What is socially engaged practice? Different perspectives

This film was made for an event we organised with NightShift in September 2022 to celebrate the launch of Culture Caleidoscoop and its overarching topic and first theme: socially engaged practice. Before thein-person panel discussion got started with colleagues from the Netherlands, anumber of international friends of Culture Caleidoscoop shared their views inthis short film. Watch the film to hear from contributors to the first issue Lora Krasteva and Henry Mulhall, Emilie Sitzia from the Advisory Collective, and Lorna and Danielle from the editorial team.

The event was hosted at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam and was co-organised with Night Shift, a monthly debate night for the museum sector that shares similar goals with Culture Caleidoscoop. The speakers included Guinevere Ras (curator at the Nederlands Fotomuseum), Dieuwertje Wijsmuller (independent collections consultant at Creative Culture Consultancy), Menno Welling (head of the Master Applied Museum and Heritage Studies at the Reinwardt Academy and member of our Advisory Collective), and Esmee Schoutens (research assistant at the Dutch National Museum for World Cultures and member of our Editorial Collective). We discussed several aspects of socially engaged practice, the challenges working with communities poses, and potential topics to explore in the future. The audience was involved in our lively debate and contributed thoughts and insights about deaccessioning objects with community input, how far museums can go in community solidarity, and how much freedom individual professionals have to follow their own values in their work.

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