Building a Hub for Museums and Civic Education in Europe
by Veslemøy Maria Svartdal
To strengthen the capacity of museums to safeguard democracy and engage with a younger audience, the European Wergeland Centre is launching “MUCIT: Museums as Sites of Citizenship,” a two-year project that unites the European Wergeland Centre, the National Museum of the Revolution of Dignity – Maidan Museum in Ukraine, POLIN – Museum of Polish Jews, and Utøya AS.
According to Iryna Sabor, it all started with a conversation with the Maidan Museum in 2022. This was the first year of Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine, and there was a lot of talk about the future of Ukrainian heritage and what challenges museums face due to the war.
Many Ukrainians had come as refugees to European countries, and worldwide the erosion of democratic values and human rights was only accelerating. Museums, in response, were reevaluating how to adapt their exhibitions to meet new challenges.
“We understood that museum educators lacked the space for networking and voicing their new ideas. We also noticed how they tried to engage with the younger generations, students and schools. So, we would need to support them,” explains Iryna.
Iryna has been working at EWC since 2013. With Master is International Relations and Conflict, she has 15 years of experience with international projects in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe. Iryna is the head of EWC’s Early Childhood and School section at the EWC and is the main initiator of the MUCIT project.
Museums are Looking for New Ways to Interpret Reality
At the same time, there is an ongoing trend in the museum world to modernize, make exhibitions more interactive for a younger audience, and facilitate discussions around the potentially difficult topics their collections represent.
“Museums are very dynamic now and they are looking for new ways to interpret reality – especially museums that are dealing with complicated history with traumatic events, says Iryna. “They are looking for ways to attract a younger audience without leaving them with a dreadful and depressing feeling after they leave the museum. Rather, they should get a call to action.”
The search for partners was not difficult. The National Museum of the Revolution of Dignity – Maidan Museum in Ukraine, POLIN – Museum of Polish Jews, and Utøya are all longstanding partners of EWC, and all work with the memory of traumatic events, as well as the value of democracy and the dangers of extremism and hatred.
Iryna explains how Ukraine is currently going through a modernizing process of their museum sector. At the same time, Norwegian and Polish museums are looking to prepare for the future by learning from the Ukrainian experience: how to live under extremely challenging conditions, how to deal with risks, and how to preserve cultural heritage during conflict.
“The main goal is to support Ukraine, to promote civic education programmes and facilitate international exchange, but also to build museums as spaces for dialogue and healing inter-generational trauma,” Iryna says.
New Network of History Museums
The MUCIT project aims to build a dynamic international network of history museums and educational institutions across Europe. This network will provide a platform for sharing resources, best practices, and innovative approaches to civic education and trauma-informed teaching.
“The network will be open to organizations that have worked with formal or non-formal education and museums before, or those who would like to explore the field more and still be part of a community, explains Project Manager Marianthi Antoniou. “The network can be expanded to whomever would like to be a part of it. In the realm of social media, it’s just a click away to be a part of a community.”
Marianthi Antoniou, who has worked at EWC since 2023, is a passionate advocate for human rights, with a particular focus on child rights and participation. She has a master’s degree in human rights and multiculturalism, and experience in both formal and non-formal educational from Greece, Poland, Germany and France.
A Long-Term Vision for Collaboration
The project aims also to help museums build their capacities to help society deal with traumatic experiences and turn it into constructive civic cation and participation in local communities. A vital part of this is the younger generations, and the partners of the MUCIT project plan on developing digital, educational resources that will be piloted through webinars in 2026. These will be freely available to museum educators all over Europe.
To achieve this an expert group will be established with 25 representatives from different Ukrainian, Polish and Norwegian museums will get together at three study visits in 2025. Their focus will be on strengthening cross-border partnerships, finding ways to deal with controversial issues and difficult topics, as well as to strengthen the civic education programs in their countries and encourage civic participation among youth.
“I’ve been working in schools, in both formal and non-formal education, and I always used interactive activities as part of the teaching process,” says Marianthi. “We are addressing teachers and educators with a focus on museums, but at the end of the day, the indirect beneficiaries are the children and students. It’s very interesting to see where this project will lead us.”
“One of the main ideas of the project is to support civic educational programmes at the museums. We will be developing teaching and learning resources. Marianthni have very good ideas on how to structure them and make them more interactive. The resources will help both museum educators and schoolteachers to work with schools on these subjects that are particularly controversial during history lessons or other subjects,” adds Iryna.
Facilitating cooperation between museums and schools is one of the MUCIT project’s long-term goals, and in that end Iryna and Mariathi have taken a leaf out of the POLIN museum’s book. They have for many years hosted an ambassador programme, where Polish teachers are trained in how to work together with museums, and in sharing this information to their colleagues in the educational sector.
The MUCIT projects wants to do something similar, hosting webinar for Ukrainian and international teachers in 2026, and finishing the project with a summer school for teachers in Ukraine.
At the end of the project, Iryna and Marianthi hope to have established a vast network of civic education institutions, and a pool of dedicated Museum Ambassadors to facilitate cooperation and make museums into a space for learning, discussion and civic action.
“We hope there will be space to expand the network and continue further projects in the years to come,” smiles Iryna.
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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.
