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© Victoriano Moreno

Participation

The museum is not merely a custodial institution that collects to preserve for the future. The collection of stories serves as inspiration to bring people together in a historical place with current relevance, to reflect and engage in dialogue about migration.

Participation is of great importance within our operation. Because stories are central to the museum, personal involvement is crucial. People share their personal (family) story and donate treasured objects to the museum. By doing so, they connect with the museum and the symbolic place that the museum is. Participation was important in the creation of the museum, but it is also further embedded in its daily operations, from collecting to accessing. Active involvement and participation of the public and of our heritage communities is always central. 

Projects

Children’s Committee

[2021-present day]

In 2021 we started the Children’s Committee, made up of 7 children who meet every month to discuss and think about ideas for the museum. Wilde Raven guided us through this journey and translated the children’s ideas into concrete actions.

NT2 Nocturnes

[2013-today]

The museum has joined forces with teachers and with the Atlas organization to develop educational materials that help newcomers experience the museum in a personalized way.

Destination Sweetheart

[2020-2021]

Love migrants told their stories during the ‘Destination Sweetheart’ exhibition. They told them while being interviewed and shared their photographs and mementoes.

Roots Seekers

[2019]

The presentation of ‘Roots Seekers’ showed us the story of people in search of their own distant and recent past. For more recent migration stories, the museum collaborated with students from the Sint-Agnes Institute in Borgerhout.

‘Safe Harbour’ project and exhibition’

[2018]

We invited newcomers to share their memories on a specially designed city map. We’ve compiled the stories in a publication and in the ‘Safe Harbour’ exhibition.

Project ‘Fieldworkers’

[2017-2018]

The museum launched our fieldworkers project in 2017. Fieldworkers are people with a refugee and migration background who conduct interviews with migrants themselves.

Exhibition: ‘A Little Bit Belgian: Six Argentinians on their Roots’

[October 2017-April 2018]

For this exhibition, the Red Star Line Museum researched emigration from Belgium to Latin America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

‘Me, Myself & Belgium’ project

[final presentation 20.01.2017]

With this project, the museum (in collaboration with Joba refugee network) gave unaccompanied minor refugees an opportunity to introduce themselves at the museum and to preserve their stories for the future.

mensen zitten aan tafels, fotos hangen aan de muur

‘Home Sweet Home’ project and exhibition

[2014]

In 2014, the ‘Home Sweet Home’ exhibition on travelling and coming home was staged in the museum Shed in collaboration with the artist Bülent Öztürk and the photographer Mashid Mohadjerin. The museum also worked with young people of Turkish and Moroccan origin.

‘Here I am!’

[2010-2013]

Even before the museum opened, we toured the city with our Story Bus (with the name ‘Here I am!’) in search of contemporary migration stories. We worked with various sociocultural associations to collect hundreds of stories.

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