EU-LAC-MUSEUMS Webinar 1 - Community-based museums in times of crisis
Channel: Museus Comunitários | Community Museums
Date: 2020-06-24

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its catastrophic effect on museum and heritage communities, three new webinars will focus on the topic of community-based museums in times of crisis. Consisting of four or five speakers in each session, our online discussions, open to all, are created in the context of reinforcing cultural relations between Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean in the frame of the Horizon2020 EU-LAC-MUSEUMS project [http://www.eulacmuseums.net].

Since 2016 our research project has supported community-based museums in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean in partnership with the European and Latin America and Caribbean Regional Alliances of ICOM [https://icom.museum/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Resolutions_2019_EN.pdf]. However, in each year of our project’s existence, we have weathered a number of difficult circumstances, including the impact of El Niño Costero in Peru in 2017, the hurricanes in Costa Rica and the Caribbean in 2018, the civil unrest in Chile in 2019, and most recently the last-minute postponement of our final General Assembly in Costa Rica owing to the travel restrictions of Coronavirus. Our years of working bi-regionally have demonstrated that by highlighting the social function of the museums, museums are relevant in the containment, reflection, and memory of crises when they are over. The project has already demonstrated that museums cannot only plan and prepare for a disaster but can also be reliably called upon to help communities recover when disaster strikes (both in the short and long term). By responding to crisis situations, museums involved in EU-LAC-MUSEUMS are helping their museum and heritage communities to grow in resilience as a result. While communities are in crisis, COVID-19 presents one more very real opportunity for us to demonstrate how - through our close working with community museums and local leaders - we can together overcome adversity, survive, and later thrive.

The five speakers in the first webinar are members of our EU-LAC-MUSEUMS Steering Committee and Advisory Board, each with advanced expertise in community-based museums and social resilience who have written for our project compendium On Sustainable and Community Museums [https://eulacmuseums.net/eulac_museums_docs/EULAC_COMPENDIUM.pdf]. The session will be chaired by the Project Coordinator, Karen Brown (University of St Andrews), and is jointly organised by Lauran Bonilla-Merchav (ICOM Costa Rica; University of Costa Rica) and Jamie Allan Brown (University of St Andrews). The second webinar will share the reflections of Latin American and Caribbean researchers from EU-LAC-MUSEUMS project affected by crises. The final webinar will be devoted specifically to the role of digital technologies and COVID-19.

List of Speakers invited to speak for 10 minutes each, followed by a Q&A:

Webinar 1: Friday 12 June, 1600h UK BST
Topic: Community-based museums at times of crisis
Co-moderators: Lauran Bonilla-Merchav and Karen Brown
Languages: English; moderation in English and in Spanish 

KEYNOTE:  Hugues de Varine (France)

SPEAKERS: Luís Raposo (Portugal) ; Beatriz Espinoza (Chile) ; Teresa Morales (Mexico) ; Samuel Franco Arce (Guatemala) 

Technical specifications:
The webinars will be hosted on zoom, and a zoom link provided soon through our project Facebook page found here: https://www.facebook.com/eulacmuseums/

Webinar 1 will be co-moderated by Karen Brown and Lauran Bonilla-Merchav who will be taking questions from the Live Chat on zoom at the end of the webinar