 Good morning everybody and welcome to the second day of NIMO's Digital European Museum conference We are really happy to have received over 1,500 registrations from over 80 countries Which makes this European conference more an international one? My name is Julia Parkl. I am the secretary general of NIMO the network of European museum organizations During these digital conference days. We have organized panels workshops, digital tours and social events for you But before we start this first panel of the day, I have the pleasure to give you a quick technical brief for the sessions Your camera will always be turned off and only the panelists are visible During the Q&A we ask you to please write your questions in the chat You can also get our attention by virtually raising your hand The conference presentations and the Q&A's are recorded and will be published soon by our channels So I think it's time to start the first session I would now like to give the floor to Tiana Bugarski, director of the Matita Stipskab Gallery in Novi Satt And also a fellow member of NIMO who will be moderating the panel understanding differences changing perspectives Tiana to you Hello to everyone Hello to everyone I'm very glad to be with you today and to have opportunity to start this panel understanding differences changing perspective And also I'm very happy to be with all of you this morning But in the same time I feel very sad because we are not all together today in wonderful city of Rijeka The city which is European capital of culture this year And I was lucky to be in Rijeka on the February 1st this year when they had the opening ceremony And to enjoy this wonderful evening but unfortunately we can't be there because of this crazy situation in the whole world But we can change our experience and our thoughts through this conference organized by NIMO So I will give short introduction with my presentation about Gallery of Matita Stipskab and the way how we understand differences and change our perspectives And because the Gallery of Matita Stipskab is one of the oldest museum institution in Serbia with a collection of artworks that number 10,000 pieces At the beginning of the 20th century as an art museum the gallery found itself and turning point trying to find the best way how to transform from a traditional rather conservative museum that exhibits works of art into a contemporary activated and up to the date museum that has a social relevance as well That process began with the reconstruction of the building, the exhibition halls, the ports, conservation studios in order to achieve professional museum standards But at the same time we worked on the transformation of approaches in creating program activities and defining a new vision and mission which would lead to a new role of the museum in the modern times In order to achieve that goals we have continuously worked on permanent education of our experts and expanding of partnership with museum institution in Serbia and region through the exchange of knowledge, participation and organization on professional conferences At the same time we have paid great attention to the expectation and needs of broader audience and the public in order to change the perspective of the comprehensions what is actually the essence of the museum through understanding the differences First of all we started the transformation of program activities by introducing new content believing that when we have children at the museum we have the whole family there and that the future audience is built at the lowest age So we started with the implementation and creation of educational program for children in 2006 We extend this program to young people, teenagers through the participation in the EU project together with the Kunsthistorische Museum from Vienna and the National Gallery of Slovenia And later with the special design program you chose through which we invite students of Navisarit high school to put on our shoes, train what museum work is and enable them to make their own exhibition in accordance with their interest They chose the team, the artworks, said the exhibition and the prepared the catalogue showing how young people see a museum exhibition In parallel we have developed a program for babies, the gallery had been equipped with the all the necessary baby equipment and became the first baby friendly museum in Serbia A free admission on Tuesday for parents with baby had been introduced and we also launched a series of special concert for babies in cooperation with Belgrade Philharmonic With such approach we wanted to show that we are a museum open for all special groups, parents with baby as well Being aware of the fact that museum belong to everyone and that they must be open to all marginalized group, we developed a partnership with the NGO Per Art from Navisarit which organized different creativity activities for people with disabilities We implemented numerous workshops, programs with them and finally presented one performance, We Are Not Monsters, which took place in all rooms of our permanent exhibition space and bring tear to eyes to everyone who had opportunity to see that presentation We have also noticed that as an art museum, we are not open enough to contemporary artists, focusing on historical painting we decided to launch a series called Tradition and Contemporary Art Creativity and invited contemporary artists to be inspired by the past and create contemporary artwork, specially designed for the space of our museum That series provide us with greater interest of contemporary art scene public and therefore brought us a new audience Current social issues and breaking of prejudices have also became a part of our exhibition policy In cooperation with the British Council as a part of a large scale regional project called Perceptions, we created an exhibition Woman Tailored to Society in which we exhibited artworks from our