CA
ES
EN
Number 10, year 2020
Revista Catalana de Museologia

Starting From Scratch: The Public and The Administration, a Co-participatory Link Necessary for the Creation of a New Museum

Publication date: 10/11/2020


Opinion

Publication date: 10/11/2020

Opinion

Abstract

In November 2018, the Maritime Museum of Mallorca (MMM) launched a process of public co-participation for its very own creation. That led the museum to meet the community that hosts it and longs for it, and also to learn how to listen to them. This methodology involves imagining—and experimenting with generosity at its core—new communicative scenarios, and its greatest challenge is linking access to and interaction with as requisites for co-participation in museums. Throughout this process we have reconsidered: a) what is the role of communicative processes in museums; b) how we generate listening techniques that bring us closer to people; c) how we build honest narratives; d) how we link the public and the administration.

1. A Co-participatory Museum

The last statement of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) on what a museum should be reads: “Museums are democratizing, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures. Acknowledging and addressing the conflicts and challenges of the present, they hold artefacts and specimens in trust for society, safeguard diverse memories for future generations and guarantee equal rights and equal access to heritage for all people. Museums are not for profit. They are participatory and transparent, and work in active partnership with and for diverse communities to collect, preserve, research, interpret, exhibit, and enhance understandings of the world, aiming to contribute to human dignity and social justice, global equality and planetary wellbeing. (1) This definition, although it is yet to be agreed upon by the ICOM and is expected to be discussed in future meetings of the organization, works for us as a first base to expose and discuss the work methodology started by the Maritime Museum of Mallorca (MMM), which aims to create tools for reflection on the co-participation (2) between the museum as an institution in a process of change and the society (a term which will be discussed later on) that it targets.

The right to participate in the cultural life of the community is a right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed in its Article 27 as follows: “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.” In addition, Article 15.1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights asks states to recognize the right of every individual to participate in cultural life.

In this context of change, we need to generate reflections of a theoretical and methodological nature to try and define what it means to materialize this right.

Today, museums are seeking ways to talk and bond with their audiences and to reach into new ones, searching for various processes of accessibility, reviewing their narratives, and creating actions of educational extension to access those communities that are physically closer to their centers. They try to establish dialogues with them in order to create tools for change around the areas of reflection designed from the very institution.

We could say that the museum has started a process of active listening, and that the consequences of this involve a meeting first and, ultimately, mutual recognition. We also find ourselves before the assumption that the museum should be an actor who triggers these meetings. Challenges are undoubtedly multiple. Among these we find what we are going to deal with in the following 

pages: assuming that the museum as a knowledge generating institution should be able to promote new communicative scenarios, and, therefore, be an institution that imagines and designs mechanisms of active listening that transform people’s access to these new mechanisms, the interaction with them and their narratives.

What we just exposed leads us to rethink what the role of communication in today’s museums is. Furthermore, it also brings us back to the non-agreed definition from the ICOM—the conflict implicated by this definition seems quite interesting—in using concepts such as participatory, transparent and active collaboration. These are all key elements in building socio-communicative relationships, the basis for participatory processes.

2. Communication and Museums: New Communicative Scenarios

First of all we want to approach the concept of communication, and then explain what we think that the theoretical basis supporting the process of participatory communication started by the MMM is.

Our proposal includes restoring the classic definition of communication by Jesús Martín-Barbero. This author argues that communication refers to “different ways and spaces of social recognition” (Barbero, 1989). Communicating culture (3) says Martín-Barbero, cannot be reduced to enlarging the sector of the public that consumes good culture, or even to the formation of a conscious public—the communication of culture must activate the component of the people to be found in the public, that is, to make cultural experience possible, the experience of appropriation and invention, the movement of permanent recreation of identity (Barbero, 1989). The author states that through communication it is possible to produce an experience of appropriation, understood as the “activation of the cultural competence of people, the socialization of the creative experience and the recognition of differences, namely, the affirmation of one’s own identity that strengthens through the communication resulting of the contact and the conflict with each other. Communication in culture ceases to represent the figure of the intermediary between creators and consumers, and assumes the task of dissolving this social and symbolic barrier, decentralizing and deallocating the potential of cultural production and its devices” (Barbero, 1989).

