Samenvatting

The Sharing Stories on Contested Histories Program (SSoCH) is an initiative carried out by the
Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed (RCE) in collaboration with several institutions, the Reinwardt
Academy among them. It consists of a two-week training program in which young museums and
heritage professionals gather to exchange ideas and learn from each other. The second series of the
program puts a strong focus on community museums and their unique practices. This research seeks to
contribute to the development of the second series of the SSoCH program by studying four community
museums: Muquifu, District 6, Multatuli and Sophiahof. These organisms are quite different from each
other, starting from the fact that they do not fit in the definitions of what a community museum should
be. As a result, this study searches for common values and practices among the studied cases which are
related to three goals: the practice of historical revisionism, the shift in the perspective used to look at
such history and the intervention of social memory through the generation of a new narrative that is
shared with the wider audience. The identified strategies of these community museums intertwine with
those of the SSoCH program that also seeks to explore the complexity of telling stories in environments
where grand narratives are being contested. Lastly, this report also evaluates if these cases could be
understood under Clifford’s (1997) definition of contact zone.

Key words: Museum, community museum, community, Sharing Stories on Contested Histories, contact
zone.