42 PAUL TH. VAN DE LAAR
Museum Rotterdam’s current vision started around 2005 with a so-called
Panorama Project, which focused on ten different areas in Rotterdam.
17
Several of these neighborhoods belong to the most ethnically and culturally
diverse areas in Rotterdam. Through schools and interviews with key figures
in the neighborhood, the museum started to map the recent past of these
areas, collecting pictures and neighborhood stories and turning them into
local panoramas that were exhibited in public places like social welfare agencies
and shops. Especially, the elderly used this project to share their own memories
with other inhabitants. We asked children from elementary schools to present
their favorite objects and write down why they wanted their personal belongings to be collected by the museum. We photographed the children and
assembled their pictures, along with neighborhood panoramas, into collages.
To many children this was their first acquaintance with a city museum and
their first opportunity to observe the community activities of museum professionals. We used the experiences in an overall exhibition in Museum Rotterdam’s main building. The team gained a lot of experience working on this
project, which was used in other experiments. In particular, it showed us
how museum educators can enhance social cohesion using personal heritage
as a key linkage factor.
In 2007, Museum Rotterdam started a program focusing on young adults in
Rotterdam South, the part of Rotterdam that was developed in the 1870s into a
port area populated by dockworkers and migrant labor families. Originally it
was a white urban working-class neighborhood and it turned into an ethnic
zone in the 1970s. Almost 80% of the population today is of non-Dutch
origin in this socially and culturally marginalized area of Rotterdam. The heritage and participation project was named Roffa 5314 when a curator noticed
that in this part of Rotterdam young adults associated themselves with
“5314,”the postal code for Rotterdam South. Roffa is a Surinamese nickname
for“tough”and is used as slang for Rotterdam. The young, mostly unemployed
adults in this area associate themselves very strongly with their urban zone
5314. In their typical Rotterdam South lifestyle, through tattoos, clothing,
and graffiti, they express a strong local identity, a cultural response to their
fellow residents living on the northern city center, the richer part of Rotterdam.
Our museum professionals developed the heritage and participation program
Roffa 5314 as an outreach program in line with the heritage and participation
agenda of the museum.
Roffa 5314 organized events and performances (hip hop and rap open mic
nights) for the young 5314 artists, supported by their own local Rotterdam
THECONTEMPORARYCITYASBACKBONE 43
South fan groups, which we recorded on video. During these events, interviews
were conducted and lifestyle elements, clothes, personal identity markers, and
accessories were collected and catalogued by Museum Rotterdam staff. We
issued four periodicals containing articles on the background of local Roffa
groups, which were distributed freely to the inhabitants of the district 5314.
The Internet played an important role in the Roffa project.
A Facebook-like website was set up, where the Roffa youth posted their own
pictures and web logs, and created their own virtual Roffa 5314 world. The
results of this program were presented in a neighborhood exhibition hall and
curated by members of 5314. This project attracted national attention and
was considered a ground-breaking participation project from a modern
urban heritage point of view.
18
The neighborhood documentation project is another example of our changing approach to local heritage. It operated by the mantra: one must look
behind the scenes in order to know how people actually live. The project concentrated on the transnational western part of town, an area that contrasts
sharply—physically, socially, as well as culturally—with the modern inner
city. From the 1960s onwards, Rotterdam’s western area offered abundant
cheap homes for low-income households, often migrant families from the Mediterranean. From the mid-1970s the left-leaning city government targeted these
areas for an urban renewal scheme, in essence the renovation of existing
Houses in a Rotterdam-South neighborhood that are to be demolished. This area has
become a favorite place for“5314”pieces. The graffiti ranges from detailed pieces to
short, messy tags. Photo taken by Hans Walgenbach.
44 PAUL TH. VAN DE LAAR
housing stock and the building of socially acceptable new homes. The central
idea was building for the neighborhood, which implied not only improvement
of housing conditions, but also a renewal of the physical, social and cultural
environment. We selected one of these neighborhoods for the pilot project.
