The MEM - Centre des mémoires montréalaises was born out of the desire to expand the Centre d’histoire de Montréal, founded in 1983. This led to the museum’s move to downtown Montréal and a redefinition of its mission. Today, the MEM aims to encourage an appreciation for the diversity of Montréal’s identities through authentic and inclusive experiences that invite citizens tell their stories and connect with each other.
Before its opening, we wanted to position the MEM as a significant part of Montréal’s cultural ecosystem, create awareness of the MEM among people less connected to museums, and reach out to Montréal’s community sector. To this end, we created Montréal in Five Senses, a series of forty workshops on the city and the five senses, offered free of charge to people served by Montréal’s community organizations.
To develop these workshops, we assembled a multidisciplinary team including photographer Youssef Shoufan, visual artist Natacha Clitandre, who is interested in the smells of the city, sound artists Chantal Dumas and Magali Babin, food guide Mélissa Simard, and Anne Jarry of the RAAMM, an association for people who are blind or visually impaired. Each workshop involved both sensory exploration and an art activity. The aim of the project was to open a space for Montrealers to share their thoughts about the city.
* The Sight workshop invited participants to create a collective photo collage based on their portraits.
* The Smell workshop invited participants to create a mobile evoking Montréal’s smells.
* The Taste workshop was a poetic bread-tasting activity exploring a food item that is a staple for many of the city’s cultural communities.
* The Hearing workshop drew attention to Montréal’s acoustic environment through the creation of a score based on a neighbourhood’s soundscape.
* The Touch workshop offered participants a sightless tour of the city using everyday items, architectural models, and textured cards.
We targeted the audiences we wanted to reach: women, people with disabilities, people from disadvantaged communities, older people, teenagers, and cultural communities. While each of these groups has its own specific characteristics, they all have several things in common: lack of time, isolation, difficulty getting around, and a lack of awareness of cultural offerings or a sense of exclusion from cultural venues. Accordingly, the MEM needed to meet them in their neighbourhoods, provide accessible content, and encourage interaction—thus fostering an image of the MEM as a museum that is inclusive and listens. To connect with these groups, we reached out to the community organizations they use: we compiled a list of organizations and called each one to offer workshops suited to their clienteles. This personalized approach was key to making the first human contact with these future partners and ensuring that the project reached its intended audiences. More than five hundred people attended the workshops. We visited women’s centres, youth centres, seniors’ clubs, and organizations that serve people from diverse cultural and ability backgrounds. For 85% of participants, the project represented their first exposure to our museum.
MEM
An accessible and inclusive project
In order to counter the perception of museums as elitist institutions, we set out to build the project around a universal and accessible theme. The idea of Montréal in Five Senses imposed itself: its appeal to the participants’ senses, sensibilities, and emotions seemed like an ideal way to spark discussion about the city and invite people from all walks of life to share their impressions and experiences. Some participants were reluctant at the beginning of the workshops. But as soon as we evoked the senses through simple questions — what is a smell that you identify with Montréal? what are the first sounds you hear in the morning? can you describe a childhood food memory? — they took interest and entered into the activity with enthusiasm. The participants shared many impressions and anecdotes with us. Some told us they were surprised that a museum was interested in their stories.
In a follow-up survey, most of the participating organizations reported appreciating that the museum had come to their spaces to alleviate transportation challenges. The fact that the project was offered free of charge was a major factor in its success. The women enjoyed taking part in a social activity that let them get to know one another. Newcomers were able to share their first impressions of the city, talk about their migration journey, and learn about the city’s cultural offerings. Seniors enjoyed sharing their experiences and memories. People with diverse intellectual abilities appreciated the sensory and artistic dimensions of the workshops, which highlighted their strengths. The project was especially compelling for people with visual impairments, for whom we adapted the Touch workshop. The initial version of the activity, which invited participants to sightlessly explore everyday objects, was of no interest to people who are vision impaired. We thus offered them a tactile workshop on the history of Montréal, with a Braille map of Montréal, cut-outs of the city, architectural models, and objects from the museum’s collection accompanied by oral histories. For many of the participants, the workshop was the first time this information had been made available to them in an adapted form. Some had never known the shape of the island of Montréal!
Enriching collaborations
This project grew out of an exceptional collaboration with a team that was committed to social engagement and creative. We chose artists and facilitators who had expertise in the subject matter, experience with cultural mediation, a desire to work with diverse audiences, and the empathy and adaptability to connect with more marginalized groups. The cultural diversity of the team, which had members from Syria, Haiti, Mexico, and France, was an asset to the project. The collaboration with the RAAMM, with its expertise in the reality of people with visual impairments and its network, was also a significant added value. For the Touch workshop, we worked with an institute specialized in visual impairment to create architectural models that were both easy to transport and easy for people with vision impairments to read.
A laboratory project with valuable lessons for the future
Montréal in Five Senses offers a positive image of museums capable of developing cultural projects based on collaboration, inclusion, and innovative practices to improve accessibility and personalize approaches. It allowed us to create a network of organizations that are excited about visiting the museum and could become partners for future exhibitions and cultural programming. We built bridges to audiences we had not reached before. Getting to know them better gave us greater insight into their specific expectations and needs. The project was an opportunity to experience and discover the extraordinary value of co-creation with a diverse team. We also observed how a sensory approach facilitated both our connection with participants and their sharing of their experiences; we have since incorporated this approach into several of our existing programs for French language learners and schools. As well, the workshops revealed interesting avenues of exploration for gathering personal testimony and enriching our oral history collection. All in all, they make up a comprehensive project that aligns with the MEM’s mission to be a museum that is interested in the human experience, inclusive, community-based, an agent of change, and bold.