Museums learn to share power with communities on their own terms
A Swedish museum that deliberately handed decision-making authority to marginalized communities found a practical blueprint for how institutions can do this without abandoning professional expertise. The model—tested over five years—offers policy makers and cultural leaders a framework for genuine co-creation rather than tokenistic community engagement.
Originaltitel: Memory Work across Difference
<p>This chapter delves into the experiences of museum professionals and community-based stakeholders in collaboratively creating the Museum of Movements (MoM), which operated in Malmö, Sweden, 2015–2020. The aim is to gain insights into how professionals in the field of memory-making can effectively serve diverse community-based practices and thus improve the conditions for subaltern communities to engage in memory work. The chapter identifies a participant–observer position, frame-setting, and work alliance as active components in dialogically based memory work, and then shows that these components also were integral to the process leading up to the establishment of the MoM. In essence, the chapter illustrates how sharing authority has manifested in practice within the realm of memory work involving multiple, differently situated actors. The objective is not to distill generally applicable techniques, but to establish a reference point for future situated practices.</p>