Community Development and museums-non-museums

3 and 4 September 2022

Center for Territory Studies and Cultural Heritage

Fundão, Portugal

To register and proposals of communications: geralmuseu@cm-fundao.pt

 

 

There are around 100,000 museums in the world. Or maybe more than double, if we added all the forms that don’t even use the term in their name. In recent years, ICOM has vigorously discussed a new definition of museum, which shall hopefully be adopted during the World Conference to be held in Prague at the end of August. All appoints to the fact that the new definition will speak for the first time about “communities” – and also about accessibility, inclusivity, diversity and sustainability. It will be the biggest innovations since in 1974, when, under the influence of the so-called Chart of Santiago, whose fiftieth anniversary we are now celebrating, it was for the first time included in the definition “at service to society”.

The new ICOM definition of museum reflects the importance of numerous types of museums other than the traditional ones: community, territorial, ecomuseums, extensive museums, etc. But there will always be frontier fields between “being a museum” and “not being a museum”. Does this distinction, however, matter to much more than museum professionals and administrations? Maybe not. Bearing in mind the objective of community development and empowerment, the paths, which will always be plural, do not really – as long as the intended destinations are well-known.

We will talk about all this in this International Meeting, with “case studies” and conceptual proposals. And we will also reflect for the first time on the new definition of museum by ICOM, just adopted a few days earlier, and its implications for community development.