Understanding communication like Martín-Barbero means to recognize the communicative process as a mediation and a device activating processes of cultural appropriation and of recognition of otherness as creative subjects. This proposal puts us in front of a new paradigm in the construction of knowledge, in which participation is an essential element in the construction of knowledge and communication is the mediating element needed to enable it.

In fact, the experience of appropriation about which Martín-Barbero theorizes generates what is undoubtedly one of the cornerstones of the new communicative scenarios which, as we see it, museums confront: the recognition of the other as a social subject, and as an inseparable unity of a community in which both museum and community negotiate meanings, and produce ideas in meeting spaces provided by the museum.

These meeting spaces, we believe, pose two communicative challenges for the promoting institutions, in this case the MMM:

a) Generating mechanisms that link access and interaction as requisites for co-participation.

b) Generating mechanisms of analysis with the narratives produced in these meeting spaces that lead museums to rethink roles, actions, activities and narratives.

If we consider this from the lens of communication, both challenges allow us to design a theoretical and methodological approach based on processes of participatory communication. From an ethnographic perspective, this new scenario is also a gateway to experiment with the techniques of participatory action research (4) (PAR) to help us understand how we can incorporate creative-participative subjects in the creation of meaning, merging ourselves with the community and showing their cultural practices, demystifying Culture in capital letters (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), and generating practices and spaces of participation that turn museums into an essential part of the societies that host them.

This is actually a disruptive proposal in which communication is both a mediator and a tool for building knowledge, which involves a change in how we interact, and, more radically, a rupture with the hegemonic narratives. It opens possibilities for rethinking about memory and the processes of collective construction.

 

3. The Participatory Process of the MMM: Context and Initial Diagnosis

In November 2018, the MMM launches a participatory process that aims to involve various maritime actors and the general public in the opening of a maritime museum in Mallorca. It must be said that when the creation of the MMM was announced, this museum was a yearning for many different people throughout the islands, all of them united by one goal: the reopening of a maritime museum. (5)

Therefore, its management considers a double challenge:

a) Opening a museum for the territory of Mallorca, with a project based on the idea that a museum should be built in a co-participatory fashion between civil society and the very direction of the museum.

b) Enabling those who make up maritime society to feel the project as their own, i.e. by participating in a project for a modern and transparent museum that “adds voices more than a full program of speeches” (Schiele, a Alcalde, Gabriel; Boya, Jusèp; Roigé, Xavier, 2010) while leading at the same time to the revaluation of maritime heritage.

Therefore, in its proposal of co-participation the institution gathers the theoretical proposal made in the previous pages and launches a process that we could fit in the participatory action research, consisting of three actions:

a) Creating meeting spaces with different associations and individuals who worked on behalf of maritime heritage for more than four decades in Mallorca, and involving them in participatory actions.

b) Approaching sources that should help the institution to set up new narratives around the sea and the maritime world.

c) Transforming the society in which the museum is integrated into a community that is present in the institution in different forms.

These three actions entail the creation of meeting spaces that aim at this mutual encounter—the recognition between the museum and society.

That is why in the following pages we will focus on the debate about different tools and strategies that shape this participatory methodology carried out from the museum in the various communicative scenarios that have shaped the process of co-participation.

The initial diagnosis for the design of the IPA is as follows:

a) The community exists already and has expectations, but it is scattered. It is a community that for forty years has struggled for the creation of this museum, but at the time of the foundation of the Consortium of the Maritime Museum of Mallorca (6) they have doubts about the viability of the project. Although this community shows their desire to be a part of the museum, they do not acknowledge the role they should take. It is a community linked to autonomous projects disconnected between each other, and distributed around the island. Nevertheless we believe they are a community in the sense that they are all involved in the claim of the museum.

b) There is no official physical space. However, news of possible spaces appears constantly in the media, which generates instability in the community and uncontrolled expectations. In November 2018, the Cultural Center of Ses Voltes in Palma was ceded, but it was in such a state of deterioration that an immediate appropriation was unfeasible. The Sóller Museum of the Sea, which has been closed for seven years now, also appears on stage, but it does not materialize the project, actually.

c) A new management has been appointed. It does not belong to the community, but it has presented a co-participatory museological project.

