Mosaic

When Interpretation Builds Collections

About the project

MOSAIC is a collaborative project between Mark | Museum of a New History of Denmark and the Immigration Museum, exploring how museums can become more relevant to new audiences while also developing new approaches to collecting.

The project addresses a key challenge: people with experiences of migration and multicultural lives are currently underrepresented both in museum collections and among museum audiences.

Rather than starting with traditional collecting practices, MOSAIC has reversed the process. Through co-created exhibitions, participants have helped develop narratives, formats and content. It is through this process that objects and stories have subsequently become part of the museums’ collections.

MOSAIC is supported by the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces.

How we work

MOSAIC uses co-creation as its core method. This means that rather than the museum defining the content and direction on its own, it creates a framework in which participants can actively contribute their own experiences and perspectives.

Through workshops, shared activities and exhibition production, participants and museums work together to develop mobile MOSAIC exhibitions. These exhibitions serve both as a means of interpretation and as a shared working space where relationships, stories and objects emerge throughout the process.

The project therefore explores how relationship-building, interpretation and collecting can be approached as a single, integrated practice rather than as separate museum activities.

Target groups

MOSAIC works with two target groups:

• Adult students attending language courses
• Young descendants of immigrants from multicultural backgrounds (aged 15–30)

What the two groups have in common is that they are underrepresented both in museum collections and among museum audiences.

Partners

The project has been developed and implemented in collaboration with a number of partners:

• Give-Grindsted Uddannelsescenter (GGUC)
• Nørrebro Library
• Peer-to-peer youth communities
• Rambøll (evaluation and data)

In addition, exhibition venues and activities have been developed in close collaboration with the participants themselves.

Key findings

MOSAIC demonstrates that if museums want to become relevant to a wider range of people, this requires more than new approaches to interpretation. It also requires a fundamental rethink of how museum collections are created.

The project points towards a practice in which the collection is not a closed system, but something that develops through dialogue with the people it is intended to represent.

The project highlights a number of key insights:

Interpretation drives collecting

When participants work on tangible interpretation outputs, they become more motivated to share their own stories and objects.

Relationships are essential

Trust and a sense of security are prerequisites for participation and for people to feel comfortable sharing personal stories.

Co-creation requires new skills

This work involves navigating complexity, emotions and unpredictable processes – aspects that have not traditionally formed part of professional museum practice.

Collecting is not neutral

What is collected is shaped by relationships, the framework of the process and participants’ own understanding of what is meaningful.

Openness creates both value and responsibility

Co-creation opens up new perspectives, but it also requires careful ethical consideration and clear facilitation.

Key outputs

MOSAIC has resulted in:

• Co-created mobile MOSAIC exhibitions
• New objects and stories added to the museums’ collections
• Methods for co-created collecting and interpretation
• Data on the target groups’ perceptions of the relevance of museums
• An article and knowledge-sharing within the museum sector

Read more in the article The Collection – The Museum’s Most Undemocratic Practice (only available in Danish)