collection and in parallel with artworks of contemporary British scene For pointing out the relevance of the topics of presenting women and the position of women painters And finally, at this very particular moment when our lives are under the influence of pandemic caused by COVID virus, we thought about that the audience expects from the museum at this moment And we realized that museums are the safest place to consume culture because they enable safe distance and wearing masks Lead by this idea, we designed a special room called the Room for Illigence in Art, in which one artwork is exhibited every week With side effects such as sounds and sense that are in connection with the painting. In this room, only one person can enjoy his time by watching the chosen artworks lying on the comfortable sofa trying to get away from the stressful everyday life In all our activities we have never strayed from our core activity, exhibiting works of art, educating different age categories through art and defining museums as a place that asks questions and offers answers through the exhibition of fine art paintings We also listen to the needs of modern society, the questions of individuals and social groups and try to serve the society with the idea of contributing to the quality of life in our city and country I think that we are an exemplary model of the idea that only by understanding the differences can we change perspectives, or in other words, we can contribute to the relevance of our institution through a better perception of museum in the modern society So that was my short introduction about what we are doing and how we are dealing with issues of modern museum, but now I would like to invite and to present you to other colleagues who will be together with me on this panel First of all, I would like to invite Kaya Shirok, you probably already know her because she is director of National Museum of Contemporary History of Slovenia and she will give us a presentation about different perspectives showing complex truth So Kaya, the floor is yours Hello everyone, thank you for the invitation and I will quickly go to share my screen, okay So today I'm going to discuss very quickly about the understanding of differences and changing perspectives, mostly by the case study of the museum where I work and actually how we deal with the subject and how we changed our perspectives in doing or explaining, researching difficult, difficult past in our institution and I'm already, okay, I'm here So in order to start my presentation I will quickly just show you where I work, this is the National Museum of Contemporary History is located within the Tivoli Park in the Slovenia capital Ljubljana It's a pink building and one of the best comments that we got from one of our visitors, what that is, it's like a Wes Anderson house and this was for us, you know, everything because we love the Wes Anderson so much The museum was open after the Second World War as the Slovene Museum of Revolution The museums of revolution were kind of museums were open all around Yugoslavia after the end of the Second World War, they were with a highly selective dominant narrative, connecting the victorious narrative of the Second World War to building heroic monuments and heroic exhibitions So what is important to know is that the exhibitions and the museum itself was built from up to bottom, the narrative was selected, the narrative was exclusive and it was built to say something really very important about a very specific part of the past Of course it was also very popular, you can see it here, this is Cegevara, he was visiting the museum in 98 if I remember, and actually everyone was invited to come to the museum The annual rate of visiting about 60,000 people per year, it's a number that we don't have anymore, but when Slovenia became independent, the museum itself, the Revolutionary Museum become the National Museum of Contemporary History Our fate was completely different from several other museums of revolution all around Yugoslavia, the government decided at that time that the topic should be enlarged and the museum is now there to discuss and build a narrative of the whole 20th century But the question that we are asking ourselves right now is how to build a narrative which is not selected, highly narrated from up to down, but to do it vice versa If we live in a country, and I think that several European countries are like that, when you have contested national narratives about the past, when the heritage interpretation is difficult and sometimes you also have several revisionist exclamations for topic, and when, till years ago, the museum narratives and exhibitions were mostly one sided interpretations of history, so the question is how can we change it, what can we do, what is the way to build a better museum, a better society Of course we know history cannot be erased, all the European countries in the 20th century had a very difficult past and the interpretation of the same past can be diverse from country to country, even if we are talking about the same battles, even if we are talking about the same topics So the history cannot be erased, but we know for sure that it can be changed What I think it's really important to say is that also the pain of the people is never forgotten, it's past generationally in the family And what I think it's important is that the present, the nowadays, it's calling us to be active, to be different, to start to think differently about how to approach the past narratives in our museums So we need to be and we would really like to be participative, engaged and connected, and to be that, I think that we have to be first responsible, we have to be relevant, and we have to be ethical What we did 10 years ago, it was the first, we start to analyze our current permanent exhibition from several points of view We pretend to be visitors, we also ask the visitors to give us