Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

Communities have incisive knowledge and understanding of place. In this study, a feminist ethnographic approach was used to demonstrate how essential it is to return community regeneration ‘to its proper function: as providing people with decent cities to live, work and leisure in’ (Blackshaw 2012: 185). This paper traces how the curator of a small private museum teamed up with a residents’ association in a socially deprived area in Malta to preserve tangible heritage in an area dubbed as a ‘slum’. This label is often used to legitimize the destruction of old buildings to make way for social housing blocks in an area with a concentration of this type of housing. Concentration of social housing in one area leads to the stigmatization of that area (Tunstall et al. 2013). Tangible heritage empowers residents. However, this heritage is often at risk whenever a regeneration project is in the pipeline since policy makers often question what is worth saving in a ‘slum’. When a booming economy led to housing shortage, a group of residents and the curator of a small museum negotiated with policy makers who were intent in building another social housing block without safeguarding the tangible heritage in the area. This paper will delineate how the place narratives held by residents, policy makers and developers interacted and explicate when and how small museums can be used to safeguard heritage in socially beleaguered areas.