The Gotland Museum has initiated a project, using funding from the Swedish Arts Council, which aims at creating a network for the exchange of knowledge and experience between museums around the Baltic Sea. The network will work both via contacts in “real life” as well as via social networks (such as blogs and Facebook) which can be used for interaction, cooperation, circulation of news and benefiting from each other’s knowledge and know-how

 

The network aims at giving each other help and support in analysing artefacts, preservation queries and cooperation in museum matters such as producing exhibitions, developing visitors’ sites, pedagogical programs etc.

 

Background

The Baltic Sea is our mutual inland sea, home to a unique natural and cultural heritage. We share a long history together, with contacts running in all directions, binding the ten countries of the Baltic Rim together. For this reason it is urgent that museum professionals in the Baltic Rim establish closer cooperative relationships with each other for a professional exchange of knowledge and experience making the common heritage and cultural identity visible.

 

Gotland’s location in the middle of the Baltic Sea makes the significance of the Baltic Sea as a natural resource and transport route very obvious to us. Ever since the Stone Age, Gotland’s development has been influenced by the Baltic Sea and contacts across the Sea.

 

We assume that a similar strong Baltic Sea tradition can be found throughout the Baltic Rim, despite differences in historic events, such as the aftermath of the Second World War.

 

Our hope is that this network will be the beginning of a long-term mutual cooperative relationship between museums in the Baltic Rim.