Co-created collections

Summary

How can museums become more sustainable – both socially and culturally? This is the question Furesø Museums / the Immigration Museum and Mark | Museum of a New History of Denmark set out to explore through the Co-created Collections project.

The museums have investigated how co-creation and citizen science can pave the way for new approaches to collecting, understanding and caring for our shared cultural heritage.

As part of the project, a model was developed that views co-creation as a cyclical process involving different stages and forms of participation. The project also identified four key factors that have a major influence on how co-creation unfolds – and what it ultimately leads to: purpose, duration, motivation and familiarity with museums.

These four factors interact with one another, creating dynamics that can both support and challenge the collaborative process. Finding the right balance is therefore essential when museums and communities come together to shape collections.

The project presents seven different case studies, each illustrating what co-creation can look like in practice – from reflecting together on what museums should collect to collaboratively creating objects that may one day become part of the museums of the future.

Co-created Collections is an open-ended experiment and an invitation to rethink who creates cultural heritage – and how we can create it together.

Click here to learn more about the project and our findings in the Handbook for Co-created Collections, available in Danish as a PDF.

Below, you can read selected extracts from the handbook.

Preface

The Co-created Collections project sets out to rethink – and challenge – traditional approaches to museum collections and collections management. This handbook is primarily intended for museum professionals working with collecting, documentation and conservation. However, our work on the project also made one thing very clear: successful co-creation requires strong skills in interpretation and engagement, as well as close collaboration between colleagues across collections and public-facing museum practice.

The handbook grew out of a desire to explore co-creation from a collections perspective and its potential to contribute to a more inclusive and democratic museum practice – one that makes room for a wider range of voices and perspectives, and enables more people to see their lives and experiences reflected in museum collections.

It provides museum professionals with a theoretical framework for co-creation, brought to life through case studies showing how the approach can work in practice. It also offers practical tools and reflections on how co-creation can become part of both collections development and museum interpretation.

But co-creation cannot happen without co-creators. This project has only been possible because so many people have shared their time, knowledge, experiences and perspectives with us.

We would therefore like to extend our sincere thanks to our many partners: Give-Grindsted Uddannelsescenter, Grindsted Agricultural College, designers Henriette Rolf Larssen and Jeanne Vilhelmsen, Nørrebro Library, Tokulturelt Pigeprojekt in Farum, Farum Local History Association, Værløseegnens Local History Association, the Rhythmic Music Conservatory and its students and teaching staff in Copenhagen, as well as the many local residents of Billund Municipality, Greater Copenhagen and the Furesø area.

Without you, the initiatives described in this handbook would not have been possible. Your contributions are helping us create a richer, more diverse and more inclusive history of Denmark – one shaped by many different voices.

Introduction

In spring 2024, the Danish government, together with a broad majority in Parliament, presented a long-awaited proposal for a new reform of Denmark’s museum sector. The promise to overhaul an outdated funding system resulted in broad political agreement on the need to modernise and future-proof the role of museums in society and create a new and more dynamic framework for the Danish museum sector.

The reform firmly establishes the collections as a fundamental part of the museums’ raison d’être. Under the new political agreement, collections must “safeguard our history and the way we tell it, remain current and relevant, and be properly documented and reported” (Museumsreform: en generationsinvestering i vores fælles fortælling, 2024, p. 2).

Alongside this renewed emphasis on collections, another key element of the reform is to strengthen museums as meeting places for democratic dialogue, innovation and co-creation. Knowledge of our shared history and cultural heritage should be shared and developed together with museum audiences. The aim is to make museums more accessible, relevant and inclusive for all sections of society – an ambition that requires, among other things, a stronger focus on the continuous development of museum collections.

The ideas underpinning the new museum reform are neither unfamiliar nor untested in Danish museums. Inspired by developments across the international museum sector, outreach and audience participation have been prominent themes in museum discourse for many years. This has introduced new ways of working, with an increasing emphasis on co-creation and inclusion in museum practice. In a world where knowledge is continually negotiated and constantly changing, recognising and including multiple perspectives has – rightly – become a democratic imperative for museums.

The emergence of the so-called participatory paradigm can be seen as a response to substantial and valid criticism of Western museums as institutions that have traditionally represented majority culture and elite histories. In recent years, this criticism has played an important role in public debates about culture and identity.

At the heart of this critique is the argument that museums, as institutions entrusted with our shared cultural heritage, have not done enough to embrace multiple voices or acknowledge the contributions of marginalised groups to the development of society. This has created an imbalance in our collective history: some groups have been overlooked or given less prominence in museum practice, while the perspectives of others have been repeatedly reproduced within familiar structures.

The participatory paradigm has encouraged museums to adopt more open, inclusive and pluralistic approaches in an effort to democratise our shared cultural heritage. As a result, a growing number of museums are positioning themselves as “authorities of recognition” – a concept drawn from the work of German professor Stephan Feuchtwang. It describes an institutional recognition that when people cannot see themselves reflected in our collective history, this presents a challenge to museums as democratic institutions. Museums must therefore make a conscious effort to embrace a multiplicity of voices and perspectives (Feuchtwang 2003; Naguib 2013).

More than ever before, this requires co-creation to become an integral part of how museums engage with our shared past, present and future.

The idea of co-creation is far from new. Yet although the concept has become increasingly widespread, there is still little consensus on precisely what it means or what it involves. Research literature shows that co-creation is neither an unambiguous concept nor a straightforward method. It is used in a wide variety of contexts to describe different forms of collaboration between different groups working on different issues.

Within museums, co-creation as both a concept and a method has evolved considerably over time, strongly influenced by broader cultural, social and technological changes. Today, we understand co-creation as a process in which museum professionals and audiences work together towards a shared goal, guided by principles of inclusion, participation and shared authority.

