theMultaka International Network is a network of five different projects and is operating in Germany, England, Italy and Switzerland. The network was created in June 2019, as all members met in Berlin, Germany.

The network's members are Multaka Berlin, Multaka Oxford, Fondazione Museo delle Antichità Egizie in Torino, AMIR Project in Florence, Multaka Bern and the Initiative: Lucky who speaks Arabic in Turin. In total, these projects are active in 15 Museums around Europe, of which: The Museums of Islamic Art and the Ancient near East Museum in Pergamon Museum, The German historical Museum in Berlin, Bern Historical Museum, The University Museum of Oxford, Egyptian Museum of Turin,  Museum Civic Archaeological and Archaeological Area, Fiesole, Bandini Museum, Fiesole, Primo Conti Museum and Garden, Fiesole, Palazzo Vecchio Museum, Florence, Novecento Museum, Florence, Museo degli Innocenti, Florence. The total number of individuals, who were trained into Guides or cultural mediators involved in this network isover a hundred newcomers, who have different cultural and professional backgrounds.

The main objectives of the network is, as well as its member projects, to diversify the museum structures by including people with migration backgrounds, thus different perspectives and to provide a safe space to engage in intercultural dialogue between both newcomer community and local community while exploring art, history and even one's own cultural heritage.

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​                GERMANY - BERLIN

Multaka: Museum as Meeting Point – Refugees as Guides in Berlin Museums

 

The project was initiated in 2015 by the Museum of Islamic Art (Pergamon Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin)in cooperation with the Museum of the Ancient Near East, the Bode-Museum and the German Historical Museum and their educational departments. As part of "Multaka: Museum as Meeting Point – Refugees as Guides in Berlin Museums", 21 Syrian and Iraqi new arrivals were trained as museum guides in order to offer interactive tours for other new arrivals in their native language. Since 2016, the guided tours have also been available in German and English. On the one hand, the guided tours transfer questions about historical objects to current debates in order to establish a link between the past and the present. The 21 guides involve visitors in the process of viewing and interpreting objects. The visitors thus become active participants through mutual dialogue and taking into account their own history. The project "Multaka: Museum as Meeting Point" hopes to facilitate access to the museum for new arrivals through low-threshold addressing and peer-to-peer communication and to help them find social and cultural points of contact as well as to increase their participation in public space. The project also conducts intercultural workshops in which people from different cultural backgrounds experience museums together and produce artefacts inspired by museum objects and personal encounters.

 

Museums:

Museum for Islamic Art

Museum of Ancient Near East

Bode Museum

German Historical Museum

 

Contacts:

Salma Jreige - Project coordination

Multaka: Treffpunkt Museum

c/o Museum für Islamic Kunst

Geschwister-Scholl-Strasse 6

10117 Berlin – Germany

info@multaka.de

www.multaka.de

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