3.1. The Methodological Proposal

A participatory action research strategy with the following objectives is proposed:

a) Listening to the demands, expectations and aspirations of the different maritime stakeholders.

b) Binding and involving the community in shaping the museum.

c) Approaching the narratives of the community to set up the different museological accounts of the MMM.

d) Explaining and connecting the community to the project presented by the management.

The proposal was developed through two actions, which ran in parallel:

1) A participatory installation, “The Net of Desires,” which aims mainly to bring the museum to the Mallorcan society.

2) The development of a series of interviews and the creation of discussion groups that seek to collect the main consensus of the actors involved in the maritime heritage sector, and to involve them at the same time in the creation of the museum.

Both actions are configured as communicative scenarios to trigger mechanisms for meeting and earning mutual recognition, and also for analyzing. This is intended to lead us to incorporate new ideas in the museum, to forge its new narratives and, therefore, a new narrative about its identity.

3.2. Planned Scenarios and Actions

3.2.1. "The Net of Desires"

"The Net of Desires" is a metaphor of a castaway who writes a message in a bottle to be collected. And so, the project is presented with the skeleton of the bow of a llagut (a traditional wood boat in Catalonia), from which a net full of glass bottles emerges accompanied by fishing baskets.

The project includes two nets:

a) One roaming around different towns in the island. The idea is to collect the desires of the people of Palma first, and then of the people of Mallorca in general, in order to know what they expect from the museum, (7) what does not exist yet and must be created, like what is about to be set up at the Ses Voltes Cultural Center (now we are back to the term Ses Voltes) in Palma.

b) Another one which is installed permanently at the Sóller Museum of the Sea since 1 June 2019.

The main goals of the intervention are:

a) Bringing the museum to the Mallorcan society, and making them involve themselves in its birth.

b) Having a minimum survey of what is expected from the MMM.

c) Informing the Mallorcan that it is urgent that the museum belongs to everyone, and that it reflects what the relationship of the islanders with the sea is and has been, so that they can be presented as a community.

d) Enlarging the community of people interested in the sea and the museum.

e) Weaving a network with the different actors of the sector that usually attend to nautical and gastronomical fairs related to the sea (in the case of the roaming net).

f) Collecting impressions of the visit to the Sóller Museum of the Sea (in the case of the permanent net).

Proposal for the Operation of "The Net of Desires"

The operation of the "The Net of Desires" is very simple: just take a piece of paper and a pencil, write a wish on it and put it in the baskets. Just as it says on the presentation text of the activity whenever the net is taken down.

The net was presented on 1 December 2018. It was exposed in Ses Voltes, the headquarters of the museum, and was open to the public up until 20 January on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Since the First Days of Studies of the Sea, in early March, it was planned to initiate a roaming phase for the project. The net hopped around several coast towns on the island following different local fairs related to the sea world:

. Porto Cristo (12-21 April): Open doors. Nautical Fair 2019.

. Colònia de Sant Pere (5 April): II Fish Fair.

. Ibiza (11-12 May): First Encounter of Traditional Boats of Ibiza. 

. Can Picafort (2 June): Nautical Sports Fair.

. Palma (8 June): World Environment Day in Palma.

. August: Sea Club, Palma, in the framework of the XXV Balearic Islands Classic Regatta, Vela Clásica Mallorca.

. September: Yacht Club Cala Gamba, in the framework of the XXIII Day of Lateen.

. September: Port de Sóller, at the Sea Fair, Serra de Tramuntana.

. October: In the space “La mar de bo” (meaning “very good”—the Catalan phrase “la mar de”, literally “the sea of,” means “very”) in the Dijous Bo Fair in Inca.

. October: At the #Noplastic2 Festival in the Fàbrica Ramis.

Every time the net is taken down its desires are supposed to be filed into a database in order to take them into account when planning the activities and contents of the museum. In the case of the net in Port de Sóller, its desires were counted each month.

