which
­provides support for spherical, 3D and flat media in galleries
 A case study of community virtual museums  235

FIGURE 11.5 The architecture of a previously published VMI used for the VMCMM.

• make resources embeddable so that they can be included in web pages and
social media and be shared through email and messaging applications.

The VMCMM further developed the Virtual Museum Interface (VMI) framework,
which was initially created for the EU-LAC Museums project’s virtual museum.
The main system components are shown in Figure 11.5. Interaction typically
begins with users creating content using the Management Interface. The Manage-
ment Interface is a web-based form that enables users to upload and modify con-
tent, which is stored in the Data Store. Once in the Data Store, the data can be
pushed to supported Social Archive platforms and backed up in an Online Store.
The data that exists in the Data Store can be used to make exhibits either as VR
and mobile applications or museum installations. The content created and curated
using the Management Interface and the Exhibit Builder Interface can be accessed
using the map-based Web Interface, mobile applications, museum installations and
Social Archive sites, each of which draws content from the Data Store. The dia-
gram shows the active nature of the VMI, which supports not only the collaborative
creation and management of content but also the presentation and reuse of this con-
tent in different ways, such as web-based exhibits, mobile applications, museum
installations and social media.

System back end

The back end uses a free and open-source Digital Asset Management ­System
(DAMS) based on Omeka. DAMS provides interoperability with popular web-based
236  Catherine Anne Cassidy et al.

FIGURE 11.6 API call to retrieve all items from the Omeka database.

systems and frameworks and is supported by a Relational Database Management

System, MySQL, which stores the data, and a Representational State Transfer
Application Programmable Interface (API), which facilitates retrieving, modifying
and adding to the data. Calls to the Omeka API are made using ­JavaScript (from
the online presentation front end) and Python (from the management front end).
The code snippet in Figure 11.6 shows a JavaScript function that is used to retrieve
items in the Omeka repository using an AJAX call. Upon successful completion
of the call, a ‘json_response’ object is received, which contains the result of the
call in JSON format, and is then parsed as required by the ‘parse_data’ function. If
the AJAX call fails or times out, an error is thrown instead. Data management and
metadata handling are important features of cataloguing and archiving systems.
Schemas developed using Dublin Core help to provide interoperability between
the vocabularies of cataloguing and archiving systems. The Europeana Data Model
builds on the Dublin Core schema and is widely adopted across Europe; hence,
it boasts a high level of familiarity with heritage practitioners. For this reason,
the information provided using the management front end is mapped to UNESCO
and Europeana types (which are, in turn, described in Dublin Core terms) so as to
facilitate interoperability with existing systems such as Europeana. Classifications
cover schema for intangible, tangible movable and tangible immovable heritage,
allowing for a varied ingress of metadata.
 A case study of community virtual museums  237

Management front end

The online front end has two facets: first, a management front end, which is
­implemented as web-based forms that contributors use to create and manage data;
and, second, a presentation front end, which includes a map-based interface, digital
galleries and archive searching. The map interface features icon-coded pins that
represent entities. Users can click on a pin to reveal a pop-up, which enables further
viewing or interaction. Uploaded and archived media appear in IIIF galleries in
a Universal Viewer, adapted for 3D models and 360-degree photography.
A web-based archive form enables the general public and heritage practition-
ers alike to upload files and supply metadata that together represent and describe
entities that are presented to users using multiple media types. The associated files
and metadata constitute the digital heritage representation mechanisms supported.
Three-dimensional artefacts created using photogrammetry and scanning processes
are used to disseminate physical heritage with greater digital reach. 360-degree
images and videos are used to show landscapes and cityscapes as scenes in immer-
sive virtual tours. Traditional media such as flat images, video and audio capture
both tangible and intangible heritage, and associated narratives support heritage
interpretation.
The VMCMM facilitates content curation and management through a variety of
interfaces. A Live Uploader enables users to transfer digitised content to the Data
Store. The content is described using metadata, while narratives are added and

FIGURE 11.7 A demonstration of photogrammetry, used to create 3D models of p

­ hysical
objects in The Enigma of Arrival exhibition.
238  Catherine Anne Cassidy et al.

modified using a wiki editor. Collections are created and managed by ­thematically
grouping uploaded items, while an exhibit builder facilitates the creation of exhibits
that can be made publicly available. The content that is created using the curation
and management interfaces is stored using both local and online storage solutions.
Local storage facilitates access to resources despite a lack of internet access, while
online storage facilitates interconnectivity and reach. The ability to ensure respon-
sive delivery of resources is a desirable feature of the VMCMM design; it enables
the system to serve the appropriate quality of content to users depending on their
operating platforms.
The capacity to upload and manage content using the Live Uploader and
­Management Interface, respectively, and the ability to reuse this content and
resources in different ways, emphasises the dynamic nature of the VMCMM.
­Heritage practitioners and community members can continuously create and digit-
ise content; once uploaded, the same content can be used to build web exhibits and
mobile applications and is accessible on a map interface as well as on social media.
Metadata added to the content while it is being created or uploaded, or even subse-
quently, can be changed continuously within the resource throughout its lifespan.

Interactive map
The map-based interface facilitates the geographical visualisation of data, as it
­represents entities on an interactive map of the world. This enables the visualisa-
tion of the spatial and geographical relationships between entities. The interactive
map supports:

• zooming and positioning, which enables geographical selection of data. Layers

allow the semantic selection and presentation of data.
• categorical visualisation of data, such that users can choose to view only muse-
ums, 3D artefacts, tours, images or any of the other entity types available, and
any combination of these types.

In addition to the visualisation of content by geographical location and category,

the VMI supports descriptive visualisation of content using a wiki system, which
collates provided metadata. The wiki is displayed in a panel alongside the map
interface and features metadata, descriptive text and data as well as any associated
multimedia in the form of 3D artefacts, virtual tours, images or video.
Exploratory visualisation is facilitated using an instant search feature that ena-
bles users to query the Data Store for entities that match a given search string. The
search results are updated after every key press that modifies the query string, and
it is performed on the title and description fields of entities. The instant search is
facilitated by locally storing representations of the entities contained in the Data
Store so as to preclude the need to repeatedly access the server while searching for
entities.
 A case study of community virtual museums  239

FIGURE 11.8 The video-recorded migration story of Brian Batson in the Destination

location on the interactive map interface.

FIGURE 11.9 Mapping interface with an expanded timeline, showing notable figures

from the Windrush generation.
240  Catherine Anne Cassidy et al.

Users can access the results geographically by viewing an entity’s location on

the map, descriptively by viewing the wiki content for the entity and categorically
by viewing type-specific information for the entity. These features work together to
facilitate the visualisation of heritage content in geographical, semantic, categori-
cal, descriptive and exploratory visualisations, thus providing breadth and depth
to the dissemination of, and engagement with, migration, as well as satisfying the
information-seeking needs of virtual museum users.

Response to COVID-19: a use case for the VMCMM

The methodologies and system outputs from the project proved to be effective
methods in reaching and connecting to audiences when faced with the disruption
that COVID-19 brought to heritage engagement. As museums closed, the only
way for audiences to engage with heritage was digitally. The use of virtual tours,
live virtual events, social media and digitised collections have expanded heritage
organisations’ digital offerings, whether in a pre-planned or ad hoc manner. Many
museums have seen their audiences grow as a result of their additional content and
their outreach online.
The topic of Windrush and the VMCMM were part of discussions during several
live heritage events broadcast on social media platforms as part of lockdown activi-
ties in 2020. As part of the CUPIDO project, alongside the Highland and Islands
Enterprise, the curators of The Enigma of Arrival joined international conversa-
tions around digital themes and participated in discussions about digital methods

FIGURE 11.10 ‘Virtual Museum of the Caribbean: The Enigma of Arrival’ live ­Facebook
event, showing a video-recorded presentation of the play Windrush by
members of the Barbados Community College.
 A case study of community virtual museums  241

for communicating heritage. One live event was solely dedicated to the 72nd anni-
versary of Windrush. It featured tours of the exhibition panels and the interactive
elements of the VMCMM, narratives discussed by the curators, a screening of the
Barbados Community College original play Windrush and a live reading of poetry
shaped by the historical events.
In order to build digital heritage capacity during the period of lockdown, the
EU-LAC Museums project’s 3D workshops were recreated in the digital realm
as a live online webinar series. Topics were expanded to include interactive map-
ping, the use of social media and virtual museums. The curators of The Enigma of
Arrival offered their perspectives and knowledge on the topics and gave feedback
on the use of digital methods, educational outreach and digital outputs.
Both live event series allowed for the framework and functional features of
the VMCMM to be part of the public debate regarding community-based muse-
ums and the creative responses to the COVID-19 lockdown. The initial prototype
virtual museum, which was launched in 2018 and influenced by the exploratory
round table discussion, became a platform for experimentation with digital heritage
activity that continued to connect communities to heritage throughout the global
lockdown. The use of a virtual museum to supplement live events and webinars
can enable heritage organisations to survive and develop resilience in times of
­unprecedented challenge.
The original plan for The Enigma of Arrival exhibition was to include a physical
element, such as its travelling to various museums along the geographical migra-
tion route of the Empire Windrush. The exhibition opened at the UWI Cave Hill
Campus in Barbados, the UWI Mona Campus in Jamaica and the BMHS. The
BMHS launch was highly successful, and following multiple requests, the exhi-
bition was extended until the end of 2019, doubling its initial duration. The 2nd
Generation Barbadian & Friends community group in Birmingham, United King-
dom, alongside Brasshouse Lane Community Centre, hosted the Enigma exhibi-
tion from December 2019 until January 2020. Through the Centre for Caribbean
and Diaspora Studies, the digital poster exhibition was installed at the Goldsmiths
University Library in 2019. The display coincided with the celebrations for Black
History Month in the United Kingdom.
However, with travel and work restrictions tightening due to COVID-19, the
exhibition could not travel further in its physical form. Yet, what seemed like a
disappointing turn for the exhibition and curatorial team in fact revealed new ways
for interaction with the narratives and digital material. Reading Museum (2020)
hosted virtual events for the anniversary of Windrush Day in June 2020. The
museum integrated content from the exhibition panels into a virtual display on
its website, generated new content in the form of community videos, objects and
photographs and developed educational materials. The new content was co-created
with a ­Caribbean community steering group which worked closely with the exhi-
bition team from the BMHS. The digital exhibition poster panels were then used
by ­Vodafone UK through The Black Professional Network for over a month as a
242  Catherine Anne Cassidy et al.

The
FIGURE 11.11  Enigma of Arrival online exhibition by Reading Museum.

part of their Windrush Day celebrations. The exhibition was free to access for all
­Vodafone UK employees, of which there are approximately 11,500.
The methods and processes used to convert physical exhibitions to a digital
format were employed in other projects after the success of The Enigma of Arrival
and the VMCMM was acknowledged. For example, an exhibition on Walter Tull,
a British footballer who died in the Battle of the Somme, was intended for physi-
cal display at the BMHS. Remote work with heritage organisations on the project
enabled collaboration through online tutorials to create digital outputs that were
then exhibited. In the end, the BMHS (2020) launched a digital exhibition, Walter
Tull: A Strong Heart Beating Loudly. BMHS hosted a Facebook Live event for the
exhibition in conjunction with the Barbados Defence Force and the Tull family on
11 November 2020, Remembrance Day.

Conclusion
The inclusive development of the VMCMM provides a framework to facilitate the
development of novel, flexible and creative online exhibitions—in this case, with
a focus on Caribbean perspectives on migration and memory. It proved a valuable
addition to The Enigma of Arrival exhibition as a resource to further explore ­Windrush
stories and histories and a platform for collecting and exhibiting previously undocu-
mented oral histories. In this way, it has helped to expand the world’s current knowl-
edge and understanding. The VMCMM is based on the VMI framework developed
for the EU-LAC Museums project but included Caribbean-specific features and
 A case study of community virtual museums  243

functions that were developed following the Itinerant Identities conference round
table discussion. It taps into Caribbean digital skills and literacies while integrat-
ing emergent technologies with traditional media and historical records. Although
the VMCMM was initially designed to be a companion to The Enigma of Arrival
physical exhibition, it became the only accessible method for engagement during
the global lockdowns as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its unique design and
bespoke functionality allowed for broader use and several iterations while the world
could only access the content digitally. The framework has since been used in other
digitally progressive projects that feature a virtual museum, but the VMCMM stands
more particularly as an archetype for migration-themed resources.

Acknowledgements
Thank you to everyone who was mentioned in the above text, all the panellists
at the round table, participants in the discussion and everyone involved with The
Enigma of Arrival exhibition (BMHS, UWI, EU-LAC Museums project and other
contributors).
The VMCMM may be found at [Link]

References
AXIELL (2017). Digitising collections: leveraging volunteers & crowdsourcing to accel-
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BMHS. (2020). Walter Tull: a strong heart beating loudly. [Online]. Available at: http://
[Link]/ (Accessed: 2 March 2021).
Cassidy, C. (2018). ‘Transcription of “Round table Caribbean virtual museums: opportu-
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(Accessed: 1 March 2021).
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Fabola, A., Kennedy, S., Miller, A., Oliver, I., McCaffery, J., Cassidy, C., Clemens, J. and
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[Link]/whats-on/enigma-arrival (Accessed: 2 March 2021).
12
ECOMUSEOLOGY IN ARTISTIC
PRACTICE
Postcolonial strategies of collective return in Latin
America and the Caribbean

Kate Keohane

Our landscape is its own monument. Its histories are traced on the underside.
(Glissant, 1999, p. 11)

In beginning with the words of the Martinique-born writer, philosopher and

­theorist Édouard Glissant, I am situating this discussion of participatory art
and museological practice within a specific form of postcolonial theory: one
founded upon an ecological approach that recentres perception towards the
­significance of landscape and the ways in which histories are experienced in
the present tense. Glissant’s theoretical work reorients how we read places and
spaces as signs or markers of lived experience and asks us to re-imagine the
possibilities of collaborative processes of interrogation. In examining the way
that the past is understood or encountered within the lived experience of a place,
Glissant asks that we consider the unseen and the ultimately unknowable aspects
of landscapes and, in so doing, return to an emphasis upon orality. It is there-
fore possible to correlate Glissant’s postcolonial approach to history-making and
­collectivity with the field of ecomuseology.
Ecomuseology is a philosophical discipline and a heritage management frame-
work that fundamentally prioritises the needs of local communities. Foregrounding
specialised knowledge and engagement—which is in some ways determined by an
extended period of time spent in a particular territory—this museological approach
preserves stories, traditions and customs. Ecomuseological interpretation is gener-
ated by and valued through its emphasis upon the environment and operates in pur-
suit of the preservation and promotion of cultural heritage (Davis, 2011, p. 5). The
word ‘environment’ refers here to a cultural strategy that responds to the effects of
climate change and also relies upon an understanding of ecological connectivity,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-15
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
246  Kate Keohane

along with the multiple factors that generate a particular lived space, including
historical, economic, social or political experiences and effects.
The origins of the ecomuseum lie in the 1960s, but the term was first defined
in France in the 1970s by the museologists Georges-Henri Rivière and Hugues de
Varine. The basic differences between the traditional museum and the ecomuseum
are typically illustrated through a pair of formulae developed by de Varine and later
added to by René Rivard (1988, pp. 123–4):

A Traditional Museum = building + heritage + collections + expert staff + public

visitors;
whereas,
An Ecomuseum = territory + heritage + memory + population.

Peter Davis (2011) further refined the distinction between the traditional ­large-scale
museum institution and the ecomuseum in Ecomuseums: A Sense of Place by stat-
ing that the ecomuseum is defined within the context of a designated geographical
area or territory. Yet, despite these seemingly self-explanatory defining factors, no
two ecomuseums are the same. While theorists have developed various definitions
since the term was proposed, with each study adding to the list of key character-
istics found in ecomuseums, I suggest that this method might ultimately prove
reductive as it does not account for the imbalances of resources and conditions that
are intrinsic to the field of ecomuseology (Rivard, 1988; Corsane, 2006; Davis,
2011). The pursuit of an ecomuseum definition is in itself generative—and help-
ful to cultural institutions for advertisement and funding purposes—but finding
a ­paradigmatic case study or list of attributes only takes analysis so far.
As a shifting concept that was generated to respond to a sense of change
within museology for the benefit of local development, the term ‘ecomuseum’
now demands renewed attention within the context of contemporary debates sur-
rounding decolonisation and ecology. Much like Glissant’s theoretical work, which
refuses to be reduced to a totalising schema, there can be no unified description of
what an ecomuseum looks like or how it can be defined in order to leave space for
different interpretations as well as an immediate action in response to changing
community needs. Through an emphasis on the adaptability, responsiveness and
sustained interrogation embodied by ecomuseums, in this essay, I offer an alterna-
tive approach to this field of study. I propose that the ecomuseum is a process or
system for working through histories that are embedded within a landscape, and
the multiple experiences that contribute to the re-activation of memory and vexed
narratives of belonging.
This essay consequently questions the stability of the term ‘ecomuseology’
through an analysis of three artistic practices centred within specific contexts in
Latin America and the Caribbean. I consider initiatives developed by three dis-
tinct groups operating within different locations, namely: the collaborative artis-
tic research of Annalee Davis on a former plantation space in Barbados; the
 Ecomuseology in artistic practice  247

community-based theoretical work of Semillero Caribe, which develops strategies

to embody theory in relation to specific contexts in Mexico and Cali, Colombia;
and the collaborative initiative BetaLocal in Puerto Rico, which attempts to coun-
ter damage inflicted during US military occupation. In so doing, I illuminate how
collective, ecologically centred artistic practices echo the anticolonial strategies of
ecomuseums for responding to landscapes damaged by processes of colonialism,
and I further propose alternative methods for ecomuseology itself.
The urgency of recognising the importance of initiatives currently being devel-
oped within the field of cultural heritage in Latin America and the circum-­Caribbean
is associated with a return to the original aims of the ecomuseological project. The
early definitions of the ecomuseum are grounded in a specific intellectual context:
Rivière believed that museums should do more to place human affairs into broader
environmental contexts, while de Varine wished to see museums become demo-
cratic institutions, with local communities taking a far more active role in their
work at all levels (Hudson, 1992). These standpoints are often associated with the
1972 UNESCO and International Council of Museums Round Table in Santiago
de Chile, which declared museums to be ‘integral’ spaces that hold the potential
to play a ‘decisive role in the education of the community’ (Nascimento Júnior,
Trampe and Santos, 2012; Weil and Bize, 2017). Motivated by the Declaration of
Santiago de Chile, early theoretical writing emphasised the need to reorient the
motivations and focus of museum practice towards communities, particularly those
within what has problematically been referred to as the Global South. As Anthony
Gardner and Charles Green (2013, p. 444) outline, the term ‘Global South’ refers
to the southern hemisphere and the specific challenges it faces, but

while historical reflection is central to the South, it does not exclude the sig-
nificance of constructive initiatives generated out of and in defiance of these
histories: that is, the web of potentialities that can connect and be coordinated
across the cultures of the South.

The rise of ecomuseology in the 1970s relates to the period that saw the independ-
ence of many of these regions, which necessitated a renewed attention to concep-
tions of the local in order to rebuild and define new forms of cultural heritage and
resistance against ever-intensifying climate forces.
The locations in Latin America and the Caribbean considered within this essay
are not only some of the places most drastically affected by climate crises but
are also home to a wide range of strategies and experimental cultural practices
to combat global challenges (Johnson, 2011). While I am hesitant to employ the
term ‘resilience’ due to its problematic overuse, these practices often engage
with international audiences while catering to local community needs in order
to preserve, promote and propagate cultural heritage and individual memory. To
name but a few, initiatives such as Alice Yard in Trinidad; Popop Studios in the
­Bahamas; Espacio Aglutinador in Cuba; or the Instituto Buena Bista in Curação
248  Kate Keohane

have been pivotal to the development of alternative approaches to creative spaces

that involve n­ on-artistic audiences in cultural processes (Wainwright and Zijlmans,
2017; ­Castellano, 2019; Hadchity, 2020). These cultural collectives promote artis-
tic mobility within the region through opportunities for funding, residencies and
networks with other similar initiatives, notably via connection with collaborative
platforms like Tilting Axis and Caribbean Linked. Thus, even as they centre the
discussion on a community of cultural workers who have a lived understanding
of a space, these initiatives do not deny the possibilities and privileges of inter-
national movements and connections. Instead, they employ ecomuseological pro-
cesses to respond to site-specific needs, while connecting with other people and
places through a relational process and practice. Moreover, although they are out-
side the typical realm of art capital and museumification, these projects share a
central goal of alternative forms of community-making and imagined networks.
I contend that this previously overlooked approach to ‘working through’ embodied
experience lies at the conceptual heart of the ecomuseological project, which has
recently focused its discussions on tourism and income generation (Nitzky, 2012).
The three artistic practices examined in this chapter echo this original purpose
and adopt the same forms, thematic focus and intention of what has tradition-
ally been defined as an ecomuseum. Indeed, they each encompass all of Gerard
Corsane’s (2006, pp. 399–418) ‘Twenty-one ecomuseum indicators’, which were
developed as an evaluative instrument and have subsequently been used to assess
the atypical case study of Robben Island Museum in South Africa, among many
others. Davis (2011, p. 92) expanded on Corsane’s list with five indicators that can
be broadly applied:

First, the adoption of a territory that is not necessarily defined by the conven-
tional boundaries. Second, the adoption of a ‘fragmented-site’ policy which
is linked to in-situ conservation and interpretation. Third, conventional views
of site ownership are abandoned; conservation and interpretation of sites via
liaison and cooperation. Fourth, the empowerment of local communities; the
involvement of local people in museum activities and in the creation of their
cultural identity. Fifth and final, the potential for interdisciplinary and holistic
interpretation.

The artistic ecomuseological practices considered within this essay are fundamen-
tally united through their pursuit of a ‘sense of place’ and so could seemingly be
defined as ecomuseums according to the pre-existing schema defined by Davis
(2011). While this might, in a sense, disprove the value of Corsane’s list of attrib-
utes and point to the impossibility of developing a unified understanding of what is
meant by Davis’s ‘sense of place’, it also points to the expanded creative possibili-
ties embodied by the forms and theoretical underpinning of ecomuseology.
At the heart of the projects by Annalee Davis, Semillero Caribe and BetaLocal is
a dialogical art practice (that is, one organised around conversational exchange and
 Ecomuseology in artistic practice  249

interaction) and a sense of embodied theory mediated through an engagement with

landscape as both literal place and idea. Although these three case studies are highly
unconventional within the field of museology, it is time that the fields of art history
and museology work together more closely in order to fully account for the scope and
ingenuity of creative labour. The performative approach embodied by these artistic
practices allows for greater audience engagement, networking, experimentation with
theory and the creation of a space for the sharing of personal experiences.
Furthermore, the literature developed around relational, collaborative and
­participatory artistic practice shines a generative light on conversations around
participation in museums. Art historians Claire Bishop (2006, 2012) and Grant
Kester (2011), in particular, have offered an invaluable methodological approach
to ­participatory art. When woven together with existing ecomuseological litera-
ture and underexamined site-specific artistic case studies, this approach provides
a resource for considering methods of centring local communities within museum
and artistic practice. Bishop’s (2006, p. 10) contention that participatory art seeks
‘to collapse the distinction between performer and audience, professional and ama-
teur, production and reception’, with an emphasis upon ‘collaboration, and the col-
lective dimension of social experience’, seems to speak as closely to the actions
that underpin the ecomuseum as it does to contemporary visual art. Kester’s (2011,
p. 10) question in relation to the ‘aesthetic’ and ‘ethical’ criteria for artistic produc-
tion also bears strongly upon the case studies considered here: ‘What forms of
knowledge do collaborative, participatory, and socially engaged practices gener-
ate?’ In these instances, collaborative, community-based artistic strategies actively
respond to ecological challenges faced by those working within postcolonial
­landscapes and facilitate space for transformation and adaptation.
The three art projects founded upon engagements with regions in Latin Amer-
ica and the Caribbean also challenge underlying assumptions around the kinds
of landscapes that can be framed or referenced by ecomuseums. Following long
debates from the mid-1990s, UNESCO’s (n.d.) conception of ‘cultural landscapes’
was defined as: ‘cultivated terraces on lofty mountains, gardens, sacred places […]
[that] testify to the creative genius, social development and the imaginative and
spiritual vitality of humanity’. Yet, the European Landscape Convention (2000)
expands considerations to all landscapes, emphasising the importance of recog-
nising local communities, and the tension between conservation and progress or
transformation and issues of ecology. This approach to landscape therefore allows
space for alterations and multiple forms of encounter. In the case studies consid-
ered within this chapter, metropolitan, toxic and post-plantation landscapes have as
much value and importance as the panoramic, majestic and nostalgic vistas that are
typically featured as representative case studies within ecomuseological literature
(Borrelli and Davis, 2012, pp. 31–47).
The case studies also work in contradistinction to Peter Davis’s (1999, p. 238)
argument that ‘the one characteristic that appears to be common to ecomuseums is
pride in the place they represent’. Instead, the value of collaborative practices of
250  Kate Keohane

cultural memory work lies in their potential as an experimental method for

­discussing, sharing and challenging the histories and lived encounters with a space.
The individual experience offered by an ecomuseum is consequently less about
pride and more about a collaborative, collective effort to discuss, decolonise and
develop ‘histories […] traced on the underside’ of a landscape, as Glissant suggests
(1999, p. 11). The concept of pride, while undeniably an essential motivating factor
for underacknowledged cultural efforts, is too ephemeral to operate as a unifying
feature and is not necessitated by cultural work of this kind. Rather, much like de
Varine and Rivard’s formula for defining the difference between the traditional
museum and the ecomuseum, the collaborative artworks considered within this
essay disrupt museological processes that necessitate walls or collections (which
are more associated with notions of pride). They instead rely upon committed col-
lective action and repeated encounters with the specificities of a place, predicated
on an awareness of precarity and the complexities of what it is to live and work in a
specific location. It is not possible to gain a total or unified understanding of a terri-
tory; ecologically based cultural initiatives therefore provide an essential space for
participatory preservation and memory work.
We are consequently prompted to question the kind of community that lies at the
heart of ecomuseum projects and to ask what it means for something to be community-
driven. There are of course communities within communities and there needs to be
space within the ecomuseological framework for dissent, disagreement and rene-
gotiation. Moving forward from notions of a unified locality, while retaining an
emphasis upon the particular lived experience of a space, the works by Annalee
Davis, ­Semillero Caribe and BetaLocal expand the concept of ecomuseology.
They do so by creating space for individualised encounter, transience, connection
between territories and alternative forms of sustainability through the documenta-
tion and subsequent written, critical and exhibitionary circulation of performances.
Although none of the artists acknowledge ecomuseology within their theoretical
premises, I suggest that their respective themes of unearthing, embodied theory
and walking-as-worlding can also be considered as ecomuseological processes and
strategies of resistance. In line with Glissant’s theoretical projects, the ecomuseum
is therefore not presented as a utopian project dependent upon pride and nostalgia
but rather represents an activist response that necessitates a recentring of commu-
nity, academic and institutional attention.

Unearthing—Annalee Davis and Fresh Milk Barbados

Having grown up on her family’s land in the St George parish of Barbados, the
work of the artist Annalee Davis focuses on site-specificity and active engagement
with figuring the meaning behind the ‘sense of a place’. Her house and studio are
situated on this inherited land, which used to operate as a sugar plantation and is
now a dairy farm. Her father and grandfather were both planters, and her fam-
ily can trace a paternal line back to 1648, when her earliest recorded ancestor,
 Ecomuseology in artistic practice  251

Leonard Dowden, came to Barbados as a less than ‘10-acre man’ (Davis, 2019,
p. 39). Walkers dairy farm (formerly Willoughby Plantation) at one point held over
300 enslaved labourers, who had been torn from their African homes to cut cane
and work the earth. The landscape itself pays testament to this history through the
remnants of industry: a crumbling sugar mill and tools for manufacture appear as
haunting reminders of the plantation system. Yet the site’s rolling bucolic fields and
the tropical myths which allow for the circulation of the Barbados landscape in the
cultural imaginary (typically framed through white sand beaches and blue skies),
occlude memories of suffering and toil and instead develop a picture of a paradise
‘outside of time’ (Sheller, 2003; Thompson, 2006).
Here, the sense of place associated with the ‘histories […] traced on the under-
side’ of the landscape is connected to hauntings and emotions of discomfort and
terror. The complexity arises in the confluence of the plantation as both home-space
and site of atrocity. For Davis (2019, p. 15), revisiting this landscape does not imply
a pessimistic reaffirmation of the past; rather, it has become a strategy for activat-
ing memory and openly invoking difficult experiences and unfinished histories.
Davis’s work—both artistic and structural—therefore functions in response to the
‘plantationocene’, a term defined by the feminist theorist Donna Haraway (2015,
p. 162) to describe the current geological age. Closely related to the ­Anthropocene,
the plantationocene demarcates the era defined by the irrevocable damage inflicted
by humans on the planet during the transatlantic trade in enslaved peoples. As
a white Creole woman, Davis uses her practice to work through her positionality
within this space, as well as issues of ecology, and the collective practices of hon-
ouring sites defined and shaped by enslaved labour.
In actively choosing to live and work on this site over the past 20 years, Davis
has developed a series of strategies to memorialise and interrogate the narratives that
have contributed to the creation of the territory. She has also facilitated spaces for
active discussion by local and international audiences. One of the most obvious ways
that she enacts this process is through the creation and development of the art space,
Fresh Milk. Since the 1990s, Davis has been campaigning for community needs and
the importance of art to notions of national identity and community in Barbados.
The Fresh Milk art centre, located on the former plantation, was founded in 2011. It
responds to the absence of gallery spaces on the island and the need to create local-
ised systems of support for artists. The name plays upon the current function of the
site as a dairy farm; the reference to ‘milk’ also connotes the turning of blood into
a nutritional substance, speaking to themes of healing and transformation. Funded
primarily by international residencies, Fresh Milk has become a hub, not only for
international researchers, writers and artistic practitioners who pay a fee to live at
the site and make use of the Colleen Lewis Reading Room (which houses over 3,500
books related to the cultural heritage of the Caribbean) but also for community mem-
bers who use the structure as a meeting point for conversations and future planning.
Since its inception, the international residency programme has welcomed
individuals drawn to the possibility of researching the specificities of place, the
252  Kate Keohane

histories of the Caribbean and the need to enact and participate in what Christina
Sharpe (2016, pp. 19–20) has termed ‘wake work’. In taking up a residency or
engaging with Fresh Milk, individuals can engage with artists, students and aca-
demics and have the chance to visit other cultural institutions and landscapes on
the island. The experience of the space is sometimes described with hesitancy and
discomfort by local and international practitioners due to questions of positionality
and extractive research practices. Nonetheless, the structures that underpin Fresh
Milk inevitably facilitate the development of understandings of the ecology of the
space, and the island more broadly, and act as a nexus for vital discussions about
what it is to exist within a postcolonial landscape. Fresh Milk therefore stimulates
sustainable development on the island by working to recentre the Caribbean as a
central node of the contemporary art world or, at the very least, functions as a space
for conversations about what it is, in Davis’s (2019) words, to be ‘committed to
a small place’.
Here, it becomes instrumental to compare the Fresh Milk site with a more
typical ecomuseological case study. Springvale Eco-Heritage Museum, in the
Scotland District of Barbados, is run by Newlands Greenidge and Denyse Ménard-­
Greenidge. Visitors to this site are provided with tours of the house and the tropical
forest that surrounds the building and shown important plants, trees and medici-
nal herbs that can be found within the territory. Like Davis, Greenidge grew up
within the space, and the collection is primarily made up of his family’s household
contents, including clothing, pots, kitchen utensils, baskets and mahogany furni-
ture, that reflect upon the period of emancipation up to the 1930s (Greenidge and
Ménard-Greenidge, 2002). There is also a small library on the site where visitors
can learn more about the history of Barbados. The shared emphasis between these
entities therefore lies in the preservation of cultural heritage and the need to re-
imagine plantation spaces. As in the case of Fresh Milk, however, questions emerge
about the kinds of audiences targeted by the Springvale Eco-Heritage Museum. In
the earlier years of the initiative, the museum was a valuable resource for educating
school groups. However, funding shortages have hampered this kind of interaction,
and the majority of visitors are tourists to the island. Both Fresh Milk and Spring-
vale Eco-Heritage Museum depend upon the labour and care of a small group of
committed individuals. As such, the sustainability of both initiatives is uncertain.
Fresh Milk works to counter this precarity by capitalising upon the interdiscipli-
nary possibilities of ecomuseological practices, notably within Unearthing Voices:
An Interdisciplinary Archaeology Project (2014–present). Through a sustained
research collaborations with transnational archaeology teams, participants gather
at the site to unearth the material heritage of Barbados and to develop historical
archives for individuals who were central to the creation of the plantation, and who
lived and worked within its bounds. Operating on a yearly basis, groups of students
work to excavate materials buried beneath the soil, which frequently include ceram-
ics that were shipped over during the colonial period, as well as tobacco pipes.
The initiative gives equal attention to immovable and movable tangible material
 Ecomuseology in artistic practice  253

culture, and to intangible heritage resources through the creation of a discursive

space. Any excavated materials are then transferred to the Barbados Museum &
Historical Society or are returned to the earth in which they were found. The prac-
tice therefore promotes the preservation, conservation and safeguarding of heritage
resources in situ, while also connecting in a broader sense to the cultural heritage
of the island. As museologist Guisy Pappalardo (2020, p. 7) posits:

ecomuseums can be an opportunity for strengthening individual-groups-­

institutions relations, through a voluntary pact. This opens some areas of experi-
mentation in order to understand the implication of the spatial justice framework,
with the space at the core of the discourse and institutions as key actors.

