Laboratório de Escuta – Laboratório de Escuta

Museums, public and universities

It is not enough to have ears to hear what is said;
there must also be silence within the soul

Alberto Caeiro

| PT

Why

While it is believed that museums can be vital spaces for knowledge, dialogue, creativity, history and learning, it is also acknowledged that there are many barriers that make them accessible and relevant only to a minority. The practical, financial and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have made all too evident the urgency of addressing why museums exist in the 21st century. This is a fundamental question – not just of today! – which raises many others:

How can museums transform their spaces, programmes and ways of working in order to better engage with the aspirations of the diverse communities they serve?
How do they interact with their audiences? How do we want them to interact in the future?
How can we all learn to listen more?
How can museums take on inclusion and incorporate co-design / co-curation with audiences as a regular practice?
How can we transform the museum experience?

The Listening Lab draws from these topics to create conversational spaces between audiences, museum professionals and universities to explore and share ideas, tools and tactics that promote reflection and support strategic change in museums. In broad terms, this Lab relates to the EPITEC 2 research project and the need to deepen research on citizenship education as a fundamental element of educational processes. This perspective focuses essentially on the role of controversial heritages from ecosocial, sociocritical and transformative perspectives. The conversation spaces facilitated by the Lab aim to provide an opportunity for shared reflection around some of the dilemmas faced by museums today (e.g., notions of anti-patrimony, the heritage of cruelty, the heritage of interest, gendered heritage, subjugated heritage, inclusive heritage and rescued heritage) and their relevance to audiences. In the case of school teachers, these issues are also explored in relation to educational contexts. This Listening Lab falls within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda, in particular through Goals 4 (Quality Education), 5 (Gender Equality), 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions). From a citizenship, heritage and arts education these goals are interconnected.

What it is about

Goals

This is an exploratory project that seeks to understand how the museum is perceived and experienced by the participants of the Listening Lab sessions. It also seeks to facilitate the collective construction of more relevant spaces with the ultimate aim of supporting change in the museum. It aims, in particular, to create a conversational space that is open to the participation of both professionals and audiences, taking special care to include the voice of young people, children, families and teachers in the cultural programming that is aimed at them.

How?

The map

The Listening Lab organises conversation sessions with professionals and audiences who are interested in talking about museums and making their voices heard. The main objective is to provide a forum and safe space for the discussion of museum-related issues and, in particular, controversial heritage. In addition, we aim to provide a space to share stories about the lived experience of museums. The Lab events alternate between two critical formats: small group conversations, and interviews.

In designing these listening moments, we choose to use reflective, creative and visual methods of representation to identify: perceptions and map out of relationships and patterns of the system’s behaviour; its dynamics and actions for change. This option allows the museum to happen as continuity, relationality, contingency and sensuality.

The approach is participatory and emphasises the agency of the participants. Importantly, the project takes on the performative dimension of these Laboratory spaces, paying attention to the form that the methods used adopt and the social realities they create. The production of tools / prototypes that can be adapted in other contexts is part of this statement.

The map to be produced focuses, on the one hand, on the communication and access barriers identified by the participants, providing a better understanding of the reasons and factors that contribute to the irrelevance of the museum for audiences; and, on the other, on mapping the spaces of possibilities imagined by participants – that is, the leverage points of great potential to change the way museums operate – to support the collective and participatory construction of the museums’ futures.

The problems of irrelevance identified are not intended as a criticism of the museum, but of the system itself. The map only represents the perspective or experience of the participants in the system.

Who?

The project brings together researchers from museum studies, art education and design who understand research as a form of active engagement with the changing social world. The Lab spaces are understood as part of this process of engagement and enquiry rather than as a research product.

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