CO - LAB

This zine is both a reflection on the process of creating the exhibition Afterlives of Slavery in the Tropenmuseum, as well as on the collaboration that created it. The partners with whom we worked have been invited to reflect critically on the process, as well as on the results. We invited them to write freely and openly about their experiences, acknowledging, as Ivan Karp suggests, that “collaboration is an opportunity to fail in the most splendid way”. It has not been our intention to intervene, to edit the content of their articles, or their ideas. We wanted to explore whether the end results of the process were different from what they had hoped. What was it like working together within institutional limits? Do they stand by the project’s outcome? How can we improve our collaboration as practice?

This publication is part of the SWICH research project. Sharing a World of Inclusion, Creativity and Heritage: Ethnography, Museums of World Culture and New Citizenship in Europe (SWICH) is a four year collaborative project between ten 10 museums across Europe and funded by the EU’s Creative Europe funding program. The project explores the role that ethnographic and world cultures museums can play in processes of citizenship and belonging in contemporary Europe.