 

3.2.2. The Consensus about the Museum among the Maritime Community on the Island

Twelve interviews with maritime actors were scheduled. They were individual meetings at which they were asked how they imagined the museum. These interviews help to outline the activity for consensus.

Then a participatory activity structured around debate groups with relevant actors from different areas of the field of the maritime Mallorca is proposed. The invited actors are people and organizations listed as agents that at some point were called from the Insular Council of Mallorca to promote the creation of the Consortium of the Maritime Museum.

The aim of this activity is as follows:

a) Presenting the proposal of the management to the community closest to the defense of heritage.

b) Binding the maritime community with the project under construction so they feel the proposal as their own.

c) Listening to the demands, expectations and aspirations of the different maritime stakeholders.

d) Explaining to all stakeholders the key issues presented in the draft from the management: biodiversity and maritime heritage (either underwater, floating or on land).

e) Symbolically linking the community with the space under construction.

It was decided to invite around fifteen representatives of the Mallorcan maritime world to propose to them an activity around the following question to them: “What or how do we want the MMM to be?”.

The proposed work operation is:

—Seven participants have to sit in an inner circle and talk for forty-five minutes. The remaining participants then listen from a concentric outer circle. After this first forty-five minutes, roles are exchanged. At the end all participants take part in a final phase: farewell.

—A moderator introduces the questions, which are repeated in both groups:

1. What or how do we want the MMM to be?

2. What role does everyone want in the museum?

3. What have we learned these years?

4. What have we learned from the experience at Sóller?

5. How do we turn the museum into a living space of debate throughout the sector?

—After going through all questions, an open discussion with all participants (farewell), who form a single center, is started.

The circles are defined by everybody’s profession and the scope they represent. It is established that, when possible, there is never two people from the same field in the same circle so that it represents the different sensitivities and possibilities of dialogue.

4. Results of the actions

4.1. Results of "The Net of Desires"

The presented data represent the period from the presentation of “The Net of Desires” on 1 December 2018 to 2 July 2019.

It was decided to set up five groups to sort the desires:

. Heritage and identity content.

. Sensitive to diversity and the environment.

. Educational and regarding types of museum.

. Sensitive to the world around us.

. Personal (and others).

The results were the following:

a) From the visits to the exhibition of the presentation of the project at Ses Voltes, Palma: 279 desires, 91 unclassifiable because they had nothing to do with the museum, 76 focused on the maritime heritage, 48 related to educational issues, 33 wishing for a better world and 31 related to the environment. 

b) From the visits to the exhibition in its roaming accompanying shipwrights in the framework of various nautical fairs: 22 desires, 9 focused on maritime heritage, 12 related to the museological project and to educational proposals and 1 to the environment.

c) From "The Net of Desires" at the Sóller Museum of the Sea. This small net was installed on 1 June, and its results come from the data collected up until 2 July. Its wishes come from to two kinds of people: children and adults. This distinction has been made according to the handwriting of the received messages. In total 94 wishes were collected, and it was decided to open the children's category because of the number of school visits to the museum.

—Children audience. Following the first school visits, students were invited to participate and hang their wishes. Since then children that have been coming to the museum with their relatives also have placed their wishes, many in the form of drawing. This should be noted as a display of children's creativity and how to use this language, drawing, as a tool of communication.

—Adult audience. Just like the children audience of familiar nature, the adult audience has different origins—it comes both from the very island and around the country and other nations. If we had more time for the analysis of the results at our disposal, we could probably find conceptual differences about what is expected of a museum depending on the origin of the visitor.

Overall results from both nets show that a museum with high heritage content is the most wanted style of museum (28% in the roaming net and 46% in Port de Sóller). It must be noted that the net at the Museum of the Sea is contextualized within a physical museum, and results come from the visit. Instead, the roaming net is missing this container, as it is displayed at fairs.

The second result of the analysis shows the importance of the MMM incorporating a communicative and an educational aspect both in the museological proposal and the divulgation activities (20% in the roaming net and 19% in Port de Sóller).

As for the museum as a tool to facilitate reflection on the world around us and in relation to the sea—a place where you can talk about biodiversity, environment and social issues—the results are similar: 30% in the roaming net and 22% in Port de Sóller.

