Museums as sites of participatory democracy and design

This chapter examines ideas of museums as sites of participatory democracy and design, with a focus on historical and contemporary developments in museum practices in Norway and Sweden. Relationships between research, policy, and practice frame our investigation of the ways in which participatory practices may or may not work in democratic ways. We first consider the meandering developments of democratization practices in crowdsourcing and associational participation in a historical context, before examining how these are furthered in more recent trends of curatorial boundary work with source communities and the principles of participatory design. The following questions are posed: In which ways are museums reformulating and contributing to contemporary notions of democracy, heritage and participation? When participation shifts from idea or value to actual practice, how does the participation of different publics become a force of transformation in museum practices, values, and modus operandi?