The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe celebrates the Council of Europe Museum Prize and spotlights 2018’s winner.
Recognising that the legal and institutional safeguards of democracy and human rights cannot remain sound and solid unless they are embedded in culture, the Council of Europe (CoE) facilitates cultural co-operation among its member countries based on the European Cultural Convention of 1954, gathering more than 60 years’ experience in policy guidance related to culture and heritage. Four specific conventions were developed to deal with architectural heritage (Granada, 1985), archaeological heritage (Valetta, 1992), landscape (Florence, 2000) and more recently the Faro Convention (2005) on the value of heritage for society.
The CoE’s work focuses on promoting diversity and dialogue to cultivate a sense of identity, collective memory and mutual understanding within and between numerous communities in Europe. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) recognised early the role of museums as a resource for this, and in a recommendation adopted in March 1977, set out the basis for two awards: the European Museum of the Year Award and the Council of Europe Museum Prize.
Celebrating the prize’s 40th year, PACE’s Culture Committee awarded the 2018 Council of Europe Museum Prize in December in Budapest, Hungary, to the War Childhood Museum in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Museums for healing
The War Childhood Museum was formed as a grassroots initiative by Jasmino Halilovic, who was a child during the siege of Sarajevo during 1992-1996. In 2010, Halilovic collected 1,000 responses to an online questionnaire, which were initially edited into a book and were later presented within the museum. Through these powerful personal stories – as well as objects associated with each – the museum advocates peace, reconciliation and the value of cultural diversity.
These concepts are particularly important to apply in the context of reconciliation in post-conflict situations where cultural heritage as a symbol of cultural identity may have been a target for destruction. Examples exist in the countries of the former Yugoslavia and in other parts of Europe where political, cultural, ethnic or religious divisions and intolerance are rapidly gaining ground. In light of this, the War Childhood Museum is deliberately apolitical, which is evident through the presentation of stories, through its social and outreach activities and in the way it was conceived and crowd-funded. The museum serves as a documentary and oral history archive, and strives to be an active participant in its local community, cultural scene, and in the education system across a divided country with over 50 ethnically segregated schools.
Volunteerism has played an essential role in virtually every aspect of the museum’s development, including building design; archival organisation; curating; graphic design; methodology and child psychology; software development; translation and copy-editing; video-editing; and voice acting for audio guides. In terms of its policy, the museum aims to fill an existing gap in documenting war experiences from a children’s perspectives, and therefore expand its research and collection across Bosnia and Herzegovina, among diaspora living abroad, and in co-operation with associations in Lebanon, Syria and Turkey.
In the words of Adele Gambaro, PACE rapporteur for the Council of Europe Museum Prize, the War Childhood Museum, “is a small museum with a great vision, a big heart and a therapeutic impact for its community. I believe that this museum has a real potential to serve as a powerful self-sustaining model of civic initiative and offers an example that could be replicated in other major conflict and post-conflict zones in the world.” Indeed, artistic freedom can make possible the expression of conflicting positions which might otherwise be politically difficult or unacceptable, and this can prove more productive than silencing such political positions. The role of museums in facilitating this is recognised by PACE’s awards
The Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society
Over the years, PACE’s Culture Committee has particularly promoted cultural rights as an integral part of human rights. Culture represents a fundamental base on which to build a stable, peaceful and prosperous society, where every individual can grow, be respected and valued. In this respect, the Council of Europe Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society – also known as the Faro Convention – represents a key political instrument as it introduces a much wider understanding of heritage, which is considered not only as an asset of the past, but more importantly as a resource for human development, for the enhancement of cultural diversity and for the promotion of intercultural dialogue.
The Council of Europe Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society – the Faro Convention – was endorsed by the Committee of Ministers within the Council of Europe in 2005, and has been ratified by 17 member states to date, with a further five who have signed the convention. It aims to promote objects and places as of significance in relation to meaning and values, as opposed to their literal value. As a framework convention, it suggests ideas for change, as opposed to enforcing them.
The Faro Convention Action initiative uses practice-based platforms in order to merge cross-cutting issues, as well as the Council of Europe’s knowledge and experience, in order to establish concrete actions. Civic initiatives enable institutions and communities to develop decision-making capacities and to manage their development processes, ensuring that heritage contributes to the social, cultural and economic dynamics of the communities.
Supporting small museums
In a recent parliamentary report entitled ‘The libraries and museums of Europe in times of change’, Lady Diana Eccles – a member of the PACE Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media – placed emphasis on the cultural, social and economic significance of small and medium-sized museums within Europe, which can play an integral role in local communities, even when many are facing funding concerns and mounting pressures to reduce operations or even to close. The report looked at new and expanding roles for museums at the start of 21st Century, considering economic pressures and challenges for the sector, and brought forward ideas and examples how to make museums resilient and sustainable.
In efforts to address the problems faced by museums, the PACE Resolution of 2016 has urged governments to increase cross-governmental recognition and support for museums, and to further their public service to communities.1 PACE has also proposed a project, launched by former rapporteur and Serbian MP Vesna Marjanovic, to initiate exchange programmes for museum staff wherein winning museums host visitors from other museums, which could prove vital to museums in countries that do not benefit from a strong financial or policy backing from the state.
References
- Culture and democracy: the PACE 2016 resolution http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/xref/xref-docdetails-en.asp?fileid=22770&lang=en
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
http://assembly.coe.int/nw/Home-EN.asp
