Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

The Mediterranean region is under enormous pressure by industry and massive tourism. Those forces constitute a major threat as they are rapidly changing communities and devastating their heritage and culture. The current situation requires a concerted recovery effort to rebuild the Mediterranean culture and identity by recreating, and ultimately, renewing a set of shared cultural values. These values can be developed by building up the sense of belonging to Mediterranean context and through the protection of historical features as well as strengthening communities that preserve maritime cultural values. This paper presents the concept of “Co-Modelling” museum exhibition which is based on involvement of local community in reinventing and rediscovering maritime traditions by having new access to cultural collective memory through participatory, intellectually stimulating and emotionally challenging museum exhibition. This concept will be discussed through a presentation of museum exhibition model with roots in local community involvement and conception of sustainability based on principles of a community-oriented creative process of both social and cultural matters which turns heritage objects into a „people’s heritage “ and bring museum exhibition “into the flow.” The motivation is to explore new methods within the Total Museum approach and new possibilities to making museums transhistorical and sites for social change by active construction of past, using innovative way of co-curating exhibition in participatory manner and digital tools as co-creative medium for “heritage dialogue” – “dialogic” engagement of cultural objects from different museums through thematically joint exhibitions linked by VR/AR technology with aim to connect maritime communities.