The foundations of participatory museum practice, however, can be traced back to the origins of museums themselves. During the Enlightenment and Romantic periods, collections were often displayed in ways that invited public engagement, although these early forms of interaction were generally passive and one-directional. The museum was primarily a place where knowledge was presented rather than created.

By the middle of the twentieth century, this began to change, and the idea emerged that museum visitors could play a part in shaping their own museum experience. Museums increasingly came to be seen as active environments in which visitors could engage with objects and stories in new ways.

During the 1970s and 1980s, new social movements began to challenge established norms – and, with them, museums’ agendas and perceptions of themselves. The demand for more participatory approaches grew alongside an increasing recognition of the importance of being relevant to a broad audience. Museums began to create spaces, albeit initially limited ones, in which marginalised groups could tell their own stories.

Combined with a growing recognition of audience participation and inclusion in other sectors, the digital revolution of the 1990s and 2000s accelerated this development considerably. Shared cultural heritage could suddenly be accessed in entirely new ways, while ideas about co-creation were expanded, negotiated and adapted to this changing environment.

Over the past decade, co-creation has assumed an increasingly prominent role in museum practice. Driven by a desire to democratise the museum experience and build more meaningful relationships with their audiences, museums have come to recognise that their role is not simply to present curated content, but also to enable visitors to construct knowledge, meaning and perspectives together with the museum.

Today, co-creation is therefore regarded not simply as a tool for engagement and participation, but as a way of ensuring that museum content reflects a broad range of voices, experiences and perspectives (Simon 2010; Black 2011; Simmons 2016).

This growing emphasis on participation has been particularly evident in museum interpretation and engagement, both internationally and in Denmark. There is now an extensive body of literature on co-creation processes in which museums and participant groups work together towards a shared interpretive output, such as an exhibition.

Co-creation has also become an established method in interpretation and engagement at both Mark | Museum of a New History of Denmark and Furesø Museums / the Immigration Museum.

Mark collects and interprets the history of agriculture, industry and tourism in Billund Municipality and has co-created a number of interpretation initiatives with children and young people. One example is Your Past – Our Future, in which pupils from a local independent school are given the opportunity to speak openly about their views on climate change and sustainability in relation to their own lives and local area.

Furesø Museums / the Immigration Museum documents and interprets local histories from the Furesø area as well as stories of immigration to Denmark at a national level. It has developed a wide range of initiatives focusing on co-creation and co-curation between the museum and participant groups. These include the temporary exhibitions Sikhs in Denmark – Meet the Sikhs and The Guest Workers – Stories from the 1970s, as well as the local history collecting project Our History.

Both museums therefore draw on a long and rich tradition of co-creation – not only historically, but also within their own institutional practices and identities.

The new museum reform has, however, once again highlighted the need to revisit co-creation as a museum concept and apply it in contexts beyond interpretation and engagement.

By placing greater emphasis on collections, relevance and participation, the reform creates an opportunity to develop new museum practices in which co-creation is integrated more fully into the way collections are developed and understood.

This handbook, produced by Mark | Museum of a New History of Denmark and Furesø Museums / the Immigration Museum, is an example of this evolving practice. Our aim is to inspire the wider museum sector by providing empirical examples, practical tools and ethical considerations for museums wishing to work collaboratively with communities, both locally and nationally.

The handbook grew out of the cross-institutional Co-created Collections project, funded through the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces’ Sustainable Museums 2023–2024 programme, which focused on sustainable collections management.

Working in close consultation with Conservation Centre Vejle, the two museums developed strategies and methods for collections development by exploring new ways of incorporating co-creation into collecting and conservation practices.

Based on the idea of integrating inclusive and participatory approaches into the collecting, documentation and preservation of cultural heritage, the museums worked with a series of concrete case studies designed to test, develop and evaluate the integration of co-creation into collections work.

The aim was to strengthen the cultural and social sustainability of our collections by challenging established collecting paradigms and conventional ideas about what constitutes a museum object. Particular emphasis was placed on intangible and place-based cultural heritage.

At the same time, people who do not normally use museums were invited to identify cultural heritage and assess what they considered significant, helping to ensure broader representation within museum collections, interpretation and research.

The extensive findings generated by these ideas and practical experiments are presented throughout this handbook.

The handbook is divided into three main chapters.

The first chapter explores the theoretical insights that emerged from the project. Using a cyclical model, we examine the different stages of co-creation and the characteristics of each stage. We also explore four factors that shape the co-creation process, examining how they interact and create synergies.

This chapter also includes a series of practical toolkits, together with ethical, organisational and strategic considerations for museums wishing to embark on co-created collections projects. Finally, we consider different degrees of co-creation, which may vary depending on the relationship between the institution and the participating group or groups.

The second chapter explores seven case studies from the project, demonstrating how these theoretical insights can be translated into practice. The cases are accompanied by photographs, comments from project partners and examples of best practice and key lessons learned.

The third and final chapter concludes the handbook by reflecting on the impact of the individual case studies and the project as a whole – both on participating groups and partners and on the museums’ own collections practices.

Co-creation is an ongoing process. There is no single definitive method and no guarantee of a successful outcome.

By embracing the principles of inclusion, participation and shared authority, co-creation challenges traditional approaches to collecting and preserving cultural heritage. Yet it is precisely through this challenge that co-creation offers the potential to strengthen the cultural and social sustainability of museum collections.

This handbook should therefore not be regarded as a definitive or final answer. Rather, it is a contribution to the continuing conversation about how co-creation can be developed and applied in new ways.

We hope it will provide a starting point for further discussion about co-creation as a method for developing museum collections, inspire other museums to explore co-creation within their own practice, and encourage dialogue about both its possibilities and its limitations.