information We ask our colleagues from other museums to come and to tell us what it's okay, what is not okay, we also invited designers to tell us how do they think this exhibition the permanent one is done And by that, we started to rethink our narratives, and we started to focus on what was the exclusion Which part of the narratives were completely neglected, which one were forgotten, and we needed to rethink also our goals, our classes and our minuses, so what are our advantages and disadvantages And I would say that this was the inner work within our self, within our institution and professions or professionals working in our museum But the other step that we did, and I think it's really very important, we started to connect with other museums all around Europe And we find out that the best thing to do is to start working on the European projects and we did many of them in the last decade First within the European culture programs, then the ESEA, European Remembrance, and now we are doing two within the creative Europe So basically I would say that actually the European projects made us understand from a completely different perspective what our national history is And how can it be combined, interpreted, even looked at from other points of view, from the points of view of our colleagues from other museums We became much more engaged and active. We invited schools to come to the museum and we discussed the refugee topics together What we also did, we started to do animation movies with the children about how do they feel about the refugee question And what if they would be a refugee, what would they would take with them so you can see the first picture right on We invited famous writers all around Europe to talk about their experience, professionals, discussing with students about the same topics in order to understand the transgenerational understanding of the past But I would say that one of the most important things that we started working on in understanding the different perspective of how to understand the past, especially from the dominant narrative on the other side to the private family narrative was to start listen to individuals, we approach to history through family stories And we encourage to invest emotionally in the past by exploring family histories In the first picture you see a project that we did, we invited people to share our stories about the first world war The first world war in Slovenia was the war that we were not remembering. It was the war that we lost, so actually it was on the other side of the of the con It was not something to remember, it was something to forget, but not in the family narrative, so we invited people to share their stories and to share their interpretations of what happened to their families Then you see a testimony who share his story about the atrocities of the second world war and then we did an exhibition called Coming Home and we presented all the stories together Two years ago within the project in search of freedom, we invited people to give us their interpretation of what freedom is, how they interpret the freedom in this century in this decade in two years ago and you can see the opening of the exhibition and the closing of the exhibition, how people start to discuss their own boundaries and their own freedom And last year within the project was, which was discussing frontiers, borders, obstacles, we also asked the visitors and this exhibition was then in Berlin and also in Sarajevo to tell us what they think about Wall Street in Europe, do they think that closing Europe is good or is bad, so on one side you can see that the answer was do we need Wall Street in Europe, on the one side of the fence it was yes, so they were putting a ribbon and on the other side was no, and what we find out and that was fascinating is that people started to put the ribbons in the middle, so the maybe appeared and really showed how we understand the past and how and the present and of course the future, because discussing the past is also discussing from the perspective of the present is giving an answer to the future And since we think that we also be relevant today, this year we started to discuss with the youngers when we were in isolation, how do they feel about the coronavirus, the perspective, first our perspective and our difficulties were that we as all of you, we were working from home and it was really very difficult to connect with people, so we started to connect through several activities that we did on our web page, but we opened an open call competition, a comic one for youngers, because we really wanted to understand how do they feel We were so centered in how we were feeling, the society itself, the grownups, that actually no one was discussing how do the youngers were feeling about the coronavirus, about the isolation It was a very nice activity that we did and we got many comics and later in the summertime we also did an exhibition about it, so with all these stories and especially with the project that we are doing right now about migration We really try in every year, every time within all the difficulties that we have to work as a museum to build sustainability, to find new ways of communication, to try to adapt to the nowadays situation in order to promote cultural diversity, to promote dialogue And no less to educate and in a shortly one minute I will just present you the last project that we are doing right now, it's about migration, it's seven institutions all around Europe discussing the long process of migrations in the 20th century We have Denmark discussing the migrations from Greenland, we have the Eiter Museum in Sweden to discuss the Sami forced migrations, we have the Istrian and the Polish Slurps Museum discussing the migrations forced migrations after the Second World War And the project started and what we learned then after it was with the COVID that we were not able to