Within the context of a site of colonial violence, it is right that the labour of
­memorialisation and restitution is shared with students, so long as the ­outcomes of
activities ultimately benefit the local community. In an expanded sense, this col-
laborative work provides the impetus for further study and creative interventions
and raises transnational historical consciousness.
The act of unearthing allows for broader conversations and encourages a literal
and metaphorical engagement with monuments ‘traced on the underside’ (Glissant,
1999, p. 11). Building upon the soil-based possibilities, another central strand of
Annalee Davis’s practice is a knowledge of the curative properties of wild plants
that have been passed down orally through generations of Barbadiana (the former
indentured and enslaved) who would have grown and harvested wild plants for use
in bush teas and bush baths. For example, blue vervain, West Indian bay leaf and
cerasee were known respectively to cure insomnia, detoxify the body and cleanse
the blood. In sharing the stories and properties of these plants, Davis enacts what
she calls ‘a botanical uprising’, in sharp distinction to the harsh imposition of a
monocrop—sugarcane—into the island’s landscape for more than three centuries.
The fields’ subterraneous layers hold an apothecary of seeds that offer a form of
transformative remediation to the exhausted topsoil (Davis, 2016). By reactivating
these traditions through artistic practice and collaborative projects, this ecomuseo-
logical artistic project gains new scope that reaches beyond the walls of the initiative.
Fresh Milk has an architectural structure, but the relatively small studio/gallery/
library ultimately serves as a hybrid space for developing relationships with the
surrounding landscape. In some ways guided by Davis’s individual practice, local
artists and international residents are encouraged to create works and conversa-
tions about their experience of the place. This might best be characterised by what
Davis calls a ‘grounding’ practice, which involves her taking a daily walk through
the geographical territory and watching for changes within the landscape as a form
of meditation. This ritual of performing the diffuse border-spaces of her home has
also been documented in her painterly projects and performances, notably Sweep-
ing the Fields (2016), in which Davis enacts a ritual cleansing of the earth that
is then photographed for posterity. In drawing attention to the repeated action of
254  Kate Keohane

walking a space defined by its colonial histories, Davis highlights the practices that
­demarcate a territory and the subtle changes and shifts that occur with sustained
presence. The work seeks to honour and preserve the cultural heritage of the space:
not only through the adaptation of archival material in Davis’s re-use of ledger
pages from the plantation for paintings and drawings but also in the continuous
reference to the colonial craft of Queen Anne’s lace and the possibilities for botani-
cal healing. Rather than privileging transnational movements, here an awareness
of the space comes laden with issues of genealogy and familial culpability. The
work therefore has both a spatial and a temporal aspect, recalling Corsane’s (2006)
ecomuseological attributes: rather than trying to freeze things in time, it considers
both continuity and change. When the subsequent photographic documentation is
then circulated internationally, conversations centre on the ecology of the space
and what it is to live and work within this specific territory.
While writers like Edward S. Casey (1996, p. 16) have said that a place must
be experienced to be understood, with the rise of what has been termed ‘the digital
community museum’ (Cassidy et al., 2018, pp. 126–39), this form of exhibitionary
encounter must be taken seriously as a possibility. In some ways, this approach
leaves the knowledge of the space to those who have gained understanding through
repeated presence, while recognising the privileges involved in art tourism. When
circulated internationally, either online or through re-curation, the images that doc-
ument sustained presence within a space come to represent the generative possibili-
ties of art as a social object from which to discuss shared histories. The research
and unearthing processes that underpin Davis’s work, which are fundamentally
ecomuseological in praxis, become the most important activity in terms of local
development, but the international participation and circulation affords further pos-
sibilities and sustainable approaches that might reasonably exceed the lifespan of
the Fresh Milk initiative.
The collaborative practices foregrounded within the space of Fresh Milk are
undeniably affiliated with the forms and aims of the ecomuseum as it was originally
conceived (Rivard, 1988). Fresh Milk and Davis’s broader practice point to the
networks that exist within island spaces to support and generate engagements with
cultural heritage. Although the artist’s individual work has primarily been shown
in international contexts, the ecomuseological actions that underlie her practice
respond to a community need. These distinct institutions and individuals might
not always see eye to eye, but they form their own form of ecology. The lack of
a contemporary art museum in Barbados and the need to continuously reinterpret
the meanings embedded within the post-plantation landscape demand the develop-
ment of alternative spaces for discussion and the preservation of cultural heritage.

Embodied theory—Semillero Caribe in Latin America

Echoing the collaborative projects enacted at Fresh Milk, the work of the artistic
collective Semillero Caribe illuminates the possibilities for developing alternative
 Ecomuseology in artistic practice  255

approaches to postcolonial theory within collective practice. It also demonstrates

the importance of dialogical and embodied practice as a way of emphasising pro-
cess rather than product within the aims and framework of ecomuseology. Founded
in 2016 by three artists—Madeline Jimenez (Dominican Republic), Ulrik López
(Puerto Rico) and Minia Biabiany (Guadeloupe)—the initiative originally responded
to the experience of ‘being from’ the Caribbean, while residing in Mexico City.
For its first set of activities, the collective organised a number of workshops that
demanded sustained awareness of the body in space, while developing democratic
systems for communication and decision-making to answer local community needs.
The project is ephemeral by nature: it has since been adapted to produce a publica-
tion and a new collaborative practice in Cali, Colombia, and will continue in other
locations. Yet, the model offers an ecomuseological educational approach. Indeed,
the practice forms the basis of what might be termed a ‘diasporic ecomuseum’,
where the specificities of living in a place are recalled somewhere else.
With a diverse group of participants from multiple walks of life (some who
knew each other and others who did not), the workshops focused on creating novel
ways of disseminating the multifaceted experience of the Caribbean space within
the context of Latin America. This approach was developed by the group through
eight multisensory experimental sessions that sought to create alternatives to colo-
nial clichés of Caribbean corporality, exploring climate-related issues, such as
humidity or the movements of hurricanes, and developing a postcolonial imagi-
nary within a variety of community contexts. The name Semillero Caribe derives
from a Spanish play on words that uses the idea of a Caribbean semillero (seedbed)
instead of seminario (seminar) to reflect the project’s generative ecological impera-
tives, as well as to highlight its non-traditional approach to theory by foreground-
ing the use of drawing and the body. For example, in the first session at Cráter
Invertido, a group of 15 participants from local communities worked on a series of
responses that implied the use of the body and its perception, through drawing and
dialogues by activating the senses through breathing, shouting, touching, listening
and repeating. Theoretical approaches to decolonisation were particularly impor-
tant to the founding of the project, as were conversations about the specific body-
codes at work in Mexico City, which generally function differently from those in
the ­Caribbean. For instance, Biabiany (2020) notably describes the acceptance of
sensuality on the street in Mexico City, as well as the extreme experience of the
male gaze in public spaces.
As with many cultural initiatives affiliated with ecological aims, this approach
was informed by personal knowledge. Biabiany describes how her practice, both
individual and collaborative, has been shaped by a specific understanding of the
Caribbean informed by the plantation system, present colonisation and the politi-
cal situation of Guadeloupe, which remains a federation of France. She states that:

In Guadeloupe, there is a strong identification with France as the governing ter-

ritory that lies 6,000 kilometers away, but also a different reality, a culture and
256  Kate Keohane

un/conscious resistance strategy challenging French assimilation policies. I see

this tension in the perception of territory and the construction of identity as our
paradigm.
(Biabiany, 2017)

This experience of persistent control by another state can also be witnessed on

the home-island of López, as Puerto Rico continues to struggle through its sus-
tained connection to the United States. The Semillero thereby generatively dis-
rupts the structure of the ecomuseum by encouraging consideration of how
an embodiment of a specific place can be informed by the actions and needs
of another.
Yet, while the structure and programming of the Semillero created space for
the retention of different perspectives in the initial workshops, the group sought
to draw out similarities within ‘Caribbeanness’ as both place and idea. Initially,
the collective was drawn towards the use of theory to express this affiliation with
a particular space but felt discomfort in working with theoretically dense mate-
rial as artists without extensive research or academic expertise. The activation
of the body and the senses became a response to this anxiety, as participants and
audiences were encouraged to embody ideas and develop alternative interpreta-
tions. These exercises functioned like games, with primary importance placed
upon multisensorial interpretation of terms or ideas. Sometimes there would be
readings or extended periods of conversation, and at other times, the group would
work in silence. Drawing, breathing and moving together, the diverse group of
individuals created a shared space for the consideration of a remembered place
in the C
­ aribbean in relation to the embodied event space in downtown Mexico.
Each activity was linked to one or more concepts by Caribbean authors, for exam-
ple: Glissant’s conception of ‘opacity’ and ‘relation’; the process of internalised
colonialism discussed by Frantz Fanon; the sense of chaos defined by Antonio
Benítez Rojo; and orality as a form of resistance through the writings of Kamau
Brathwaite. In the process of creation, or what the organisers called ‘un-learning’,
the participants worked to relay differences and to figure shared equivalences
in a system that sought to avoid colonially implicated strategies of knowledge
dissemination.
This avoidance of fixity was echoed in the format of the eight sessions, which
took place over the course of a month with the group changing and adapting. Some
people arrived only at the end of the workshops, others completed the whole pro-
gramme and others left in the middle of activities. Each week utilised different,
yet thematically related, literary publications as cultural support and to facilitate a
form of connection. The Semillero necessitated processes of memory, projection
and mindful awareness of the body in space through isolation of the senses. In
addition to being one of the tools for the construction of narrative in certain exer-
cises, orality took over from sensation at the end of each session so that responses
to the event could be shared. There were no predetermined results or structure;
 Ecomuseology in artistic practice  257

rather, the needs of the group were answered in real time. This responds closely to
­Pappalardo’s (2020, p. 7) claim that:

ecomuseums may be educational and transformative processes that start from

the collective reconstruction of memory – including tensions, conflicts, contra-
dictions and questions of power – and may evolve in emancipatory paths for
liberating the most oppressed individuals of society. This requires interpreting
heritage as action, as socially active research.

Rather than directly embodying de Varine’s (2006, p. 227) contention that the
e­ comuseum ‘is a two-way medium, where the concrete knowledge and experience
of the citizen is exchanged with the more learned scientific or technical knowledge
of the specialist, through a jointly built exhibit’, here the ecomuseological pro-
cess allows space for experimental modes of group learning, where all members
become experts through an emphasis upon embodiment.
A series of four collaboratively written publications were then produced in
2017–2018 as a form of pedagogical support following these events. These
were written in French, English and Spanish to reflect the multilingual reality of
the Caribbean region and to expand the reach of the project beyond those who
were involved in the Semillero. This emphasis upon accessibility is important for
thinking about ecomuseums and how information that is generated through various
processes of engagement with a specific territory can be disseminated, documented
and incorporated into the formation of the space over time. Critically, in the case
of the Semillero, this formulation allowed for adaptation and processes of critical
evaluation that encouraged a re-imagination of the aims of the project and a recog-
nition of when the needs of a local community were met.
This evolution is evidenced in the second iteration of the project in 2018, led
by Biabiany, where the format was altered to respond to the gender imbalance of
the first Semillero. This time, a group of women from Cali, Colombia, engaged in
a series of new activities related to five Caribbean women authors. This second
manifestation was developed in collaboration with curator Yolanda Chois within
the framework of her project Tópicos entre trópicos (‘Topics among Tropics’).
Titled the Semillero Doukou, the event was made possible through the logistical
support from Más Arte Más Acción and the cultural division of the Banco de la
República in Cali. The reflections and activities, which were intended to create
a diasporic bridge between the Caribbean and Black Colombia, focused on the writ-
ings of Jamaica Kincaid (Antigua), Nefta Poety (Guadeloupe) and Mary Grueso
and ­Nohelia Mosquera (Chocó, Colombia). This reiteration of the ­Semillero was
founded upon novels rather than theory and actively sought to distinguish itself
from logics of intellectual domination in order to create an embodied matrilineal
approach to Caribbean studies. Glissant’s key theoretical concepts still played an
important role in the structure of the sessions, but the terms were removed from
their source in order to be re-activated or productively misread, and they were
258  Kate Keohane

juxtaposed with images taken from the literary texts. Although located in Latin
America rather than the Caribbean region, the Semillero actively responded to
the processes of imaginative place-creation through collective work. In addition,
the artists who initiated the project—who consistently engage with the Caribbean
within their individual practice—experimented with relational approaches to cor-
respondences and divergences between the two contexts.
To grant greater authenticity and to encourage alternative iterations, Biabiany
invited local researchers to work with local communities in each session. Notable
participants included dancer Angélica Nieto with danza-manglar; writer Jenny
Valencia, author of the urban tale Shangó y el cerro de las tres cruces de Cali
(‘Shangó and the Hill of the Three Crosses of Cali’); artist Carolina Charry with her
voice work; and curator Ericka Florez in collaboration with dancer Andrea Bonilla
regarding her research around straight and curved lines. Additionally, Otilia Caracas,
an author from Valle del Cauca, accompanied the group with her work. The dance
of the Bigidi, defined by the choreographer Léna Blou, proved particularly genera-
tive (Blou, 2015; Biabiany, 2020). Created by enslaved people, the form of dance
was forbidden for many years but remained a core underground practice. The dance
involves moving in disrupted lines, in a way that comes close to falling, but which
retains a precarious balance. Working to react to living in a place and being unable to
see a bright future, but needing to keep moving forward, experiments with the move-
ment become a display of imbalance and the paradoxical logic of irrationality. Rather
than becoming a performance of cultural heritage to outsiders, the forms of collec-
tivity, touch, speed, meeting and intimacy made manifest by these forms of dance
allows for the generation of new meanings and for associations to be shared within
a safe space. The forms of the Bigidi might therefore provide inspiration for under-
standings of ecomuseology as process or method for working through experiences
of dislocation. Unlike the traditional museum, it is vital that the ecomuseum retains
space for collapse within its definition, as ecomuseums are by their very nature
socially, climatically and financially precarious. As the Bigidi dance suggests, this
attribute can be mobilised as a strength, providing a way to respond more quickly to
community needs and to move in time with the changing rhythms of the community.
In this way, the second iteration of the Semillero utilised theory within processes
of participatory co-creation (Simon, 2010, pp. 268–70). In effect, the sustained
incorporation of Glissant’s central ideas, rather than being reductive or overly sim-
plified, offered an expansive framework for thinking through other writers and
embodied experiences. Beyond the move from theory to practice, the recognition
of the importance of art within these conversations also relates to issues of partici-
pation, and what Nina Simon (2010, pp. 85–120) describes as the need to move
from the ‘me to the we’ within museum practice: here, the artist and the conception
of individualised encounter is retained, while allowing possibilities for imaginative
and lived connections. De Varine (2006, p. 228) writes that:

the ecomuseum must begin as, and remain, an expression of the community, an
endogenous product, to be recognized by the community as its own property
 Ecomuseology in artistic practice  259

and instrument; so it must speak the language of the community, rooted in the
living culture of the people.

By contrast, the work of the Semillero asks what the nature of this community-
based language is, and how alternatives might be born. What might be termed
‘diasporic ecomuseology’ therefore finds its greatest support within the field of
visual art.

Walking as worlding—BetaLocal and Puerto Rico

The practices of BetaLocal bring together both the collaborative ecological
approach of Annalee Davis and the diasporic landscape embodiment developed by
Semillero Caribe. Initiated in Puerto Rico in 2005 by cultural entrepreneur Michelle
Marxuach and artists Beatriz Santiago and José ‘Tony’ Cruz, the non-profit organi-
sation has developed a research and visual arts centre that interweaves residencies
and initiatives that present dissenting ways of existing within an island space. The
project began by refurbishing a single-floor building owned by Marxuach in Old
San Juan to serve as a space for art residencies, exhibitions and meetings. For this
purpose, they used the network created in previous years through the organisation
of M&M, a biennial event funded by Marxuach. M&M brought a wide range of
artists and curators who work in the field of relational aesthetics to Puerto Rico
(including Rirkrit Tiravanija, Hou Hanru and Adel Abdessemed) and exhibited
the work of world-famous artists, such as Gilbert and George, Marina Abramovic
and Vito Acconci (Bourriaud, 1998). After the third edition of M&M, the project
was discontinued and transformed into BetaLocal. In contradistinction to M&M,
BetaLocal has, since its beginnings, aimed to engage with non-artistic audiences,
confronting political causes and fulfilling specific social and cultural needs. Its
temporal operation has also differed from the typical biennial system, which relies
upon the temporary shipping in of contemporary global art and networking within
these systems for the supposed benefit of local practitioners.
Instead, BetaLocal has sought to embody a different, South-centric, model.
Initially conceived as an alternative library and archival space that was open to
all, it soon evolved in order to integrate other features and programmes. Among
those, the first organised was La Práctica (‘The Practice’), an immersive collective
research programme open to artists, researchers and cultural activists. The pro-
gramme, defined as a ‘horizontal, peer-taught’ experience, consisted of the annual
selection of up to five people with the aim of developing cooperative, practical
onsite research. La Práctica offers a residency space and encourages the fellow-
ship recipients to devote a number of hours each week to collaborate with differ-
ent artistic and non-artistic communities. These collaborations result in ongoing
joint research initiatives, talks and reading sessions. Under this scheme, the invited
individuals are not considered specialists; rather, they are specifically sought out
in response to requests made by the various groups who regularly visit BetaLocal.
What is important is that all the people who are involved in these actions participate
260  Kate Keohane

on equal terms in the research process, with the results aimed at addressing and
responding to collective expectations and desires. Residents are therefore com-
pelled to decentre themselves and transform their original ideas into cooperative
productive action.
The second related initiative that developed chronologically was La Ivan Illich,
which is founded upon a dissenting approach to educational practice. Conceived as
an ‘un-learning’ project, this curriculum-free educational experience invites any-
one who is interested to propose a particular lesson that they would like to receive
or teach. BetaLocal provides the space for these exchanges to take place and seeks
to satisfy the requests that are received. In the typical ecomuseum, the educational
model runs the same risks as the traditional museum of becoming a static preserva-
tion or unified vision of vulnerable cultural heritage. Here, however, the skills and
needs relate directly to the individuals that interact with the space and initiative
and can therefore morph and grow over time. As found in the methodology of
Semillero Caribe, this kind of approach will inevitably have its challenges and lead
to mistakes, but the expansive potential of the ecomuseological model provides
greater fluidity and consequent innovation.
Finally, the most conventional initiative developed by BetaLocal is The Harbor,
which functions as an art residency for international guests and, as in the case of
Fresh Milk, this international residency is premised on the need to interact and
actively engage with the specificities of place. Rather than thinking about Peter
Davis’s ‘sense of place’, this experience relates more closely to what Bourdieu
(2005, pp. 43–9) terms ‘the development of reflexive habitus’: that is, the potential
to reconsider behaviours and develop new practices in relation to an environment
constitutive of a society or a group, which can be altered by new actions, education
or training.
BetaLocal has resulted in solo projects that reflect upon the specificity of the
place, notably by the internationally acclaimed artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz.
However, the organisation also leads a ‘walking seminar’ that utilises the embodied
experience of the landscape as a mode of resistance following the ecological dam-
age caused by US military occupation. Puerto Rico comprises a group of islands
that have been a ‘possession’ of the United States since their invasion in the 1898
Spanish-American War. Following hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, Puerto Rico
received very limited aid, and questions are still being raised about the US govern-
ment’s lack of engagement and delayed aid response (Reyes Franco, 2018). Until
these issues are resolved, or at the very least recognised by those in positions of
authority, the situation in Puerto Rico will remain precarious. As in the cases of
Fresh Milk and Semillero Caribe, BetaLocal demonstrates that ecomuseology must
respond to the condition of being in one place while also being subject to the power
or influence of another if it is to adequately engage with the lived experiences of
‘post’-colonial spaces. Rather than foregrounding progress, within art-based eco-
museological approaches, continuous return and collective ‘working through’ are
equally important.
 Ecomuseology in artistic practice  261

BetaLocal’s walking practice consequently involves traversing multiple forms

of terrain and engaging with oral histories and conversations about the healing
properties of plants, often within the grounds of an abandoned military space. The
military base originally functioned as a training site and support centre for the con-
trol of narcotics traffic. It assisted American invasions of the Dominican ­Republic
in 1965, Grenada in 1983 and Haiti in 1994, but its primary purpose was as a loca-
tion from which to oversee bombing exercises, or attacks, on nearby Vieques
Island. Vieques remained inhabited during this time, resulting in a rise in frequency
of cancerous tumours and general harm to the environment and the health of the
9,100 residents due to explosives-related pollutants (Jirau-Colón et al., 2019). In
1999, errant bombs killed a civilian guard during Vieques exercises, sparking a
surge in protests, and in 2002, a plane carrying seven airmen crashed in the town of
Caguas. The American Navy denied the 1999 charges but decided to close the test-
ing range in 2003. Despite the fact that ambitious plans have been made to turn the
empty base into a cruise ship dock, a base for space travel, a commercial airport,
tourist resort and industrial park, these proposals have been delayed by environ-
mental studies and a lack of funding, and the space currently remains abandoned.
While BetaLocal requires international residencies for funding purposes, the
sustainability of this project, like the work of Annalee Davis and Semillero Caribe,
is secured through the re-enactment and documentation of collaborative practices.
The resulting materials can then be used to communicate in more expansive net-
works. Although the spaces in which they are subsequently exhibited tend to be
associated most closely with the academic art world, they offer a valuable teaching
resource and assist in the process of visualising and recording local community
needs and shared issues. Certainly, in some ways, this form of thinking is not revo-
lutionary, since the practices align with ideas surrounding relational aesthetics and
participatory art. However, the fields of art history and museology have yet to rec-
oncile their similarities and differences and to work out what each can learn from
the other. It is in this regard that initiatives that bridge this divide, including Fresh
Milk, Semillero Caribe and BetaLocal, are particularly instructive.
It is consequently important to think about how ideas associated with relational
aesthetics and participatory art relate to the development of community-based sus-
tainable tourism (Bowers, 2016, pp. 758–82; Riva, 2017). Incorporating particular
ecomuseological principles—such as a holistic approach to interpretation and infor-
mation sharing, paying equal attention to cultural and natural resources and monitor-
ing the changes to the region over time—can support the three pillars of sustainability
(economic, socio-cultural and environmental) within a region, while existing outside
of the domain of large-scale museumification (Purvis, Mao and Robinson, 2018).

Conclusion
In highlighting these three case studies, it becomes apparent that through participa-
tory, dialogical practice, artists, activists and audiences from multiple backgrounds
262  Kate Keohane

can be brought together to respond to the specificities of particular spaces. While

the initiatives foreground the importance of ephemerality and transmutability,
which seem to go against certain defining principles of the ecomuseological project,
these same features might equally be thought of as a way to respond in real time
to the needs of local audiences and benefit local communities. Through cultural
participation, and an emphasis upon community wellbeing and global sustainabil-
ity, these creative initiatives avoid didacticism, prioritise collaborative processes
of ­working-through and develop new systems for thinking about museums and
‘unlearning’ colonially implicated systems of knowledge.
The works of Annalee Davis, Semillero Caribe and BetaLocal raise the question
of who ecomuseology is for. The traditional definition of the ecomuseum yields
a quick answer: local community audiences. However, this is not always the case,
as the experience of sustained presence within a space is not limited to those who
dwell in it and communities are themselves fragmented. Rather, ecomuseums
almost always have a complex relationship with their perceived internal and exter-
nal audiences, as well as the broader cultural ecosystem in which they find them-
selves. In the pursuit of breaking down the binary between local and global, while
preserving an emphasis on the needs of those who live in postcolonial spaces, the
three projects considered here exemplify the key features of ecomuseums. That is,
they allow for change and development; encourage documentation and conserva-
tion of cultural heritage by promoting interdisciplinary research at all levels; and
utilise a holistic approach to nature and culture to develop a sustainable approach to
tourism and international engagement. In this way, the performative aspects of eco-
museology are brought to the fore, particularly the importance of walking, unearth-
ing and orality to collaborative interactions among individuals who are themselves
shaped by multiple communities, places and spaces.
Yet, the initiatives also point to the shortcomings of the ecomuseum model.
As Borrelli and Davis (2012, p. 43) outline, ecomuseums ‘are not a panacea for
all environmental concerns. They cannot necessarily resolve, for example, con-
flicts between conservation and development, or environmental protection and
economic interests, or the conflicting interests of communities and ambitious poli-
ticians or developers’. By contrast, the kinds of participation developed through
experimental artistic practice, networks and interdisciplinary initiatives leave room
for unequal relations and alternative hierarchies. They also reject modes of tour-
ism that look for a fixed version of landscape, heritage and culture (Salazar, 2010).
Rather, the process of individual encounter is recognised as a powerful factor in
shaping new visions for the future of particular spaces, while foregrounding the
critical importance of local forms of tangible and intangible heritage.
These art-based ecomuseological initiatives are therefore more sustainable than
the types of projects that have traditionally been defined within the bounds of eco-
museology, as they evolve across times and places and gain new meanings in their
subsequent documentation and re-display. The artists who choose to develop these
practices ground their work in the experience of staying within a particular territory
 Ecomuseology in artistic practice  263

for a prolonged period of time, developing systems that are devised by and for
local populations, even as they secure benefits for these communities through
international engagement. This approach inevitably relies upon certain privi-
leges, such as access to international movement and the ‘global’ contemporary
art world, but all three initiatives have succeeded in avoiding the constraints and
structures of the traditional museum, by developing alternative systems of value
and pointing to the importance and possibilities of staying within or returning
to a place.
The actions of Annalee Davis, Semillero Caribe and BetaLocal ask us to col-
lectively reflect on the way that history is traced on the underside of the landscape.
They further prompt us to be actively involved in the process of recognising and
meeting the socio-ecologic challenges experienced within contemporary postco-
lonial spaces. The most valuable function of the ecomuseum is therefore not to
encourage pride in a specific territory—although such museums might depend
upon hopeful visions for the future—but instead to continuously develop processes
for seeing the same space differently. The practices involved in the creation, devel-
opment, enactment and afterlives of the above initiatives and, by association the
ecomuseological school of thought, therefore become less about progress than the
experience of the effects of the past on the present and the need for a continu-
ous return to places, spaces and ideas. In recognising complexity and conflict, as
well as issues of power, precarity and belonging within the discourse surrounding
ecomuseums, space is left for multiple future interpretations, collaborations and
engagements with and within a specific environment.

