L'Internationale - Museum of the Commons: Towards a Healthier Art Ecosystem

Museum of the Commons (MoC) is a four-year project developed by L'Internationale, the European confederation of contemporary art museums. MoC encourages contemporary museums and cultural organisations to act as open-source tools for new sustainable forms of cultural co-creation, contributing to environmental, social and artistic transformation.

For over two centuries, museums have been the guardians of heritage and memory. In recent decades, they became key spaces in the public sphere where important challenges – climate change, social inclusion and equality – are addressed and debated. By understanding the cultural sector as an ecosystem made up of organisations of different scales, influences and target audiences, MoC builds sustainable collaborations between 7 museums, 3 academic institutions, 4 arts organisations and 2 associated partners with specific roles in the arts sector across the European continent (North, East, South and West). Thus, MoC will contribute to making a broader and more inclusive arts ecosystem.

The MoC project is divided into three thematic strands:

1) Climate: addressing issues of environmental sustainability;

2) Organisations in Situation: questioning the role of arts institutions as spaces of inclusion and diversity; and

3) Past in the Present: addressing history and heritage as tools for social justice.

To this end, MoC museums provide 5 interconnected elements that form the central core of their work as guardians of European heritage and memory: art collections, archives, libraries, audiences and places.

Project partners will use these elements as common goods for the development of the programme. The MoC will reaches 2 million European citizens through the production of 6 exhibitions, 4 art gatherings, 5 residency programmes, 6 nomadic schools, 50 workshops, 5 community garden projects, 1 online platform, 3 digital archives and 41 digital publications.

L'Internationale Museum of the Commons - Press Release

* Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.