The pilot started with statistical data assembled by the Centre for Research
and Statistics of the municipality of Rotterdam. This centre gathers rafts of relevant statistical data: demographic patterns, ethnicity, types of households,
migration and emigration figures, public health, labor and housing conditions,
welfare related data (average incomes, rents of real estate prices, social provisions, level of education), and so on. This representative dataset helped us
to place the household studies in an urban context.
Streets and households in this neighborhood were selected at random. For
instance, the pilot project started with the selection of every 10th household
in four randomly chosen streets. We invited these households to participate
in the documentation project, which was introduced in the local newspaper
and advertised in free copies of the neighborhood press. The interviews concentrated on 11 topics. Apart from vital facts (name, address, number of
family residents), several questions about migration history and living conditions were listed. We analyzed household data and compared with the
The urban neighborhood, a place to collect future heritage? Photo taken on an urban
heritage tour in Rotterdam-West, by Henk van der Kroon, Rotterdam.
THE CONTEMPORARY CITY AS BACKBONE 45
general statistical data on a city level. Our in-depth interviews and inquiries
focused, however, on issues related to daily life in a transnational city.
19
The City as Muse
These aforementioned urban heritage initiatives laid the groundwork for a
three-year intensive community-based heritage and participation program,
named the“City as Muse,”which began in 2010. In its first year Museum Rotterdam’s urban curator did extensive fieldwork among an intercultural
women’s group, some of them single mothers, living in one of the poorer
parts of Rotterdam. She interviewed them on a regular basis, made photographs
and used their personal stories to set up a heritage agenda based on participation by these women.
The women live in a Rotterdam neighborhood that used to be one of the
landmarks of the post-war welfare society. However, this housing area
proved not to be suitable as a living area for an intercultural society and is
slated for redevelopment in a few years’ time. Upon learning the plans for
the neighborhood, the women did not sit down passively and await their
Proud women“Van de Velden,”the cover of the special magazineEvery Women, a glossy
dedicated to this women’s group. The women are styled as important representatives of
their Rotterdam communities, resembling the members of the Rotterdam elite, whose
pictures are collected by the museum. Photo by Mark Janssen.
46 PAUL TH. VAN DE LAAR
uncertain future. They joined forces and started an informal group, which
meets on a weekly basis and has become the contact group for local officials
and social housing agencies. These women have breakfast together and
discuss the major social issues of living in the neighborhood. Together they
plan social activities, assist other parents with the education of their children
and are widely involved in community programs. In order to document these
women’s stories, the Museum Rotterdam team created a glossy magazine,
Every Woman.
20
Exhibition installers and artists were involved in turning the
heritage project into a public performance. Some works of art were collected
and have become part of the museum’s contemporary heritage collections.
Museum Rotterdam’s Heritage Model
These heritage initiatives opened up new doors to the city. From 2013 onwards,
Museum Rotterdam will present exhibitions in various locations around the
city and will be branded as "Museum Rotterdam-on-location.”This is a kind
of community museum network that combines urban stories and participation
programs and turns them into accessible, public-profiled exhibitions. This city
museum network uses concepts of social and learning curatorship, which are
based on urban historical anthropologists’ skills of participating and close
empirical observation models using an inductive methodology. The urban
stories and participation projects are being used to reformulate our collecting
strategy with a focus on contemporary transnational issues. Museum
Rotterdam-on-location uses a strategy whereby museum professionals integrate with urban communities and base their research agenda on active participation. Collecting is thus not a passive undertaking, and in the end the
cooperation needs to be conveyed in a Museum Rotterdam-on-location
exhibition.
Conclusions
City museums, as promoted by David Fleming and others, should be“agents of
social changes and break up the city museum’s wall.”