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13
EXHIBITION-MAKING AS
STORYTELLING
The 14th FEMSA Biennial in Michoacán Mexico

Ana S. González Rueda and David A. J. Murrieta Flores

In her manifesto How to Make Art at the End of the World, artist Natalie Loveless
(2019, p. 21) reflects on using Thomas King’s The Truth About Stories in her teach-
ing to conceive of stories as ‘material-semiotic events that configure worlds’ and
affect how we see the world and act within it:

Stories are wondrous in their capacity to reorganize our approaches to our social
material worlds; they are dangerous for their capacity to produce themselves as
compelling objects of belief […] the telling of stories is a political performative.
A world-making, knowledge-making practice.
(Loveless, 2019, p. 21)

Loveless (2019, p. 21) stresses the need to think about the stories ‘we are crafted
out of as well as which we participate in crafting’. This chapter investigates
­Mexican modern and contemporary art’s implication in both national history and
the stories that challenge and unsettle established narratives. It concentrates on the
decentralising curatorial proposition of Inestimable azar (‘Inestimable chance’),
the 14th Fomento Económico Mexicano S.A.B. de C.V.(FEMSA) Biennial
(­February 2020–February 2021), based in the Mexican state of Michoacán and
directed by Daniel Garza Usabiaga. The biennial’s exhibition programme centred
on a series of ‘museological interventions’, such as site-specific commissions that
responded to the cultural heritage of the venues—especially various understudied
mural paintings from the 1930s and 1940s in the cities of Morelia and Pátzcuaro
(Bienal FEMSA, n.d.). We approach the interaction between the biennial and the
venues’ murals through storytelling to address the kinds of worlds and knowledges
it constructed. Our analysis engages with the wider call for a postcolonial rein-
vention of the museum (Chambers et al., 2014; Simpson, 2001; Von Oswald and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-16
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
 Exhibition-making as storytelling  267

Tinius, 2020). Introducing her volume on museums and indigenous perspectives,

historian Susan Sleeper-Smith (2009, p. 2) considers museums as powerful rhetori-
cal devices intentionally built to tell stories and maintains that the public museum
became the site for ‘official and formal versions of the past’. Traditionally, the
history told by objects and their curatorial and interpretive contextualisation fol-
lowed an evolutionary narrative that contrasted the ‘primitiveness’ of indigenous
cultures with the ‘progress’ of Western societies, a story that served to justify the
violent colonial imposition of ‘civilised order’ across the world (Sleeper-Smith,
2009, p. 2). Sleeper-Smith (2009, p. 4) underlines indigenous peoples’ demands to
‘deconstruct the colonization narrative from the viewpoint of the oppressed [and
introduce] a multiplicity of voices, a variety of narratives, and the use of muse-
ums as tools of revitalization’. In this case, the biennial introduced a collaborative
framework that sought to facilitate the participation of Michoacán’s indigenous
communities.
The FEMSA Biennial was founded in 1992. Its eighth edition introduced a new
itinerant format that aims to engage with the local heritage and artistic production
of the host state (Bienal FEMSA, n.d.). Funded by the FEMSA Foundation, the
biennial is part of a more extensive cultural programme through which the multina-
tional corporation professes its commitment to support the sustainable development
of the communities where it operates (FEMSA Foundation, 2021).1 Philosopher
and political theorist Oliver Marchart (2014, p. 264) has argued that biennials from
the periphery contribute to the decentring of the West, especially regarding issues
‘around the legitimacy and status of non-Western art’. He observes that, while
biennials are often instrumental in enhancing the public impression of a particular
city and are an asset to the tourist industry, they crucially assist in ‘constructing
local, national and continental identities’ (Marchart, 2014, p. 264). Marchart cites
the 1989 Havana Biennial as a key reference that introduced a model less focused
on spectacle and more concerned with a specific discursive interest. Its theme,
‘Tradition and Contemporaneity’, addressed ‘anticolonial politics and non-Western
modernities’ (Marchart, 2014, p. 271). The 1989 Havana Biennial also posited the
now widely accepted idea that biennials should interact with their host locations
and not, as Marchart (2014, p. 273) describes, ‘simply descend like a UFO’. This
landmark exhibition anticipated the current curatorial interest in participatory and
critical education strategies. For Marchart (2014, p. 273), the idea of decentring
biennials refers to an effort ‘to shift the canon and to open the field for dissident
practices and discourses’.
The widespread influence of the 1989 Havana Biennial is evident in the case of
Inestimable azar, particularly in its decentralising, discursive approach and inter-
est in collaborating with local, indigenous craft makers. However, art and cultural
theorist Panos Kompatsiaris (2020) underlines the ambivalences of contemporary
art biennials as proclaimed sites of resistance that ultimately rely on the domi-
nant neoliberal order they seek to contest. In this sense, it is important to con-
sider that FEMSA, the biennial’s sponsor, is a multinational corporation, owner of
268  Ana S. González Rueda and David A. J. Murrieta Flores

the world’s largest Coca-Cola bottling franchise and the largest convenience store
chain in Mexico. Over the years, it has been the target of criticism for its appropria-
tion of public resources such as water, often to the detriment of indigenous com-
munities (Pearson, 2017; Franco, 2020); its consistent opposition to public policies
that address health issues from which it profits (De Alba, 2020); its hostile labour
practices across the country (Lobo, 2019) and the extensive environmental impact
of its operations (Peredo, 2011, 2015). To make matters worse, FEMSA’s extractiv-
ism has often been abetted and protected by the Mexican government (see Ramírez
Miranda, Cruz Altamirano and Marcial Cerqueda, 2015; Pacheco-Vega, 2015). It
is crucial, then, to consider how the biennial worked within the local heritage sites
and arts scene, reflecting wider cultural struggles about identity where the state is
no longer the dominant actor.
The role of the 14th FEMSA Biennial is particularly significant consider-
ing the dire state of cultural institutions in Mexico at the time of writing. The
government, led by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has chosen to
concentrate on a single mega-project: ‘Chapultepec Park: Nature and Culture’,
directed by renowned artist Gabriel Orozco, which took 12 per cent of the fed-
eral culture budget for 2020 with a total estimated cost of £368 million (Cepeda,
2020). In light of budget cuts to culture in the public sector and concomitant
mass layoffs, critics have pointed to the project’s reinforcement of a central site
in a wealthy area, while peripheral institutions struggle to survive the effects of
the COVID-19 pandemic. The government’s attention to this single enterprise
demonstrates its adherence to neoliberal logic: the grand scheme serves as a dis-
traction from the deep-seated issues and prevalent precarity within the cultural
sector (Cepeda, 2020).
This chapter considers the critical agency of the 14th FEMSA Biennial and
its intervention in museum knowledge production processes at a moment of
crisis. We begin by considering the biennial’s curatorial proposition: the set-
ting up of a dialogue between contemporary art and Michoacán’s local herit-
age, an encounter that was conceived as a historiographical revision that might
challenge official national history. The second section provides a historical
contextualisation of the post-Revolutionary, state-led cultural and educational
campaign in Mexico during the first half of the 20th century. In particular,
we examine the didactic role of muralism, as well as the redefinition of crafts
within the narrative of modernisation. The third section concentrates on the
biennial’s re-reading of the local modernist heritage, especially regarding issues
of ­Mexican identity. As an example of the biennial’s storytelling, we discuss
­Graciela Speranza’s participation in the public programme and her analysis of
Juan O’Gorman’s mural Historia de Michoacán (1942). Finally, we present two
of the artistic commissions and their different approaches to local craft: Marco
Rountree’s imaginative rethinking of modernist aesthetics and Adela Goldbard’s
collaboration with Arantepacua’s Communal Indigenous Council (2019–2021)
on a craftivist project.
 Exhibition-making as storytelling  269

An encounter between the modern and the contemporary

As explicitly stated by artistic director Daniel Garza Usabiaga and public
­programme curator Esteban King, Inestimable azar was intended as a platform
for dialogue between the 20th-century Mexican avant-garde, whose works feature
prominently in the buildings and institutions housing the biennial, and contem-
porary artists (Miércoles de SOMA, 2021). The title itself alludes to the complex
geographical network of the avant-garde in Europe and the Americas, being a ref-
erence to the 1938 manifesto written by André Breton, Diego Rivera and Leon
Trotsky, which resulted from a series of discussions held in the town of Pátzcuaro,
Michoacán, that year (Tarcus, 2019). The manifesto conceived of chance encoun-
ters as a way to know the world better (or change it); the biennial’s title included
this reference to centre the state of Michoacán as a meeting point between local,
regional, national and international cultural currents.
Acting within the discourses of the art world while also expanding into the
related terrain of history and art history, the biennial’s curatorial line sought to
break with the unitary quality of Mexican art historiography, which has tended
to homogenise the country’s artistic developments through national perspectives
(see Bienal FEMSA, n.d.). Its inaugural conference bore a provocative title,
Adiós historia oficial (‘Goodbye official history’), suggesting that the national-
ist narrative that characterises Mexican art and education would be left behind.
This claim on the history of the nation was based on an interpretation of the
biennial’s simultaneously local and global focus as offering an alternative to
official nation-making narratives. The dialogue between the 20th-century avant-
garde and contemporary artists was thus framed as an opportunity to renew
the historical links between both: first, through the involvement of local artists,
artisans and curators in the biennial’s development, and, later, by the inclusion
of international audiences in the digital instances of the programme due to the
COVID-19 pandemic.
The preceding iteration of the FEMSA Biennial (2018), directed by curator
Willy Kautz, had already revised its structure in order to encompass activities and
proposals beyond the usual exhibition-centred format. It took place in the state
of Zacatecas, which has even less involvement in the contemporary Mexican art
world than Michoacán. Entitled Nunca fuimos contemporáneos (‘We were never
contemporary’), Kautz’s biennial integrated heterogeneous works within a pro-
gramme designed to involve public spaces and institutions peripheral to the art
world.2 Garza Usabiaga and King’s continuation and expansion of the FEMSA
Biennial’s possibilities two years later reflected an even greater interest in the
interactions between the local and the global, positioning these as integral to an
understanding of art’s role in Mexican history and identity. The role of a robust ped-
agogical programme articulated through free conferences, workshops, networking
events and academic activities continued the precedent set by the 13th Biennial in
terms of knowledge production. However, where the latter’s questions and critical
270  Ana S. González Rueda and David A. J. Murrieta Flores

standpoint were related to generic concepts of modernity and c­ ontemporaneity, the

14th iteration focused on particularly Mexican approaches to history.
The staged encounter between modern and contemporary Mexican art and the
biennial’s production of knowledge through artistic, representational and educa-
tional means—whether presence-based or digital—reveals similar patterns to
avant-garde muralism. The common starting point is history, and, in this sense, the
re-evaluation of historical discourses usually belonging to the nation represents
the primary site of struggle where the biennial inserted itself as a contender. The
Mexican muralists’ context, shaped by the Revolution that broke out in 1910, was
thoroughly permeated by discussions about history. The murals themselves were
conceived by intellectuals as part of a vast educational programme first designed
in 1921 after the creation of the Secretaría de Educación Pública (Public Education
Ministry, hereafter referred to as SEP). As will be discussed below, the educational
logic of muralism, which stakes a claim on historical discourse and even becomes
indistinguishable from it, is the basis from which the biennial’s proposals emerged.
In this, they mirrored statements of a historical nature that touch upon issues of
identity and nationality.

Muralism’s teaching of national history

The creation of the SEP in 1921 was guided by an educational ethos that ­transcended
the more technical aims of progressive instruction and acculturation that were
typical of prevailing positivist views at the end of the 19th century (see Vázquez
de Knauth, 1970, p. 81). In the hands of the Revolutionary intellectual José
­Vasconcelos as Education Secretary, the institution’s aim was social betterment
and national harmony understood as a path towards the redemptive ‘light’ of civi-
lisation (­Garciadiego Dantan, 2015, p. 34). Vasconcelos’s project had three major
components: the school, the library and the arts. All were organically related in a
way that is best expressed through the free textbooks created in the 1920s and dis-
tributed nationally to schools and libraries, which were illustrated by artists aligned
with the values of the Revolution. Each of the three components was represented
by professionals and students (teachers, librarians, artists), who were recruited by
the SEP to go on ‘missions’ across the country to improve literacy, and for the prac-
tical education of peasants and the working class. One of ­Vasconcelos’s ambitions
was to ‘decentralise culture’ through the creation of arts and teaching centres even
in the most geographically challenging parts of the country (­Garciadiego Dantan,
2015, p. 44). Education understood in this way was part of the implementation of
social justice. Harmony, under the nation’s banner, was seen as the necessary end-
point of the creation of Mexican citizens (Garciadiego Dantan, 2015, p. 49). Thus,
nation-building became a primary concern for the Mexican system of education
throughout the post-Revolutionary period, up to and beyond the Lázaro Cárdenas
presidency (1934–1940), when practically all the murals that feature in the biennial
were commissioned and completed.
 Exhibition-making as storytelling  271

The federal scope of the SEP meant that schools proliferated under the mantle
of the state, which extended the nationalisation of the population of the Mexican
territory even in places where governments previous to the Revolution had little
outreach. The process involved a complex conceptualisation of Mexican identity
derived from the new Revolutionary values and interpretations of history in which
indigenous populations, local traditions and cosmopolitan or nationalist outlooks
played crucial roles. The colonial process of ‘Mexicanising’ indigenous peoples
was one of the main threads of the educational system, with various positions vying
for hegemony throughout the 20th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, there were
two prevailing views: the first advocated erasing indigenous identities in favour of
a Mexican one centred on the figure of the mestizo (mixed-race person); the second
sought to produce a dialectical dynamic in which indigeneity and mestizo iden-
tity would be synthesised into a new Mexican identity, ‘elevating’ the indigenous
in the mestizo and the mestizo in the indigenous. Thus, political and educational
processes became deeply intertwined, leading Mexican intellectuals of the period
to conceive of education as an organic remedy to all the ailments of society. Fol-
lowing this model, schools would transform ‘not only the individual, but the entire
social medium comprehending the entire community’ (Bruno-Jofré and Martínez
Valle, 2009, p. 49). With history as the core discursive node, the homogenisation
of the country (culturally, but also politically, economically and socially) as a task
to be realised by educative means implied a broad array of informal pedagogical
tools, such as art, public rituals and ceremonies that would engage entire communi-
ties (Bruno-Jofré and Martínez Valle, 2009, p. 49). The school would be integral to
the social life of populations, and its jurisdiction would extend beyond traditional
teaching facilities. Among the vehicles of nation-building were mural commis-
sions and vast art-historical, anthropological and archaeological projects, such as
the creation of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (National Institute
of Anthropology and History) in 1939.
In this sense, it is significant that the SEP was the centre of both educational
and cultural projects. For instance, in 1937 the Cárdenas government created the
Departamento Autónomo de Prensa y Publicidad (Autonomous Department of
Publicity and Press, hereafter referred to as DAPP), which was explicitly and
expressly charged with propaganda matters both within and outside the country.
The DAPP conceived of education as a tool of propaganda (Cruz Porchini, 2014,
p. 243), and, as a result, its functions came directly into conflict with the interests
of the SEP. For instance, SEP mural projects that post-Revolutionary governments
understood to be crucial in the creation of a national imaginary were seen by the
administrators of the DAPP as interior propaganda efforts (see Dümmer Scheel,
2018). Consequently, the DAPP began to model their posters on murals commis-
sioned by the SEP.3 The DAPP’s interpretation was made possible by the SEP’s
nationalist programmes themselves, which also included posters, and which were
often designed to convince the people of the benefits and rights they had—perhaps
indirectly—gained from the Revolution. Nonetheless, the Cárdenas presidency
272  Ana S. González Rueda and David A. J. Murrieta Flores

represented a culmination of the educational projects born from the Revolution.

Deliberations on national identity and the historical foundations of the country
were concentrated in the SEP, and the borders between history, memory and the
nation became porous (Farías Mackey, 2010, pp. 261–2). Within Cárdenas’s doc-
trine of a ’socialist education’ (Bruno-Jofré and Martínez Valle, 2009, p. 48), his-
tory would be a crucial subject, used to show how Mexican society is, how it
had been and how it should be—in other words, the role of history in socialist
education would be one of socialisation (Vázquez de Knauth, 1970, p. 80; ­Buenfil
Burgos, 2004, p. 48). This conception is similar to the muralist avant-garde’s sus-
tained development of historical subjects as the revolutionary key to activate the
Mexican masses.
The creation of the DAPP was but one instance of the Cárdenas government’s
comprehensive nation-making strategy and the wide-ranging nature of its approach
to education, demonstrated by its adoption of a visual communication system in
which murals shared the same discursive space as propaganda due to a common
historical subject matter. Turned into vehicles of education, murals proliferated
across the country in SEP projects that targeted less wealthy regions outside the
metropolitan centres, such as Michoacán, Veracruz, Guerrero and Sinaloa (Cruz
Porchini, 2014, p. 16). Born in Michoacán and a former governor of the state
(1928–1932), Cárdenas embraced regional projects and even experimented with
Pátzcuaro, one of the 14th FEMSA Biennial’s seats, as a modernist tourist attrac-
tion (Jolly, 2018, loc 10.68). The realisation of Vasconcelos’s ‘decentralisation of
culture’ by the Cárdenas government is well represented by its numerous mural
commissions, distributed across towns and cities of the state of Michoacán, includ-
ing Pátzcuaro. As suggested by art historian Jacqueline Jolly (2018, loc 7.17), the
development of Pátzcuaro under Cárdenas offers ‘two competing ways of imagin-
ing the region vis-à-vis the nation crystallized’: first, that Mexico ‘was the sum of
its regions, each with distinctive cultures, products, and landscapes to contribute to
the national whole’; and, second, that ‘the regional could embody the national’, so
that ‘the local might serve as a microcosm of the nation’. This tension is reflected
by the mixed themes of mural commissions in the period, which oscillate between
local, national and even international historical topics (as in Phillip Guston and
Reuben Kadish’s The struggle against terrorism, also known as The struggle
against terror and fascism) (see Boime, 2008). As vehicles of nation-building,
murals attempted to situate Mexicans in various present contexts grounded upon
history, moving between the local and the global.
Conceived as part of the educational system, muralism generally produced
historical discourses without recourse to the conventionally text-based, academic
processes of history-making. Its bases were developed throughout the Revolution-
ary and post-Revolutionary periods by the artistic avant-garde in relation to both
political and aesthetic issues that were expressed, for the most part, in representa-
tions of history. Against Romantic conceptions of the individual genius (although
ultimately reaffirming them through an image of heroic participation in public life),
 Exhibition-making as storytelling  273

the muralists privileged collective work, regarding art as a public endeavour that
would take place outside and beyond the art world and its established institutions
(Jaimes, 2012, p. 19). They proposed a break with the conventions of looking at
artworks within museums; their intent was to dissolve the limits between art and
life, critiquing the existing institution of art and explicitly freeing the spectator
from art world constraints and conventions, such as the exhibition space or the
individualised aesthetic experience. As art historian Renato González Mello (2008,
p. 15) argues, the muralists conceived of their practice as an ethical imperative,
meaning that it had to act beyond artistic concerns to impact social life. Moreover,
their ethos coincided with the educational project of Vasconcelos’s SEP, since they
also understood art as a privileged form of knowledge, even more apt than social
and natural sciences, which ignored the spiritual dimensions of human existence in
its path towards illumination (González Mello, 2008, p. 88). The murals’ represen-
tations of history turned public spaces into national sites where the nation’s mem-
ory and the identity of Mexicans were at stake. The murals’ historical discourse,
however, put the intricacies of historical processes aside, limiting its knowledge
and its world-making to the nation construed as a homogeneous—or at the very
least homogenising—entity.
Muralism’s revolutionary origins resulted in an art for the masses, emphasis-
ing its public nature as the rejection of traditional art world institutions.4 Its social
themes highlighted historical content as a way to impact reality by interpellating
viewers as Mexicans. The aesthetics and politics of murals taught viewers through
visual and narrative means what Mexico was, who a Mexican was and how they
came to be such. One of the critical elements of the educational aspect of muralism
was its capacity to generate popular historical knowledge while ignoring histo-
riographical debates. Its appeal to a strained heterogeneous identity was rooted in
the ‘inclusion and appropriation of a glorified and nationalized indigenous culture’
(Oesterreich, 2018, p. 5). The muralists’ representations of the Mexican people as
the primary subject of history entailed defining who exactly said ‘people’ were,
a process articulated around the ‘elevation’ of the category of popular art and its
highest expression: the artesanía (craftwork). This view was promoted by the first
Exposición de Arte Popular (Exhibition of Popular Art) in 1921, which was com-
missioned by President Álvaro Obregón and coincided with the SEP’s creation.
The category of popular art as redefined by artists and intellectuals of the period
implied the transformation of everyday objects, which is to say craftworks from
all over the country, into works of art. In other words, the heterogeneity of objects
from daily life across the Mexican territory—mostly indigenous in origin—was
reduced to a homogeneous category of (high, culturally acceptable) popular art that
was necessarily tied to a unifying image of the nation.
Additionally, popular art was seen as a result of the revolutionary process and its
path towards further emancipation. As such, it connoted a newly achieved moder-
nity in terms comparable to the claims of the muralist avant-garde (see S­ubirats,
2018, p. 119). This modernity-born-from-revolution was not exclusive to the
274  Ana S. González Rueda and David A. J. Murrieta Flores

major cultural centres of the country and could be found everywhere, including the
periphery. As art historian Miriam Oesterreich (2018, p. 9) argues:

the early staging of the indigenous as representing the national and the t­ raditional
as epitomizing the modern, like the Exhibition of Popular Arts in 1921, can be
interpreted as manifestations of the national for Mexicans themselves, as an
aesthetic strategy to unify diverse social strata into a single national identity by
means of cultural politics and touristic development of the provinces.

As mentioned in the previous section, the Cárdenas government actually ­developed

many of these cultural discourses that had been first advanced—but never
­realised—in the 1920s, and that privileged ‘the provinces’. Alongside its mural
commission projects, it founded the Museo local de artes e industrias populares
(Local Museum of Popular Arts and Industries) in Pátzcuaro in 1938, which was
among the first of its kind in the country.5 The formation of an image of the nation
that was both homogeneous and heterogeneous, mestizo and indigenous, suggested
a complicated relationship between the country’s centres and its margins (Jolly,
2018, loc 10.73). The Cárdenas regime, in its effort to decentralise culture, essen-
tially conceived of Mexico as the sum of its peripheries.
Through government policies in which politics and aesthetics were entangled,
murals and schools went hand in hand when it came to the production of knowl-
edge about the Mexican self and its context. While it would be difficult to claim
that murals themselves were schools, they did perform functions that had previ-
ously been the preserve of the school environment, developing beyond the art
world and considerably affecting the everyday lives of Mexicans. First, by 1934,
the rate of illiteracy was very high: only one in six adults could read (Lira García,
2014, p.  132). Second, the influence of the Catholic Church in education was a
threat to the state’s secularism, as well as its anchoring of the Mexican identity in
revolutionary social values. In this context, the state’s expropriation and occupation
of church buildings that were central to smaller cities and towns, as well as its mis-
sionary ethos of school-building, necessitated more than textual tools of education.
Murals played the role of not only establishing the state’s presence within essential
buildings but also teaching Mexicans about their history in a purely visual, aes-
thetic manner that did not need them to be able to read. Since every Mexican must
visit public buildings, whether for bureaucratic or educational purposes, murals
became one of the centrepieces of daily public life in the country. Considering all
of the above, the history that murals taught—with very few exceptions—could be
summarised as follows: first, an indigenous golden past is ruptured by the barbaric
Spanish conquest, followed by three centuries of resistance and torture (often at
the hands of the Church)6; then, a new libertarian rupture occurs in the form of the
country’s independence (where the heroes of the motherland are born), followed by
a century of struggle against foreign interventions and imperialism; the last rupture
is the Revolution, when justice is done for indigenous peoples and the working
 Exhibition-making as storytelling  275

class comes into being (along with its new heroes), and whose future is bright
with further emancipatory potential. This is the core of the ‘official history’ that
the FEMSA Biennial explicitly rejected through new approaches to storytelling.
However, it faced several difficulties in its attempt to overcome the foundations of
Mexican identity with which it engaged.

The biennial’s reinterpretation of local modernist heritage

On the one hand, the biennial’s organisers explicitly utilised terms reminiscent of
the artistic avant-garde and focused on the historical connections between modern
and contemporary art, such as in their proposal to create an ‘anti-manual’ about the
‘encounters and crossings between art, curating and pedagogy’ (Bienal FEMSA,
n.d.). Articulated around axes that include ‘realisms’, ‘artistic integrations’
between, for instance, painting and architecture created by muralists and their state
patrons, and ‘traditional artistic practices’, the biennial’s curatorial approach was
firmly based on modernist concerns about the relationship between art and life. As
King’s statements show, the organisers sought to think of the biennial beyond the
art world, conceiving of it as a space that could have an impact outside the exhi-
bition space. It would be a place for art, as well as for knowledge exchange and
community-making (Miércoles de SOMA, 2021).
On the other hand, the organisers also engaged with historical issues about Mex-
ican identity and questions of indigeneity, cultural centralisation and the revision of
the category of popular arts. In Garza Usabiaga’s words,

This year’s public programme is bringing into discussion the historiographic

task of re-reading our local cultural patrimony. Due to its rich artistic history, the
state of Michoacán presents interesting examples of where the local intersects
with the national and the global.
(Garzon, 2021)

The biennial’s artistic and curatorial commissions reflect both King’s and Garza
Usabiaga’s statements, promoting local curators and institutions under the interna-
tional framework of the biennial, but also giving great importance to artists whose
projects involved Michoacán communities through collaboration with their work-
shops and artisans. While some of these projects will be discussed further below,
our interest at this point is to suggest that the attempted destabilisation of artistic
categories, such as popular arts, and the rethinking of established narratives and
historical canons mirror modernist educational approaches to the same issues.
Muralism’s elaboration of historical discourse was well supported by the
­Mexican post-Revolutionary state. It was used by governments throughout the
20th century to turn the country’s history into a series of static myths and images
(official history). However, the muralists themselves were continually at odds
with the state’s attempts to co-opt their works. Art historians and scholars such as
276  Ana S. González Rueda and David A. J. Murrieta Flores

Subirats (2018) and Jaimes (2012) are among the most recent authors to argue that
the ­relationship between the muralist avant-garde and the governments that would
often sponsor them was not free of conflict and contradiction. This is a relevant fac-
tor when considering the likewise contradictory developments of the Mexican edu-
cational system, which involved murals, public rituals, ceremonies and traditional
educational institutions. This system produced a shift in art-historical hierarchies
related to artworks and popular craftsmanship; developed historical discourses
that privileged the marginalised and peripheral; attempted to connect the local and
the national with the international; and attempted to impact the everyday lives of
­Mexicans through knowledge production.
At times, the biennial’s pedagogical discourse becomes indistinguishable
from its modernist counterpart. Discussing the commissioned curatorial work
of Erandi Dávalos in an interview with SOMA, Garza Usabiaga insisted on the
biennial’s role as a platform for the recognition of artisanal work, stating that the
intent was to ‘bring these artists out into the light’ (‘sacar a estos artistas a la
luz’) (Miércoles de SOMA, 2021). This act of ‘elevation’ mirrors those made
by post-Revolutionary intellectuals. It was supported by the accompanying pro-
gramme’s various conferences about culture during the Cárdenas period, mon-
ographic talks on Juan O’Gorman—author of Historia de Michoacán (History
of Michoacán), one of the biennial’s modernist centrepieces—and the relation
between art and propaganda in the 1930s. The programme with which the event
staked its historiographical claim closely followed the authoritative methods of
modernist knowledge production, undertaken through a diversification (perhaps
even ‘regionalisation’) of means: workshops, talks, events and exhibitions in
public spaces across cultural centres in Michoacán that put artisans, artists and
spectators in dialogue with one another about historical issues of identity and
the nation. It is significant, in this sense, that both Garza Usabiaga and King are
agents from the art world, like most muralists were, and that they are both from
Mexico City. Additionally, all of the website’s materials are in only Spanish and
English (there are four indigenous languages in Michoacán alone), and the talks
were delivered solely in Spanish.
What makes the biennial distinct, first, was its private, corporate origin, since
it was able to enter the struggles of history-making without the burden of nation-
building that characterised the educational core of the muralist avant-garde. The
post-Revolutionary state saw education as a path towards modernisation and citi-
zenship, national illumination and emancipation, creating a ‘regionalist’ aesthetic
in which murals played the role of monumentalising the state’s appropriation of
various indigeneities for identity purposes. The biennial’s programmes critiqued
the consequences of this process, which are especially relevant in a context
where the current Mexican government, led by President Andrés Manuel López
Obrador, has fallen back on historical appeals to unity in national identity. Thus,
instead of appropriating marginalised voices in historical representations, the bien-
nial attempted to let them speak out through its critique of official history and
 Exhibition-making as storytelling  277

by involving local communities and artisans throughout its development. Instead

of knowledge driven by homogenisation, the plurality sought by the biennial
produced heterogenisation and the possibility of new narratives about the local,
national and international. The intention was to present Mexican identity as a site
of encounter, a history in the making, instead of a settled imaginary or an immov-
able past. Second, then, the biennial framed its public programme in response to
the COVID-19 pandemic, facilitating dialogue through its own infrastructure, no
longer the state’s. The state’s articulations of history were not mediated conversa-
tions in which several points of view could be articulated. By contrast, the biennial
promoted a view of history in which the periphery should have a voice, amplified
through the private and global nature of its own structure, and best seen in the artis-
tic commissions. In this regard, it is important to mention that the López Obrador
government, self-proclaimed as leftist and thus supposedly committed to further
representation of the country’s peripheries, has so far mostly reproduced the strate-
gies of appropriation that characterised nationalist discourses throughout the 20th
century. The government has even made itself a protagonist in Mexican history in a
process it has called ‘the fourth transformation’ (an allusion to what it considers to
be Mexico’s epoch-building historical events), offering its own interpretation of its
place in official history. Furthermore, its claims to having single-handedly ended
the neoliberal fragmentation of cultural institutions is hardly a reality; the biennial,
in this context, only reaffirmed the market’s incisive participation in struggles over
historical discourses.
During her lecture for the biennial’s public programme, Argentine critic Graciela
Speranza (XIV Bienal FEMSA, 2020) presented a detailed reading of O’Gorman’s
mural, Historia de Michoacán (1942), whose narrative follows the pattern out-
lined above.7 At the top, O’Gorman depicted the Purépecha cosmogony and scenes
of indigenous life before the conquest, including dances, rituals, violent confron-
tations with the Aztecs, villages, temples and pyramids. The Spanish colonisers
advance at the centre of the composition, followed by evangelisation scenes and
the main heroic characters of the Mexican Independence and Revolution struggles.
Speranza observed that while the mural synthesises centuries of history, O’Gorman
has attended to every detail: each water ripple, each feather on the Purépecha head-
pieces, the manes of the conquerors’ horses, the thread of a fishing net, the ribbon
bows tying a weaver’s braids, the folds on José María Morelos’s headscarf and so
on. Speranza argued that, through these details, the artist achieved ‘a referential
illusion, an effect of reality that vivifies the history lesson’ (XIV Bienal FEMSA,
2020). However, she noted that O’Gorman also resorted to surreal figures for the
darkest moments of the story. The mummy at the centre and the hand-headed mon-
ster with serpent arms at the right anticipate the artist’s post-apocalyptic later work.
O’Gorman completed the lesson with his didactic use of text. A dog carries a sign
with an ironic commentary: ‘conque así es la famosa civilización humana’ (‘so this
is the famous human civilisation’). At the bottom left, the artist’s self-portrait holds
a written statement that refers to the resistance of the oppressed peoples and their
278  Ana S. González Rueda and David A. J. Murrieta Flores

latent strength, which will someday produce extraordinary art and culture ‘like
a gigantic erupting volcano’. In alignment with the biennial’s curatorial premise,
Speranza’s analysis of O’Gorman’s realist, surrealist and didactic storytelling strat-
egies offered a historiographical revision, a retelling.
By considering how we might look at the mural today, Speranza’s lecture also
contributed to the biennial’s intention to draw connections between the mod-
ern and the contemporary. Her talk compared the ‘excess’ of muralist figura-
tion with the digital overload of the 21st century. For instance, she discussed
­Trevor Paglen’s From ‘Apple’ to ‘Anomaly’ (Pictures and Labels) (2019–2020),
a mosaic of thousands of images that problematises machine-learned categories.
Speranza also mentioned Carlos Huffman’s painting El Juegador (2013) and
its meticulous depiction of realist and surrealist figures: the fern leaves among
the cables, techno-garbage, old printers and routers that allude to a dystopian
future. She drew further connections between O’Gorman’s late, post-apocalyptic,
‘anti-architectural’ work and contemporary artists’ responses to the Anthropo-
cene, such as Adrián Villar Rojas’s monumental, futuristic, clay and cement ruins
in The Murderer of Your Heritage, the 2011 Argentine pavilion at the Venice
Biennale and Pierre Huyghe’s After ALife Ahead (2017), an evolving ecosystem
installed in an abandoned ice rink that brought together organic, inorganic and
augmented reality components. In this sense, she presented O’Gorman’s surreal-
ist visions as prophetic.
Most importantly, Speranza reflected on the non-anthropocentric Purépecha
worldview and the blurring of the boundaries between humans and animals sug-
gested by the masks portrayed in the mural. For the critic, these scenes suggest
a more equitable relationship with nature. Her most compelling insight, which
offered a radical reinterpretation of the mural, is borrowed from philosopher
­Déborah Danowski and anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2017, p. 104):

indigenous people have something to teach us when it comes to apocalypses,

losses of the world, demographic catastrophes, and ends of History […]: for
the native people of the Americas, the end of the world already happened – five
centuries ago. To be exact, it began on October 12, 1492.

