The EU-LAC museums project and community-based museums

Abstract

For four years, the EU-LAC Museums project researched community empowerment and state-of-the-art initiatives in museums and in Europe and LAC and then created new research prisms to foster good relations between these regions through shared histories and a common vision. Throughout this process, the consortium oscillated between pushing the boundaries of given museum definitions and trying to locate a working definition for the project. The term ‘community-based museums’ became key to this process, providing a cornerstone for bi-regional museological understanding. This chapter explores this collaborative process and presents the findings of our survey ‘What is a community museum in your region?’