TAKING CARE_Ethnographic and World Cultures Museums as Spaces of Care

Alarming environmental shifts and crises have raised public awareness of and anxieties regarding the future of the planet. While planetary in cause and scale, the negative effects of this global crisis are unequally distributed, affecting most intensely some of the already most fragile, including indigenous and formerly colonized peoples and contributing to rising global insecurity and inequality. Some scholars have argued that these anxieties should be taken as connected with another prominent set of anxieties around the ‘announced’ failure of the plural democracies that have become commonplace in many countries across the world.

ToCare places Ethnographic and World Cultures Museums at the centre of the search for possible strategies. The project is framed around the notion of care, and will explore under-tapped potential of these museums, for thinking critically about planetary pasts and about sustainable, convivial futures. Our claim is that World Culture Museums should no longer be conceived primarily as repositories of heritage to be preserved. They are places of encounter and practice, of social experimentations and innovation, of knowledges and skills, where diverse ways of knowing and being in and with the world, and narratives of diversity can be (re)discovered, co-created and publicly shared. Within Europe, such caring/careful (full of care) spaces are needed more than ever.

The project is organised around a set of interlinked/articulated themes, along a scale that starts from the museum as a site for care, opening towards thinking about the caring for the planet and its future, then on questions related to the unequal sharing of heritage resources and restitution. These themes will be explored in a shared programme of workshops, artist-based research, creative residencies and exhibitions, small-scale lab meetings, and collaborative publications, working through a range of participatory models, from small-group, hands-on sessions to wider public events.

Slovene Ethnographic Museum

(Partner) Ljubljana

All projects of Slovenian producer

Foreign producers in the supported project

KHM-Museumsverband (leader)

Austria (EU)
Culture Lab (partner)

Belgium (EU)
Institut de Cultura de Barcelona (partner)

Spain (EU)
Linden-Museum Stuttgart - Staatliches Museum fur Volkerkunde (partner)

Germany (EU)
Musée des Civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée (partner)

France (EU)
Musee Royal de l'Afrique Centrale (partner)

Belgium (EU)
Museo delle Civiltà (partner)

Italy (EU)
Museum am Rothenbaum (partner)

Germany (EU)
Nationalmuseet (partner)

Denmark (EU)
Statens Museer for Varldskultur (partner)

Sweden (EU)
Stichting Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen (partner)

Netherlands (EU)
The Chancellor Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge (partner)

United Kingdom (EU)
The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford (partner)

United Kingdom (EU)

Funded projects

CAFÈ: Redefining Historic Cafés as European Cultural Heritage

ArtElevate – Fostering inclusive cultural expression in Europe

CARE – Culture for Mental Health

Glassmaking Between Tradition and Innovation

WONDERCUT – Collaboratively Exploring the Public Value of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Next Level Cultural Experiences

Heroes Unleashed: Implementing a Sensory Reading Program in European Public Libraries

DATAS – The Data and the Sovereign

TALKING HEADS – Conversation with the art of the past

Libraries of Emotions for Good

GreenHeritage – Nurturing a sustainable future in the gardens of time

G-BOOK 3

PAGE: a Project for Advancing coGnitivE accessibility in publishing

DIGITAL on STAGE – Unleashing the Performing Arts Experience through Digital Innovation

OASis – Open Art Spaces in Synergy

Transport: Sustainable puppet co-creations for European young audiences

Danube Dance Alliance for Development of Contemporary Dance Scene in the Danube Region

Mind the GAP

Beletrina Digital

WOMEN interACT - participatory theatre against the double exclusion of women

TECH(ing) TALES WITH A TWIST for the children of the present

DoSEL – Drama of Smaller European Languages

MUSICVILLE – Green European Opera

Operation Nova

Kino x Games

FASIH - Future Art and Science Industrial Heritage

Cultural BEES

Is this us?

Climate Art Fusion Caravane (CARAVANE)

Moving Balkans

Youth Art for the Earth (YAFE)

Shadow Pandemic: Hidden Voices

Open House Europe (OHEu)

Third Stage

VERSOPOLIS – WHERE POETRY LIVES

December: 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

Connecting Emerging Literary Artists (CELA)

Transmedia stories of insularity (TRAST)

Female Digital Creativity (FLUX)

Planet Hope (New European Fiction) (PH)

More than a Book (MTaS)

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

Connected with Books (CWB)

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 (OLL LE)

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)