meet, we were not able to discuss our research, we were even not able to discuss the topic with our testimonies So we start working on YouTube and we start sharing webinars and we invited several professionals which are discussing the migrations in Europe and also in US to tell us their stories, to give us their answers about how should we work and what kind of a museum for migrants discussing the sensitive topics and stories we should develop It's really very traumatic when the stories can be really very traumatic when you ask the people who are from the second or the first or the third generation of migrants to tell us about their identity or identities in our society And the feelings are of course multilayered from the positive and the negative emotions from how to preserve your own traditions, your own identity, especially in an environment which is through the hate speech also by the politicians themselves all the time every day saying that you are a second class citizen And you can see it here from one of the testimonies that we got how complex the situation is and how really difficult is to build a better environment and a safe nest of tolerance and understanding within our museum's activities We find out while doing the testimonies told through zoom or one to one that actually their stories were changing us, but they were also changing them Through, we were all sharing our own empathy one with another And we were at the same time trying to understand the pain of the other and the moral values that we have while discussing stories coming out from a completely different moral frames Basically, we really wanted to build stories together with the testimonies about how do they feel being a second class citizens, how can we achieve being a better museum and build together with them a better environment for sharing all the stories and histories that we have in our society And of course, different perspectives show completely different truths and I would say that we need to adapt, we need to adapt daily, annually, 10 years ago we needed to adapt financially In most European countries we have to adapt politically and right now we all need to adapt because of the pandemic situation The most important thing is that we need to act ethically towards all the narratives towards all the groups and all the memories need to be equal when we try to understand them and we need to show empathy and we need to work more towards empathy in our everyday museum environment We cannot be neutral, we need to know our own boundaries and but we need also to connect to listen and to act ethically and only by understanding the pain of the others, the one who are living hand in hand with us in our society, we can build a better future And I will finish with a picture that we took last year in ICOM meeting in Kyoto, the one of you who were there or the one of you who read about it, we know that actually there was a huge eight hour debate about a very important topic and the topic was the new museum definition And last year the new museum definition was for many museologists and professionals, a completely different isolated island, but in the year 2020, there is this indicator that we needed to adapt and that the museums have changed and they have changed in some measures completely significantly and I would finish with the first sentence of the now rejected proposal for a new definition and that it was that museums should be democratic, inclusive, they need critically to support all the voices all the stories in order to understand the past for building a better future. We need to be, as I said, more responsible, more relevant and more ethical and it starts with us with our own changing of perspectives, and by then, after the next step is to understand the perspectives of the others. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Kaia. It was this was very interesting to hear your presentation and to see how the museums are acting from inside, or how the museum can really change the society or try to be a part of that big and important change. We have an opportunity to see totally different kind of story. We will see how people from outside can change museum. So I really invite Salma Yerik. She is a guide in the German Historical Museum in Berlin, since the start of the project, MULTAKA, and MULTAKA is actually the meeting point museum, and that is a program which shows how refugees are guides in Berlin Museum. Also, she became the project coordinator of that program in 2017. So let's see what Kaia, what Salma can tell us about her experience working in the museum and share difficult questions with public and with people from the museum. Salma, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Tiana, for the presentation and for the introduction, and also thank you very much, Kaia, for the presentation. I think also Kaia's presentation would be a perfect introduction to what you're doing as well, especially the last part on the social role of the museum as we would like to call it, let's say. So just to start over, my name is Salma Yerik. I come from Syria and I moved to Germany in 2014. In 2015 I started working with the MULTAKA project as a guide in the German Historical Museum, which you'll hear about right now. And in 2017 I started coordinating the project. And I'm going to share my screen now so you would all see the presentation. Please let me know if you can't hear me or if you have any difficulties seeing my screen. As Tiana also mentioned, MULTAKA means meeting point in the Arabic language. And the MULTAKA project was initiated originally by the Museum of Islamic Arts in 2015. After what is referred to as the refugee wave or refugee crisis in 2015-2017, we definitely do not see this as a crisis. I'm just saying that this is how it's referred to. So basically the project started in 2015 and the idea was to kind of cooperate with other museums. As you can see