What we want
We live in a world connected by information, communications, and transport infrastructure, in which we are all linked by our actions and decisions. Even distant events have an impact on us and our decisions have an impact elsewhere. The European Museo Mundial Project aims to educate people on global issues and generate discussion. We also want to motivate people to become active in promoting a more equal and sustainable world. Therefore, the main focus of this project is Global Learning, thereby supporting the Millennium Development Goals and their follow-up strategies as declared by the United Nations.
Why introduce global issues into museums
Through this project, we are promoting Global Learning in a special environment – museums. Museums are well-established institutions of learning. Millions of European citizens visit museums each year. At the same time, many museums are looking for ways to update their traditional topics to address today’s problems and issues. The Global Learning approach offers museums the chance to broaden their range of topics and thus gain new visitors that have not been reached yet.
At the same time, NGOs sometimes complain about reaching the same audiences again and again. Cooperation with museums promises new audiences for development issues. However, Global Learning is seldom promoted in museums at present. The Museo Mundial Project aims to bridge this gap.
How to introduce global issues into museums
In this project, partners from both museums and development NGOs have developed 41 “Global Learning for Museums” installations and embedded them into exhibitions for viewing by visitors at partner museums in Hungary, Germany, Portugal and the Czech Republic. Installations embedded in exhibitions can take many forms. During two years of work on our project, the team came up with many installations that show just how diverse Global Learning in museums can be. For example: an audio point on land-grabbing placed in an exhibition on West Africa (Naturhistorisches Museum, Nürnberg); a board game on world trade placed in an exhibition on the 1920s (Loures Municipal Museum); an interactive model railway educating visitors on sustainable mobility installed in a railway exhibition (Railway Museum, Budapest); a table-based installation on water in an exhibition on thermal baths (Budapest History Museum); a wall installation on food security (Agricultural Museum, Prague); and many more installations that we have set up so far. We have set out our ideas on this website to inspire others. The installations shown on this website were developed through a participatory approach involving staff from both museums and NGOs. So that the embedded Global Learning approach may be replicated by other museums and NGOs, the installations are cheap and affordable to reproduce.