21
Reframing history is
thus essential, and more energy and efforts are needed to mobilize communities. In the 21st century, communities should be entitled to share their expertise with professionals. The future urban curator will be a kind of heritage
broker, an intermediary between the public and the museum. Museums need
to follow this path to enlarge their representativeness and help to feed the
42 PAUL TH. VAN DE LAARMuseum Rotterdam’s current vision started around 2005 with a so-calledPanorama Project, which focused on ten different areas in Rotterdam.17Several of these neighborhoods belong to the most ethnically and culturallydiverse areas in Rotterdam. Through schools and interviews with key figuresin the neighborhood, the museum started to map the recent past of theseareas, collecting pictures and neighborhood stories and turning them intolocal panoramas that were exhibited in public places like social welfare agenciesand shops. Especially, the elderly used this project to share their own memorieswith other inhabitants. We asked children from elementary schools to presenttheir favorite objects and write down why they wanted their personal belongings to be collected by the museum. We photographed the children andassembled their pictures, along with neighborhood panoramas, into collages.To many children this was their first acquaintance with a city museum andtheir first opportunity to observe the community activities of museum professionals. We used the experiences in an overall exhibition in Museum Rotterdam’s main building. The team gained a lot of experience working on thisproject, which was used in other experiments. In particular, it showed ushow museum educators can enhance social cohesion using personal heritageas a key linkage factor.In 2007, Museum Rotterdam started a program focusing on young adults inRotterdam South, the part of Rotterdam that was developed in the 1870s into aport area populated by dockworkers and migrant labor families. Originally itwas a white urban working-class neighborhood and it turned into an ethniczone in the 1970s. Almost 80% of the population today is of non-Dutchorigin in this socially and culturally marginalized area of Rotterdam. The heritage and participation project was named Roffa 5314 when a curator noticedthat in this part of Rotterdam young adults associated themselves with“5314,”the postal code for Rotterdam South. Roffa is a Surinamese nicknamefor“tough”and is used as slang for Rotterdam. The young, mostly unemployedadults in this area associate themselves very strongly with their urban zone5314. In their typical Rotterdam South lifestyle, through tattoos, clothing,and graffiti, they express a strong local identity, a cultural response to theirfellow residents living on the northern city center, the richer part of Rotterdam.Our museum professionals developed the heritage and participation programRoffa 5314 as an outreach program in line with the heritage and participationagenda of the museum.Roffa 5314 organized events and performances (hip hop and rap open micnights) for the young 5314 artists, supported by their own local RotterdamTHECONTEMPORARYCITYASBACKBONE 43South fan groups, which we recorded on video. During these events, interviewswere conducted and lifestyle elements, clothes, personal identity markers, andaccessories were collected and catalogued by Museum Rotterdam staff. Weissued four periodicals containing articles on the background of local Roffagroups, which were distributed freely to the inhabitants of the district 5314.The Internet played an important role in the Roffa project.A Facebook-like website was set up, where the Roffa youth posted their ownpictures and web logs, and created their own virtual Roffa 5314 world. Theresults of this program were presented in a neighborhood exhibition hall andcurated by members of 5314. This project attracted national attention andwas considered a ground-breaking participation project from a modernurban heritage point of view.18The neighborhood documentation project is another example of our changing approach to local heritage. It operated by the mantra: one must lookbehind the scenes in order to know how people actually live. The project concentrated on the transnational western part of town, an area that contrastssharply—physically, socially, as well as culturally—with the modern innercity. From the 1960s onwards, Rotterdam’s western area offered abundantcheap homes for low-income households, often migrant families from the Mediterranean. From the mid-1970s the left-leaning city government targeted theseareas for an urban renewal scheme, in essence the renovation of existingHouses in a Rotterdam-South neighborhood that are to be demolished. This area hasbecome a favorite place for“5314”pieces. The graffiti ranges from detailed pieces toshort, messy tags. Photo taken by Hans Walgenbach.44 PAUL TH. VAN DE LAARhousing stock and the building of socially acceptable new homes. The centralidea was building for the neighborhood, which implied not only improvementof housing conditions, but also a renewal of the physical, social and culturalenvironment. We selected one