CollabFund | Collage for Care

Collage for Care

Alumni

• Lena Stammarnäs – Project lead, exhibition producer, exhibition design
• Mutanu Kyany’a – Programme management and oversight, creative direction

Cooperation Partner

• Jenny Gasbarro Ringarp – Project administration, exhibition assistance

Partner Museums and involved external institutions

• African Digital Heritage (Nairobi)
• Världskulturmuseerna (The National Museums of World Culture), Gothenburg, Sweden

Project Description

Collage for Care is a collaborative, cross-continental film and platform project that will feature 20 short video reflections from African and Afro-Diasporic contributors, as well as European museum professionals and community members, focusing on restitution, colonial histories, and care. The film will feature a multitude of voices, and the platform can be used in a multitude of ways. It introduces new ways for museums to engage with complex heritage through ethical collaboration and shared authority. Care is a central theme: care for people, for objects, and for histories. The project models how care can guide the museum’s response to contested collections and support long-term collaboration and accountability. TheMuseumsLab alumni primarily involved are Mutanu Kyany’a, African Digital Heritage, and Lena Stammarnäs, the Museum of World Culture, Sweden. Mutanu Kyany’a will be the Project Manager and the partner museum organisation responsible for administrating the funding is The National Museums of World Culture, Sweden.

Project Development

This project was born out of conversations during Lena Stammarnäs’s 2024 residency in Nairobi as part of TheMuseumsLab Fellowship Programme. While reconnecting with Mutanu Kyany’a, they reflected on the silences surrounding Sweden’s colonial entanglements; histories often obscured by the country’s positioning in indirect and academic colonialism. These conversations deepened through engagement with other MLab Fellows and shaped a shared recognition: that restitution, care, and accountability must also address ambiguous or unacknowledged colonial contexts.

Collage for Care operationalises these insights by bringing together African and European MLab Alumni to co-create a film that navigates memory, restitution, and repair across institutional and cultural boundaries. It is a clear translation of the programme’s intellectual and ethical foundations into a tangible, public-facing initiative embedded within a permanent exhibition. The collaboration models how postcolonial theory can be practiced in museums, rooted in specific objects, cases, and relationships, with the aim of building replicable models of ethical engagement.

The project also affirms TheMuseumsLab as a growing community of practice. Through continued collaboration between ADH, the Swedish National Museums of World Culture, and MLab alumni, it reflects a commitment to long-term dialogue, shared authority, and institutional transformation. By participating in the CollabFund initiative, we hope to further explore what sustainable, cross-continental collaboration can look like when grounded in care, accountability, and mutual respect.

The initiative TheMuseumsLab CollabFund is funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation).