Challenges and tensions in the relationships between museums and their landscapes. The educational proposals of the Museu do Douro

— Marta Coelho Valente

Abstract

This paper seeks to introduce a framework for questioning relational processes and public engagement in cultural institutions, as well as to open a discussion on current educational practices in museums, their assumptions, and challenges, while also considering their tensions and possible paradoxes. This will enable me, at a second stage, to explore the educational ecologies of the Museu do Douro [Douro Museum] in Portugal, particularly the BIOS – Biografias - Municípios do Douro e Trás-os-Montes project [BIOS – Biographies in the Municipalities of Douro and Trás-os-Montes] in which I was involved as a participating observer in 2017.


Presentation Proposal

Today we are witnessing a shift in institutional discourses seeking to break down the traditional barrier between institutions and their contexts and populations. Although we may regard this as a current trend that is to some extent generalised in museums, the practices adopted seem to continue to reveal the paternalistic and colonialist machine that museums still are today. Practical processes of collective agency within the local context of museums, which are described as potentially horizontal strategies, are commonly seen as a sign of ‘openness’ on the part of the institutions. However, it is important to question the processes that simply convey the museum as an open and accessible space, while continuing to perpetuate unilateral power mechanisms. We recognize that it is an enormous challenge to politically and critically place the museum within the context where it resides, opening itself up to dialogue, debate and 'working together', across different cultures, multiple viewpoints, other readings and positions; opening itself up to the confrontation of different points of view, where intertwined lines of knowledge and experience flow in the creation of situated actions and new collective meanings.

The research I am working on is part of a field of study that has arisen around the possibilities of public engagement and the social relationships that are established in cultural institutions and museums, having as an object of study the pedagogical work of the Museu do Douro. Based on this study, my proposal is to problematise emerging key points that are inherent to current institutional pedagogical practices, while addressing the relationships that museums establish with people and with local contexts / the surrounding landscapes, as well as to explore dissident and transformative pedagogical possibilities in tune with more democratic and socially engaged values.

BIOS – Biografias - Municípios do Douro e Trás-os-Montes was a project resulting from a partnership between the Fundação Museu do Douro [Douro Museum Foundation] and the Fundação EDP [EDP Foundation] that was based on artists’ residencies in recreational, cultural or social associations and local schools in 10 municipalities. The aims of this project were to create a collection of biographies of people and their places and to promote experimentation in diverse artistic approaches, including animation, sound and performing arts. This project illustrates a research study about the territory and the joint creation of a multimodal corpus about the landscapes. It is also a way of conceiving educational proposals that are open to other working approaches within the territorial context and with the people.

With a particular focus on this project, the collaborative work process developed in 2017 – which involved the education team, a resident artist and a youth group from Sendim, Portugal – I attempt to understand which possibilities for discourse and narrative were considered in these zones of contact and conflict, and how different interests and dialogical and negotiation processes were taken. With this, I seek to bring into the discussion some points for critical questioning and reflection on the challenges, paradoxes and tensions of relational and collaborative processes in the field of museum education.