SWICH – Sharing a World of Inclusion, Creativity and Heritage

SWICH – Sharing a World of Inclusion, Creativity and Heritage is an EU-funded cooperation project between 10 European ethnographic museums. Weltmuseum Wien acted as lead partner in this project, running from October 2014 until September 2018.

Together, the partner museums reflected on the future of ethnographic museums in a society shaped by processes of migration and globalization. Globalisation and migration contribute to a diversification of European society, thus multiple cultural identities increasingly characterize its citizens. Ethnographic museums have to reflect such new circumstances and re-contextualize their collections that catalogue the diversity of world cultures in the light of such global and transnational changes.
The possibilities opened up by collaboration with communities, artists and interdisciplinary approaches were tested. How can museums function as nodes of debate and identification between local and transnational identities? Another focus lies on the question how museums will collect in the future and on the potential of digital technologies for the visitor experience. A series of workshops and exhibitions test how new technologies help to enhance cross-cultural encounter. The emphasis lies on the inclusion of diaspora and post-migrant communities in Europe.

Activities
The partner museums worked on strategies for a future-oriented museum practice in a series of conferences, workshops, residencies and cooperative exhibition formats. These settings served as platform for the discussion of future collecting strategies, the inclusion of contemporary art and the relational role of ethnographic objects in the complex networks between originating societies and local diaspora-communities. Furthermore, the significance of new digital technologies as tools for cross-cultural cooperation were examined.
Artists, scholars and members of descendant communities were invited by partner museums for residencies for an intensive exchange within the institutions. The outcomes are presented on the project website www.swich-project.eu, in public programs, in a number of publications and innovative collaborative exhibition formats.

Conceptual Focus
The project revolved around a series of interrelated key concepts: co-creativity and experimental exhibiting, relationality, cultural subjecthood, emotional citizenship and diaspora. The project partners addressed ideas of relationality, as a way to explore how ethnographic museums and collections are sites around which relationships are built between the museums and its multiple stakeholders, both historical and contemporary. Such a relational approach takes into account co-creative knowledge production, experimental modes of engaging with the collections and the importance of contestation. Similarly the project addressed issues of Europe’s diversity by looking at the intersecting diasporas of objects and peoples. A major concern was addressing digital futures and the question of how new digital technologies are impacting notions of citizenship and (trans-national) belonging and how the different stakeholders experience ethnographic museums and relate to cultural heritage presented in them.

With these interrelated concerns, Museums of Ethnography and World Cultures developed new practices to address the shifting citizenship regimes and practices that are emerging in Europe.

(Source: EC; look also SEM)

Slovene Ethnographic Museum

(Partner)

All projects of Slovenian producer

Foreign producers in the supported project

KHM-MUSEUMSVERBAND (leader)

Austria (EU)
Culture Lab – International Cultural Expertise (partner)

Belgium (EU)
INSTITUT DE CULTURA DE BARCELONA (partner)

Spain (EU)
Linden-Museum Stuttgart (partner)

Germany (EU)
Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée, Marseille (partner)

France (EU)
Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale (partner)

Belgium (EU)
Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico «Luigi Pigorini» (partner)

Italy (EU)
National Museums of World Culture (partner)

Sweden (EU)
THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE (partner)

United Kingdom (EU)

Funded projects

Shadow Pandemic: Hidden Voices

Open House Europe (OHEu)

Third Stage

VERSOPOLIS – WHERE POETRY LIVES

Uncomfortable Beings, Azra, Best Imaginary Friends Forever

LINA - Learn, Interact, and Network in Architecture

Reactivating unused urban spaces through architecture and arts (ReCITYing)

Art Nouveau: a new EUtopia

Creative Industries Development Centre (KUL)

Web 3.0 Accelerator for Sustainable Cultural Tourism (Web3Tour)

Studiotopia: Enter the Symbiocene with Arts and Science (Studiotopia 2)

Bio Awakening - developing bio-art practices in Western Balkan

TestArt

GREENSTAGE

Climate Art Fusion Caravane (CARAVANE)

Connecting Emerging Literary Artists (CELA)

Cultural BEES

Transmedia stories of insularity (TRAST)

Female Digital Creativity (FLUX)

Planet Hope (New European Fiction) (PH)

More than a Story (MTaS)

Our Little Library: Through literary bridges to reading adventures (OLLLB)

Connected with Books (CWB)

Operation Nova

Moving Balkans

Exploring Expanded Publishing: EX-Pub

Thinking Publishing (ThinkPub)

Novel Europe (NovelEU)

REVIVE

Temporama: Mini Slate 2023

Studi Virc: Mini Slate 2023

The 10th and 11th edition of FeKK - Ljubljana Short Film Festival

The 20th and 21st Kino Otok - Isola Cinema International Film Festival

20. and 21. ANIMATEKA International animated film festival

Film in Hospital 2.0

EU Youth Cinema: Green Deal 2024-2026

Cinema without barriers (CWB)

Literary Agent Platform: Capacity building (LAP CB)

Tramal Films Mini Slate 22 (TFMini22)

Vertigo Slate 2022: Chestnuts, Memory of Autumn Mists, OHO, Splashing around

Staragara slate 22

Our Little Library: Literary exchanges

Testing Ground (TestG)

Better Live

Variola - Dark Spring TV series

SEMA

Paradiso

Leave the door open

The Big Green

The Long Way Down

New approaches for local media (NEWLOCAL)

Life Long Burning – Futures Lost and Found (LLB3)

Time For Live Art (LIVETIME)

Our Little Library: Literary Exchanges

Women Power in Comics (WOMCOM)

Movement, Digital Intelligence and Interactive Audience (MODINA)

Fortissimo. An interactive digital tool that brings kids closer to classical music (FF)

Spring Cleaning

Animation Festival Network

CulturalDeTour - Sustainable Cultural Tourism by Design Driven Innovation

Building the future of democracy through art, science and technology (EUDigitalDeal)

The Museum of the Commons. Towards a Healthier Arts Ecosystem (MoC)

ACT: Art, Climate, Transition

Baths, gothic churches and miners’ houses

Fake Lies

THE FILM CORNER RELOADED - A CULTURAL APPROACH

CINEMINI EUROPE

FC Freedom

Body

Movies in Motion

Voix de la Poesie Europeenne

Trust me, I'm an artist

The Faces Behind the Nose - Promoting Hospital Clowning as a Recognized Genre of Performing Arts

SYMBOLS - Culture of Death& Cultural Life: New audiences and creations around European Cemeteries!

SWICH - Sharing a World of Inclusion, Creativity and Heritage

SPECTRUM 14|15

Small Size, Performing Arts for Early Years

Performing the Museum

Masters & Servers: Networked Culture in the Post-Digital Age