While their thinking informs Speranza’s rediscovery of O’Gorman’s mural, it can

also assist our analysis of the rest of the biennial, especially at the time of the
COVID-19 crisis. Danowski and Viveiros de Castro argue that the American geno-
cide of the 16th and 17th centuries has been the largest demographic catastrophe in
history, even taking into account the current and future threats of nuclear war and
global warming. They observe that survivors found themselves as ‘humans without
world […]. They carried on in another world, a world of others, their invaders and
overlords’ (pp. 105–6). In what follows, we discuss two of the biennial’s artistic
commissions and examine how exhibitions may investigate and present ‘the many
worlds in the World’ (p. 120).
 Exhibition-making as storytelling  279

Contemporary art and craft retellings

Marco Rountree
Marco Rountree’s untitled installation drew from local heritage to investigate
progressive historical narratives and trouble the notion of a national modernist
aesthetic. The dogs from O’Gorman’s mural reappear in clay as one of three com-
ponents. Rountree commissioned local craftsman, Juan Carlos Marín, to reproduce
them life-sized, in the same colours and positions as the mural: one is standing and
the other is sitting holding the sign with its mouth. Detached from the context of
the painting, their unimpressed, sceptical remark ‘so this is the famous human civi-
lisation’ is open to new interpretations. The artist also had four wooden columns
with fish motifs carved locally. These reference the troje, the region’s traditional
housing which consists of various structures surrounding an ekuaro, a central area
demarcated by greenery, low walls and different units that constitute the interior
living space of extended families. Spatially, the troje is formed by a square or
rectangular room, a raised platform used to store corn and seeds and a porch at the
front with decorated wooden columns (Ettinger, 2015, pp. 71–2). Finally, Roun-
tree’s installation includes a mural made of colourful seeds, another reference to

FIGURE 13.1 Marco Rountree, Untitled (2020). Wood, ceramic and seeds. I­ nstallation
detail. 14th FEMSA Biennial, Centro Cultural Clavijero, Morelia,
­Mexico. Courtesy of the artist.
280  Ana S. González Rueda and David A. J. Murrieta Flores

the troje. However, the mural was also inspired by a common craft activity for
children in Mexico (Rountree, 2021). Most people who grew up in Mexico remem-
ber arranging shapes with beans and pasting them on paper. Rountree’s sculptures,
columns and murals revisit a fundamental principle of modern art and architecture
in Mexico, and one of the biennial’s central lines of research: the integration of the
visual arts. The artist has developed an imaginative approach to Mexican modern-
ism, as seen in previous works, such as Xitle Volcano School of Sciences and Arti-
sanry (2019), a series of interventions of the Museo Anahuacalli, built by Diego
Rivera to house his collection of pre-Hispanic figurines and opened posthumously
in 1964 (Museo Anahuacalli, n.d.).
Both Rountree’s project at Anahuacalli and his installation at the biennial reveal
his interest in artist Adolfo Best Maugard’s drawing teaching method which,
according to art historian and curator Karen Cordero Reiman (2010, p. 45), was
formulated to create decorative images ‘endowed with a Mexican national char-
acter’. Cordero observes that the state endorsed Best Maugard’s method as part
of its cultural programme and school curriculum in the early 1920s. His method
proposed a basic vocabulary for a national art, based on elements allegedly taken
from pre-Hispanic art. Best Maugard put forward seven primary elements found in

FIGURE 13.2 Marco Rountree, Untitled (2020). Wood, ceramic and seeds. I­ nstallation
detail. 14th FEMSA Biennial, Centro Cultural Clavijero, Morelia,
­Mexico. Courtesy of the artist.
 Exhibition-making as storytelling  281

different combinations across the ‘primitive’ art of all nations: the spiral, the circle,
the half circle, the S motif, the curved line, the zig-zag line and the straight line
(Cordero Reiman, 2010). Rountree’s mural starts from this basis; there are water
drops, a pot of flowers, a fish, a snake, and a tree and its roots, all highly schema-
tised. The tree’s trunk and branches are made up of straight lines of black beans;
more colours are used for the blooms represented in circles. The roots below are
also drawn in straight lines, mostly in white and pink. A snake surrounding an arch
on the wall is mainly drawn using a zig-zag line, and Rountree has even left some
free-floating spirals. During our conversation, the artist emphasised the importance
of the line in his work (Rountree, 2021). His reference to Best Maugard is particu-
larly telling in the context of the biennial. Cordero Reiman underlines the signifi-
cant influence of the method in introducing and popularising modernist aesthetics
in Mexico. She notes that it encouraged the adoption of rural material culture as
a model rather than a subject of contemporary painting. It provoked a generational
shift towards a more abstract use of line and colour, reinforced the compositional
role of drawing in the canvas and extended the stylisation of figurative motifs.
According to Cordero Reiman (2010, p. 55), Best Maugard was driven by the need
to produce a national art ‘on a grassroots level’, as part of the public education
programme. Together with the columns which stand for the local, traditional way
of life and O’Gorman’s dogs, which are unconvinced of the enlightening narra-
tive, Rountree’s seed mural interrogates the nation-building, unifying didacticism
of avant-garde muralism, making space for other stories.
The installation invites renewed scrutiny of the ‘modernism of artesanía’
(Montgomery, 2014, p. 233). Art historian Harper Montgomery (2014, p. 235)
has problematised the post-Revolutionary conception of indigenous artisans as
‘­natural, innate creators’ integral to Mexico’s modernisation. Her study delves into
the conflicting discourses surrounding popular art. She notes that before crafts were
commercialised, they were displayed as a resilient system of production resistant to
capitalist markets. Montgomery pays particular attention to Dr Atl’s commentary
on the volume accompanying the 1921 Exposición de Arte Popular. There, the
artist considered the popular market as a ‘site of socialist integration’ that dem-
onstrated communal self-reliance and sustainability as an alternative social and
economic system, which was resistant to US industrialisation (Montgomery, 2014,
p. 240). Dr Atl’s ideological reflections emphasised the rural communities’ con-
nection to the land, based on the traditional standing of minerals, earth and clay
as communal property in Mexico. However, Montgomery draws attention to the
more problematic implications of Dr Atl’s vision: the idea that indigenous labour
was driven by an instinctive, creative drive rooted in ‘race’, and his notion of habi-
lidad manual indígena (indigenous manual skill) as the basis of a mythical work
ethic. These informed immigration policy and discourse that posited Mexican
labourers as exceptionally skilled and an asset to the US economy. Accordingly,
­Montgomery notes the contrast during the 1930s between the Mexicans crossing
the border to work in the US, and the US citizens travelling to Mexico to vacation.
282  Ana S. González Rueda and David A. J. Murrieta Flores

In this context, crafts played a significant part in supporting tourism and presenting
Mexico as a colourful, peaceful and non-industrial retreat. Montgomery reflects
on the ‘deeply problematic myth of the Mexican as a “naturally” able worker’
(2014, p. 247). For all the utopian values embedded in artes populares, however,
artisans remain vulnerable to the forces of globalisation, especially considering
the increased privatisation of cultural tourism in Mexico, in which the biennial is
implicated (see Coffey, 2010). We must underline at this point the paradoxical role
of biennials as both critical agents and sites of spectacle, and the ­political ambiguity
that legitimises these events within global neoliberal culture (Green and Gardner,
2016; Kompatsiaris, 2017). In this case, Rountree’s installation made a  subver-
sive historiographic intervention by offering an alternative retelling. At the same
time, the biennial’s emphasis on crafts as representative of resilient, anti-capitalist
ways of life provided a unique selling point, even if visits were hampered by the
­COVID-19 pandemic’s travel restrictions.

Arantepacua’s Communal Indigenous Council 2019–2021 and

Adela Goldbard
In contrast to Rountree’s more conceptual, individual approach, Adela Goldbard
chose to collaborate with the Purépecha community of Arantepacua on a craftivist
project. The co-authored installation centred on the events of 5 April 2017, when
more than 300 members of the Michoacán police and army forces suppressed
and attacked the community using police cars, trucks, helicopters and a ‘rhinoc-
eros’ armoured tank. Four community members were killed and another nine were
detained (Goldbard, 2021). The previous day, a delegation from Arantepacua
had attended a meeting with officials in Morelia (the state’s capital) to discuss a
land ownership issue with the neighbouring village of Capácuaro. Far from being
resolved, the conflict escalated, and the Arantepacua community organised a pro-
test, including road blockages, which prompted the police operation (Ureste, 2020).
After the traumatic event, the community decided to reject and effectively expel
political parties and the local police. They sought justice by exercising their right to
self-determination as an indigenous community (United Nations General Assembly,
2007; Aparicio Wilhelmi, 2009). For instance, they established a communal patrol
called kuaricha and formed a horizontally structured communal council made up
of four women and four men, which acts as the local authority (Ureste, 2020). The
state of Michoacán officially recognised their decision to self-govern in 2018. The
neighbouring communities of Comachuén, Sevina and Nahuatzén are also strug-
gling to reclaim their right to self-determination and resist impoverishment, political
persecution, harassment and criminalisation. Arantepacua continues to demand that
those responsible for the 5 April operation are brought to justice (Ureste, 2020).
Goldbard (2021) first approached Arantepacua’s Communal Indigenous Coun-
cil and met with a relative of one of the victims. The artist recalls that during these
initial meetings they ‘discussed the importance of making their struggle ­visible
 Exhibition-making as storytelling  283

through collaborative and creative work’ in opposition to the dominant official

narratives, and in support of their legal fight for justice. Her proposal involved
a trueque de saberes (exchange of knowledges) with other nearby communities,
based on an understanding of traditional craft and first-hand narratives as forms
of resistance. As the central component, Goldbard (2021) proposed the fabrication
and destruction of a real-scale papier-mâché rhinoceros, which was later commis-
sioned in Cherán. Schoolteacher, Juana Morales, suggested the addition of cross-
stitched embroideries made by craftswomen from Arantepacua and Turícuaro.
The embroideries were based on photographs and video stills sourced from the
council’s archive and Auani Pascual’s documentation. Three hundred clay diabli-
tos (little devils) and over 70 wooden police cars, trucks and vans were made
in Ocumicho and Pichátaro. Finally, Goldbard commissioned traditional songs
known as pirekuas that narrate significant events for the community. An edited
version of the artist’s interviews with several community members was integrated
into the installation at the Centro Cultural Clavijero (Clavijero Cultural Centre) in
Morelia. These interviews were essential to the artist as first-hand accounts from
the community.
Goldbard (2021) stressed that every decision was made in agreement with
the council as the local authority. She reflects that the process was not easy; trust
was gradually built through dialogue, and short- and long-term goals negotiated,
including several commitments on her side, such as facilitating workshops for
children and showing the installation in Tijuana and Chicago (which have large
Purépecha populations). Council members, Juana Morales and Valentín Jimenez,
acted as co-producers, facilitating the collaboration among neighbouring com-
munities and initiating the trueque de saberes. Scholar Mary Loveday-Edwards
suggests that, in this kind of approach, the artist assumes the role of ‘co-learner,
facilitator, [or] social transformer’ (cited in Robertson and Vinebaum, 2016, p. 6).
Goldbard (2021) sees herself ‘as a weaver, a producer and a catalyst’. Her role
consisted of ‘intertwining’ the shared narratives and bringing various components
together. Ultimately, she aimed to ‘reconstruct and preserve the collective memory
of Arantepacua […] and purge some of the harm inflicted on the community by
the bloody events of April 5th, 2017’ (Goldbard, 2021). In this regard, the project
raises questions regarding authorship and a potentially uneven collaborative rela-
tionship between the artist and the community. In some respects, Goldbard’s con-
temporary approach reproduces the modernists’ intention to preserve endangered
indigenous cultures. At the same time, however, the community members involved
also recognised the value of the project for their own purposes.
Artist, critic and curator Nicole Burisch (2016) has examined the recent atten-
tion to craft within politically engaged, collaborative and performative projects. She
notes that, in these cases, the centrality of the crafted object shifts to become a record,
a prop or a tool, and sometimes the object disappears completely. Considering that
performance art’s transition from objects to actions has been historically interpreted
as a political stance against commodification, Burisch (2016, p. 59) argues that the
284  Ana S. González Rueda and David A. J. Murrieta Flores

analysis of dematerialised craft practices must attend to ‘the role of gestures, actions,
and encounters’. As the central component of Goldbard’s Kurhirani no ambakiti, the
life-size rhinoceros stood in for the police’s armoured tank, embodying the harm
inflicted on the community (Goldbard, 2021). On 4 December 2020, the effigy was
carried in a procession that followed the same route as the yearly remembrance
procession for the victims of the 5 April raid. The papier-mâché rhinoceros arrived
at Arantepacua’s central square to be burnt and destroyed with fireworks, while
local musicians performed the commissioned pirekuas that narrated the events of
2017 and the community’s subsequent struggle for self-­governance (Goldbard,
2021). The rhinoceros’s head was cut and displayed as a trophy at the exhibition.
According to Goldbard (2021), ‘the aesthetic violence of this action [was] intended
as a purging’. It sought to destabilise the politics of memory, dismantle ‘oppressor/
oppressed’ dichotomies and assist in healing collective trauma. The artist reflected
that the project’s title, translated as ‘burning the devil: since that’s the only way they
listen to us’ suggests that violence is sometimes the only means left for oppressed
populations to contest the violence inflicted on them, and that, in fact, it offers a
radical approach to storytelling. While there is an undeniable gap between the per-
formative action and its documentation, the audio conversations with community
members and the video of the rhinoceros’s procession and burning, which was pre-
sented as part of the installation, offer a glimpse into the resistant potential of the
project, which lies in the community’s sense of ownership over it.

FIGURE 13.3 Adela Goldbard, Kurhirani no ambakiti (quemar al diablo): porque solo

así nos escuchan (2020). Video still. 14th FEMSA Biennial. Courtesy of
the artist.
 Exhibition-making as storytelling  285

Based on the communal archive, the cross-stitched embroideries present a visual

counter-account of the event. Scholar and curator Ellyn Walker (2021, pp. 303–6)
has studied how diverse communities across the Americas use embroidery ‘as a
site of resistance and re-imagination […] to expose histories of gendered, colonial
and state-sanctioned violence, and create models of feminist making, community-­
building and Indigenous resurgence’. In this case, the archival photographs and video
stills became ‘pixelated’, tactile images (Goldbard, 2021). As Julia ­Bryan-Wilson
(2017, p. 7) claims in her seminal study on art and textile politics, ‘to textile politics
is to give texture to politics, to refuse easy binaries, to acknowledge complications’.
Not only do the stitches ‘insist on the women’s survival’, but embroidery also sup-
ports healing and decolonising processes, demanding truth-telling and accountabil-
ity (Walker, 2021, p. 308). In Goldbard’s installation, the stitched police barricades
and approach, along with the community’s losses, defence and protest, present the
counter-narrative that has been suppressed by the state. In this sense, the textiles
perform ‘a vital act of memory work, allowing others to bear witness’ (Walker,
2021, p. 313). Kurhirani no ambakiti demonstrates how craft activism can support
self-determination, autonomy and cultural memory, as well as their interconnec-
tions with global citizenship and justice (Black and Burisch, 2021, p. 56). In the
context of the biennial, the commission’s curatorial framework encouraged and
facilitated the collaborative process, allowing the Arantepacua community to craft
their retelling as part of their ongoing fight for justice.

FIGURE 13.4 Adela Goldbard, Kurhirani no ambakiti (quemar al diablo): porque

solo así nos escuchan (2020). Installation detail. 14th FEMSA Biennial.
­Courtesy of the artist.
286  Ana S. González Rueda and David A. J. Murrieta Flores

The more than 300 clay diablitos, hand-painted with police and military
­uniforms, and more than 70 wooden police cars and trucks point to the excessive
use of force by the Michoacán police (Goldbard, 2021). The pirekuas, mostly sung
in Purépecha, narrate the events of 5 April, remember the deceased and praise the
strength and resilience of the community (Goldbard, 2021): ‘Arantepacua vive y
seguirá viviendo; hoy se escucha su voz’ (‘Arantepacua lives and will keep living;
its voice is heard today’). Overall, the installation presents the tensions that lie in
the distinction between art and craft. As Bryan-Wilson (2017, p. 6) suggests, the
dynamics between ‘fine art/non-fine art [bring] to the fore extraordinarily fraught
questions about race, cultural appropriation, valuation and class disparity’. How-
ever, while the line drawn between art and craft has emphasised the latter’s func-
tionality or use-value, analysis and interpretation of art in the 21st century tends
to explore the collapse of such boundaries (Bryan-Wilson, 2017, p. 13). Goldbard
(2021) notes that indigenous communities’ artistic practice preserves and compli-
cates oral memory, expresses identity and connects people to their territory, tradi-
tion and culture—all of which are urgently needed in a world in crisis. Similarly, in
their introduction to The New Politics of the Handmade, editors Anthea Black and
Nicole Burisch (2021, p. 31) stress the need for ‘re-articulating craft as a world-
making and geographically specific aesthetic practice that connects to the land’.
Black and Burisch reflect that while craft alone might not overturn colonial frame-
works, it can offer alternative ways of knowing and imagining that contribute to

FIGURE 13.5 Adela Goldbard, Kurhirani no ambakiti (quemar al diablo): porque solo

así nos escuchan (2020). Installation view. 14th FEMSA Biennial, Centro
Cultural Clavijero, Morelia, Mexico. Courtesy of the artist.
 Exhibition-making as storytelling  287

cultural transformation. For Goldbard (2021), the biennial platform sustained some
of the main aims of her project: making visible the attack of 5 April and giving
voice to the community’s struggle. Nevertheless, she stressed that, more than vin-
dicating popular art, decolonising contemporary art requires moving away from its
commodification, and abolishing or renewing its ‘alienating and stagnant institu-
tions’ (Goldbard, 2021). Embroiled in these complex politics, the meeting between
art and craft staged by Goldbard’s project can be seen as what Bryan-Wilson (2017,
p. 19) calls ‘forms of making side by side’ that offer no straightforward conclu-
sions. These practices are best approached with a ‘both-at once’ or ‘both/and’
logic (Bryan-Wilson, 2017, p. 36): art and craft, authored and collaborative, action
and object, local and global, aesthetic and political. While, during the 20th cen-
tury, tradition was retrieved as part of the country’s modernist project (ultimately
reinforcing binary distinctions), contemporary practices concentrate on blurring
their limits. In this case, by working at the seams of these boundaries, the project
­presents the community’s claim over their history.
We have necessarily focused on only 2 out of 24 artistic commissions and
5 local exhibitions organised by the biennial. Our analysis is inevitably limited
to the works that, in our view, best reflected the biennial’s curatorial proposition
and its emphasis on reconsidering official narratives and promoting co-creative
processes of knowledge production. To briefly cite one more example, Costa Rican
artist Carlos Fernández’s site-specific installation Continua despensa de saberes—­
comprised of a series of ten abstract paintings and three photographs—responded
to the 16th-century fresco paintings depicting botany lessons on the walls of the
Old Jesuit School in Pátzcuaro.8 Fernández (2021) regards his paintings as a ‘live
register’ that incorporates graphics from the agronomy classes he teaches and
the virtual dinners he hosted during lockdown, in which he performed a mono-
logue tracing food products and capitalist trade networks. Fieldworkers, cooking
processes and local markets are layered onto the canvas. As curator Gabriela Saenz
observes, Fernández’s work unveils traditional, more sustainable agricultural prac-
tices (Fernández, 2021). Overall, the biennial’s decentralising, revisionist approach
presented situated artmaking at the end of the world. Danowski and Viveiros de
Castro (2017, p. 5) describe the Anthropocene as a ‘passive present’ or a present
‘without a view’. We are living through a ‘shared catastrophe’ that we can no
longer revert, which makes its mitigation more urgent (Chakrabarty, 2009, p. 218).
Crucially, as philosopher Bruno Latour (2017, p. 90) sustains, the events we need
to cope with lie largely in the past rather than the future.
In the context of precarious cultural labour and contested narratives about
­Mexican identity, the 14th FEMSA Biennial offered a decentralising, revisionist
perspective on the role of art in history-making. The biennial’s discursive approach
presented a historiographical intervention that questioned homogenising national
narratives and re-examined, in particular, the concept of artesanía and its part in the
post-Revolutionary definition of Mexican identity. Our analysis considered both
the role of muralism within a larger cultural and educational programme during
288  Ana S. González Rueda and David A. J. Murrieta Flores

the 20th century and the biennial’s revision and challenge to official ­historical
discourse. Through its public and exhibition programmes, the biennial facilitated
contemporary art retellings in close collaboration with the local indigenous com-
munities. While the corporate framework sustaining these commissions raises
concerns regarding their critical and political potential, the curatorial proposition
brought a crucial issue to the fore: the pressing concern about whom history speaks
for and the possibility of communities crafting their counter-stories in response to
their erasure. By approaching the biennial through storytelling, this chapter pro-
poses that large-scale exhibitions may be knowledge- and world-making practices
that potentially reflect the many worlds in the world.

Notes
1 FEMSA Foundation works in three main areas: water sanitation and security, early
­childhood development and a cultural programme that promotes Latin American ­modern
and contemporary art.
2 The title of the 2018 FEMSA Biennial referenced Bruno Latour’s epistemological
­critique in We Have Never Been Modern, first published in French in 1991.
3 Another instance of friction between the SEP and the DAPP surrounding notions of
propaganda was the film production programme that various post-Revolutionary gov-
ernments, including that of Cárdenas, had implemented as part of their plans for educa-
tion. The programme aligned with the ‘Mexicanisation’ project and the formation of
a national imaginary, originally developed by the SEP (see Aobites and Loyo, 2010,
p. 246). However, by 1938, it had been taken over by the DAPP, which understood
it as less a cultural issue than one of interior propaganda in which a good amount of
documentary films promoting the works of the Cárdenas administration be funded and
created in a very short time (see Dümmer-Scheel, 2018, p. 294).
4 Despite muralism’s focus on the masses, it was simultaneously for elite ‘initiates’, as
González Mello (2008) demonstrates in his detailed reading of the masonic and occult
elements of murals by Rivera and Orozco from the 1920s to the 1940s.
5 As the museum’s website states, its purpose was to ‘assert the economic and aesthetic
value of products by Purépecha people’ native to the state of Michoacán (INAH, 2020).
The first Museo de Arte Popular in Mexico City opened in 2006.
6 So ingrained was this kind of reading of murals that Philip Guston and Reuben Kadish’s
work in Morelia about fascism and racism in the US came to be popularly known as The
Inquisition, with its hooded figures understood as representations of Spanish Catholic
torturers.
7 A detailed visual analysis of the mural is available from Canal Crefal (2018). Conoce el
Mural de Juan O’Gorman. 24 October. [Online video]: [Link]
8 The school was founded in 1574. It belonged to the Jesuits until 1767. It subsequently
held diverse functions until around 1960, when it was abandoned. The building was
restored between 1990 and 1994 and is now a dependency of Michoacan’s Culture
­Ministry (Sistema de Información Cultural, 2017).

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14
THE ARRIVANTS EXHIBITION
Art, migration, museums and resurrections

Allison Thompson

Introduction
For more than 25 years, since the quincentennial of Columbus’s arrival in
the ­Caribbean, there has been a growing interest in exhibitions that ‘explore’
­Caribbean art. The majority of these shows have been presented in European or
North American institutions, with only a few having reached the Caribbean.1 What
is required to construct a more equitable global platform from which to articu-
late a discourse on contemporary Caribbean visual practice? What is required to
curate an exhibition of Caribbean art first and foremost from a ­Caribbean per-
spective and for a Caribbean audience—an exhibition that is regional in its focus
and its staging, able to travel first through the Caribbean but also internation-
ally, as a counterpoint to those exhibitions that have gained wider international
­exposure in the past?
The exhibition Arrivants: Art and Migration in the Anglophone Caribbean
World contemplated these questions in the early stages of its conception. Taking its
title and its focus on ‘the journey’ from Kamau Brathwaite’s The Arrivants trilogy,
this exhibition, which included the work of 25 artists from the Caribbean and the
wider diaspora, explored the diasporic nature of Caribbean society as documented
and interrogated through its artistic production.2 Planned as part of the Horizon
2020 EU-LAC Museums and Migration project, the exhibition, which opened at
the Barbados Museum and Historical Society in November 2018, sought to inves-
tigate the impact of migration and gender, and the resulting cultural diasporas, on
the field of contemporary visual art and on curatorship in particular. This exhibi-
tion, curated by myself and Veerle Poupeye, cast its gaze on the issues represented
from within the Caribbean itself, taking into consideration how such projects are
­negotiated in the Caribbean context.3

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-17
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
 Art, migration, museums, and resurrections  293

Kamau Brathwaite’s Arrivants: A New World Trilogy (1973), consists of three

long poems—Rights of Passage (1967), Masks (1968) and Islands (1969)—that
each deal in their different ways with journeys and a ‘rediscovery’ of Africa
(Brown, 1995). Brathwaite, who originally left Barbados in 1949 to study history
at the University of Cambridge, subsequently travelled to Ghana in 1955 to work
as an education officer. While there, he witnessed Kwame Nkrumah’s rise to power
and the emergence of Ghana as the first African state to gain independence from
Britain, two events that impacted his ideas about Caribbean culture.
Brathwaite later said of the transformative experience of his time in Africa:

Slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, I came to a sense of identification of myself with

these people, my living diviners. I came to connect my history with theirs, the
bridge of my mind now linking Atlantic and ancestor, homeland and heartland
[…]. And I came home to find that I had not really left. That it was still Africa;
Africa in the Caribbean.
(Coombs, 1974, as cited in Morris, 1995, p. 118)

Brathwaite returned to the Caribbean in 1962 and the following year accepted
a teaching post at the University of the West Indies Mona Campus in Jamaica, but
a few years later, he returned to the UK to pursue a PhD at the University of Sussex.
It was at this time that he, along with John La Rose and Andrew Salkey, founded the
Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM), an important collective of ­Caribbean writers
and artists. This fertile period spent across three continents formed the grounding
of the Arrivants book, which has been described as ‘a major document of African
reconnection [that] […] charts a set of overlapping psychic journeys to, from and
within the New World and Africa, acknowledging achievement and some painful
realities, examining self and community, past and present’ (Morris, 1995, p. 129).
Migration, both voluntary and forced, is and always has been central to the story
of the Caribbean; as such, it is deeply embedded in the psyche of Caribbean people
and has shaped their identities and experiences, whether they are migrants them-
selves or not. From the arrival of European expeditions, dating from the end of the
15th century, and the extermination of the indigenous population, the Caribbean
was repopulated first by Europeans as well as through forced migration from Africa
and subsequent waves of migration from Asia and North and South America. The
20th century also witnessed significant movement out of the Caribbean to diasporic
centres such as London, New York, Miami and Toronto. There has also been ongo-
ing migration into and throughout the region. The art selected for this exhibition
focused on the social and cultural impact of these migratory patterns and histories,
their political significance, as well as acts of defiance and resistance and the impli-
cations for individual and collective identities. The work of Kamau Brathwaite
provided inspiration on how traditional practices, models and languages might be
reconsidered, altered or creolised.
294  Allison Thompson

Both curators of the Arrivants exhibition, Veerle Poupeye and myself, migrated
to the Caribbean in the 1980s from Belgium and Canada, respectively. We both have
had long careers as educators, curators and writers in the Caribbean, but we remain in
some sense ‘outsiders’. This perspective of living between two places, of belonging
in some way to a somewhere else, is the experience of the migrant. Indeed, many of
the key texts on Caribbean identity and culture have been impacted by the writer’s
experience of distance or remove, strangeness, of being outside or away.
The Caribbean, while often superficially characterised as an undifferentiated
region, is in fact a complex and highly varied space in terms of geographies, his-
tories, ethnicities, religious or spiritual practices, languages and more. For the
Arrivants exhibition, it was decided to give particular focus to the Anglophone
Caribbean from the early 20th century to the present day and to the cultural impact
of migration from and to the UK, North America and Europe, as well as move-
ment within the Caribbean and Central American region. Implicit in this are the
earlier histories of forced and voluntary migration that have shaped the Caribbean
as we know it today and the manner in which these have shaped the identities
and experiences of Caribbean peoples, whether they are themselves migrants or
not. Most of all, the exhibition focused on the social and cultural impacts of these
migratory movements, their political significance, the histories of defiance and
resistance, and their implications for individual and collective identities. While
the decision to focus on the Anglophone Caribbean was the result of certain practi-
cal ­considerations—notably the relatively small scale of the project, the ease of
accessibility to work and the ability to provide more focus on a restricted scope of
research—this brings with it several shortcomings and biases. It continues to give
priority to the divisions within the Caribbean based on the history of colonisation,
most notably evident in the divisions of language today. In reality, people within
the ­Caribbean have moved across these barriers for multiple reasons, including
education, employment and family. While Barbados is unique in its uninterrupted
history of colonisation under the British, many Caribbean countries experienced
periods of control under differing imperial powers, with present-day cultures that
reflect this.
Many of the artists included in the exhibition have lived in multiple locations
and have reflected on this experience in their work; as well, the broader effects of
diaspora, displacement and migration are key themes in the work of many artists in
the Caribbean and its diaspora alike. Given the recent migration crises throughout
the world, and particularly the questions about the immigration status of members
of the Windrush generation in the UK, the subject has taken on particular potency
in this moment.
A second but important consideration in conceiving this exhibition pertained to
the representation of Caribbean art in survey and thematic shows, most of which
have been initiated, funded and toured by major institutions in metropolitan cen-
tres and most of which have never even been shown in the Caribbean—a major
imbalance in the representation of Caribbean art that needs to be addressed. Was
 Art, migration, museums, and resurrections  295

it possible, the organisers wondered, to rethink the exhibition format to respond to

the specific needs and aspirations of exhibition-making in the region, to speak first
to a Caribbean audience, but then also present an inflected voice to a global audi-
ence? Caribbean writers throughout the 20th century have had a profound influ-
ence on cultural and postcolonial studies—Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Edouard
­Glissant, Kamau Brathwaite, George Lamming, Wilson Harris, Derek Walcott,
Sylvia ­Winter, Stuart Hall and the list goes on. These critical thinkers are known
and cited globally to describe the social transformations over the last century. But
notwithstanding the broad application and relevance of their radical ideas, the ker-
nels of this thought were rooted within the unique space described as the Caribbean.
Noted European curator Hans Ulrich Obrist (2014, p. 14) has famously remarked
on his reliance on Caribbean theorists, especially Édouard Glissant in his attempt to
formulate an approach of globality in his projects. But as art educator and curator
Nanne Buurman has pointed out in her essay ‘The Blind Spot of Global Art? Hans
Ulrich Obrist’s Ways of Curating’, the proliferation of contemporary art that is cir-
culated as ‘global art’ in biennials and art fairs worldwide raises ethical questions
about the tropes of globality and practices that presume to transcend territorial
borders and the inequitable access to resources and visibility. Themes of migration,
in particular, have been identified as one of the major conundrums of the current
global condition, but as Buurman indicates, there is a difference between volun-
tary and forced migration (Buurman, 2018, pp. 301–22). How can curators in the
Caribbean address these power imbalances as they relate to access to resources and
visibility? And how do we rethink the exhibition model to resituate the dialogue of
a Caribbean contemporary and its relationship to the global?
In their book Situating Global Art, Buurman and her co-authors address the
structural conditions of exclusion and systemic discriminations caused by the logic
of national and regional canons, art history’s ‘colonial unconscious’ (Dornhof
et al., 2018, p. 11). They call for efforts to decolonise art historical knowledge
and replace binary epistemological models with more relational approaches that
focus on ‘contacts, flows and circulations, as well as global relations of production’
(Dornhof et al., 2018, p. 12). The traditional Eurocentric or Western narrative of
a linear, chronological historiography of progress has been widely criticised for
failing to acknowledge the existence of multiple modernities as well as the hetero-
geneity of coexisting contemporary art practices. The authors’ description of a more
fluid and non-linear model echoes Kamau Brathwaite’s concept of Tidalectics, his
riposte to the fixed, assured, earthbound reasonings of European thought embodied
in Hegel’s dialectic and inspired instead by the fluctuating tides, rhythmic waves
and itinerancy of the ocean in modelling a different interpretative approach.
Museums and their practices of exhibition display are rooted in a European
tradition of 19th-century empire building through amassing colonial collections
of looted objects and staging ‘great exhibitions’ and human zoos, and they are
implicitly linked with the agendas of nation-building. However, Dornhof et al.
argue that the exhibition format, with its ability to present a variety of images
296  Allison Thompson

and objects from diverse contexts simultaneously, has the capacity to function as
a ­counter-model and a ‘critical corrective’ to linear historiographies and diachronic
narratives of progress—more so than the linearity of written text. (Of course,
Brathwaite’s poetry confounded this very presumption of linearity!)
The emergence of so-called global art as represented, for example, in the
­proliferation and expansion of biennials can mask deep inequities and biases—the
radically varying social, political and economic conditions that impact art produc-
tion, distribution and reception worldwide. Dornhof et al. argue for a perspective
that acknowledges ‘the inherent transculturality of artistic practices and artefacts’,
in an effort to account for their ‘dynamic cross-cultural constellations, migrations
and transformations, locations and dislocations’ (2018, p. 17).
The concept of transculturation, first articulated by Cuban anthropologist ­Fernando
Ortiz Fernández in the 1940s, has more recently been revived for its potential to
address some of the current imbalances. Ortiz developed the term in his classic text
Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (1940), as an alternative to acculturation,
explaining that when a dominant culture imposes its ideas and practices on another,
both are transformed through the multidirectional reciprocity of the exchange (Ortiz,
1995). The German philosopher Wolfgang Welsch introduced the term ‘transcultur-
ality’ in the 1990s (seemingly without acknowledging Ortiz’s precedent half a cen-
tury earlier) as an alternative to multiculturality or interculturality, which portray
cultures as homogenous and monolithic (like distinct spheres), since contemporary
societies are characterised by greater inner differentiation and complexity as a result
of multiple cultural influences, whether they experience migration or not (Welsch,
1999). For Welsch, the transcultural was equated with the cosmopolitan or syncretic
and could serve as a political and ethical corrective to ethnocentrism and xenophobia.
More recently, art historian Monica Juneja has identified the limitation of
Welsch’s description, which assumes that border crossings and cultural mix-
­
ing were unique attributes of modernity. She argues that transculturation denotes
a dynamic process of transformation that unfolds through extended contacts and
relationships between cultures. She reminds us that the emergence of the discur-
sive category of ‘culture’ within the social sciences is tied to the idea of the mod-
ern nation, premised on the belief that identifiable groups were ‘ethnically bound,
internally cohesive and linguistically homogeneous spheres’ (Juneja and Kravagna,
2013, p. 25). But this seemingly stable conception was challenged or threatened by
contradictory trends generated by mobility and extended contacts that have charac-
terised societies for centuries. The terms transculturation and transculturality are
explicit critiques of this notion, for the prefix ‘trans’ enables emancipation from the
concept: ‘Transculturality is about spatial mobility, circulation or flows, an insight
drawn from studies of globalisation, but is neither synonymous with nor reducible
to these’ (Juneja and Kravagna, 2013, p. 25).
Importantly, Juneja argues for using transculturality as an analytical mode
rather than a theoretical given. It is necessary to acknowledge a range of possible
transactions rather than fixed dichotomies or polar positions. While concepts such
 Art, migration, museums, and resurrections  297

as syncretism, creolisation and hybridity, which have emerged in those regions

that had close ties with colonialism, notably the Caribbean and Latin America, are
related, they have become ‘globalised’ in their usage but also diluted from their
original meaning and should not be conflated with transculturation:

it [transculturation] rather operates on a different register and highlights the

p­ rocedural character of a broad variety of phenomena, including flows, entan-
glements, and other forms of circulation, and confronts us with the challenge of
finding a precise language to capture the morphology of the relationships built
into these phenomena.
(Juneja and Kravagna, 2013, p. 29)

Decolonisation is identified as a transcultural project. The model of colonialism

describes the transmission of culture from metropolitan centres to colonised periph-
eries where it is uncritically absorbed as a result of asymmetries of power. But this
model, even in cases where colonies have reconfigured the culture exported to
them, is distorted by its construction as the coloniser–colony binary. A transcultural
view refutes the myth of the dominant, fixed and immutable culture of the coloniser
and instead allows us to locate these processes in a global context that transcends
this opposition and views cultural phenomena as multi-sited interactions.
Relying on the adaptive concept of transculturation as articulated by Juneja,
Dornhof et al. propose focusing on ‘transcultural topologies’ of global art—made
up of institutions, actors and specific art practices as well as historiography and
curation—that serve as ‘nodal points’ in networks that transcend bounded or
­geographical categories of nation, region or city.