The last category of analysis are personal desires, and this one can be excluded because it is not of interest to the museum. They add to 1% in Sóller and 11% in the roaming net.

4.2. Results of the Activity for Consensus

Out of the seventeen people invited to the activity, twelve attended, eleven men and one woman. They represented different sectors and sensibilities within the maritime world in Mallorca.

The activity worked, although some attendees were initially surprised by its operation—for many of them it was their first time taking part in a participatory activity.

Consensus about the museum:

. Bringing stakeholders and people from the sector together.

. A territorial museum interrelated with other museological spaces.

. Public participation.

. A space for diffusion.

. A space of consciousness.

. A space for research.

. A space to generate public opinion.

. A lively and dynamic space for dialogue.

. A link between the different sectors working in the sea.

. A space for heritage work and for debates on the sea (pollution, the values of working on a ship, and how people relate to the sea).

. A space for reflection on contemporary debates (tourism, overcrowding, global city).

Consensus about the maritime heritage:

. Asking ourselves the reason for the existence of so much heritage that has not been preserved.

. Heritage for its exhibition, but above all linked to a participatory and educational component.

. Underwater heritage, one of the richest in the Mediterranean, is to be collected.

. Intangible heritage (oral) and the need to generate an archive of memory urgently. Starting documenting the elderly.

Consensus about the celebration of the future First Days of the Sea (Jornades de la Mar):

. The need to organize a conference so that its conclusions mark the lines of work of the museum.

. Binding experts and the public to draw the lines of what will be a participatory museum.

. Binding the participants of the session in the conference.

A number of references come up, and it is asked for them to be introduced in the conference:

. Tavern encounters (Girona) to recover oral memory, promoted by the Fishing Museum in Palamós, Catalonia.

. The Albaola project, Basque Country.

. The Phoenician excavations in Cadiz, Andalusia.

. The House of Culture of Pola, Alicante.

. The dynamizing example of the Tarragona Port Authority and its involvement with the Maritime Museum of the city, or volunteer experiences.

As a result of the work of analysis based on the working sessions of November, a second meeting in January was organized. There, a first draft program of what  the First Days of Studies of the Sea would eventually be was presented. 

5. Conclusions

5.1. Conclusions on the results of “The Net of Desires”

The net worked as a presentation of the museum, especially in the spaces it roamed through. Indeed, the net works if dynamized, i.e. if it is linked to an action, whether a nautical or a gastronomic fair. The fact that shipwrights were its mobilizing actors has been very positive, since it was possible to contextualize the net. The shipwrights, little by little, made the narrative of the net its own, to the point that they asked for explanatory material in order to be able to divulgate its content in the several events they attended. Through the workshop of the shipwrights and the Maritime Museum of Mallorca, this action gives visibility to the Maritime Heritage Unit as a unit with a shared goal: safeguarding and disseminating the maritime heritage of Mallorca. By this means the museum presents itself to an audience that already knew the work of shipwrights.

The overall results show that the most wanted museum is one with much specialized content of heritage, but very well-communicated, a place where education and divulgation should govern the actions of the institution. It should be noted that matters related to biodiversity and our relationship with our environment are not left aside.

5.2. Conclusions of the Activity for Consensus

The activity takes place in a building under construction, as a metaphor of the transparency in the creative process of the project. It is yet in an embryonic stage, where everything is possible and everything is yet to be done, in a space that has not been used for years. There is a symbolic link between the museological space under construction and in the process of being recovered and the project of the museum, also under construction and trying to recover an old dream: Mallorca had to have a museum tied to the sea. The activity worked. It brought together the maritime community on the island around the museum to design future lines of action, outline work teams and attach people to a project that, thanks to this action, they are starting to feel as their own.

This action endorsed the roadmap drawn by the management. It incorporated the demands of the sector: the conference, the need to seek oral memory on the sea and the need for a study on different pieces to incorporate them to the museum's collection, where smaller vessels are highly desired elements.

