Belgium

HOmusee-2013Musées et Société en Wallonie ASBL
(Museums and Society in Wallonia) gathers several museums in frenchspeaking Belgium. It aims at encouraging its members to develop links with their audiences, to promote training among professionnals of the museums and foster collaboration between society museums and cultural tourism. To do so, Musées et Société develops pedagogical and mediation tools and helps to create thematic netwoks among its members, particularly among society museums gathered around the socio-anthropological approach (HoMuseum). These museums develop special actions using the ethnographic approach to strenghten links between inhabitants and the museums.

Website: www.msw.be

Here you can find some methods used by members of HOmusée (Walloon ethnology network) and Vade Mecum harvest oral evidence.
A simple tool that can help the dialogue between generations and people from different cultures.

• Integration of artwork in to the project “Museum of cross-border life”.
Goal of the project is to integrate art and architecture  developing the concept of the Museum building in Wallonia

Description of Musées et Société en Wallonie project: Ethno et archi (French and English), pdf

• Theatrical creations from living heritage.
THe methods of ethnology (surveys, historic searches, social enviroment) ground lead to scenic creations addressing highly targeted themes of regional intangible cultural heritage. Mediation is based on rehearsals of theater then offering a very relevant oral communication to the public.

Description of Musées et Société en Wallonie project: Ethno et théâtre (French and English), pdf

Participants:
Pierre Pirlot  coordinates the learning partnership for Musées et Société en Wallonie (MSW) and particulary for the network HOmusée.
MSW is a federation of 154 museums.
Pierre is coordinator for networks (Art, Ethnologic,scientific) of MSW.
His work aims mainly at encouraging each member to develop links with their audiences, to promote training among professionnals of the museums and foster collaboration between society museums and cultural tourism.
Members of HOmusée network (here)