Focusing on the transcultural topologies of global art thus permits the study of
relational processes of circulation and exchange while also calling into question
the idea of ethno-cultural locality as a nostalgic marker of authenticity as well
as celebrations of multicultural plurality that disregard ongoing inequalities in
capitalist and (neo) colonial power relations.
(Dornhof et al., 2018, p. 18)

If transculturation, and by extension Tidalectics, can function as an analytical

mode, the challenge is to conceive how this manifested in curatorial practice, in
the face of the gross inequities in the distribution of resources, influence and power.
Responding to earlier exhibitions of Caribbean art, the Arrivants project intended
to situate this discussion within the context of the Caribbean, beginning with
­Barbados. While the exhibition focused on the Anglophone Caribbean, it included
artists from the diaspora, several of whom were exhibiting in the region for the first
time. The original exhibition proposal emphasised the intention to cast its gaze on
the issues represented from within the Caribbean itself. And while diaspora artists
were included, there was a deliberate intention to represent the diversity of artists and
298  Allison Thompson

artworks that originate in the Caribbean, as this is often also a deficiency in externally
curated exhibitions. As a project, Arrivants also reflected on the processes involved
in art exhibition-making in the Caribbean, the challenges as well as the opportunities
for new thinking and innovative approaches and the need for capacity development.
A blog was established on which members of the curatorial team could share their
thoughts and reflections, along with photographic and video documentation of the
installation process and the exhibition, as well as short interviews with participants.4
Two broad themes were eventually identified, which helped to frame our think-
ing and choice of works: place/displacement and diasporic subjectivities.

Place/displacement
A key issue in diasporic experiences is the connection to place—both in terms of
the imaginaries that surround the original homeland and the sense of connection, or
lack thereof, to the place of arrival and settlement—and at times perilous and alien-
ating process of moving from place to place, whether by force or by choice. These
are common preoccupations in the work of artists who are themselves migrants,
whose subjectivities are shaped by various diasporas and who are part of the cos-
mopolitan societies of the Caribbean as frequent travellers. Such a sense of dis-
placement also occurs in the context of Caribbean tourism, which can be seen as
the flipside of migration, which generates a largely fictional sense of place that is
rooted in nostalgia, stereotype and exploitation.

Diasporic subjectivities
Between the diasporic origins of the Caribbean and the continued transnational
movements of Caribbean people, identities are constantly renegotiated, with regard
to notions of ‘home’ and responses to life in the diaspora, where cultures collide as
much as they do in the Caribbean itself. This shapes the experiences and definitions
of self, community, family, race, social status and gender and sexuality, in both
positive and negative ways.

The exhibition venue

Unlike neighbouring countries, such as Guyana, Jamaica, the Bahamas or Cayman
Islands, Barbados does not have a national gallery, despite decades of calls for one
from the local art community. Nor does it have a purpose-built museum for contem-
porary art such as those of Martinique, the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico. Thus,
it was largely out of necessity that the decision was taken to locate the exhibition
at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. As such, the Arrivants exhibition
was conceived as an intervention into the historically charged environment of the
museum, which is located in a 19th-century military prison, located within the envi-
rons of the historic Garrison Savannah area.5 The works were installed in two small
 Art, migration, museums, and resurrections  299

temporary gallery spaces (the Aall Gallery and a former storage room, c­ onverted in
the 1990s and referred to as the Exhibition Gallery), as well as the Cunard ­Gallery,
which houses a permanent collection of historical prints. Additional works were
installed outside the museum by the entrance, in the interior walkways, in a prison
cell and in one of the period rooms of the ­Warmington Gallery.
Outside the museum, works by Eddie Chambers and Hew Locke were situ-
ated on either side of the large entrance. Chambers was born in Wolverhampton,
UK to parents who had emigrated from Jamaica as part of what became known
as the ‘Windrush generation’, a term referring to West Indian people who were
invited by the colonial British government to help rebuild Britain in the aftermath
of the Second World War.6 The 1948 British Nationality Act gave all subjects of the
British Empire citizenship and the right of settlement in the UK. Despite this, the
new Caribbean arrivants encountered intense racism and a colour bar that excluded
them from housing, many types of employment and social spaces such as pubs
and restaurants. The British Parliament subsequently passed immigration laws in
1962, 1968 and 1971 that radically curtailed immigration to Britain from the Com-
monwealth, bringing the Windrush era to a close. The term has recently received
renewed attention in the wake of the Windrush scandal, during which many of
these early West Indian settlers found their citizenship called into question by the
authorities. Hundreds of citizens were detained, deported and denied legal rights
as a result of a 2012 government policy to create a ‘hostile environment’ for immi-
grants. The Windrush report, which investigated the scandal, ultimately presented
evidence that harmful immigration policies were the result of the public’s and offi-
cials’ poor understanding of Britain’s colonial history.
This lived experience of the hostile and racist environment in which West
­Indians lived, one that led to riots in the late 1950s and escalated to militarised
police aggression in the 1970s, informs the work of Eddie Chambers.7 In Untitled
(1994), which was included in the Arrivants exhibition, Chambers reconfigures the
Union Jack, changing the colours to red, gold and green, symbolic of Rastafari cul-
ture. The work was first produced as part of a project in which artists were invited
to design flags for the Liverpool Town Hall. Chambers explained:

Growing up Black, in Britain, in the 1970s, it seemed to me that I did not really
have a flag. I had never been to Jamaica, so I did not feel that the flag of that
country was mine. Racism and a certainly alienation from the British nation
state meant that I did not see the British flag as being mine either. What I did
start to feel, by my mid-teens, was a strong pride in my Afrocentric ancestry,
history and heritage, engendered, in no small part, by the teachings of Rastafari,
and reggae music. My flag, made in the mid-1990s by a flag maker, was my
attempt to create a Black British ensign, that took account of the influence of
Rastafari on the making of Black Britain. With its Rastafari colours of red, gold
and green, for me at least, this was a flag that I could finally identify with.
(Chambers, 2018).
300  Allison Thompson

Veerle Poupeye has identified in Chambers’s work a ‘subversive inversion of

images and symbols’ similar to the mocking tactics traditionally used in Caribbean
carnivals, such as Jamaica’s Jonkonnu, observing that Chambers imposed a ‘black’
identity on a quintessentially ‘white’ symbol (Poupeye, 2022, p. 19).
There are protocols in place that govern the display of national symbols, and when
Chambers’s flag was first exhibited at the Liverpool Town Hall, it was removed after
only one day. Poupeye describes that, in an ironic twist, Chambers’s flag, which was
deemed unsuitable for display, was nevertheless ceremoniously folded and formally
returned to him. This history gave us pause as we pondered what procedures to put
in place to fly Chambers’s flag on the flagpole outside the Barbados Museum, next
to the Barbados flag. The imposition of a black identity on a symbol of Britishness
in a formerly colonised island where the vast majority of the population are descend-
ants of African slaves resonates in a very different way than it does in the UK. We
contemplated alternative options for displaying Chambers’s work if the museum was
instructed to remove it, but that never happened. The only incident occurred the night
of the exhibition opening when a museum guard lowered Chambers’s flag along with
the Barbados flag at sunset, as protocol dictated. We had to explain that this was
a work of art and the flag needed to be quickly raised again before the guests arrived.
Also installed at the front of the museum, next to Chambers’s flag, was a new
work commissioned from Guyanese British artist Hew Locke, which also manipu-
lated iconic yet contested national imagery. Locke has been investigating the his-
tory and symbolism of public monuments for over 15 years, altering their images
with paint and collage. In response to the many recent controversies surrounding
statues commemorating war heroes and political figures, and in questioning the
notion of designating public and national heroes, Locke has created interventions
in the form of altered photographs, which he describes as ‘mindful vandalism’.8
Images of statues of Christopher Columbus, Edward Colston and Peter Stuyvesant
have been garishly draped in cheap gold chains, medals and other adornments—the
excessive wealth and booty harvested by the enterprise of empire.
For the Arrivants exhibition, Locke was invited to address the statue of Lord
Horatio Nelson, which had been located in the centre of Bridgetown since the early
19th century. The bronze statue was originally commissioned by public subscrip-
tion from Sir Richard Westmacott, following Admiral Nelson’s death in battle at
Cape Trafalgar in 1805, and was erected at the top of Broad Street in front of the
Parliament Buildings in 1813, in what was then named Trafalgar Square. The statue
pre-dates Nelson’s column in London’s Trafalgar Square by almost three decades.
The Barbados monument became a source of controversy in the post-independence
era, particularly after the site was renamed ‘National Heroes Square’. This move
alone necessitated a rethinking of the historical narratives surrounding Nelson’s
legacy as the protector of Great Britain’s hold on the Caribbean island.
In Nelson, Bridgetown (2018), Locke’s treatment of Lord Nelson differs from
many of his other digital manipulations of monuments. Locke describes the earlier
images as more graphic while this one is more impressionistic. Rather than being
 Art, migration, museums, and resurrections  301

draped with the trappings of his conquests, Nelson is surrounded by images that
seem to emerge as ghostly apparitions, an aura of the violence that characterised
the colonial era. Skulls and bodies appear from the patinated bronze of Nelson’s
figure like silent witnesses and victims. His military jacket is transformed into the
Union Jack, emphasising Nelson’s role as the embodiment of the empire’s naval
power. The graphic diagram of bound human cargo aboard the slave ship Brooke is
printed across the plinth of the statue below Nelson’s name, unmistakably linking
his exploits with the British transatlantic slave trade. The larger-than-life digital
image of Locke’s altered Nelson was the first to be presented in the form of a two-
dimensional cut-out figure as a simulated public monument. ‘History is messy’,
Locke states. ‘But there are means of reconciling with it’ (Locke, 2018).9
Locke’s intervention at the Barbados Museum was a temporary one, and at the
end of the exhibition, the work, which was digitally printed on foam-core was, at
the artist’s instructions, destroyed with a sledgehammer. In retrospect, this was
an uncanny foreshadowing of events around the world, when public monuments
were pulled down, notably that of Edward Colston in Bristol. In November 2020,
on the occasion of Barbados’s 54th anniversary of independence, the government
formally removed the bronze statue of Nelson from his plinth in Bridgetown.
Stepping through the large fortified doors of the Barbados Museum, the first
work viewers encountered was Kelley-Ann Lindo’s Sending Love Inna Barrel
(2018). Four cardboard shipping barrels were suspended from the ceiling, end to
end, forming a long tunnel. Chairs were placed at either end, and visitors were
invited to engage in conversation through the long echoing chamber. The work is
a response to the feelings of abandonment experienced by Caribbean children left
behind when their parents migrated overseas. It was not uncommon for parents to
leave children with family members or neighbours for years while they struggled
to secure housing, employment and some financial security before bringing their
children to join them. In the meantime, parents would send clothing and foodstuff
in large cardboard shipping barrels, which were eagerly received, not only for the
goods inside but also as a longed-for connection with mothers or fathers. The term
‘barrel children’ is used to refer to this phenomenon, acknowledging the traumatic
repercussions this has had. Lindo has commented:

Traumatic memories are forever susceptible to change, each time there are
attempts to recollect it, and it is that fragility I have explored, through the use
and manipulation of fragile materials. My ongoing body of work seeks to estab-
lish a conversation around the dynamics surrounding the ‘barrel children’ syn-
drome within the Caribbean culture – a term referring to children who have been
left behind by one or both parents who have migrated.
(Lindo, 2018)

The barrel is a recurring image in a number of works in the exhibition, symbolic

of a nomadic existence as well as the movement of both peoples and goods that
302  Allison Thompson

has governed the region’s history. For Reparation (2003), Guyanese artist Philip
Moore repurposed the cardboard container used by West Indians to import con-
sumer goods from England and the United States, painting the surface with intri-
cate patterns, sweeping brushstrokes and sequin-like dabs of paint. Prominent
among the images is a crowned, two-faced colossus, his armour itself the profile of
another face with a row of all-seeing eyes. The heart-lined strip that wraps around
the barrel is highlighted by rows of holes punctured through the cardboard surface
and repeated in patterns across the rest of the object. These are illuminated by
a string of Christmas lights inside the barrel, evocative of a metropolitan city at
night; metal rings at the top indicate that the barrel could be hung like a chandelier
or beacon. The title, Reparation, refers to the paltry compensation handed to slaves
at the moment of Emancipation as well as more recent calls for economic restitu-
tion to be paid to descendants of slaves by those who profited from their enforced
and unpaid labour.
Barrels also appear repeatedly in the epic painted series by Guyanese artist
­Stanley Greaves, There is a Meeting Here Tonight; however, here, these are the
steel drums used to export oil. In The Annunciation (1993), a man stands inside the
drum, which is transported on a dolly, pushed by the woman beside him, an agri-
cultural worker identified by her stalk of sugar cane. While the specific meaning of
the figures, objects and relationships in these surreal works is evasive, the barrels
are pervasive, signalling the extraction of resources and circulation of capital that
continues to influence the political instability in the region.
Kishan Munroe, an interdisciplinary artist from the Bahamas, produced a sin-
gularly remarkable work for the Arrivants exhibition. Munroe, whose practice is
rooted in extensive historical research, employs documentary practice to promote
engagement with underexplored narratives of the African diaspora. Drifter in Resi-
dence (2018) was a live expedition and video installation in which the artist under-
took what he described as an ‘artist’s residency at sea’ (Munroe, 2018). Based
on extensive research and training in survival techniques, Munroe constructed a
raft—kept afloat on a platform of barrels—for an expedition on the Atlantic Ocean
at the peak of hurricane season. In a statement, the artist explained:

This ‘introspective/retrospective’ pilgrimage marks a ten-year milestone in

my professional artistic journey, actively engaged in extensive anthropologi-
cal investigations through cultural immersion. With this phase of the project
I literally plunge into the foreign world of the ocean, seeking to tap into the
­narratives, realities and histories of man’s precarious relationship with the sea
and his never-ending quest for ‘home’.
(Munroe, 2018)

For the Arrivants exhibition, nine video screens were installed in the Exhibi-
tion Gallery in three rows of three. The outer eight screens showed images of
the research and construction process as the artist conceived of and built the raft,
 Art, migration, museums, and resurrections  303

while the central screen presented a live feed of the artist drifting at sea, conveying
the isolation and vulnerability of this singular yet heroic figure adrift in the expanse
of the ocean.
The sea was another recurring theme. Nadia Huggins presented two works
from her Transformations series (2014–2016), a group of diptychs that explore the
relationship between the artist and the marine ecosystem. The artist pairs cropped
photographic self-portraits with marine organisms resulting in a new and hybrid
relationship. Huggins explains:

In the sea, as a woman who identifies as other, my body becomes displaced from
my everyday experiences. Gender, race, and class are dissolved because there
are no social and political constructs to restrain and dictate my identity. These
constructs have no place or value in that environment.
(Huggins, 2018)

Cosmo Whyte’s The Expat (2017) provided a poetic corollary to Huggins’s

images—a self-portrait of the artist seen from behind, his damp back dotted with
clumps of barnacles, a performative display that presents bodies, and bodies of
water, as liminal.
Whyte’s In the Belly of the Whale (2018), responded to the physical space and
history of the Barbados Museum, specifically a jail cell which has been preserved
as a record of the building’s original function as a military prison. With the cell
door shut tight, viewers had to peer through the small opening to glimpse the spar-
tan and cramped environment which Whyte transformed with veils and soft light-
ing. Artefacts from the museum’s collection—an African drum, large ceramic jugs,
a funerary urn and a ceramic replica of an Ife head—were surrounded by dozens
of empty and discarded rum bottles, a rusty machete and an old shoe; a clash of
historical artefacts and detritus of a colonial past.
Veronica Ryan also created an installation that responded to the Museum’s
existing exhibition spaces with work that like Whyte’s, challenged traditional
notions of the artefact. Shack Shack (2018) consists of a series of small mixed
media sculptures displayed in a pair of glass cabinets built into the thick coral stone
walls of the Aall Gallery. The title references the long wooden seed pods produced
by the flamboyant tree and woman’s tongue tree (Albizia Lebbeck) that appear in
the cabinets, bound together with twine. Ryan combines natural, organic elements
with colourful nylon fishing line, woven plastic bags and crumpled soft-drink bot-
tles. Wrapped, bound, nestled and confined, these various materials—natural and
­manmade—revel in their contorted eccentricities. Some of the objects are stitched
into pillows, concealed within crocheted covers or displayed on doilies. The sin-
gular objects spaced out on the shelves exist as separate islands, curiosities that
are paradoxically familiar and strange. They teeter between museum artefact and
domestic ornament, preserved in an anthropological display case or the cabinet of
a West Indian front room.
304  Allison Thompson

Ryan’s focus on the rich and varied—and increasingly imperilled—natural life

of the region resonated with the paintings of Lynn Parotti and Winston ­Kellman.
Parotti’s Microatoll I and II (2016), part of her Bahama Land series, provide
a  microscopic view of a thriving reef head with corals as seen through the crys-
tal Caribbean water, an environment of extraordinary life forms and beauty. But
Parotti introduces foreign elements that suggest an imperilled ecosystem.
Winston Kellman’s seascapes are recorded from the ocean’s edge, looking out
across the rugged east coast of Barbados from a small fishing village known as
­Bathsheba, which lies on the brink of the ‘Black Atlantic’. Paul Gilroy uses this phrase
to describe an African diasporic model of modernity understood from a transnational
and intercultural perspective that acknowledges the centrality of the experience of
slavery as central to plantation economies and imperial capitalism (Gilroy, 1993,
p. 15). Every day, Kellman paints the same yet changing view; Paul Gilroy’s ‘chang-
ing same’, a phrase that emphasises the connectedness between different moments
that allows us to identify systems of cultural exchange and continuity across time
(Gilroy, 1993). The artist completes each work in one sitting, recording a site which
is layered with a history of trauma that is both personal and collective, but also cap-
turing the ephemeral atmospheric sensations of that unique encounter. Collectively—
and ultimately this is how the works need to be understood—the Bathsheba Series
forms a diary or journal that records the intersection of place and memory.
Marianne Keating brings a unique perspective to the selection of works in the
Arrivants exhibition. Born in Ireland and based in London, Keating has created
Landlessness (2017), a two-channel video installation, filmed on location in Ireland
and Jamaica, that interrogates the largely undocumented migration of Irish inden-
tured labourers to the Caribbean during the early 19th century. Based on records
found in the National Archives in Ireland, England and Jamaica, Keating presents
conversations and recovered textual traces, which previously had been consigned
to disappear within the archives.
Simon Tatum’s response to the theme of migration was Tropical Forms (2018),
a collection of organically shaped paintings that function as organisms capable of
adapting to the various environments and exhibition spaces that a nomadic exist-
ence takes them to. The wooden crate in which they were shipped lies at the base
of the installation of forms—a mixture of plants and human limbs—that expand
upwards and across the walls, claiming space and visibility.
Caroline Holder’s Homeland Insecurity (2006) is a 24-piece ceramic dinner
set decorated with intricate sgraffito images and text that reference the heightened
state of fear, suspicion and paranoia that have been fostered in New York after the
collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. As a Barbadian art-
ist based in New York, Holder recorded the atmosphere of paranoia and fear that
pervaded the city:

I was in a prime position as an ‘outsider’ to observe the enormous psychological

toll; the world had become less safe and we less certain of our place in it. Fear
 Art, migration, museums, and resurrections  305

cast a thin layer of dust over the city. I found it particularly poignant to see the
burning towers recurring in the drawings of my young students two years after
the tragedy occurred. These, alongside the ubiquitous advertising campaign, ‘If
you see something, say something,’ and police presence everywhere compelled
me to develop this installation.
(Holder, 2018)

The clay pieces are inscribed with images of planes flying into burning buildings,
neighbours peeking through their curtains, phones being tapped, with accompany-
ing messages: ‘Yo mamma is a terrorist […] So turn the bitch in’. For the Arrivants
exhibition, the work, which is in the Barbados National Collection, was displayed
in the ‘dining room’ of the Warmington Galleries, period rooms that are on per-
manent display at the museum, viewed through openings, as if peering through a
window. The pairing of the ostentatious interior décor of an 18th-century colonial
‘great house’ with pointed commentary on contemporary xenophobia poses oppor-
tunities to contemplate the long and ongoing trajectory of historical contestations
and power imbalances within the intimate sphere of domestic rituals.
On a wall facing the Warmington Galleries, Leasho Johnson’s expansive mural
Land of Big Hood and Water (2018)—the third incarnation of a ‘guerrilla’ street art
action originally located on Hope Road in an upscale part of Kingston, Jamaica—
transformed the serene ambience of the museum’s tree-lined upper courtyard into
a raucous party. Vinyl cut-out figures frolic with abandon in a sea of vibrant red.
These modified figures pose in a variety of contorted dance hall-inspired postures.
Like Tatum’s Tropical Forms, Johnson presents a hybrid melding of human and
plant forms. The title parodies Jamaica’s informal motto, ‘Land of Wood and
Water’, ‘hood’ being an American term for ghetto, but also a colloquial Jamaican
term for penis. These humorous characters seem to mock tourist expectations of
a hyper-sexualised excess but equally evoke how racist stereotypes are rooted in
histories of violence and exploitation.
The imagery in Johnson’s mural shared some links with Sheena Rose’s work.
‘This Strange Land’ Sketchbooks #anotherconfession (2018) was the title given to
a display of six small and well-worn drawing books. ‘This Strange Land’ is, for the
artist, Barbados. Through a vast compilation of line drawings, the artist explores
her own feelings of anxiety and alienation in the island of her birth. In depic-
tions of herself as a half-submerged island monster, her sense of self becomes syn-
onymous with place—an identity that both embraces and breaks apart the tropes
of the ­Caribbean as an act of rebellious self-exploration and self-realisation. The
intimate scale of the notebooks perhaps makes their diaristic self-confessions less
­confrontational but no less provocative.
As objects, the sketchbooks fit well in the museum’s Cunard Gallery, named for
Sir Edward Cunard, a member of the eponymous shipping line dynasty and a donor
to the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. He was one of several wealthy
British visitors who built villas on the Barbados West Coast in the mid-20th
306  Allison Thompson

century. Encouraged by Neville Connell, the director of the museum, Cunard

­collected colonial Caribbean prints, which were bequeathed to the museum upon
his death in 1962. The collection included iconic early images of the Caribbean by
artists including Agostino Brunias, Isaac Mendes Belisario and Lieutenant J.M.
Carter. These works form the core of the historic print collection permanently on
view in the Cunard Gallery. As Veerle Poupeye noted in the Arrivants blog, these
prints, produced largely by itinerant and military artists, present the Caribbean as
seen through the eyes and the world view of the planter and colonial administra-
tion classes, and form an important and multilayered visual archive of life in the
colonies during the 18th and 19th centuries.
For the exhibition, we retained a selection of the historical prints and paintings
in the Cunard Gallery to operate in contrast to, and in tension with, the modern and
contemporary works. These acted as interventions into the historical narratives, in
an effort to subvert these colonial perspectives while commenting on the social and
cultural contradictions of postcolonial Caribbean life. The room was dominated
by Ras Ishi Butcher’s epic painting 400 Years: New World Order (1994), which
extended across the length of the end wall in the rectangular gallery, directly facing
the panoramic mid-18th-century painting Governor Robinson Going to Church.
Butcher’s 400 Years presents a revised historical overview of Europe’s tragic and
violent encounter with the Caribbean, including Columbus’s voyages, transatlantic
slavery and the proto-industrial plantation system. The large figure of the overseer
surveys the patchworked fields, with smaller vignettes recording scenes of colo-
nial domination and death. The overseer’s thorned and undulating whip snakes
across the diptych. It is an epic retelling of transatlantic encounter that led to the
long and brutal institution of plantation slavery. Referring to this work, Richard
Powell states, ‘one notices certain technical procedures and recurring motifs that,
apart from distinguishing him as a remarkable witness with something special and
powerful to say, individuate Ras Ishi as a dedicated and cerebral painter’ (Powell,
2010, pp. 19–20).
Also located in the Cunard Gallery was a work by Ewan Atkinson, created
for the Arrivants exhibition to be displayed in the 1950s-styled cases that house
a selection of historical maps. Peregrination, A Playable Reproduction (2018)
is a Victorian-styled board game that was presented as if ‘in play’, laid out with
accompanying game pieces, a pair of dice and a stack of 91 buttons as ‘counters’.
As described in the accompanying instructions, the supposedly serendipitous game
pieces have been taken from the pockets of the imaginary players: a wooden shoe,
a Vape mat (mosquito repellent), a dried passion fruit, a peanut-candy wrapper, the
key from a can of corned beef, a plastic toy and a commemorative pin.
Using a language both visual and written that mimics colonial texts and parlour
games, Atkinson fashions this faux artefact as a storytelling device. The full title,
as inscribed on the board, is A New Neighbourhood Amusement: Peregrination!
An instructional game of chance replete with folly and adversity for the benefit of
recent arrivants. Like an ancient map, the game is presented as a well-worn and
 Art, migration, museums, and resurrections  307

much-used document, complete with illusionistic fold marks, rips and stains. The
route or journey to be pursued through the game is mapped out as a spiral mov-
ing through 50 ‘symbolic figures’ or stations that represent locations, artefacts and
residents or characters found in ‘the Neighbourhood’, an imaginary community of
misfits and migrants that has encompassed Atkinson’s production for the past 16
years. The two text panels that frame the central image provide a description of the
50 figures along with the meticulously articulated rules of the game. Nevertheless,
ambiguity recurs and randomness seems to rule in the end. The often unreason-
able and dehumanising bureaucratic hurdles, the waiting in line, the prospect of
being sent back, the loopholes and penalties are familiar pitfalls for all who travel
or migrate. In the era of visa lotteries, Atkinson’s surreal world is all too familiar.
Francis Griffith’s painting A History of Time (c. 1966) provides an interesting
comparison, as it can also be understood as a map of sorts, a diagrammatic rep-
resentation or symbolic depiction that charts not only space but also time, a con-
structed world view that compresses biblical stories, historical events and recent
international happenings into an architecturally ordered framework, tying these
disparate elements into a seemingly preordained expository presentation.
The story of Francis Griffith’s life is an extraordinary one that involved migra-
tion and travels across the world and provided him with rich experiences and
mystical revelations that were recorded in his paintings. Griffith, who was born in
Barbados, became a seaman with the British Merchant Marines and worked as a
gunner with the British Royal Navy during World War II and, later on, the docks
repairing and painting ships. In the 1950s, Griffith continued to work in Cardiff in
construction and manufacturing, during which time he studied welding and tech-
nical drawing. By the early 1960s, Griffith returned to sea life, travelling, by his
own account, to 76 countries. He was most impacted by visits to Africa and the
Middle East, where, through mystical interventions, he was given the name ‘Son
et Luimere’ (sic), which he translated as ‘Son of Light’. It was at this time that
Griffith began painting as a way to record not only the places he had visited but
also important world leaders and significant dates, mapping out a complex web of
indecipherable connections and meanings.
A History of Time is one of Griffith’s earliest known paintings as well as the
largest and most ambitious. The majority of the painting is taken up by an elabo-
rately articulated banquet hall where crowds of Arab men and women have come
to honour the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon, who appear twice at the top and
bottom of the composition. Rows of elegantly arched windows and richly attired
guests are separated by mountain ranges and rivers with travellers arriving by boat
and on camel. The centre of the composition is dominated by a large circular foun-
tain with a six-petaled structure that functions like a large compass—a magnetic,
orienting force. Along the top border of the composition, Moses presents the tablets
with the Ten Commandments. On either side, horse-drawn chariots bear the flags
of the various nations engaged in World War II: Australia, the United States and
Greece on the left, and Pakistan and the USSR on the right. Through the central
308  Allison Thompson

north–south axis of the painting is a meeting of powers, both ancient and modern,
overseen by God’s laws, imposing structure and order over the history of time as
understood and divined by the artist.
The theme of diasporic subjectivities finds particular expression in a series of
portraits located throughout the exhibition. The Poet (1947), one of the earliest
known works by Karl Broodhagen, is a portrait of writer George Lamming when
he was only 20 years old, six years before the publication of his acclaimed debut
novel, In the Castle of My Skin. This sensitive terracotta bust reflects Broodhagen’s
lifelong interest in portraiture, and specifically the representation of Caribbean peo-
ple. The sculpture was made the year Broodhagen began teaching at Combermere
school, where Lamming had studied under Frank Collymore.10 Lamming’s later
writings, such as The Emigrants (1954) and The Pleasure of Exile (1960), focused
on the migrant’s journey and the alienation and displacement caused by coloni-
alism. The portrait busts and paintings by Broodhagen provide their own subtle
insights into the diversity, complexity and richness of the Caribbean experience.
Paul Dash’s Self-Portrait (1979) appears as a remarkably intimate and honest
confrontation with self, as the artist, palette and brush in hand, faces the viewer
with an intense and steady gaze. By the end of the 1970s, Dash had been actively
involved with CAM. His acquaintance with other Caribbean artists and writers
may have influenced his determination to focus on his own identity as an Afro-
Caribbean man. He later explained:

At that time I had not painted a full-on portrait of a black sitter and hadn’t
seen many portraits of black people in the flesh; paintings in which there was
a black presence yes, but few portraits in which artists struggled to say some-
thing specific about such sitters. Rembrandt, Pieter Paul Rubens, Marie Benoist,
Augustus John and others had made wonderful paintings of black subjects but
I hadn’t yet seen them in a gallery setting or had the opportunity to study such
works in depth.
(Dash, 2018)

Dash, who later had an influential career as an art educator at Goldsmiths, ­University
of London, had to wait until after his retirement to gain long-overdue recognition
for his painting.11
In Sheena Rose’s photographic double self-portrait Flowers and Pearls, Gor-
geous (2018), the artist is presented as a famous personality, wearing dark glasses
and literally coated in glitter. Rose has developed a rich cast of personae over the
years that she performs through photography and videography, both as a means
to explore multiple dimensions of her own personality and to allow herself to live
other lives. She writes:

Sometimes, I feel so disconnected from my home Barbados, that I feel like an

outsider and it doesn’t feel like an ordinary space; its more than that. There is
 Art, migration, museums, and resurrections  309

magic, spirits, beauty and mystery in this strange land; a quiet magical space.
Perhaps an exaggerated space that draws the viewers to be very curious of space
and surroundings.
(Rose, 2018)

Keith Piper’s Ghosting the Archive (2005) presents the largely forgotten studio
contents of British commercial portrait photographer Ernest Dyche, who recorded
the likenesses of residents of the inner-city area of South Birmingham during the
1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. Piper came across boxes of glass negatives during
an artist residency undertaken in the archival spaces at the Library of Birmingham
in 2005. Having grown up in the same area, Piper was inspired to ‘reactivate’ this
record of an evolving inner-city community composed largely of immigrant fami-
lies. In the single-screen video presented as a slide show, the artist stands behind
the camera in the library storage room and extends his hands into the frame, wear-
ing white archival gloves and holding up photographic negatives. This image is
then reversed so that the room is seen as a negative, while the archival portraits—
and the individual they recorded—appear as they were originally intended.
Sovereign State (2016) is a single-screen video work by Hew Locke who again
interrogates the consumption of official portraiture as an ongoing deference to
empire. Recalling his childhood in Guyana, Locke remembers images of Queen
Elizabeth II on the covers of his school exercise books long after the country’s
independence from Britain. He would often be reprimanded for drawing over these
images, literally defacing the symbols of monarchy. Reviving this aesthetic of the
doodle, Locke’s current work challenges the dearth of more complex portraits of
the royal family and instead creates images with a very different truth as art. In
Sovereign State, the monarch’s mouth is bound to safeguard her secrets. Sounds
of whispers hover in the air as the altered images of the Queen slowly morph and
transform. Locke’s contemporary take on royal portraiture references medieval and
Renaissance imagery of the ruling elite, who were often portrayed with skulls or
skeletons as a reminder that ‘in the midst of life we are in death’ and thus change
is always inevitable.12
Arrivants was conceived as part of an EU-funded initiative looking at muse-
ums, migration and gender. Collectively, the works in the exhibition spanned seven
decades, from the pre- to post-independence eras of the Anglophone Caribbean, a
period of important change and transformation, and addressed a broad spectrum of
issues related to migration in ways that are nuanced, incisive, moving, inspiring,
surprising, humorous, thought-provoking and beautiful.
Not only did the diverse works by the participating artists present a broad scope
of approaches to the theme, the integration of the works into the museum’s existing
displays placed these conversations within the broader context of a British colonial
history.
A number of the participating artists were exhibiting in Barbados for the first
time, and many viewers remarked on the importance of the opportunity to see
310  Allison Thompson

these works, particularly in relation to one another in the context of the exhibition.
­Particularly impactful were those works that were commissioned and made for the
exhibition and which responded to the context of Barbados and the museum. Sev-
eral of those artists were able to travel to the island to make and install their work,
and the two youngest artists in the exhibition, Kelley-Ann Lindo and Simon Tatum
from Jamaica and Cayman Islands, respectively, participated in short-term intern-
ships with the Museum, assisting with the installation of the Arrivants exhibition.
This created significant opportunities for interaction with the local art community
and wider public, a social aspect of the exhibition-making process that should not
be disregarded.
The intersecting themes of migration and museology provided the potential for
a meaningful discussion and analysis about how museums, and particularly small
regional museums, can participate in the current interrogations into the meanings
and directions of Caribbean art and question the ways in which and where it is
presented. While the Barbados Museum as a venue provided opportunities for
interventions into existing narratives, the choice was partly in response to the lack
of purpose-built spaces in which to exhibit contemporary art. Deficiencies in infra-
structure, both physical and professional, were recurring challenges throughout the
process. Initial ambitions that the exhibition could travel throughout the region and
eventually to the UK were never realised. And the absence of a catalogue docu-
menting the event is a significant missed opportunity.
The challenge for museums and curators to develop innovative strategies, rec-
onciling ambitious objectives with limited resources, to present Caribbean art to
Caribbean as well as global audiences is ongoing. As Dornhof et al. observed,
the exhibition format, with its potential to assemble and juxtapose diverse objects
and perspectives, provides unique opportunities to address issues of migration
and diaspora. Migration is often a disorienting process, necessitating strategies
of problem-solving and improvisation. Taking on the theme of migration as a
critical strategy allows us to rethink the exhibition format, to respond to the spe-
cific needs and aspirations of exhibition-making in the region, to speak first to a
­Caribbean audience, but then also present an inflected, creolised voice to a global
audience.
Viable, sustainable strategies will require formulating not only different routes
but also potentially, different destinations.

Notes
1 Notable exceptions include the Global Caribbean shows, curated by Haitian artist
Edouard Duval Carrie, and En Mas: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean,
curated by Claire Tancons (Guadeloupe) and Krista Thompson (Bahamas). But in both
cases, while the curators are Caribbean, these exhibitions originated in North ­American
venues. The Global Caribbean exhibition was launched in 2009 by the Haitian C ­ ultural
Arts Alliance as part of Miami Art Basel’s satellite programming and presented at
the Little Haiti Cultural Complex’s main gallery. It continued as Global Caribbean /
 Art, migration, museums, and resurrections  311

Borderless Caribbean, featuring work of artists from the Caribbean archipelago and its
surrounding land mass as well as its diaspora. The organisers have invited guest cura-
tors and other academics ‘to formulate what a cultural production from the region could
consist of [[Link] EN
MAS: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean opened at the Contemporary
Arts Center in New Orleans in March 2015. Another important and early exception is
Carib Art: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean (1993), which was a travelling exhibi-
tion organised by the National Commission for UNESCO of the Netherlands Antil-
les. The exhibition opened in Curaçao, in 1993, and was exceptional in its efforts to
include all countries in the region, regardless of size or artistic production. Reference
should also be made to the regional biennials: the Havana Biennial, which began in
1982, the Santo Domingo Biennial, which began in the Dominican Republic in 1992,
and the Jamaica Biennial, launched in 2014 as the successor to the Jamaica National
Exhibition.
2 The artists were Ewan Atkinson, James Boodhoo, Karl Broodhagen, Ras Ishi Butcher,
Eddie Chambers, Paul Dash, Stanley Greaves, Francis Griffith, Caroline Holder, Nadia
Huggins, Leasho Johnson, Marianne Keating, Winston Kellman, Kelley-Ann Lindo,
Hew Locke, Philip Moore, Kishan Munroe, Lynn Parotti, Keith Piper, Sheena Rose,
Veronica Ryan, Simon Tatum, Aubrey Williams, Golde White and Cosmo Whyte.
3 The Arrivants exhibition was conceived in collaboration and co-curated with Veerle
Poupeye. The concepts, ideas and explanatory texts that have informed this paper were
developed jointly with her, and I would like to thank her for her scholarly and collegial
contributions. Alissandra Cummins and Karen Brown, as the leaders of the Horizon
2020 EU-LAC Museums and Migration project, provided formative and essential input.
Jessica Taylor and Ewan Atkinson also provided valuable insights and assistance, as did
Kelley-Ann Lindo and Simon Tatum who assisted with the exhibition install.
4 This blog can be found at [Link] (Accessed:
18/10/2022). Images of the artworks discussed in this chapter can also be seen here.
5 There have been artistic interventions at the Barbados Museum previously. Joscelyn
Gardner’s White Skin, Black Kin: ‘Speaking the Unspeakable’, curated by Joscelyn
Gardner and Denyse Menard Greenidge in 2004, was an intervention into four galleries
at the Barbados Museum. In 2008, Sonia Boyce installed the two-screen video Crop
Over in the Cunard Gallery. And in May 2018, Katherine Kennedy invited five artists
(Llanor Alleyne, Annalee Davis, Ada M. Patterson, Adrian Richards and Kraig Year-
wood) to join her to create artistic interventions that engaged with the collections.
6 The name comes from the Empire Windrush, a ship that brought an early group from the
Caribbean to Britain in 1948.
7 Eddie Chambers’s most well-known work is undoubtedly the four-part collage now in
the collection of Tate Britain, Destruction of the National Front (1979–80). For this
four-panel work, the artist tore up an image of the Union Jack and reorganised it to form
a red swastika. Reproduced as four screen prints, each successive version is torn until, in
the final frame, the image is completely destroyed.
8 See, for example, the digital viewing room created by Hales Gallery entitled ‘MindfulVandal-
ism’. [Link]
9 Locke refers to his own ambivalent feelings about these public figures. While he admires
the technical skill of his fellow sculptors of the past, he wants to draw out the com-
plexities of their readings in a postcolonial context. This is only the second time Locke
addressed public monuments in the Caribbean; the first was the statue of Queen Victoria
in Georgetown Guyana.
10 Collymore was an important literary figure and publisher of BIM magazine and a men-
tor to both Lamming and Broodhagen as well as other literary figures, such as Derek
Walcott and Edward Kamau Brathwaite. Lamming had left Barbados in 1946 to teach
in Trinidad; he remained there for four years before emigrating to England, where he
312  Allison Thompson

worked as a broadcaster for the BBC Colonial Service. Broodhagen followed him to
London two years later when he began his studies at Goldsmiths, University of London.
11 This Self-Portrait was recently acquired by Tate and was included in the Tate Britain
exhibition Life Between Islands: Caribbean-British Art 1950s-Now.
12 Edvard Munch’s famous 1893 painting The Scream is a significant influence, as are
Tudor portraits of Elizabeth I by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. These include The
Rainbow Portrait, in which the Queen wears a dress covered in eyes and ears as the all-
seeing ruler, and The Ditchley Portrait, where she stands upright on a map of England,
storms raging behind her while the sun shines on her.

References
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­Curating’, in Dornhof, S. et al. (eds.) Situating Global Art: Topologies – Temporalities –
­Trajectories. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, pp. 301–26.
Chambers, Eddie. (2018). Arrivants Exhibition Artists Statement. [Online]. Available at:
[Link] (Accessed: 05/01/2022).
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[Link]/tag/paul-dash/ (Accessed: 05/01/2022).
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­Trajectories. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.
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Harvard University Press.
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[Link]/tag/nadia-huggins/ (Accessed: 14/01/2022).
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[Link] (Accessed: 14/01/2022).
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Bridgetown: Barbados Museum and Historical Society.
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Kamau Brathwaite. Bridgend: Cromwell, pp. 117–31.
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Alissandra et al. (eds.) Ras Ishi: Secret Diaries. Barbados: Miller Publishing.
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15
THE POLITICS OF CHANGE
New pedagogical approaches to Caribbean
museology, conservation and curatorship

Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

Introduction1
In 1989, Bridget Brereton cast a critical eye on the work of the Association of
­Caribbean Historians (ACH) and asked:

Has the ACH encouraged innovative research methodologies in Caribbean

­history or helped to open up new subjects or fields of investigation, espe-
cially in the context of ‘new’ social history? On the whole the answer must
be, I think, a qualified ‘no’. The historiography of the region, especially of the
Anglophone Caribbean, which predominates in the output of the ACH, remains
somewhat conservative, rather suspicious of the ‘new’ history and of inter-
disciplinary approaches […] Scholars from disciplines other than history – notably
anthropology, but including archaeology, geography, sociology, economics and
linguistics – have participated in ACH conferences and presented papers; but the
historiography of the region has not been fully receptive to the inter-disciplinary
approach, though planning of the UNESCO [United Nations Educational, Sci-
entific and Cultural Organisation] History, to which ACH members have con-
tributed a great deal, is changing this.
(Brereton, 1992, pp. 5–6)

A scan of the indices to ACH Conference papers for the first 20 years of the
a­ssociation would support her assessment (Blondel, Knight and Rouse-Jones,
1989, 1990). Neither the words ‘heritage’ nor ‘museum’ are referenced in the index
before 1989. Barry Higman, as chair of the ACH Conference Programme Com-
mittee, encouraged his colleagues, during its meeting in November 1993, to con-
sider expanding the association’s themes for the conference, generating a ‘list of

DOI: 10.4324/9781003288138-18
This chapter has been made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license.
314  Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

possibilities […] popular history; public history; heritage management/ museums/

heritage interpretation; theory in Caribbean history; […] pictorial history; film as
source’ (Juan Gonzalez Mendoza, ACH conference, Puerto Rico, 1994, p. 4).

The museum’s role and development in the post-independence

Caribbean
Between 1972 and 1993, a series of reports examined the status of museums in the
region for the first time since Bather and Sheppard’s 1933 report on ‘The Museums
of the British West Indies’ (Bather and Sheppard, 1933, pp. 27–58)2 some 40 years
before (Cummins, 1994, pp. 200–1). These reports were orchestrated through
UNESCO, the Organisation of American States (OAS), the United Nations Multi-
Country Sustainable Development Framework (UN MSDF) in the Caribbean in
association with the Caribbean Conservation Association (CCA) and, afterwards,
in collaboration with the Museums Association of the Caribbean (MAC), founded
in 1989. While these reports covered a wide range of considerations, including
documentation and conservation of Caribbean museum collections, public educa-
tion requirements and the poor condition of museum (mainly historic) buildings
and museum collections, and links between tourism and museum development,
they consistently paid critical attention to the chronic need for training of museum
staff, given that ‘properly qualified museum staff were practically non-existent in
the Caribbean’ (Lemieux and Schultz, 1973, p. 2). This situation posed a particular
challenge for these general or ‘community’ museums’ ability to respond to the
expressed needs of their communities. Towle and Tyson, for example, particularly
gave priority to the museums’ role in defining national and regional identities,
especially in their capacity to ‘promote a sense of pride, self-esteem and national
identity that will help people of developing nations overcome the debilitating sense
of cultural inferiority and dependency induced by Colonialism and slavery’ (Towle
and Tyson, 1979, p. 5).
At a critical juncture in the early 1990s, forty-four museums were surveyed in
13 Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states, following which a com-
prehensive programme of training was developed for regional museum personnel
including paper preservation, preventive conservation, collections management
and cataloguing, travelling exhibitions, museum education, administration and
financing. One important finding from this Caribbean Museum Survey was that:
‘[o]nly 29. 5 percent of all museums surveyed indicated the presence of formally
trained personnel on their staff’ and ‘staff development remained a high priority in
the development of Caribbean museums’ (Cummins, 1993, p. 61). The report also
observes:

It is regrettable to note that in most instances training opportunities have been

limited to short-term workshops and seminars which may give a basic picture, but
 The politics of change  315

hardly qualified the individual as a professional. The thirst for more at the end of
each activity leaves serious museum workers with a frustrating sense of limitation.
(Cummins, 1993, p. 60)

These findings remain a reality. A key recommendation was made for ‘[t]he
development of undergraduate and graduate level museum training programmes
in ­conjunction with the University of the West Indies and the Museums Associa-
tion of the Caribbean’ and for fellowship assistance to be provided to CARICOM
nationals from St. Lucia, Dominica and Tobago for ‘study outside of the region’
(Cummins, 1993, p. 69).

The establishment and development of heritage/museum

courses in the Anglophone Caribbean
Museology or museum studies originated in the University of the West Indies
(UWI) primarily through the efforts of Dr Barry Higman when, in 1992, as the head
of the History Department at Mona he introduced the concept of a full-scale mas-
ter’s degree programme in heritage studies. Departmental minutes for the period
indicate that despite initial scepticism, approval and comments from Cave Hill
and St Augustine regarding the proposed master’s diploma in heritage studies sup-
ported this proposal and agreed that ‘the programme could be offered on a regional
basis, moving from campus to campus at appropriate intervals’ (UWI Mona, 1992b).
These combined with the development of an Archaeology programme produced
“Efforts to obtain a modern Museum/Laboratory...”, largely expected to exhibit
and preserve the archaeological collections being recovered through the rapidly
growing Archaeological Studies programme (UWI Mona 1992a). However, it
was clear that “(i) In the longer term, the Department was looking forward to the
establishment of a “School of Historical Studies”, with its own independent facili-
ties, including audiovisual systems, museum and laboratory.” (UWI Mona 1992a).
Initial drawings and a prospectus for the UWI History Museum were prepared
to launch a fundraising programme. This was done with the funding support of
both UNESCO and the Jamaican government who pursued these goals as part of
national cultural policy for the island.
Higman’s revised programme proposal was later approved, noting ‘that a strong
Caribbean focus was essential’ (UWI Mona, 1992c). The key objectives for the
Heritage Studies master’s programme were clearly articulated:

To provide academic training for persons wishing to work in public history and
the heritage industry, and to enhance the skills of those already employed in
these fields. It offers the opportunity for critical reflection on the practices of
public history and for the learning of practical skills.
(UWI Mona, 1993a)
316  Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

Graduates of the programme were expected to be equipped to work in tourism,

museums and historic sites and the media, ‘interpreting the Caribbean past for a
public audience’ (UWI Mona, 1993a). Initially it was agreed to be offered part-
time in 1993–1994 over a 24-month period (UWI Mona, 1993b), during which
it was hoped that funds might be raised to support bursaries and scholarships to
enable full-time registration and also to enable students from other parts of the
Caribbean to travel to Jamaica for the second year. With the successful launch
of the programme in December 1993, by January 1994, the department was
able to report that ‘Higman, coordinator of the programme […] reported that
attendance had been good and the drop-out rate […] very low’ (UWI Mona,
1994). The programme’s continued success was reported at interdepartmental
meetings indicating that ‘the M.A. Programme had attracted over 80 applicants
for… the 30 available spaces’ for the 1994–1995 semester’. At the same time,
it noted that UWI Cave Hill was considering the possibility of ‘a joint venture
with the ­Barbados Museum to establish an Institute of Heritage Studies’ (UWI
St. ­Augustine, 1994). The proposal for H67K, the originating heritage studies
course, reads as follows:

Describes and analyses Caribbean heritage, and the attitudes of peoples towards
it. It will include the efforts of government and non-governmental organizations
to preserve Caribbean heritage in and outside museums. It will examine the pol-
itics of heritage management and presentation, and the role and status of public
history in the Caribbean. It will investigate the relations between C ­ aribbean
history and Caribbean heritage.
(UWI Mona, 1993c)

The graduate-level course, which taught that museums have a central role to
play in heritage management, preservation and presentation, anticipated that
the specialised museums in Port Royal, Kingston and Spanish Town (including
the National Gallery and the National Trust) would provide strong institutional
support for students and expected that they would be an important resource for
the examination of the ‘relations between Caribbean history and heritage’ (UWI
Mona, 1993a). The course ‘Artifacts, Museums and Archives’, which was even-
tually transferred from Mona, was the only programme that spoke directly to
‘the collection, curation, management and display of artifacts and documents in
the Caribbean. Acquisition policies and information systems, Conservation and
preparation of exhibitions. Living History Museums. The meaning of artifacts’
(UWI Mona, 1993a). It provided, within the limited five weeks allocated, the
totality of direct exposure to the study of museums. Typically, the course offered
baseline orientation to the precepts of the profession in a series of tutorials cover-
ing (1) the Definition and Role of Museums; (2) Curatorship, Collections Man-
agement and Conservation; (3) Interpretation and Representation (Exhibitions);
(4) Museums and Heritage: The Politics of Culture (Heritage policy, legislation,
 The politics of change  317

heritage tourism) and (5) Ethics. However, at Cave Hill, Watson established
a direct link with

the Barbados Museum to teach this component of the heritage studies course
which was deliberately included because of the Museum’s role as not just the
repository of our material culture but also of our natural history and our intan-
gible cultural heritage. I considered the museum to be an integral part of the
teaching of heritage. Museum Studies was therefore a natural and logical choice
for inclusion in the heritage studies degree programme.
(K. Watson, personal communication, 2018)

From the inception of the course, where the emphasis lay on the examination
and interpretations of archaeological remains and artefacts and built and natu-
ral heritage, lecturers for both the archives and the museum components of the
course made clear their concerns about the adequacies of such brief programme
offerings to prepare students to enter into their respective fields. While the inclu-
sion of both field trips and a one-month practicum at the end of the course did
serve to extend students’ exposure to the discipline, these concerns were not
really addressed until the artefacts component was removed from the course
structure, allowing both museums and archival studies to absorb these essential
constructs into their differing contexts and to expand into complementary seven-
week programmes.
However, more than two decades were to pass before a full-length museum
studies programme at the UWI was developed following its Quality Assurance
Review of the Heritage Studies master’s programme in 2009. While the programme
had enjoyed more than a decade of success at UWI Cave Hill, it had nevertheless
existed in its truncated form, despite being the only formal course of study for her-
itage specialists in Barbados. The Department of History and Philosophy contin-
ued its evaluation and commissioned a revised museum studies programme, which
finally led to a comprehensive revision of the long-standing programme, updating
its course contents to expand

its course offerings to keep pace with the present growth and future potential
of the Caribbean heritage industry. As in the past, the programme will not
only continue to create marketable graduates in the field of cultural herit-
age, but current changes will deepen and diversify students’ knowledge base.
A new emphasis is placed on innovative types of experiential learning so that
graduates can immediately apply their skills across all sectors of the heritage
industry, including tourism, museums, archives, government, and university.
This new programme has excellent potential to attract a larger and wider (pan-
Caribbean/international) student body with its greater interdisciplinary and
global approach, AND to foster candidates for higher levels of heritage study
and research (MPhil and PhD levels). Furthermore, the revised programme is
318  Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

now poised to expand in future new directions, especially into management

aspects of the heritage industry.
(UWI Cave Hill, 2012, p. 61)

While the Cave Hill Heritage Studies programme began to call for greater
­synergies between the archaeology and heritage courses, as well as the introduc-
tion of Cultural Resource Management in its offerings, the department welcomed
opportunities for a broadly multidisciplinary approach and an orientation towards
tourism development. It was anticipated that ‘the restructuring of the existing/for-
mer Museums/Archives course into two separate courses [would provide] students
with higher skill sets in both archival work and key museum concepts, including
management’ (UWI Cave Hill, 2012, p. 2), a development that enabled the ‘Arte-
facts, Museums and Archives’ course which evolved from a single elective course
into completely separate core programmes.
In 2012, a semester-long course debuted. HIST 6720: Museum Development,
Management and Curatorship included provision for

a new mandatory requirement for practicum work within the research paper
[…] The nature of practical work can include any of a number of options, such
as oral history documentation, audio-visual work, archaeological fieldwork,
documenting museum and archaeological collections, archival retrieval/study,
database construction.
(UWI Cave Hill, 2012, p. 3)

Exhibit and educational programme planning and design became a particular target
early on for students, where students were required to ‘demonstrate evidence of
independent practical work within a museum or heritage site environment’ (UWI
Cave Hill, 2012, p. 46). In redesigning the course description and rationale, the
university was taking account of an expanding body of new museological writings
and specifically Caribbean-initiated research and activity, designed to trace

the evolution of Caribbean museums from agencies of Empire to symbols of

independent national and cultural identities […] contemporary curatorial prac-
tices […] important for their comprehension of the museum’s role in contem-
porary Caribbean society. [As well as] the foundations of museum/exhibition
development and interpretation informed by both museological theory, meth-
odological approaches and technology-based practices required for creative and
effective professional practice […] the establishment of many new, privately
operated museum displays, as well as the development or reorientation of pub-
licly operated institutions and sites in response to the demands of local stake-
holders […] illustrated by the new national art galleries and museums, as well
as the reinterpretation of national histories.
(Cummins, 2012, p. 44)
 The politics of change  319

This course specifically responded to the general growth in the museum and
­heritage sectors in the Caribbean, which, despite continued economic and soci-
etal challenges and the issues of national and cultural representation, both at home
and abroad, evidenced a growing need for professional training for deployment in
­Caribbean museums and other heritage-oriented institutions.

Preventive collection care and conservation practices and

training in the region
To date, there is no dedicated course for preservation, collection care and conserva-
tion offered in the Anglophone Caribbean. While preservation and collection care
topics are incorporated within the museology course, these components have only
rarely been delivered by a conservation specialist. More typically these modules
have been delivered by curators or museum managers.
Having these critical topics incorporated has provided regional museology and
heritage staff with a necessary overview of preventive conservation and collection
care. However, the use of the term ‘conservation’ in the course descriptions is a
misnomer, as conservation as a professional discipline is not taught; rather, it is an
introduction to the topic.
In practice, collection care is led by curatorial, librarian and archive staff,
which can be viewed as an integrated approach to the preservation of objects,
as it incorporates the priorities of the different specialists. This approach, how-
ever, lacks the input or guidance of a preventive, collection care or conservation
specialist, who adds another layer of efficacy to the objects’ care. Internation-
ally, heritage courses are typically based on the premise that heritage staff will
be working alongside professional preventive and conservation personnel. The
reality is that there are many instances in the region where heritage professionals,
having completed only short courses or on-the-job training, have been tasked with
collection care management. In national institutions in the Global North, this work
is executed and led by a specialist, as it is a profession within itself. Realistically,
community museums can rarely afford a dedicated preventive conservator on staff
nor do they have access to a budget for recruiting preservation and conserva-
tion specialists for project-based work. Curatorial and collections staff thus by
default are multidisciplinary; working as the ‘chief cook and bottle-washer’, their
resources and capacities are spread thin, with their additional duties in preventive
conservation, remedial conservation and as art handlers. The onus has been, and
remains widely, on curators and collections managers to inform on and implement
preservation and collection care.
Over the decades, only a handful of people have been formally trained in preser-
vation and conservation abroad as opportunities arose. Notably, however, temper-
ate climate strategies are not always appropriate for tropical environments. These
conservators afterwards were charged with training others on the job, while facing
limited access to resources and to professional development in the region.
320  Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

Conservation and preventive professional practice in the region remains far less
formally established than the curatorial, librarian and archive professions. Similar
to the evolution of the profession in Asia and Europe, the specialism within the
region has grown out of the development of artists, artisans and craftspeople restor-
ing and repairing others’ works, the difference is the lack of a scientific base as its
underpinning (Plenderleith, 1998, p. 129). There are historic and contemporary
bookbinding and furniture-making apprenticeship practices. However, the nurtur-
ing of master craftspeople and skilled professionals was traditionally undermined
by a colonial edict that promoted the importation of ready-made objects from the
colonial occupier. The conditioning was, and the perception remains to an extent,
that the imported is superior, aesthetically and functionally. The artisans who
repaired others’ objects locally were often constrained by a lack of locally sourced
materials and by restricted access to expensive imported materials and equipment
as well as by limited expertise or formal training in restoration. It is important to
reiterate that temperate materials are not always efficacious in tropical climates.
The region is currently reliant on them, however, as the profession and materials
have yet to develop indigenously. Until local conservation practices and materials
are established, innovative scientifically tested regional options, such as regionally
made repair papers (as has been used in Cuba, India, the Philippines and Thailand),
will not be available.3
‘The profession has evolved and concomitantly the skills of those who practice
it, thus following the general rule of adaptation for future sustainability’ (Margariti,
2019, p. 108). Modern conservation has a scientific foundation, with an emphasis
on minimal intervention, reversibility and ethically preserving the physical and
intangible integrity of the objects with a high level of motor skills and underpinned
by a code of ethics. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) defines con-
servation as

all measures and actions aimed at safeguarding tangible cultural heritage while
ensuring its accessibility to present and future generations. [It] embraces pre-
ventive conservation, remedial conservation and restoration. All measures and
actions should respect the significance and the physical properties of the cultural
heritage item.
([Link]

Salvador Viñas describes modern conservation as a complex activity born out of

identifying the need for different approaches to care and repair of valued ‘herit-
age’ objects as opposed to mending common items.
(Viñas, 2005, p. 13)

In addition to the complexity of the variables involved in the act of conserving,

‘it may involve many different professionals from many different fields working
towards the same goal’ (Viñas, 2005, p. 9). There is the confusion of the terms or
 The politics of change  321

synonyms used to describe the variations of related ‘care’ activities by the general
public and even within collection repositories. What is clear is that there is a grow-
ing need in the region with emerging national identities that as collections and rel-
evant objects are increasing the material culture that reflects them defines identities
as significant to the community.
The opportunity to formally study conservation within the region is currently
limited to Cuba and Puerto Rico. However, for the Anglophone Caribbean, lan-
guage remains a considerable barrier. The few conservators that have been formally

FIGURE 15.1 ‘The Restoration’ 1991 by Allison Chapman-Andrews; depicting the

s­tabilisation of paintings in the National Collection by conservator
­Patricia Byer, assisted by artists with transferable skills. © B
­ arbados
Museum & Historical Society and the artist.
322  Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

trained in archive, object, painting and paper conservation have done so mainly in
Canada, Britain and America. Fewer still have journeyed as far away as Russia,
with some of the training including internships with other institutions.
The training delivered by heritage professionals and their guidelines is based
on standards for temperate climates, which calls into question why the standards
are not formally adapted to the region. There has been a call to have a Caribbean
Conservation Code of Ethics mainly to instil accountability and promote awareness
(Salkey, 2001, pp. 28–9) but given the limited numbers of conservators the neces-
sity for this is debatable. A temperate climate has major seasonal fluctuations and
low humidity compared to a tropical or subtropical one, with a wet and dry season,
consistently high humidity and salt air corrosion. The Caribbean requires its own
preservation, collection care and conservation standards, practices and procedures
that need to be led by regional professional conservators. While the material ‘types’
can be categorised as the same internationally, there are cultural differences and
significance when working with objects of one’s own indigenous culture and belief
system, and value judgements are collectively made on what to conserve and what
can wait.

