Plenary: Agents of Social ChangeHall A, MECCChair: Jo Besley

Jo BesleySenior Curator Social History, Queensland Museum, and Churchill Fellow 2009

Closure? Or opening? Museums as ‘crucibles’ for identity, healing and recovery

“Museums are morphing. Once they were chroniclers or collectors, gathering objects and facts and putting them on display. Now many have become crucibles: places where a cultural identity is hammered out, refined and reshaped”

Ed Rothstein, The New York Times, July 20, 2006

Making space

• Civic spaces: active citizenship

• Safe spaces: social justice

• Community spaces: participation

Opening up, breaking the silence

• Participants and visitors

• Truth recovery

• Public acknowledgement

Re-visit and commemorate

• Tell the story in your own way

• Share the details

• Mourning

• Reflection

• Both participants and visitors

Reconnect and create new narratives

• Reconnect with others - reconciliation, social harmony

• Personal and communal recovery

• Find a mission