Collaborative Design and Education as Decolonizing Practice: A Case Study of Community Museum Development in Central Belize

• In Event: Are We There Yet? Building and Exploring Equity in Research-Community Partnerships of Varied Scales and Durations

Abstract

Objective: As interdisciplinary community teaching spaces, museums can serve as a nexus for socially engaged and collaborative educational design, fostering and supporting dialogue about how to best understand, curate, and educate around complex social and scientific issues. However, these informal educational spaces are frequently characterized by “teaching” that equals the delivery of expert knowledge and disavows community needs, perspectives, or values (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003; Rogoff, Callanan, Gutiérrez, & Erikson, 2016) This case study (Stake, 1995) presents an analysis of a collaborative community design and development project for the establishment of a museum and cultural heritage center in Belize. For the purposes of this paper, our analysis focuses on moments where the project’s guiding principles of cultural sustainability and collaborative design were reinforced, or troubled, through work with local educators.

Case Context: The Crooked Tree Museum and Cultural Heritage Center is a community-centered permanent exhibition space focused on the human/environment interaction over time in the area of Crooked Tree, Belize. The co-designing process of the museum exhibits is part of a broader project that involves documenting ancient Maya settlement in the region. Excavation of these historical-era sites and collaboration with an ethnographer doing work with Kriol people in Crooked Tree yielded a very successful temporary museum exhibit in the town. The exhibit was built upon historical artifacts found by a regional archeological team, those donated from the collections of community members, and rich ethnographic and oral history data.

Theoretical Framework: As educational designers and researchers, we understand the dual aims of establishing a community-focused and sustainable institution are linked to the process of collaborative design with a diverse array of stakeholders. This web of collaborators reaches from government-level employees providing infrastructural and material support, through the town chairmen, educators, and tourism council, to local Kriol informants, guides, historians, and community leaders. The analysis of this iterative engagement process allows us to contribute to a better understanding of how collaborative educational design can serve as the foundation to decolonizing practice that rejects extractive colonial trends and centers the experiences of non-dominant communities (Gutiérrez & Jurow, 2016; Gutiérrez, Engestrom, & Sannino, 2016).

Data Sources: Data includes observation, survey data, field notes, and researcher reflective writing.

Results: The process of collaboratively designing museum spaces that engage the colonial history of African enslavement and labor in Belize troubled the researchers’ notions about what should be included in the museum, and created opportunities for critical reflection on the role of both museums and collaborative design in the decolonizing process of telling and re-telling marginalized histories in public spaces.

Significance:. Principles of decolonization and sustainability are often discussed in abstract, theoretical terms. Here, we challenge ourselves to put into practice the abstract concepts by working in partnership with Kriol community. We put into practice cultural sustainability by not simply by serving as experts who document a threatened and marginalized cultural group, but through public participation where community educators served as both informants and active participants in the collection, recording, and presentation of their history.

Authors

• Sara Clarke-De Reza, Washington College

• Eleanor Harrison-Buck, University of New Hampshire