FIGURE 15.2 
Louise Parris, the late object conservator who trained in the United
­ ingdom, demonstrating at a collection care workshop. © ­Barbados
K
Museum & Historical Society.
 The politics of change  323

Towards the end of the 20th century, paintings and archive conservation lab-
oratories were set up and binderies adapted in Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and
Trinidad and Tobago. In 1977, under the vision of Michael Chandler, the Barbados
Archives had a functioning laboratory in which two trained archive conservators
shared their skills with other members of staff through on-the-job training, termed
‘traditional repair’, akin to an apprenticeship.
The challenge with this approach is limited possibilities for both parties to have
access to continuing professional development (CPD) as well as reliable succes-
sion planning. Feedback from colleagues in these situations includes the constant
eroding of their workforce, budget, space, continual training and, quite seriously,
the authority to effect change. In the worst cases, the feedback was that procedures,
materials used, treatments, techniques and skills had become fossilised. In extreme
instances, this had resulted in avoidable damage to objects from interventive and
harmful treatments executed with uninformed, though well-intentioned and out-
dated ‘traditional repair’ techniques. This scenario continues today.
As conservation expertise largely still lies outside the Caribbean region, the
financial implications have historically hindered CPD. In practice, without effec-
tive succession planning, internships and formal training conservation can regress
to a blanket ‘factory’ approach to the treatment of unique objects. There remains
a need for professionalisation that includes academic rigour, ethical considerations
and formal supervised internships with professional conservators.
While there are no current statistics available on the number of conservators
and people working as conservators in the region, anecdotal evidence recog-
nises a distinct deficiency. The conservation deficit evidenced in 1993 during the
Caribbean Museum Survey referenced earlier remains almost as acute today in
21st-century national institutions. Following an Organization of American States
­(OAS)-sponsored evaluation workshop, held in Barbados in May 2015 to docu-
ment identifiable gaps that might exist in regional heritage training opportunities
and competencies relevant to cultural heritage and memory work in the Caribbean,
the goal was to establish priorities for future educational efforts based on priori-
tised competencies grouped under: Heritage Management; Preservation and Con-
servation; Ethics and Professional Practice; Laws, Regulation and Governance;
Research and Documentation; Access and Use; General Management; History and
Philosophy; and Heritage and Tourism. The first priority, Heritage Management
encompassed two areas of cultural heritage work:

The first is the management of collections held in museums, archives, documen-

tation centres, archaeological storage depots, etc. The second relates to the man-
agement of heritage sites. Each of these areas requires its own set of knowledge
and neither is being addressed by the educational offerings in the region. Both
areas were designated as priorities by the participants in the workshop.
(OAS, 2016)
324  Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

The objectives eventually formulated for this OAS project were to increase the
capacity of the Anglophone sub-region to protect and enhance its heritage in a
professional and efficient manner. Consultations with heritage professionals made
clear that, while capacity building must strengthen ‘the knowledge, abilities, skills
and attitudes of people with direct or indirect responsibilities for heritage conserva-
tion and management’, it must also improve

institutional structures and processes by empowering decision-makers and

p­ olicy-makers, as well as introducing a more dynamic relationship between her-
itage and its socio-economic context. It involves an inclusive approach, so that
the relevant missions and goals are met in a sustainable way.
(OAS, 2016)

Preventive conservation became the baseline of collections care internationally,

which was considered both a gap and a priority for the region. The work aimed
to slow the rate of deterioration through the control of the environment and the
proper exhibition, storage and handling of objects. The UWI Open Campus and
the General Secretariat of the Organisation of American States were signatories
to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that acknowledged that the develop-
ment of culture was imperative for socio-economic development. Additionally, the
need to recognise, preserve and promote regional customs and ancestral knowledge
were underscored as important steps in the effective ‘transmission to present and
future generations’ (UWI Open Campus, 2017, p. 12).
Another component of this MOU, the Caribbean Heritage Network, is an
encouraging development. The network has recently started to collate informa-
tion on heritage education and professional development, heritage legislation and
fiscal incentives, inventories and monitoring, socio-economic impacts of heritage,
sustainable heritage tourism, traditional crafts and artisans, which includes spe-
cialisms, with the intention to create and document the current skills matrix and
extrapolate from this for future needs.
Formally trained and skilled conservators in the region have reported not being
able to undertake treatments because of limited budgets, particularly to purchase
imported specialised materials and equipment. Like the objects they care for, con-
servators’ skills are at risk of deteriorating if not used and they are suffering from
the challenges of working in silos. Conservation in the heritage sector is also hin-
dered by a local stigma of working with one’s hands. There is lack of input from
conservation at the decision-making levels for funding bids, collection care, stor-
age and construction of exhibition spaces, all of which result in preventable physi-
cal risks to the longevity of objects. In a recent conversation with formally trained
and apprenticed conservation colleagues working in the sector, it was speculated
that this practice results from the sector being accustomed to not having conser-
vation historically and a departmental structure that places conservators within
a ‘­service department’.
 The politics of change  325

FIGURE 15.3  Training in cleaning carpets and collections storage at the Bar-
bados Museum & Historical Society. © Barbados Museum &
Historical Society.

This is opposed to a department that adds value to the understanding of the

object—its materiality and the interpretation of the evidence presented within its
degradation, its fabrication, its attribution and its authenticity. There is a continued
need for advocacy initiatives to explain the role and value of conservation. The
suggestion is that the hierarchy and misconception of conservation as a profession
by upper management and government has, and is, resulting in the stagnation of
advocacy for investment in it. The few conservators that do exist report that they
cannot champion effective change to current practice at a strategic level.

Our archivists and librarians in the region do not always get access to the most
ideal resources for professional development as Conservation is not always seen
as a priority in fiscal budgets…So, when the opportunity comes around to share
with others nationally and regionally and to get some hands-on training from
professionals in the Diaspora, it is a resounding ‘Yes, please!’.
(Inniss, 2019)

In addition to professional development in their own area of specialisation, there is

the added pressure in the region to gain skills in conservation. It is felt that online
platforms adequately provide theoretical learning opportunities and access to aca-
demic papers. The use of online repositories was championed as a resource at the
2018 conference Itinerant Identities: Museum Communities/Community Museums.
Many of the representatives from the island nations noted that UWI was best suited
to host the repository, which would include the documentation of discussions,
conferences, workshops and, most importantly, instructional videos. Instructional
videos were thought to support community museums without specialists, but to
what extent? Can and should archival, curatorial and librarian staff be expected
326  Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

to perform treatments on objects? The truth is that many do undertake remedial

­treatments and, as this practice is established, would it be better if they had access
to instructional videos that include when not to intervene and how to have contact
with a network of professional specialists, even if only online? There is a wealth of
academic and scientific papers available online, many of which can be effectively
utilised. The virtual support is approached as a means of supplementing the aca-
demic, scientific and practical, hands-on conservation training. The reality is that
it is by no means a replacement of it; however, there has been a shift born out of
international lockdown restrictions. Instructional videos with experts were deemed
a reasonable interim measure by universities with conservation courses. Internation-
ally, practical studio time was pared down to a minimum. The online allocation has
resulted in hybrid teaching. Its popularity has grown, partly because the efficacy of
it is improving with innovations in filming and familiarity as well as accessibility.
The logical judgement is that accessibility and a reduced impact on the environment
are some of the advantages of online courses, but this also needs to be balanced
with the ‘in-person’ experience, which may be essential in some instances. In the
recent British Council-funded project HUNAR: Heritage Unveiled: A National Art
Restoration Project (2019–2020) in Afghanistan, professional development shifted
to utilise wider dissemination of informational videos via online platforms as well
as project awareness and the promotion of gender and social inclusion using social
media (R. Mulholland, 2020, personal communication, February).
Much like other hands-on professionals, a conservator’s skills are honed experi-
entially. This is optimised when underpinned by the rigour of academic study and
scientific and technical analysis, as well as by witnessing and assisting experts in
the field. Like the ‘Living National Treasures’ status of artists and artisans in Japan,
where the skills of these artists and artisans are highly valued, the skill of conserva-
tion and the succession of it is also necessary to preserve. For complex treatments,
there is no question that the hands-on approach and familiarity with the materials
are necessary and superior, but while it is challenging to embrace this shift to the
virtual, it is claiming its pedagogical place, especially with preventive and remedial
treatments such as surface cleaning and object handling.
Conservation courses are expensive, as they necessitate restricted numbers, spe-
cialist equipment, multiple lecturers and internships for skills transfer. In recent
years, conservation courses such as the Paper and Book Conservation courses at
Camberwell College of Arts have been closing because of running costs. In the
current financial crisis, most universities are at risk in general, with the arts on the
front line of the cuts, and conservation courses are some of the most expensive to
run. The options for prospective students interested in conservation specialisation
are contracting, but online offerings could be a silver lining for multidisciplinary
and preventive conservators.
In the region, the job market for specialised conservators is restricted due to
limited funding and lack of advocacy, so that while administrators have been
increasingly interested in investing in their capacity to monetise digitised heritage
 The politics of change  327

resources few understand the critical importance of conserving the original ­artefacts
as complementary to this process. Notwithstanding a considerable need for such
skilled positions and facilities in which conservators could work to stabilise and
preserve at-risk heritage, there remains an acute need in the region for collection
care, building, metalwork, painting, paper, object, sculpture and textile conserva-
tors. The current working practice is to hire specialist conservators, often from
both within and beyond the wider region, occasionally with them working on-site
or the objects being sent overseas for treatment. The issues with the latter practice
are not only the cost, due to the insurance implications, but also that these already
fragile objects risk additional damage from regional and international transport.
Specialists abroad may also use treatments from a different cultural and environ-
mental perspective. The engagement with the individual object, the collection and
the object’s use is not as engaged as it is where there are in-house conservators and
those of the same cultural background. The absence of national expertise perpetu-
ates the colonial conditioning of dependence, ignorance and indifference.
In recent years, there have been initiatives such as the government policy in
Barbados where young ‘give back’ volunteers who have an interest in the arts and
history are engaged with collection-based entities in exchange for state-sponsored
education. The programme promotes civic duty as well as raising the profile of
careers in this sector. Over the years, there have been project-based possibilities for
young people to job shadow visiting professionals. However, viable career oppor-
tunities within the heritage sector are rare. For instance, over 20 years ago, one of
the authors worked as an assistant with a professional curator and conservators
providing practical real-world experience. Most conservators will attest to their
internships as the most valuable and utilised learning experience that they draw on
in their daily work. This is why we are seeing the resurgence of apprenticeships,
internships and fellowships across many practice-based disciplines.
In a survey of the Barbados National Art Gallery Collection in 2020, three young
people from a visual arts tertiary institution with previous gallery and museum
experience were selected to work as assistants alongside one of the authors, expos-
ing them to the approach of a conservator and preventive conservation. This aspect
of the project was championed as key for national succession planning and to pro-
vide an opportunity for experience in the heritage sector.
While it was a step towards succession planning, its strength was in the impact
the experience had on the assistants. Gallery assistants Malick Storey and Anisha
Wood reflected that:

…these experiences have expanded my interests beyond art production, into

other areas in the creative sector such as policy making, curatorial practice,
cultural history, community outreach in the arts and, of course, art conservation
[…]Chances such as these are few and far between in Barbados and would oth-
erwise require traveling to a major metropolitan city for a similar experience.4
(Storey, 2020)
328  Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

FIGURE 15.4 Lidia Aravena, Puerto Rican Consultant Conservator, assessing a paint-

ing under magnification. © Barbados Museum & Historical Society.

It highlighted for me the linkages between all stakeholders in the sector that
aid in the conservation of works for generations to come. This would include
the materials chosen by the artist as a substrate, the choices the framer makes
when framing a piece, how the art is displayed by the curator and for how long,
the best practices used by art handlers when transporting the work and how the
work is stored until it’s next showing.
(Wood, 2020)

These types of projects echo programming for those working in the sector. An
interventive treatment of Stipendiary Magistrates Records from St Kitts deliber-
ately became a teaching, networking event and advocacy for current conservation
practices (The Blue Road, 2018).
There is a deficit of technical and scientific analysis in the region on objects that
would inform about their fabrication and authenticity. Technical history is under-
pinned by the evidence the object provides and adds value to the understanding of
its historic use. Technical art history:

underwrites everything. It travels in a great sweep from the general to the par-
ticular – from global sources of pigment supply to the specifics of extracting dye-
stuffs in seventeenth-century Holland, from medieval concepts of colour to vivid
glimpses in London studios. It is impossible to understand art properly without its
insights. It acknowledges – celebrates – the artist at work and the act of making.
(Bomford, 1998)
 The politics of change  329

FIGURE 15.5 Barbados Give Back Volunteer assessing a new acquisition at the Barba-
dos National Art Gallery. © Barbados National Art Gallery.

The combination of knowledge of the cultural, historical, fabrication and scientific

evidence affords the community with as informed an overview as possible. With
these skills, the authority of one’s own material cultural heritage would carry more
weight internationally.
In recent years, what has organically evolved in the region is the utilisation of
professional networks and online platforms to support capacity building for per-
sons charged with preserving and conserving objects. Lectures, discussions and
demonstrations have started to be streamed using virtual and social media applica-
tions, such as Zoom, WhatsApp, YouTube, Skype and Facebook. MAC has also
included online resource hubs on its website providing guidelines on implementing
COVID-19 mitigation procedures and papers on conservation.56 International
expertise and regional collaborations are more accessible than ever. At a 2019
workshop on Current Conservation and Preservation Practices in Archives and
Libraries held at the Barbados National Archives, round-table discussions included
virtual participation from Trinidad, Jamaica, St Kitts and the UK. During the
discussions on the workshops, there was a consensus about the need for similar
continued practical programming in order to maintain and gain skills as well as
networks (Barbados National Archives, 2019).
The feedback was actioned with further online programming such as the three-
day Collections Care Workshop for Historic Interiors in a Tropical Environment
2021, which covered

• the agents of deterioration and methods of mitigation,

• an introduction to space assessment,
• an introduction to object handling and object cleaning,
• property maintenance,
330  Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

• environmental management,
• visitor routes,
• collection care and emergency plans,
• inventories,
• health and safety,
• risk assessments and
• ongoing training needs.

This workshop included videos of assessing exterior and interior spaces,

­demonstration videos, lectures and exercises. Out of the workshop came the com-
mitment to form a working group in Barbados to take action on shared building
maintenance issues, such as pest activity and efflorescence in historic walls.
The training sessions have increased from talks and workshops to formal lecture
series, such as the two-week UNESCO programme on Museums and Risk Prepar-
edness in 2021, which comprised a varied series of lectures from different museum
specialists, including Caribbean museum directors, international and regional con-
servators with different specialisms and emergency response specialists. The topics
mainly focused on collection care management and risk ­preparedness but also on
fighting against illicit trafficking in cultural property.
An article produced by the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and
Excellence (CREDE) at the University of California advances five principles of
effective pedagogy: two of these are ‘Joint Productive Activity’ and ‘Contextu-
alization’ (CREDE, n.d.). The first indicates a level of cooperation and exchange
between the instructor and the student. In line with this process, guidance is given
by the course coordinator and the student gains agency in the process of learning.
The latter, contextualisation, speaks to the link between instruction and the stu-
dent’s personal, family and community experiences (CREDE, n.d.).
An investment in formal academic training, online resources, practical work-
shops and apprenticeships within the region in preventive conservation and
­collection care would go far in safeguarding the objects of national, regional and
international importance. Without formal training, procedures and resources for
tropical environments, our heritage will continue to avoidably deteriorate: inappro-
priate treatments will continue to cause irrevocable damage and loss, and the use
of damaging chemicals on objects to treat insects and mould will continue. What
will be left will be an ever-increasing repository of inaccessible objects requir-
ing interventive conservation. Who will undertake the conservation? Unless the
storage facilities, handling and display practices meet appropriate standards, no
professional conservator will do it, as ethically conserving an object and placing
it back in an environment that will cause damage is unacceptable. Strides will be
made when more national and regional positions are created and when persons
are professionally trained in different disciplines in conservation; until then, the
­Caribbean nations will continue to risk and perpetuate dependence on the authority
and resources of the Global North. It is also pertinent to realise that the rhetoric
 The politics of change  331

FIGURE 15.6 Work experience at the Barbados National Art Gallery Collection as part
of a condition survey 2020.  © Barbados National Art Gallery.

used by ex-colonial powers to justify keeping objects that are not indigenous to
them is because of a lack of infrastructure and expertise to preserve them. The
Tarzan saviour complex is alive and well. While the region does need help, it needs
help with implementing sustainable infrastructure.
Until then, the region can continue to be innovative in creating new preven-
tive conservation methodologies and strategies, collaborating with local entities
that do have transferable capacities and expertise. For instance, one of the confer-
ence papers at the 2011 International Pest Odyssey conference was a Caribbean
case study of a collaboration with a local ice cream factory to undertake a low-
temperature treatment on a collection which suffered from major insect infestation
(Bancroft, Blyth and Watson, 2011).

Proposals for relevant online courses and resources in the region

The increasing traction of e-learning platforms in the region has made clear that
there are critical online courses and resources that could serve as the practical foun-
dation of regional collection care.

An introduction to preventive conservation

Participants would be informed about the general issues, such as the 10 agents
of deterioration, and the most pertinent issues to the region as well as effective
332  Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

achievable solutions, using local case studies, including environmental ­maintenance

suitable for the tropics.

An introduction to integrated pest management

This course would draw on the established principles of monitoring, mapping,
establishing risk zones, housekeeping, incorporating pest management in the
design of spaces, pest identification and treatment of infestations. This training
would incorporate the creation of a dedicated pest-identification poster for the
heritage sector, similar to the one created for English Heritage (English Heritage,
n.d.), but which deals with the pests prevalent in the Caribbean such as termites
(like the Coptotermes acinaciformis), silverfish (Ctenolepisma longicaudata) and
African powder-post beetle (Lyctus brunneus). The establishment of a regional pest
working group that incorporates pest control companies’ expertise would create
a beneficial network for heritage institutions and governments, and it could also
establish standards for appropriate treatment options available for heritage objects.
The outcomes of such a network would benefit both the heritage sector and the
wider community.

Emergency response in the tropics

There is a wealth of information on emergency responses and many comprehensive
regional workshops: most recently, the course Building Disaster Resilience in the
Caribbean’s Culture Sector was offered in 2020 and facilitated by UNESCO and
the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), for example.
However, like the other identified training modules, it would be advantageous to
adapt bespoke versions to emergency response in the tropics, in which preparations
for hurricanes are at the forefront. The identification of salvage materials, consist-
ent practical training similar to that of the Historic England Salvage and Disaster
Recovery Course, and concrete improvement of institutional and national supply
stores would afford the region a fighting chance. (Historic England, 2018). The
Caribbean has the academic understanding of what is needed from excellent theo-
retical workshops. Unfortunately, most institutions have not been able to undertake
the regular practical training or to implement what they have learned due to lack
of resources and access to materials and equipment. This means that the region’s
already at-risk material cultural heritage is not prepared for the yearly threat of
­hurricanes, volcanoes and other extreme weather events.

Foundation in object handling

This foundational course would be a quick win and, in the interim, the e­ -learning
module created by the Museum of London could be adapted and utilised
(Museum of London, n.d.). Ideally, this training could be improved with video
 The politics of change  333

demonstrations, discussions and attendees’ physical demonstration of what they

have learned.

Object marking guidelines

Producing object marking guidelines would be another easy improvement to
­current practice, with the proviso that the materials used, such as barrier layers will
age appropriately in the local environments.

Condition reporting of objects

While this practice is established in some institutions it should be updated to include
input from conservation professionals, to meet the need to be succinct and to utilise
virtual reports and imaging as well as to be relevant for loans to other institutions.
The region could easily come together to formalise this process.

Surveying object and collection conditions

Institutions need to have appropriate data to strategically prioritise their resources
to areas of their collection for preservation and conservation which is critical for
securing grants and funding. The worldwide emphasis on digitisation and accessi-
bility of collections can be argued as being more important in the region because of
how spread out these nations are, with travel costs remaining challenging. Acces-
sibility via digitisation is advantageous for research and an income-generation
avenue for all institutions, but surveying to inform on stabilisation treatments for
digitisation is lacking. The collateral issue, however, is that the original object is
often damaged in the process to facilitate the ‘digital’ version, as there is funding
for digitisation but not for the resulting conservation required.

Exhibition and display procedures

At the moment, these procedures are mainly based on temperate climate ­protocols,
which, for the most part, are effective, but while adjustments can be made to the
environmental parameters compromises are commonplace given restrictive budg-
ets. Many institutions create decent exhibitions and permanent displays with excel-
lent content, but the execution of the physical display can be hampered by dated
cases fabricated from inferior materials and ineffective mounts to support the
exhibited objects. Again, this would be a quick win with an investment in mount-
making professional development and the use, for instance, of bespoke costume
mounting along with successful bids for museum-quality display cases.
Gallery and exhibition design in the region does not normally take into account
‘dead spaces’ in proximity to display cases and objects, which has an increased risk
in the Caribbean because of prolific insect activity. Another improvement would
334  Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

be the use of tested inert display materials, within construction of display cases.
Training would highlight which objects should be cased, for instance, the barrier
distances, appropriate lighting levels as well as air change and circulation is a high
priority. A shared and frequently updated list of appropriate materials and suppliers
for the region should be generated from this activity.

Gallery maintenance
Many museums need support with establishing, implementing or improving lighting
policies, dust deposition management and rotating objects within their permanent
displays. Most museums in the Caribbean prioritise a high level of ‘housekeeping’7
in the region, but there are notable improvements, as specified above, which can be
illustrated using case studies, including regular repeated training of maintenance
staff specifically in bespoke cleaning of heritage objects and spaces. References
such as The National Trust Manual of Housekeeping could be adapted for this
purpose (National Trust, 2011).

Surface cleaning of objects

As many objects remain on open display and others inevitably suffer from dust
deposition with high temperatures, humidity and air-borne salt content, surface
cleaning of objects in many heritage institutions by non-conservators is necessary
to minimise the cementation of dust, the corrosion of objects and biological deg-
radation. With online demonstration videos, the dissemination of these skills, as
well as how to identify when an object requires cleaning, could be advantageous
in preventive care. The practice of ‘dusting’ objects exists, but the people doing so
should have access to CPD and to specialists to assist them with utilising minimum
intervention methods and to avoid preventable damage by ‘domestic’ cleaning
methods and substances.

Offering online resources

All of the highlighted examples could be supported by an online network of
­specialists and peers, who could meet quarterly to discuss such projects. This can
be as simple as the ‘Conservation Family’ WhatsApp group between profession-
als working in the sector in the region, which was initiated by participants at the
­Caribbean Heritage Network’s Caribbean Conversations in Conservation confer-
ence in March 2020. We anticipate that this informal group will eventually lead to
a membership-based and or practice-based entity.
Preventive collection care and conservation modules should be taught by spe-
cialists in those areas. There are many institutions internationally for benchmark-
ing online learning platforms; these e-learning opportunities could be similar to the
Victoria and Albert Museum’s Online Learning Academy or the Courtauld Short
 The politics of change  335

Courses (The Courtauld, n.d.). The repositories of resources could be akin to the
Getty’s Teaching and Learning Resources, Our Collections Matter Toolkit of the
International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural
Property (ICCROM) and the Emergency Response Online Workshops hosted by
ICCROM (The Getty Conservation Institute, n.d.). What is being proposed is to
draw on what already exists, to collaborate where possible without losing auton-
omy. It would be advisable to incorporate what is relevant for the Caribbean and to
use regional case studies and the region’s own objects to illustrate the training and
to collaborate with people that are on the front line of this region’s heritage.
The Caribbean requires formalised bespoke approaches to the care and con-
servation of its material heritage in a tropical environment. There should be clear
and achievable guidelines for museums having to work with external special-
ists, particularly on how to recruit and commission relevant expertise. Consistent
practical exercises in and reviews of emergency response procedures and training
are critical, especially with the increase in natural disasters in the region that are
unique to it. Regional and national institutions could, for example, procure materi-
als and equipment collaboratively, sharing critical resources and working across
­departments, institutions and regions.

Curating the Caribbean: new directions, new methodologies

and new museologies
The most recent developments in Caribbean museum studies have developed as
a result of two fully funded project-based partnerships between the UWI and the
European Union and Latin American and Caribbean (EU-LAC) Museums project,
taking advantage of the UWI’s region-wide scope and capacity to deliver online. In
the academic year 2016–2017, a component of the Caribbean Civilization course
assessment was designed to further develop potential approaches to a Caribbean
museology. The pedagogical approach in this move was unique, as the students
took on the role of researcher, analyst and historian. This initiative was birthed
out of a global project and built on an MOU created between the UWI and the
University of St. Andrews in 2015. The European Union Horizon 2020 Europe,
Latin America and Caribbean INT-12–2015 call (European Commission, 2015)
approved funding that enabled a unique consortium of universities and museums
in both regions, organised through the ICOM, to embark on a community museums
project with the overall aim of creating ‘a common vision for sustainable, small to
medium-sized local and regional museums and their communities, and reinforce
mutual understanding and cooperation between regions’ (EU-LAC Museums, n.d.).
Indeed, contextualisation was a key element of this course assignment, as stu-
dents were encouraged to locate their research in their communities. The students
were therefore able to attach greater meaning to their research processes.
In July 2016, two new courses were introduced into the UWI Open Campus
curriculum through an MOU signed between the UWI and the OAS: Values-based
336  Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

Heritage Site Management and Museum Conservation Skills. These courses were
eventually delivered between February and May 2017, with the rationale for the
latter stand-alone elective course explained as follows:

Museum conservation is an area in need of more trained professionals active in

the field globally and particularly within the Caribbean region. Furthermore, as
heritage tourism becomes an increasingly important aspect of the tourism sector
in the Caribbean, with an increase in community-based museums that attempt
to capture the uniqueness of their environment, exposure to critical aspects of
museum management and conservation is indispensable.
With seasonal changes and the threat of natural disasters along with man-
made threats, it is imperative that museum workers and those engaged in herit-
age work are knowledgeable about the ways in which they can safeguard their
collections for posterity before an incident occurs […] Students will be better
equipped to make appropriate choices in exhibition design and storage facilities
for such objects.
(OAS, 2017)

The course was developed in response to the critical need for professional training
in the care, management and conservation of museum collections for deployment
in Caribbean museums and other heritage-oriented institutions. Specifically, it was
designed:

to provide participants with comprehensive exposure to preventive conserva-

tion. Participants will be exposed to methods of mitigating deterioration and
safeguarding collections through disaster and recovery planning, thus ena-
bling them to make informed decisions about the handling and management of
cultural objects. The course will also equip participants with skills in disaster
­preparedness and management as it relates to these objects. Additionally, the
course allows for the exploration of the different areas of collection policy devel-
opment, record keeping and documentation, giving participants ­competence in
effective museum collection management.
(UWI Open Campus, 2016 a/b, p. 34)

It re/introduced participants, many of whom were already working in regional

institutions, to current practices relating to museum collection development and
essential documentation, critical heritage interpretation and approaches to defining
collection and artefact significance, informed by both the methodological and tech-
nology-based approaches required for creative and effective professional practice.
However, it was found necessary to introduce many of the participants to essen-
tial knowledge of the role and function of museums, particularly in the context
of emergency evaluation and preparedness, condition reporting and professional
conservation practice.
 The politics of change  337

This intensive induction programme left participants with a better knowledge of

collections definition and management, as well as a better understanding of how
broad their responsibilities were (or would be). The responsibilities would be made
manifest as they addressed community needs and supported national efforts to fulfil
the requirements for the implementation of the various conventions to which these
nation states are signatory. They were also provided with some knowledge of what
was needed to secure their collection holdings for future generations. However, it
was also clear that they had become highly sensitised to and, deeply aware of, the
vulnerabilities of their collections and of their museums and national heritage in
general. The questions they left the course with included the following: When next
would the course be held so that they could inform other colleagues to join? Where
could they go to acquire further assistance to protect and promote their holdings?
How soon would the university be providing intermediate-level courses, as they
needed to continue? (Cummins, 2017) The needs raised and the potential offerings
identified in response are in the process of being actioned with the intention of
sourcing funds to manifest the next steps.

Conclusions: potentialities and possible futures for museum,

preservation and conservation studies in the Caribbean
As our pedagogical history has demonstrated, the Caribbean region has benefitted
at times from investment in museum studies training, distinct from the fields of his-
tory and heritage studies. More recently, there is an urgency to equip the sector with
skills adapted to market forces and tourism, among other issues facing the region.
However, to maintain professional standards in the Caribbean museum sector, an
innovative way forward now needs to be designed among multiple actors and put
in place. One need only look to the catastrophic events of 2017 to consider the
urgency of this situation. The needs of the region share core training requirements
with the world, particularly in the Global South, including collections manage-
ment, preservation, conservation and principles of museum education. At the same
time, a future course will need to address distinctive needs as articulated for our
islands (and possibly other SIDS), such as appropriate provisions, security, disaster
preparedness, recovery and resilience as well as specific conservation disciplines
and collection care needs in humid climates. Beyond this, there is a need to have
formally trained conservators of different specialisations to undertake treatments
and to create and implement regional conservation and preservation policies.
The approach to conservation education and training as proposed by the Interna-
tional Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) UK may offer the most useful
model to address training needs in island nations including the Caribbean, where:

1 Specialist courses should be multidisciplinary and mutual learning should be

encouraged. In addition to core subjects available to all participants, optional
subjects will extend capacities and/or to fill the gaps in previous education and
338  Alissandra Cummins and Anne Bancroft

training. To complete the education and training of a conservation practitioner,

on-the-job and practical training is recommended to give practical experience.
2 Courses aimed at continuing career development should build on the initial
education and training of participants. Such short courses play a role in enlarg-
ing attitudes, updating the knowledge of specialists and introducing concepts
and techniques of conservation and the management of the built and natural
heritage.
3 Every country or regional group should be encouraged to develop at least one
comprehensively organised institution to provide and/or support conservation
education and training and specialist courses. Where such institutions do not
exist, this may be achieved though regional exchanges and collaboration, by
building new initiatives onto existing programmes and building up training
capacity in these institutions.
4 The active exchange of ideas and opinions on new or improved approaches to
education and training between national institutes and at international levels
should be encouraged, including by national, regional and international level
exchange of teachers, experts and students. Collaborative networks of individuals
and institutions are central to the success of this exchange. (ICOMOS, 2012, p. 3)

There are synergies and quick wins to be had using the ICCROM Our Collections
Matter toolkit and underpinning them to the countries’ achievement of the Sus-
tainable Development Goals. It is possible that through future strategic alliances
among the UWI, local museums, museums associations, conservation bodies and
museum professionals, as well as international partners in policy and academia, a
sustainable model for museology, conservation and museum studies can be created
for the benefit of a region with sophisticated needs in relation to material culture,
history, territory, community and sustainability.

Acknowledgements
Research for this chapter has been supported by the EU-LAC Museums pro-
ject. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020
Research and Innovation programme under grant agreement No. 693669.
Additional research for the chapter was undertaken by Natalie McGuire and
Kaye Hall of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society; their work is gratefully
acknowledged.
Thanks must also be extended to Professor Sir Woodville Marshall for shar-
ing his archival resources and recollections of the initial developments at UWI
Mona and Cave Hill with us, as well as Professor Barry Higman for UWI Mona,
Dr Karl Watson for UWI Cave Hill and Dr Veerle Poupeye for Edna Manley
­College—all of whom willingly lent their archival resources and memories
in helping to reconstruct the ‘history’ of museology and conservation in the
­Anglophone Caribbean.
 The politics of change  339

Notes
1 An earlier version of this chapter, titled ‘The Politics of Change: ­Pedagogical ­approaches
to Caribbean Museum history and curatorship’, was presented by ­Alissandra Cummins,
Karen Brown and Anne-el Bain during the annual conference of the ACH, Bridgetown,
2018.
2 The first analytical study of Caribbean museums and their history, audience, collections,
facilities and resources appear in Francis Bather and Thomas Sheppard’s ‘The Museums
of the British West Indies’ (including the Bermudas and British Guiana).
3 Banana leaf paper has been used in these countries as a paper repair method. Banana leaf
paper has also been made by the Northern Caribbean University, Department of Biology,
Chemistry and Environmental Science, Cuba.
4 Storey, M., Wood, A. Feedback from Barbados National Art Gallery Conservation sur-
vey Report 2020.
5 See the MAC website for their COVID-19 resources: [Link]
covid-19-resources/
6 See the MAC website for their conservation publications in the different volumes https://
[Link]/caribbean-museums-volume-4/
7 Housekeeping techniques and materials are typically used in a domestic setting as
­opposed to museum environment.

