Heritage as a process of connecting – Pluralism and diversity in Nordic and Baltic museums

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how the concepts of pluralism and diversity are filled with meaning through specific practices and attitudes in museums in Nordic and Baltic countries, through a method of both a widespread quantitative questionnaire sent to ca 750 museums in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Estonia, as well as through qualitative semi-structured interviews with a selection of key-individuals. The paper frames the analysis around seeing heritage as a process of connecting where focus is placed upon the concepts of care and belonging. The paper identifies that the current speed of the museum hinders the process of reaching and connecting to a diverse audience, where a relationship based on mutual trust can be sustained over a long period of time. Furthermore, it identifies the need for a shared understanding within the sector as to what concepts such as integration and diversity mean and how it can be approached through practices in the museum. Finally, the paper recognises that the sector itself has to become more diverse in order to reach out to a plural society.

KEYWORDS:

• Museum studies
• diversity
• museology
• Nordic museology
• pluralism

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Nordplus for funding the project, and everyone in the Heritage, Identity and Social Cohesion project, particularly Adam Norman, Annina Ylikoski, Victoria Nylund, Kaari Siemer, Saale Randaru, Laila Bækkevold, Lowissa Wallgren Frånberg and Malin Bäckström. We also want to thank Maria Domeij Lundborg who was instrumental in the initial phases of the project and contributed with developing the questionaries. Further thank you are due to our colleagues and friends at NCK for their support: Kristina Jonsson and Anna Stugvard. Further thank you goes to the two anonymous reviewers as well as to Laurajane Smith for useful comments on the paper significantly improving the argument. GW would also like to thank Sarah May for interesting discussions and support. Finally, nothing would have been possible without the kind souls who spent time answering the questionaries and who agreed to do interviews. Thank you so much!

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. For an innovative project dealing with language barriers see ‘Inte utan mitt språk’, in English: Not without my language, developed at the Maritime Museum in Karlskrona, part of the Swedish National Maritime and Transport Museums, and the initiative started in 2005. In this project pupils with an immigrant background created folders for visitors in their mother tongue. The pupils would focus on the aspects of the exhibitions that they found the most interesting and write the texts based on their own perspectives. The pupils also took the photos that were used in the folders themselves. The folders are available for visitors to the museum (https://www.marinmuseum.se/skola/samarbeten/inte-utan-mitt-sprak).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Nordplus Adult [NPAD2018/10205].

Notes on contributors

Gustav Wollentz

Gustav Wollentz defended his PhD in the summer of 2018 at the Graduate School “Human Development in Landscapes”, Kiel University, Germany, focusing on the relationship between difficult heritage and temporalities, examining issues related to memory, belonging, and identity. He received his Bachelor’s and his Master’s degree in Archaeology from Linnaeus University in Sweden. In 2018 and in 2019, he was hired within the AHRC-funded “Heritage Futures” research programme, to work on the ”Uncertainty” theme of the project, which resulted in a co-authored chapter on Toxic Heritage. He is currently a project leader / researcher at the Nordic Centre of Heritage Learning and Creativity.

Helena Kuhlefelt

Helena Kuhlefelt has a Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Analysis and a Master in the Erasmus Mundus Master program Euroculture. Within the heritage sector, she has been working with project evaluation with a focus on inter-organisational projects. Outside of the heritage sector she has experience from both government administration as well as the civic society. Organisational culture, identity formation, place making, and majority-minority relations are some of her academic interests in relation to the heritage field. She is currently a project manager at the Nordic Centre of Heritage Learning and Creativity.