The Museums of India® project is designed to bring together museums, heritage and communities to create a participatory eco-system of museum exploration, enrichment and education. The attempt is to create sustainable community engagements that allow people to contribute to museum experiences as well as participate in them.
Many museums in India struggle with visitor engagement and funding, and the Museums of India project provides avenues for various stakeholders – museum creators, museologists, museum designers, artists and craftsmen, students and general visitors – to co-engage, hence creating new opportunities for rejuvenation of the 1000+ museums in India and the communities that surround and support these museums. The idea behind the project is to make museums living and breathing cultural hubs which encourage and facilitate interactions and participation, especially of local communities.
The project started with an expanding digital listing of the museums in India, with the realisation that there is no single in-depth online resource that showcases the diversity of Indian museums. Given the fact that many museums in India struggle with visitor engagement and paucity of funding, the museum map is a facility that provides visibility and interaction between museum professionals and the audience. Museums of India® (http://www.museumsofindia.org) aims to:
- create an in-depth online resource to acquaint tourists with the country’s museums and give visibility to their programmes and activities;
- build the capacities of smaller museums and private collections, and nurture an ecosystem for the exchange of information, ideas, expertise and resources;
- involve as wide an audience as possible with museums—students and teachers, scholars, heritage professionals, tourists, and enthusiasts;
- encourage community investment by generating online discussion about the role of museums in society.
Since its inception in May 2017, Sahapedia has documented 450+ museums in 70+ cities on this platform, and this number is continuously growing and has become a one-of-its-kind platform for the museum ecosystem in the country. Through its outreach activities the Museums of India is a step towards re-envisioning museums as living cultural hubs. The programme includes curating and organizing immersive and creative museum-centric experiences for a variety of audiences around the country. The project seeks to integrate the platform allowing enthusiasts to participate in these experiences, write and share their opinions and journeys with our carefully selected set of experience leaders and also offer to conduct such experiences.
Museums of India is committed to its vision, and is eager to collaborate with people and institutions from across the world to achieve this in as decentralised a manner as possible. Come, join us!