of these neighborhoods for the pilot project.The pilot started with statistical data assembled by the Centre for Researchand Statistics of the municipality of Rotterdam. This centre gathers rafts of relevant statistical data: demographic patterns, ethnicity, types of households,migration and emigration figures, public health, labor and housing conditions,welfare related data (average incomes, rents of real estate prices, social provisions, level of education), and so on. This representative dataset helped usto place the household studies in an urban context.Streets and households in this neighborhood were selected at random. Forinstance, the pilot project started with the selection of every 10th householdin four randomly chosen streets. We invited these households to participatein the documentation project, which was introduced in the local newspaperand advertised in free copies of the neighborhood press. The interviews concentrated on 11 topics. Apart from vital facts (name, address, number offamily residents), several questions about migration history and living conditions were listed. We analyzed household data and compared with theThe urban neighborhood, a place to collect future heritage? Photo taken on an urbanheritage tour in Rotterdam-West, by Henk van der Kroon, Rotterdam.THE CONTEMPORARY CITY AS BACKBONE 45general statistical data on a city level. Our in-depth interviews and inquiriesfocused, however, on issues related to daily life in a transnational city.19The City as MuseThese aforementioned urban heritage initiatives laid the groundwork for athree-year intensive community-based heritage and participation program,named the“City as Muse,”which began in 2010. In its first year Museum Rotterdam’s urban curator did extensive fieldwork among an interculturalwomen’s group, some of them single mothers, living in one of the poorerparts of Rotterdam. She interviewed them on a regular basis, made photographsand used their personal stories to set up a heritage agenda based on participation by these women.The women live in a Rotterdam neighborhood that used to be one of thelandmarks of the post-war welfare society. However, this housing areaproved not to be suitable as a living area for an intercultural society and isslated for redevelopment in a few years’ time. Upon learning the plans forthe neighborhood, the women did not sit down passively and await theirProud women“Van de Velden,”the cover of the special magazineEvery Women, a glossy
dedicated to this women’s group. The women are styled as important representatives of
their Rotterdam communities, resembling the members of the Rotterdam elite, whose
pictures are collected by the museum. Photo by Mark Janssen.
46 PAUL TH. VAN DE LAAR
uncertain future. They joined forces and started an informal group, which
meets on a weekly basis and has become the contact group for local officials
and social housing agencies. These women have breakfast together and
discuss the major social issues of living in the neighborhood. Together they
plan social activities, assist other parents with the education of their children
and are widely involved in community programs. In order to document these
women’s stories, the Museum Rotterdam team created a glossy magazine,
Every Woman.
20
Exhibition installers and artists were involved in turning the
heritage project into a public performance. Some works of art were collected
and have become part of the museum’s contemporary heritage collections.
Museum Rotterdam’s Heritage Model
These heritage initiatives opened up new doors to the city. From 2013 onwards,
Museum Rotterdam will present exhibitions in various locations around the
city and will be branded as "Museum Rotterdam-on-location.”This is a kind
of community museum network that combines urban stories and participation
programs and turns them into accessible, public-profiled exhibitions. This city
museum network uses concepts of social and learning curatorship, which are
based on urban historical anthropologists’ skills of participating and close
empirical observation models using an inductive methodology. The urban
stories and participation projects are being used to reformulate our collecting
strategy with a focus on contemporary transnational issues. Museum
Rotterdam-on-location uses a strategy whereby museum professionals integrate with urban communities and base their research agenda on active participation. Collecting is thus not a passive undertaking, and in the end the
cooperation needs to be conveyed in a Museum Rotterdam-on-location
exhibition.
Conclusions
City museums, as promoted by David Fleming and others, should be“agents of
social changes and break up the city museum’s wall.”
21
Reframing history is
thus essential, and more energy and efforts are needed to mobilize communities. In the 21st century, communities should be entitled to share their expertise with professionals. The future urban curator will be a kind of heritage
broker, an intermediary between the public and the museum. Museums need
to follow this path to enlarge their representativeness and help to feed the
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