6. Overall Conclusions

The MMM is aligned with the feelings and expressions included in the definition the ICOM is working on about what a museum should be. The co-participatory process has been the appropriate tool to generate the sense of a community and to collect contemporary debates since its birth. The process helped to bind all maritime actors, fragmented after many years of wear while working for the birth of the museum. The planned activities made the community participate in favor of a common goal: the preservation of the Mallorcan maritime heritage and its history, and the opening of the museum.

The participatory action research strategy has materialized in concrete and real actions in relation to the museum. These actions represent concepts such as participation, transparency and active cooperation, which have become praxis of work and action. The same process also made it possible to integrate people in the museological narrative. They took part in the project and the proposal of lines of research.In this sense, it can be concluded that the co-participatory process has enabled encounters between the maritime sector and the museum, and as a result both have generated a process of mutual recognition, which resulted in joint actions, (8) 

new narratives and alliances. The process also allowed to think and experiment with new forms of knowledge construction, new syncretic and hybrid processes of socialization, which too often are invisible in the hegemonic environments of the narrative.

For now, it is possible to conclude that the MMM recognizes the community as its own, inherent to the museum. This is an exercise of honesty and transparency that strengthens the bond with the community, which accesses to and interacts with the museum through meetings promoted by the center. So a dialogue between a subject (the museum) and several other subjects (the community) is established. Both come together in a common narrative, creating joint actions and work experiences like the First Days of Studies of the Sea. In fact, during the last months the community and the museum have proved that they want to work together, and therefore that they are ready to create a Kintsugi, (9) an image that helps us to visualize conflicts and negotiations as part of the creative process and the final outcome. And so, the negotiation between what there was and what will be takes the form of a process of research and knowledge, which creates a new and differentiated project.

Thus, we can conclude, as we suggested at the beginning of this article, that communication emerges as an interdisciplinary mediating process and facilitate encounters and mutual recognition, and at the same time as a methodological tool for the construction of new narratives, and therefore new stories.

The co-participatory process also showed that new tools for the analysis of actions and proposals that assume the same process were generated, because the narratives that derive from them help to incorporate them to the work of the museum. This is the case of the result of the activity for consensus.

Although the co-participatory process had two objectives—bringing the museum to the Mallorcan society and linking it to the various maritime actors to set up a community—this first phase focused on creating a maritime community. Still, we think it is necessary to highlight the positive results of “The Net of Desires” as a tool for dialogue with society. These show that the public wants to address the sea in a cross-disciplinary fashion, and also that they want maritime heritage to have a specific weight. The museum, therefore, is to generate tools for reflection, and to be a meeting space to generate social change initiatives. It should be a museum with an activist purpose. It already is that in the project’s process of co-participation, but it must still seek formulas that prevent it from limiting this feature to its the structure, because it must be thought of as a public entity, and from dissolving its activism.

These are delicate balances that must be experimented with.

Now it’s time to make the MMM a society’s museum. Through its headquarters in Palma, Ses Voltes, and with the consolidation of a stable staff, the proposal should be able to generate inputs with the public, who have to take it on as their own, and participate in its work.

7. Ongoing lines of intervention

Once this first co-participatory process was finished, there was an intention to start a second round of participation focused on the celebration of the First Days of the Sea. These days focused on the debates that came up during the activity: biodiversity, maritime heritage, and museums and society. The chosen formula combined:

a) Workshops with experts in each field to sketch the lines that should be articulated in the future narrative of the museum.

b) Tables to link actors from different fields in work dynamics, and that should serve to connect them, to debate their interests and to create synergies with the future museum.

c) Actions to put the public in touch with work dynamics based on specific themes, both in Ses Voltes and outside. It is a priority to create a decalogue of good practices around the sea, a cross-disciplinary effort in the areas of work of the museum.

Since these first conference a second one has been brought up, this time with museums and their accessibility at the core.

Study of possible collections. A first research and analysis on the old collection of the Maritime Museum of the Balearics is put forward. It is deposited in the Museum of Mallorca, in the Consulate of the Sea, headquarters of the government of the Balearic Islands, and in the Military Museum of the Castle of San Carlos, in the Chamber of Commerce. In addition to this study, a first research on the various private collections on the island is also being carried out. After all this work, different items will be selected to be incorporated to the exhibition at Ses Voltes and to the museological collection of the institution.

