Inside Out
Museums and In-/Outreach: Digital symposium hosted by the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Germany
19.–20. August 2021
19.–20. August 2021
Das Teilen
Nowadays, broad sections of society are actively engaged in sharing their personal opinions and their individual interpretation of controversial social and political topics via social media. Experiences, stories and visions are thus brought together in an interactive and dialogic way. This involves not only the instantaneous transcending of regional borders and conceptual boundaries, but also the creation of new global communities every day. Against the backdrop of the digital age and the increasingly visible diversification of society, cultural institutions are being encouraged to see themselves as open platforms for communication, participation and creation, and to intensify their connective and collaborative processes. In order to be able to overcome borders and barriers, many museums are now using strategies of in- and outreach, thus enhancing the diversity of their programs.
At the digital symposium on 19 and 20 August 2021, international and national experts will be exchanging views on various strategies, approaches, and conditions for participatory in- and outreach programs. The symposium will focus on innovative forms of participation in which museums connect with diverse audiences outside their traditional spaces and engage in mutual exchanges of experiences and learning.
On the first day of the symposium, the focus will be on museums outreach projects. Participatory methods and processes will be presented. What potential do interactive formats offer? What do equitable collaborative approaches involve, and what challenges and opportunities do they pose? On the basis of examples from museums practices, the institution of the museum, with its traditional exhibition and mediation work, will be interrogated and thus also considered as an object of transformation processes.
On the second day of the symposium, attention will be turned towards rural areas with their local cultural and social traditions and values. Like many other rural regions, villages and small towns in Saxony are often marked by a constant flow of outward migration and by structural disadvantage. What opportunities for engagement do cultural institutions use in order to counteract the discrepancies between town and country and to generate dialogue where possible? Which practices from the field of art and culture stimulate independent action within social discourses and the way they are conducted? The panel will present different approaches, such as mobile museums, digital outreach, and collaborative or co-curating formats.
Finally, the symposium will venture a look into the future and ask how newly created networks of cultural participation can be sustained and how, in the long term, multiple voices can be reflected back to the museum audience, as well as to inside of museums.
The symposium will be held online in German and English. It is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
