Here’s how our museum is learning to work with an international network of critical friends
by Abhay Adhikari and Etta Grotrian
At the Übersee-Museum Bremen, we are on an extraordinary journey of collaboration with an international network of critical friends. We’ve been learning how to step back and listen as well as acknowledging the limits to our knowledge. This post is a first attempt to make sense of the process we’ve been developing for nearly a year.
Why do we need critical friends?
Our collections were brought from their countries of origin to a European museum. It is therefore a prerequisite for us to incorporate or even be led by the perspectives of the communities our objects come from. In order to do this, we have to learn new ways of thinking and working. As museum professionals, our innate curiosity is the best qualification to move forward, but we need to get into the habit of asking questions. This is why we set out to build a network of critical friends to help us frame those questions.
The first step: becoming comfortable with gaps in knowledge
We began the process with a workshop in which we were asked to put ourselves in the perspective of a visitor, based on real archetypes and relatable scenarios. We then switched back to our individual roles in the museum and asked ourselves what we can offer this visitor, and if this offer will make any meaningful difference. This was a revealing exercise as it exposed the gap between our institutional perspective and community’s needs.
When we applied this logic to examine our intention of working with the communities our objects come from, we realised that there was a lot that we did not know. This humbling experience helped define the themes of the conversations with critical friends: What is the difference between being interested in and condescending about different cultures? How can we embrace activism as cultural professionals? How do people from different cultures frame concepts that we are so familiar with?
The setting: turn up and chat
The format of these online conversations is simple — turn up and chat in small groups. There are 2 guests and between 5–7 participants. Each conversation lasts for 90 minutes with a short break. The majority of the time is allocated to group discussion. The goal is to share personal experiences. This is not the norm for meetings. We tend to judge our contribution and the contribution of others through the lens of expertise and preparedness. For our conversations with critical friends we followed several principles to change this dynamic:
- Don’t overthink and don’t over prepare: We reinforced the idea that it is good to just turn up, have a light-hearted conversation and have fun as we get to know each other. In this process, we’ll learn a lot as well as becoming comfortable with making mistakes.
- Small is beautiful: Typically we start meetings by discussing the big goal and then getting anxious about how we will fit the targets and milestones into a tight timeline. In the conversations we usually talked about just one idea or concept, and if we came out of the experience with intellectual clarity, that was a significant win.
- One step in real-time: We went into these conversations not knowing what might happen. Each subsequent step was identified by asking colleagues to fill in a reflection questionnaire. This was a liberating and deeply collaborative experience.
The impact: becoming vulnerable
In hindsight, these conversions made us aware of our insecurities and the fact that we cannot avoid engaging with them if we are to build better relationships with communities. In terms of changing the way we think, these conversations have given our colleagues a deep sense of joy and helped them reconnect to their work despite the enormous pressures of time and resources. As for practical steps, this experience led us to launch the Digital Residencies to work collaboratively with artists with links to the Pacific Islands / diaspora to develop prototypes to showcase our digital collections. We’ll continue to post updates as we make sense of our experiences.
This activity is part of NEO Collections — A project about user centered, explorative, open and reusable digital museum collections and the way they are accessed, curated and enriched. NEO Collections is funded by the Digital Culture Programme of the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes). Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