Research work on the oral memory on the sea in the island. We think about the need for the museum to start collecting and documenting oral memory, understood as the knowledge, the experiences and the ways of people who have seen the way of life in which they grew up disappear. Thus, it all comes down to not losing the knowledge of a generation of people, such as fishermen and shipwrights, of which there are increasingly fewer individuals.

The creation of the Ses Voltes educational space. In order to bring the museum to the public and specifically to the young people, we start a work of mediation to co-design the educational space of Ses Voltes. For this, we count on the group Sa Galania, which is in charge of the mediation through artistic and cultural practices in processes of collaboration between the institution, a center of social and labor integration programs, a school and two higher education cycles, all from Palma, to generate a space accessible and approachable.

Museumization of Ses Voltes. The process of participation shows the urgency of the museumization of Ses Voltes, which is seen as the natural home of the maritime community close to the museum, because turning the building into a physical museum is a promise made by the governments of the late seventies. Despite the existence of a draft agreement signed by the council in 1978, Ses Voltes never became the headquarters of the Maritime Museum. For decades, it was used for other projects of the city council, and it has become yet another story of the transition. Therefore, it is urgent to museumify the Ses Voltes space so that the community can make it their own, and this goes beyond a promise of creation. The process of museumization started in June 2019 with an initial presentation of the vessels guarded by the Association of Friends of the Maritime Museum of Mallorca in the caves of the Bellver Castle, in Palma. It is a symbolic event which the maritime community identifies as the point zero in the recovery of the space.

Notes


(2)

In the present case we understand “co-participation” as the process in which the public institution / museum (1) works with several stakeholders (2). The museum as an entity has more power than the different stakeholders combined, and therefore assumes a role of leadership—there is an encounter between 1 and 2, being this 2 a diverse unit. In such co-participatory process, the museum assumes the institutional responsibility for it, and decides to launch a second order reflection process and to arrange meetings with the community.

(2)

In the present case we understand “co-participation” as the process in which the public institution / museum (1) works with several stakeholders (2). The museum as an entity has more power than the different stakeholders combined, and therefore assumes a role of leadership—there is an encounter between 1 and 2, being this 2 a diverse unit. In such co-participatory process, the museum assumes the institutional responsibility for it, and decides to launch a second order reflection process and to arrange meetings with the community.

(3)

“Culture is the organizing principle of the experience through which we sort and structure our present, from our place in the social networks. It is, strictly speaking, our practical sense of life” (González, 1987: 8).

(3)

“Culture is the organizing principle of the experience through which we sort and structure our present, from our place in the social networks. It is, strictly speaking, our practical sense of life” (González, 1987: 8).

(4)

Method of research and collective learning of reality, based on a critical analysis with the active participation of the groups involved, aimed at stimulating transformative practice and social change. The method of participatory action research (PAR) combines two processes—knowing and taking action—and in both it involves people in the approached reality. It is a process that combines theory and practice, that enables learning, critical awareness of the population about their reality, their empowerment, the strengthening and expansion of their social networks, their collective mobilization, and their transformative action.

(4)

Method of research and collective learning of reality, based on a critical analysis with the active participation of the groups involved, aimed at stimulating transformative practice and social change. The method of participatory action research (PAR) combines two processes—knowing and taking action—and in both it involves people in the approached reality. It is a process that combines theory and practice, that enables learning, critical awareness of the population about their reality, their empowerment, the strengthening and expansion of their social networks, their collective mobilization, and their transformative action.

(5)

In November 2018 the MMM finds itself in an abnormal situation. After forty years, a possibility to fill the space in Mallorca for a cultural institution dedicated to the studies of the sea, the promotion of values and heritage preservation surfaces. The situation is as follows: there is demand from an active community around the idea of a maritime museum, but so far there have been no political conditions to channel this demand. In 2018 this community and the political will in the islands converge, and the Consortium of the Maritime Museum of Mallorca is born. This creates a situation that can be described as point zero for a museum that is now able to generate an unprecedented scenario in the island.