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INDEX

Note: Italic page numbers refer to figures.

14th FEMSA Biennial (Mexico) 12, Anacostia Neighborhood Museum 5–6

266–91 Anderson, Benedict 73
25th ICOM General Conference, Kyoto, Antigua 95, 111, 205, 257
Japan (2019) 47 Arantepacua (Mexico) 282–4, 285, 286;
2nd Generation Barbadian & Friends group Communal Indigenous Council
216, 241 268, 282; see also Purépecha
34th ICOM General Assembly, Kyoto, community
Japan (2019) 97, 108 Aravena, Lidia 328
Arce, Samuel Franco 39
Aall Gallery 299, 303 archaeological sites and museums 10, 65,
AAM see American Alliance of Museums 74, 116–36
Abdessemed, Adel 259 Archaeological Studies 315
Abramovic, Marina 259 Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, Csilla 4
Abungu, George 182 Arrivants exhibition 1, 85, 117, 292–312
Acconci, Vito 259 art installation 10
ACH see Association of Caribbean Association of Caribbean Historians (ACH)
Historians 213, 313, 314
Afghanistan 326 Atkinson, Ewan 306, 307
Africa 5, 85, 112, 201, 293, 300, 307; Atl, Dr 281
African heritage 79, 182, 183, 299 Aubague, Laurent 25
Aguada, La: Museo Escolar Hugo Günckel audiovisual media 131, 133, 315; see also
de La Aguada (Hugo Günckel video
School Museum of La Aguada)
(Chile) 57, 58, 59, 61, 66 Bahamas 247, 298, 302
Albania 112 Bancroft, Anne 7, 13
Alexandra Institute 162 Barbados 12, 39, 46, 47, 94, 95, 213,
Alice Yard 190, 191, 247 216; Arrivants exhibition 293–4,
Allende, President Salvador 9, 54 297–8, 300–301, 304–5, 307–10;
Alleyne, Llanor 191 rhizomatic research approach 178,
American Alliance of Museums (AAM) 4, 187, 188, 190, 194; conservation
140, 141, 160, 202 317, 323, 325, 327, 330;
344 Index

ecomuseology 246, 250–2, 254; Brasshouse Lane Community Centre 241

virtual museums 221, 224, 226, Brathwaite, Kamau 256, 292–3, 295–6
231, 241 Brazil 110
Barbados Archives 323 Brereton, Bridget 313
Barbados Community College (BCC) 212, Breton, André 269
240–1 Bretos, Fernando 149
Barbados Defence Force 242 British Nationality Act 199, 299
Barbados Museum & Historical Society Broodhagen, Karl 308
(BMHS) 47, 184, 190–2, 198–220, Brown, Jamie Allan 8, 39, 47
221–44, 253, 316, 317; Arrivants Brown, Karen 8, 9, 10, 39, 47, 181
exhibition 292, 298, 300, 301, 303, Brulon Soares, Bruno 3–4, 7, 98, 178
305, 310 Brunias, Agostino 306
Barbados National Archives 329 Bryan-Wilson, Julia 285, 276, 287
Barbados National Art Gallery 327, Building Disaster Resilience course 332
329, 331 Burisch, Nicole 283, 285, 286
Barbados National Collection 305 Butcher, Ras Ishi 306
barrel children 215, 301 Buurman, Nanne 295
Bartholomew, Lindsay 149 Byer, Patricia 321
Batson, Brian 239
BCC see Barbados Community College CAM see Caribbean Artists Movement
Belize 9, 72–87; National Museum of Camarena Ocampo, Cuauhtémoc 4, 6, 8–9,
Belize 74–76, 78; see also Houses 41, 180
of Culture Cameron, Fiona 3
Benítez Rojo, Antonio 256 Campbell, Gary 55
Benoist, Marie 308 Campbell, Keron 143, 149
Berkeley, William Noland 5 Canada 100, 112, 294, 322
Best Maugard, Adolfo 280, 281 Cape Farewell (2012–) project 162
BetaLocal (Puerto Rico) 12, 247–8, 250, Caracas, Otilia 258
259–63 Cárdenas, Lázaro, and his government 270,
Biabiany, Minia 255–6, 257–8 271–2, 274, 276
Bigidi dance 258 Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM)
biodiversity 3, 60, 138, 139, 146, 155, 293, 308
156, 157 Caribbean Community (CARICOM)
Bi-Regional Youth Exchange 8, 37–51, 314, 315
117, 201 Caribbean Conservation Association
Bishop, Claire 249 (CCA) 314
Black Diaspora Visual Arts programme 185 Caribbean Conservation Code of Ethics
Black History Month 241 322
Black Professional Network 241 Caribbean Disaster Emergency
Black, Anthea 286 Management Agency (CDEMA)
Blou, Léna 258 332
BMHS see Barbados Museum and Caribbean Heritage Network 13, 324, 334
Historical Society Caribbean Linked 248
Bodle, Chris 162 Caribbean migration 11–12, 198–220, 221–
Bolivia 110 244; see also Virtual Museum of
Bolland, Nigel 72 Caribbean Migration and Memory;
Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo 24 Windrush
Bonilla, Andrea 258 Caribbean museology 11, 13, 177–97, 217,
Boruca community and culture (Costa 313–41
Rica) 39, 41–2, 44, 48–9; Boruca CARICOM see Caribbean Community 314
Community Museum 39 carnival 183, 234, 300
Bourdieu, Pierre 260 Carter, Lieutenant J.M. 306
Braasch, Gary 162 Casey, Edward S. 254
 Index  345

Cassidy, Catherine Anne 12 conservation 13–14, 38, 60, 65–6, 78–9,

Castro-Gómez, Santiago 8, 24, 26 112, 119–22, 125–6, 137–8, 140–1,
Cayetano, Roy 79, 82, 84 145, 248–9, 253, 262, 313–41;
Cayetano, Sebastian (‘Mr. Caye’) environmental 125, 138, 146,
76–7, 83 156–57, 164; pest management
Cayman Islands 10, 160–74, 298, 310 332; training and apprenticeships 7,
CCA see Caribbean Conservation 120, 138, 319–20, 323, 326–7, 330,
Association 331, 333–4, 337
CCMI see Central Caribbean Marine Coral Encounters 10, 163–5, 167–2
Institute coral reefs and their health 10, 143, 164–8,
CDEMA see Caribbean Disaster 171–2, 304; coral bleaching 161,
Emergency Management 166, 168
Agency Cordero Reiman, Karen 280, 281
Center for Research on Education, Corsane, Gerard 246, 248, 254
Diversity and Excellence Costa Rica 1, 7, 37–51, 89, 93, 100, 116;
(CREDE) 330 National Museum 41, 44, 116
Central Caribbean Marine Institute (CCMI) COVID-19 pandemic 12, 193–4, 268, 277,
164, 165, 166, 168, 172 278, 282; effect on community-
Centre for Caribbean and Diaspora based museums 98–9; enhanced use
Studies 241 of technology 222–3, 234, 240–41,
Césaire, Aimé 295 243, 269, 287, 326, 329
Chambers, Eddie 266, 299, 300, 301 crafts and craftspeople 13, 43, 85, 112, 120,
Chan Chan (Peru) 117, 119, 120–1, 122–3, 131, 214, 320, 324; in Mexico
125–6, 128, 132–3 268, 273, 276, 281, 282, 283, 285,
Chandler, Michael 323 286, 287
Chapman-Andrews, Allison 321 CREDE see Center for Research on
Charry, Carolina 258 Education, Diversity and
Chaumier, Serge 5 Excellence
chicha de jora 123–4, 127 creolisation 178, 186–7, 191, 297, 310
Chile 5, 9, 39, 52–71, 89, 94, 100, 110, Critical Race Theory 184
129–30 Crooke, Elizabeth 2
Chois, Yolanda 257 Cruz, José ‘Tony’ 259
Chuxnabán (Mexico) 30–1; Community Cuba 247, 320, 321
Museum of San Juan Bosco Cultural Center Museum and Memory of
Chuxnabán 30 Neltume 57
citizen scientists 3, 10, 137–59 Cummins, Alissandra 1, 7, 12, 13, 83, 85,
Citizen-Led Urban Environmental 183, 200–201
Restoration 10, 140 Cunard Gallery 191, 299, 305–6
Claverie, Marie 9 Cunard, Sir Edward 305
climate change 3, 6–8, 10, 14, 138, 155, CUPIDO project 240
160–74, 202, 245 Curação 247
co-curation 11, 14, 85, 185, 204, 206, 208, curation 13, 98, 226, 238, 275, 295, 297,
210, 212, 213, 217, 227 316, 335
Colombia 7, 12, 34, 110, 247, 255, 257 curatorial practice 77, 83, 190–1, 203, 207,
Colston, Edward 300–301 217, 297, 318, 327
Columbus, Christopher 292, 300, 306
Commock, Tracy 10, 149, 150 Dana, John Cotton 5
community assemblies 8, 28, 111 dance 42, 48, 76, 79, 81, 85, 119, 131,
community-based museums 8–9, 47, 52–3, 258, 277
55–8, 61–2, 64, 68–9, 89–93, 95–9, Danowski, Déborah 278, 287
108, 116, 241, 336; definition 94, DAPP (Departamento Autónomo de Prensa
180; role of 9, 52, 55, 97 y Publicidad) 271–2
Connell, Neville 306 Dash, Paul 308
346 Index

Dávalos, Erandi 276 Fabola, Adeola 225, 227, 229

Davis, Annalee 12, 246–7, 248–9, 250–4, Facebook 41, 99, 240, 242, 329
259, 261, 262, 263 Falk, John H. 55
Davis, Peter 2, 4, 7, 39, 40, 95, 108, 180, Fanon, Frantz 200, 256, 295
246, 248, 249–50, 260 Federal University of Rio de Janeiro 7
De Carli, Georgina 117 Fernández, Carlos 287
decolonisation 3–4, 7, 12, 23, 26–7, 109, flooding 44, 122, 162
246, 250, 287 flora and fauna 139, 141, 145, 146, 147,
Deleuze, Gilles 177, 178 148, 151, 154
Departamento Autónomo de Prensa y Florez, Ericka 258
Publicidad see DAPP Fortey, Richard 73
Deutsches Museum 162 France 39, 89, 93, 109, 179, 246; and
diablitos 283, 286 Guadeloupe 255–6
digital badges as incentive 139, 151 Francis-Brown, Suzanne 230
digital exhibition panels 190, 221, Franco, Samuel 44, 47
233–4 Fresh Milk 12, 250–4, 260–1
digital technology and digitisation 12, 133, Frost Science Museum 138–40, 143, 145–
185, 221–44, 333 7, 149–51, 155
disaster resilience and risk prevention 39, Fujimori, Alberto 119
44, 47, 123, 130, 133–4, 332, 335, Fúquene Giraldo, Laura 9
336
Dodd, Jocelyn 74 Gaelic language and culture society
Dominican Republic 255, 256, 261 (Comunn na Gàidhlig) 40–1
Dussel, Enrique 24, 26 García Ortega, Eleazar 30, 33
Dyche, Ernest 309 Gardner, Anthony 247
Garifuna community and culture 9, 75–9,
ecomuseums 1, 6–8, 11–12, 37–51, 88, 89, 82, 83, 85; see also Gulisi Museum;
95, 100, 107–8, 180–1, 245–65; see Luba Garifuna Museum
also under museology Garza Usabiaga, Daniel 266, 269, 275–6
Ecuador 37, 105, 111 Germany 5, 179
Egypt 112 Gilbert and George 259
El Niño phenomenon 2, 10, 117, 122–3, Gilroy, Paul 304
134 Glissant, Édouard 11, 12, 177–8, 185–6,
Elmúdesi Krögh, Bárbara 9 187, 245, 250, 256, 257,
embroidery 283, 285 258, 295
emergency response 330, 335 Goldbard, Adela 268, 282–87
Enigma of Arrival exhibition 11, 198–220, Golding, Viv 2, 180, 191
222–4, 231–3, 237, Goldsmiths University 216, 241, 308
240–43 González Casanova, Pablo 23
enslavement 183, 199, 213, 217, 251 González Mello, Renato 273
environmental issues 6, 38, 99, 137–8, González Rueda, Ana S. 12
140–1, 156 Graham, Claude 205
Errázuriz Contreras, Javiera 9 Grand Cayman 161, 164
Espinoza, Beatriz 95 Greaves, Stanley 302
EU-LAC Museums Bi-Regional Youth Greece 100, 109
Exchange 8, 37, 39, 41, 49 Green, Charles 247
EU-LAC Museums community museum Greenidge, Newlands 252
survey 9, 88, 95, 99–112 Grenada 261
EU-LAC Museums policy 96 Griffith, Francis 307
EU-LAC Museums Policy Round Table Grosfoguel, Ramón 24, 26
report 108 Grueso, Mary 257
extreme weather 2, 122, 163 Guadeloupe 255, 257
extreme weather events 162, 332 Guatemala 32, 72, 75, 95, 111
 Index  347

Guatemala: Community Museum of India 112

Historial Memory of Rabinal 32 Instagram 152; see also social media
Guattari, Felix 177, 178 Institute of Jamaica 138, 139, 157
Guerrilla Girls 62 intangible cultural heritage 7, 64, 69, 75,
Gulisi Museum 75, 76, 77, 78–9, 83, 85 78, 83, 92, 98, 107, 108, 110, 112,
Gunn, Ann 89 118, 130, 180, 213, 237, 253, 262,
Guston, Phillip 272 317
Guyana 94, 110, 298, 309, 323 integral museum 11, 59, 88, 117
International Association of Art Critics 185
Habinahan Wanáragua (Jankunu) 79, 80–2 International Centre for the Study of the
Haiti 110, 261 Preservation and Restoration of
Hall, Kaye 11, 47 Cultural Property see ICCROM
Hall, Stuart 295 International Committee for Museology see
Hanru, Hou 259 ICOFOM
Haraway, Donna 251 International Council of Museums see
Harris, Versia 190 ICOM
Harris, Wilson 295 International Movement for a New
Havana Biennial 267 Museology (MINOM) 6
heritage management 245, 314, 316, 323, International Year of the Reef (IYOR) 164,
336 165, 166, 172
heritage studies 14, 38, 205, 315–17, 318, internships, museum 214–15, 310, 322,
337 323, 326, 327
Hewitt, Guy 214 Ireland 304
Hickling-Hudson, Anne 181 Isle of Skye (Scotland) 8, 37–51
Highland and Islands Enterprise 240 Italy 100, 109
Higman, Barry 313, 315–16 Itinerant Identities conference 1, 46, 208,
HOCs see Houses of Culture 213, 226, 243, 325
Holder, Caroline 304 Ivan Illich, La 260
Honduras 75 IYOR see International Year of the Reef
Houses of Culture (HOC) (Belize) 9, 75,
77–9, 82–3 Jamaica 3, 10, 13, 39, 72, 94, 110, 137–59,
Huacas de Moche Museum 117, 119, 120, 216; Arrivants exhibition 293, 298,
122, 123, 125, 128, 129, 132, 133 299, 304, 305; conservation 316,
Hudson, Brian 201 323, 329; virtual museums 224–5,
Huffman, Carlos 278 228, 241
Huggins, Nadia 303 James Corner Field Operations 162
HUNAR: Heritage Unveiled 326 James-Williams, Sherene 94, 227
hurricanes 13, 44, 151, 161, 255, 302, 332; Japan 100, 326
Irma 260; Maria 260; Nate 44 Jimenez, Madeline 255, 256
Huyghe, Pierre 278 Jimenez, Valentín 283
John, Augustus 308
ICCROM 335, 338 Johnson, Leasho 247, 305
ICOFOM 4, 179, 185 Jolly, Jacqueline 272
ICOM 1, 3, 39, 46–7, 54, 62, 97, 99, 116, Jones, Sherilyne 9
117, 118, 182, 247, 320, 335; Costa Juneja, Monica 296, 297
Rica 44; definition of a museum 3,
88, 95, 98, 108; Norway 98; Peru Kadish, Reuben 272
119; UK 98 Karp, Ivan 2, 77, 202
ICOM Resolution No. 5 6, 47, 97–8, 108, Kautz, Willy 269
117 Keating, Marianne 304
illicit trafficking of culture 330 Kellman, Winston 304
immersive media 222, 225, 237 Kennedy, Katherine 192
Immigration Museum (Australia) 189 Keohane, Kate 12, 201
348 Index

Kester, Grant 249 memory 9, 11–12, 14, 30, 55, 59, 62, 65,
Kinard, John 5 198–220, 246–7, 256, 257, 272,
Kincaid, Jamaica 257 284, 304; collective 6, 23, 28, 30,
King, Chelle 149 34, 42, 52–3, 63, 125, 283; memory
King, Esteban 269, 275, 276 work 5, 250, 285, 323; oral
knowledge-sharing 11, 30, 131, 181, 186, 111, 131, 286; and technologies
188–9, 191, 230 132–3; see also Virtual Museum of
Kompatsiaris, Panos 267 Caribbean Migration and Memory
Kosinski, Dorothy 83 (VMCMM)
Kreps, Christina 83 Ménard-Greenidge, Denise 252
Mendes Belisario, Isaac 306
La Rose, John 293 metadata 193, 221, 228, 234, 236, 237, 238
Lambayeque region (Peru) 118, 122, 123, Mexican Independence 277
124, 127, 128, 129, 131, 133 Mexican Revolution 32, 270–2, 274, 277
Lamming, George 295, 308 Mexico 4–7, 12, 23–36, 72, 247, 255, 256,
Latour, Bruno 287 266–91
LGBTQ groups 26 Miami, Florida (US) 137–59
Libertad region (Peru) 117, 118, 122–3, Michoacán state (Mexico) 12, 266–91
126, 127, 128, 129, 132, 133 Middle East 85, 307
libraries 144, 191, 227, 252, 253, 259, 270, Mignolo, Walter 4, 24
329; digital 226 migration 11–12, 13, 14, 47, 65, 91, 117,
Lindo, Kelley-Ann 301, 310 181, 185, 198–220, 221–44,
living history 214, 316 292–312
Locke, Hew 299, 300–301, 309 Miller, Alan 12
Long, Norman 67 Modest, Wayne 2, 180, 183
López Obrador, Andrés Manuel 268, 276, Montgomery, Harper 281, 282
277 Moore, Philip 302
López, Garzón 24, 256 Morales Lersch, Teresa 4, 6, 8, 39, 41, 48,
López, Ulrik 255 89, 95, 180, 202
Loveday-Edwards, Mary 283 Morales, Adriana 49
Loveless, Natalie 266 Morales, Juana 283
Low, Theodore 78 Morrison, Elizabeth 143, 149
Luba Garifuna Museum 76, 77, 78, 79, 83, Mosquera, Nohelia 257
85 Movement for a New Museology
(MINOM) 6
M&M 259 multimedia 232, 238
MAC see Museums Association of the Munroe, Kishan 302
Caribbean muralism 12, 13, 42, 266–88
McGuire, Natalie 11, 12, 228 Murrieta Flores, David A.J. 12
Mairesse, François 5 Musa, Yasser 84
Malalhue: Museo Despierta Hermano de Museo Anahuacalli 280
Malalhue (Chile) 9, 57–8, 59, 66 Museo Escolar Hugo Günckel see Hugo
Mali 112 Günckel School Museum of La
Maori people & culture 8, 26, 27, 58 Aguada
maps, interactive 223, 232, 233, 235, 237, Museo Tringlo de Lago Ranco 57
238, 239 museology 1, 4, 7, 56, 58, 67, 106, 227,
Mapuche people 9, 56, 58, 63 310; Caribbean 11, 13, 177–197,
Marchart, Oliver 267 217, 313–41; ecological community
Maréchal, Jean-Philippe 184 museology 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 39, 109,
María Morelos, José 277 198; see also new museology
Martinez, Lee 149 Museum Association of the Caribbean
Martinique 298 (MAC) 47, 221, 222, 314, 329
Marxuach, Michelle 259 Museum Conservation Skills 336
 Index  349

Museum Development, Management and NHMJ see Natural History Museum of

Curatorship 318 Jamaica
Museum of London 332 Nicaragua 75
Museum Volunteers for the Environment Nieto, Angélica 258
(MUVE) 143, 146, 150–1 Nigeria 112
Museums and Risk Preparedness 330 Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art
Museums Association (UK) 4 Center 162
Museums Association of the Caribbean Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme
(MAC) 1, 94, 138, 185, 193, 226, 231
314–15, 329
Museums Connect 140, 151, 156 O’Gorman, Juan 268, 276, 277–8, 279, 281
museums, social role and function of 9, OAS see Organisation of American States
52–71, 88, 92, 130 Oaxaca (Mexico) 4, 6, 28, 30, 32, 41
MUVE see Museum Volunteers for the object handling and preservation 125, 319,
Environment 324, 326, 329, 332
Obregón Torres, Raúl Rodrigo 67
Naipaul, V. S. 204 Obregón, Álvaro 273
National Archives, Ireland 304 Obrist, Hans Ulrich 295
National Building Museum, US 162 Oesterreich, Miriam 274
National Gallery of Denmark 162 Ogurcak, Danielle 143, 149
National Gallery of the Cayman Islands online platforms 187, 201, 217, 231, 248,
(NGCI) 3, 10, 161, 163–72 331, 334
National Garifuna Council of Belize 76, 82 Open Air museums 5
National Museum of Archaeology, Lisbon oral histories and testimony 8, 29, 58,
41, 90, 116 76, 125, 133, 242, 261, 318; and
Natural History Museum of Jamaica migration 206, 210, 213, 216, 217;
(NHMJ) 138, 139, 140–1, 145–7, see also under memory
149, 151, 154, 155–6 Organisation of American States (OAS)
Navarrete, Angélica 53, 63 314, 323–4, 335–6
Nelson, Lord Horatio 300–301 Orozco, Gabriel 268
Neltume: Centro Cultural Museo y Ortiz Fernández, Fernando 296
Memoria
de Neltume (Museum of Neltume) Paglen, Trevor 278
(Chile) 4–5, 9, 53, 56–8, 60, 61, Palacio, Dr. Joseph O. 76
63, 67 Palmer, Kerri-Ann 149
Nettleford, Rex 85 Panama Canal 44, 222, 224
Network of Community Museums paper and book conservation 326
of America (Red de Museos Pappalardo, Guisy 12, 253, 257
Comunitarios de América) 4, 6, 8, Parotti, Lynn 304
25, 34, 41, 47, 48, 89 Parris, Louise 322
networks, community and heritage Pascual, Auani 283
museums 35, 100, 104, 105–6, Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of
111, 254; professional museum Science see Frost Science Museum
326, 328, 329, 332, 334, 338; see Pérez Orozco, Amaia 63, 64
also Caribbean Heritage Network; Pericci, Ciro Caraballo 129
Network of Community Museums Peru 1–2, 10, 39, 65, 89, 92, 100, 111, 116–
of America 36; Pontifical Catholic University
new museology 6, 7, 54, 58, 59, 67, 88, 91, of Peru 116, 123
118, 178–9, 181, 183, 200 pest and insect control 330, 331, 332, 333
Newell, Dionne 10, 149, 150 Philippines 111
NGCI see National Gallery of the Cayman photogrammetry 221, 223, 232, 234, 237
Islands photography 172, 216, 234, 241, 283, 285,
Ngcobo, Gabi 162 287, 300, 308; macro 10, 166
350 Index

Piper, Keith 309 Saenz, Gabriela 287

plantations 246, 250, 251–2, 254, 255, 306 Salkey, Andrew 293
Poety, Nefta 257 San Vicente de Nicoya Ecomuseum 39, 41,
Portmore region (Jamaica) 141–2, 144–7, 42, 111
150, 152; Greater Portmore site Sandahl, Jette 160
142, 144, 146–7, 152, 155, 157; Santiago de Chile, Round Table of (1972)
Portmore Junior Centre 145, 154; 6, 9, 54, 60, 68, 88, 179, 247
Portmore Municipal Council Santiago Muñoz, Beatriz 259–60
(PMC) 144, 155 SAP see Sicán Archaeological Project
Portugal 1, 8, 37–51, 89, 100, 117 Scotland 1, 4, 8, 39–51, 89, 92, 94, 100,
postcolonial theory 245, 255 109, 116, 117, 130, 133, 252; see
post-critical museology 181–2, 185, 187, also Isle of Skye
189, 193, 195 SDGs see Sustainable Development Goals
Poupeye, Veerle 292, 294, 300, 306 Semillero Caribe 12, 247, 248, 250, 254–9,
Powell, Richard 306 260, 261, 262, 263
Puerto Rico 12, 247, 255–6, 259–60, 298, Shared Island Stories project 4
314, 321 Sharpe, Christina 252
Purépecha community 277, 278, 282, 283, Shea, Margo 56
286; see also Arantepacua Shoman, Assad 73, 74
Sicán National Museum 119–20, 122, 128,
Quijano, Aníbal 4, 8, 24, 26 129, 131, 133
SIDS see Small Island Developing States
racism 184, 186, 205, 299 Simon, Nina 11, 202–3, 258
Raposo, Luis 4, 39, 88, 94 Skype 140, 143, 148, 152, 329
Rastafari culture 299 Sleeper-Smith, Susan 267
Reading Museum (England) 216, 241, 242 Small Island Developing States (SIDS) 14,
Red de Museos Comunitarios de América 138, 155, 161, 337
(Network of Community Museums Smith, Graham 26
of America) 4, 6, 8, 25, 34, 41, 47, Smith, Laurajane 55
48, 89 Smithsonian National Museum of Natural
Reinwardt Academy (Amsterdam) 7 History 5, 162
Rembrandt 308 social inclusion 14, 38, 47, 91, 116, 127,
Repetto Málaga, Luis 10 129, 326
Research Yard 190, 191 social media 100, 138, 141, 146, 151, 153,
Rey Curré: Community Museum of Yimba 154, 206, 224, 234–5, 238, 240–1,
Cajc de Rey Curré (Costa Rica) 39, 326, 329; see also Facebook;
41–2, 44 Instagram; Twitter
rhizomatic research approach 11, 177–97 South Africa 162, 248
Richards, Adrian 192 South Korea 112
del Río, Sira 63 Spain 1, 10, 39, 47, 64, 89, 100, 109, 116,
risk see disaster resilience and risk 117, 130
prevention Speranza, Graciela 268, 277–8
Rivard, René 246, 250, 254 Springvale Eco-Heritage Museum 252
Rivera, Diego 269, 280 St George 250
Riveros, Isabel 57, 66 St James 110
Rivière, Georges-Henri 117, 246, 247 St Kitts 328, 329
Robben Island Museum 248 St Lucia 315
Rose, Sheena 305, 308–9 St Vincent 75, 76
Rountree, Marco 268, 279–82 Staffin Community Trust (Isle of Skye)
Rubens, Pieter Paul 308 40, 41
Rubio, Omar 60 Stavenhagen, Rodolfo 24
Rússio, Waldisa 178 storytelling 12–13, 25, 106, 163, 266–91,
Ryan, Veronica 303 306
 Index  351

Stuyvesant, Peter 300 University of Lisbon (Portugal) 7

Sullivan-Sealey, Kathleen 143 University of London (England) 308
sustainable development 2, 4, 14, 47, 53, University of Miami (US) 143
65, 68, 91, 97, 98, 99, 119, 134, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
156, 252, 267 (England) 7
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) University of Porto (Portugal) 41
38, 158, 338 University of Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo
sustainable museums 38, 95 (USAT) (Peru) 123
Sweden 5 University of St Andrews (Scotland) 41, 44,
46, 95, 98, 116, 133, 198, 221, 335
tangible heritage 7, 77, 83, 92, 96, 108, University of the West Indies (UWI) 1, 13,
110, 118, 180, 223, 236, 237, 252, 47, 94–5, 116, 187, 198, 201, 221,
262, 320 223, 233, 293, 313–41; Cave Hill
Tatum, Simon 304, 305, 310 campus 204–5, 208, 214, 226, 231,
Thailand 112 241, 316–18; Mona campus 241,
Thompson, Allison 13 315–16; Museum 216, 230, 315
Tidalectics 295, 297 University of València (Spain) 10
Tilting Axis 248 Urquhart, Natalie 10
Tiravanija, Rirkrit 259 USAT see University of Santo Toribio de
Toynbee, Joseph 5 Mogrovejo
Transoceanic Visual Exchange (TVE) UWI see University of the West Indies
189–91
trauma 9, 44, 59, 63, 282, 284, 301, 304 Valencia, Jenny 258
Trinidad and Tobago 39, 110, 178, 187, Van Mensch, Peter 7
189, 194, 221, 323; see also Alice de Varine, Hugues 4, 5, 7, 23, 39, 78, 88,
Yard 95, 117, 246, 247, 250, 257, 258–9
Trotsky, Leon 269 Vasconcelos, José 270, 272, 273
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph 183, 199–200, 217 Vázquez Ruvalcaba, Mario 5
Túcume 120–1, 128, 133 Venezuela 111
Tuhiwai Smith, Linda 8, 23, 26, 27 Venice Biennale 278
Tull, Walter 242 Vergo, Peter 178, 182
TVE see Transoceanic Visual Exchange Victoria and Albert Museum 334
Twitter 41, 152 video 4, 40, 133, 151, 188, 189, 190, 206,
208, 210, 221–244, 325, 326,
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, 330, 332; use of at 14th FEMSA
Scientific and Cultural Biennial 283, 284, 285; use of at
Organization) 54, 76, 88, 95, 236, Arrivants exhibition 298, 302, 304,
247, 249, 313, 314, 315, 330, 332 308, 309
Union of Community Museums (Mexico) 6 Vieques Island 261
United Nations Educational, Scientific Villar Rojas, Adrián 278
and Cultural Organization see Viñas, Salvador 320
UNESCO Virginia Key North Point (VKNP) 142,
United Nations Multi-Country Sustainable 143, 145, 147, 153
Development Framework (UN Virtual Live Experiences (VLEs) 168
MSDF) 314 Virtual Museum Interface (VMI) 235, 238,
United States of America (US) 10, 74, 100, 242
112, 137–59, 160, 247, 256, 260, Virtual Museum of Caribbean Migration
281, 302 and Memory (VMCMM) 11–12,
Universidad Austral de Chile 52, 116, 221 185, 198, 200, 202, 206, 208, 215,
Universidad Nacional de Avellaneda 216–17, 221–44
(Argentina) 98 virtual museums 11–12, 117, 185, 198,
Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de 221–44
Janeiro (Brazil) 98 virtual reality (VR) 222, 225, 235
352 Index

virtual tours 12, 133, 223, 229, 234, 237, Weil, Karin 9, 227, 228, 230
238, 240 Welsch, Wolfgang 296
Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo 278, 287 West Indies Federal Archives 205
VKNP see Virginia Key North Point 142–3 Wetherell, Margaret 55
VLEs see Virtual Live Experiences WhatsApp 152, 155, 329
VMCMM see Virtual Museum of Whyte, Cosmo 303
Caribbean Migration and Memory Whyte, Damion 143
VMI see Virtual Museum Interface Wilson, Benjamin 143
volcanoes 332 Windrush Day 212, 216, 241–2
Windrush migration 11, 12, 198–220, 221,
Walcott, Derek 295 222–3, 224, 231, 239, 240–1, 242,
Walker, Ellyn 285 294, 299
Warmington Galleries 299, 305 Windrush, HMT Empire 199, 204, 221,
waste 10, 162; solid waste 138, 142, 157 222, 224, 241
water heritage and management 3, 64, 65, Winter, Sylvia 295
117, 125, 130, 144, 155, 161, 268;
water-based tourism 165; water- YouTube 4, 41, 117, 329
quality monitoring 148; Water
Tribunal of the Plain of Valencia 64 Zi Xi, Tan 162
Watson, Sheila 2, 72, 73, 180, 202, 317, Zimbabwe 112
331 Zoom 99, 329