Collecting local memories on-line is a growing practice with participatory elements on different levels. Three levels of participation – micro, meso and macro – are introduced by describing an exemplary case: the Memory of East in Amsterdam. These levels of this particular case can be grounded in the statements of the Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society. This indicates that the Memory of East case might be a good practice. However, looking at 53 other cases shows that the three levels are present, but designed differently with respect to the degree in which residents participate. Since the convention is not specific enough we choose the notion of cultural citizenship to assess the value of cases like these. We claim that the cases that have more focus on ordinary residents participating on all three levels assures a sustainable and self-feeding system, which is the best answer to the goals of the convention.
This article describes how the 4 period rooms of the city museum in the Dutch town of Bergen op Zoom were redesigned using storytelling and how this design has been received by visitors. For this redesign, rooms were reframed as sets of the story of Marie Anne van Arenberg, Marquise of Bergen op Zoom, and the objects as props to stage her story, which was full of secrets and of unexpected turning points. The visitor is enticed to discover cues to unlock these secrets in order to get a grip on her story while exploring the museum space. This is however not a treasure hunt, nor simply a game, but an exploration in which visitors are invited to discover and to create meaning and a journey into what matters to them. To this end, they have indeed to resort to their own frame of reference and to their personal life story in order to come to a narrative closure at the end of their visit. We used Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to understand the visitors’ lived experience, both emotionally and sensorially at different moments and situations during the story-driven experience and to understand how the chosen design helps tell the story and how visitors use their personal context and frame of reference to make sense of it.
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