Shared Histories is a collaborative digital platform conceived by The Women's History Museum of Zambia and The Swedish National Museums of World Culture. The platform is centered around cultural object repatriation through digital means and works to address the gap in cultural knowledge by providing and increasing accessibility to Zambian cultural objects which have over centuries found their way outside of their communities of origin and thus have been inaccessible to most. The experiences and contributions of owners of heritage and objects have been erased from the mainstream socio-economic and cultural history in Zambia as a result of the country’s colonial legacy and post-colonial tensions. This is exacerbated by generally poor access to sources of museums, archives and museum collections.
Further Background:
The experiences and contributions of owners of heritage and objects have been erased from the mainstream socio-economic and cultural history in Zambia as a result of the country’s colonial legacy and post-colonial tensions. This is exacerbated by generally poor access to sources of museums, archives and museum collections. The Swedish Ethnographic Museum and The Women’s History Museum of Zambia developed a proposal to address this matter. Consequently, a project to develop a collaborative and interactive digital interface for sharing historical collections and women’s histories between Sweden and Zambia was approved for funding by the Swedish Institute.
Problem Statement:
Some of the collections held in the Swedish Ethnographic Museum lack important context and relevance which Zambia’s contemporary and historical interpretations could add. Many artefacts belong to cultural traditions that colonial governments and museums actively discouraged and misrepresented. Some of these traditions and their supporting knowledge and resource management systems still survive, often through the tenacity of women custodians. For the Swedish Ethnographic Museum, access to such contemporary sources would contribute to a richer understanding of a shared, but difficult, history and cultural heritage. For The Women’s History Museum of Zambia the platform will create access and improve the metadata of objects and documents deposited in the Swedish Ethnographic Museum by the Zambian public.