(5)

In November 2018 the MMM finds itself in an abnormal situation. After forty years, a possibility to fill the space in Mallorca for a cultural institution dedicated to the studies of the sea, the promotion of values and heritage preservation surfaces. The situation is as follows: there is demand from an active community around the idea of a maritime museum, but so far there have been no political conditions to channel this demand. In 2018 this community and the political will in the islands converge, and the Consortium of the Maritime Museum of Mallorca is born. This creates a situation that can be described as point zero for a museum that is now able to generate an unprecedented scenario in the island.

(6)

On 4 January 2018 the statutes of the Consortium of the Maritime Museum of Mallorca are published. It is established legally in the form of a consortium, as this is considered the most suitable form for the foundation of a new institution within the legal administrative framework at the time. The main objectives of the consortium are focused on the protection, recovery and diffusion of the maritime heritage of the island, as set out in Article 4 of the statutes.

(6)

On 4 January 2018 the statutes of the Consortium of the Maritime Museum of Mallorca are published. It is established legally in the form of a consortium, as this is considered the most suitable form for the foundation of a new institution within the legal administrative framework at the time. The main objectives of the consortium are focused on the protection, recovery and diffusion of the maritime heritage of the island, as set out in Article 4 of the statutes.

(7)

The museum understood as a physical space, a container, since it already exists as a project by functioning and generating documentation, actions . . . in short, work.

(7)

The museum understood as a physical space, a container, since it already exists as a project by functioning and generating documentation, actions . . . in short, work.

(8)

We want to highlight the joint action that took place on 26 September 2019. This date commemorates the World Maritime Day. To celebrate it, we wanted to do a co-creative action: sailing with traditional vessels from different points of the Bay of Palma to the Porto Pi Lighthouse Museum. In this case, the action was designed by a prominent member of the maritime community, the master craftsman and netter Jaume Amengual, and the MMM. The former assumed the organization with the various stakeholders, and the latter took on the institutional management that made it possible.

(8)

We want to highlight the joint action that took place on 26 September 2019. This date commemorates the World Maritime Day. To celebrate it, we wanted to do a co-creative action: sailing with traditional vessels from different points of the Bay of Palma to the Porto Pi Lighthouse Museum. In this case, the action was designed by a prominent member of the maritime community, the master craftsman and netter Jaume Amengual, and the MMM. The former assumed the organization with the various stakeholders, and the latter took on the institutional management that made it possible.

(9)

Kintsugi is a Japanese technique used to repair fractures on ceramics with resin coating either powdered or mixed with gold, silver or platinum dust. It is part of a philosophy that states that breakage and repairs are part of the history of an object, and therefore they are to be displayed instead of hidden, and they should add on to beautify the object, highlighting its history and transformation. Extracted from Wikipedia on 6 April 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi

(9)

Kintsugi is a Japanese technique used to repair fractures on ceramics with resin coating either powdered or mixed with gold, silver or platinum dust. It is part of a philosophy that states that breakage and repairs are part of the history of an object, and therefore they are to be displayed instead of hidden, and they should add on to beautify the object, highlighting its history and transformation. Extracted from Wikipedia on 6 April 2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi

Bibliography

Bourdieu, Pierre i Wacquant, Loic (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago.

González, Jorge A. (1987). “Los frentes culturales. Culturas, mapas, poderes y lucha por las definiciones legítimas de los sentidos sociales de la vida”, a Estudios sobre las culturas contemporáneas, vol. I, núm. 3, p. 5-44, Universidad de Colima. Colima, México.

ICOM (2020). “La creación de una nueva definición de museo - la columna vertebral del ICOM”, a https://icom.museum/es/normas-y-directrices/definicion-del-museo/, consulta feta el 19 de març del 2020.

Martín Barbero, Jesús (1989). “Comunicación y cultura: unas relaciones complejas”, a Telos: cuadernos de comunicación, tecnología y sociedad, núm. 19.

 

Schiele, B. (2010). “Els museus de societat i les seves identitats en l’era de la globalització”, a Museus d’avui. Els nous museus de societat (ed. Alcalde, G.; Boya J.; Roigé, X., p. 13-31. ICRPC Llibres, Girona.

Sections

Keywords

Share