with the Museum of Islamic Art, Ancient Near East Museum in Pergamon Museum, Bode Museum, the Museum of Byzantium Art basically and the sculpture collection and the German Historical Museum. The idea of the project was to train newcomer guides or to train newcomer communities into becoming guides for very important Berliner museums and to make them basically or give them the opportunity to give other Arabic-speaking newcomers tours in their own mother tongue. As you can see the participating museums at the Museum of Islamic Art as I've mentioned, the Ancient Near East Museum, the German Historical Museum and the Bode Museum and through the objects and through the history that is shown and art that is shown in these four museums, a cultural bridge is wished to be built through these intercounters within the museum. So what the MULTAKA project basically does is creates a safe environment for people within the museum to have an intercultural dialogue and to also share their perspective on history. It's also very much about reclaiming agency because, as you all know, ever since 2015, the migration has been that topic. It's not that migration started in 2015, but after the peak that happened in 2015, migration has been a topic of many projects and migrants and newcomer communities, the Arabian secret have also been the topic of many different projects and many different activities run by states or museums. And the idea of this project was to let them speak for themselves and to give them the opportunity to share their perspectives instead of doing a project for them. It's from newcomer communities to newcomer communities. We started giving tours in these four museums in 2015. In Arabic for other Arabic speaking newcomers and then the project developed and we started giving tours in German and in English as soon as we spoke with her German. And then that was integrated within our main offer, let's say. In December 2015, the first 19 guides came to the museums and then we were trained and it's very important to know, as Tiana said, we as outsiders of the museum is basically the fact that we are not museums people we haven't studied sociology or we haven't studied necessarily art history, we come from different backgrounds. We were all from Syria and Iraq, and at the moment we're all from Syria because the Iraqi colleagues left the project. But the important thing is that we are not museums expert, for example, I myself have studied law at Damascus University, and because I studied law I could focus on certain aspects in the German American Museum that my architecture colleagues would not focus on or that my economist colleagues would not focus on and this is, of course, all about changing perspective. And it's also about giving people opportunity because a museum should be relevant for everybody and everyone. And this was basically the project's way of making this or achieving this relevance for people who usually wouldn't come to the museum. You can see these are pictures from all the different tools and where different topics and different history, let's say parts or aspects and different objects play different roles. For example, in the Museum of Islamic Art, and in the ancient Near East Museum in Pergamon Museum, many of the objects that are basically all of the objects that are displayed in these museums also have their own migration story and they also may come from the same region that we have migrated from. And through talking about these objects, first of all, we also show acknowledgement for our own cultural heritage. And second of all, we also kind of share the migration story with these objects. And it's also about highlighting the good aspect of the migration. And it's also about highlighting how old and beautiful migration is and how without migration, nobody would be able to see all of these objects, let's say. This is also about, as I said before, this is about reclaiming agency and this is also about deconstructing some aspects of the colonial history that many European countries share in Germany is one of them. And it's also about being able to talk about these questions about these important questions in a safe environment because the museum should be a neutral environment where people could share and talk about everything. In both the museum, for example, the Museum of Byzantium Art and Sculpture Collection, it's also very important to show how diverse and how rich also the Middle East region, let's say, is and it also shows a lot of objects also from the Middle East region, but from the civic time, which also kind of highlights the cultural religious and diversity that was in the Middle East for thousands of years and still is. And it's also about highlighting the living together in peace and harmony, and what we aspire to achieve also here. In the German Stalker Museum, of course, a different story, we don't share a migration story with the objects, however, we do highlight migration in the German history, we do highlight rebuilding the country after total destruction and total war. And we do also highlight the fact that also many Germans, as many Europeans were at once, especially in the late 19th century, were also refugees or were also asylum seekers, not that asylum seeking was present in the same concept that it is right now. Earlier, but still people migrated all over the world for centuries and this is what we also try to migrate to to communicate. It's also important to say that our offer was very, very basic and very simple. It was also free of charge for all newcomer communities. And if you're wondering about the word newcomer, this is our way to kind of overcome the difficulties that language offers. Basically, being a refugee is a political state or a political, let's say connection to a certain state, and this should not describe what a person is. Many of the people who come to Germany in 2015-2016 share or basically most of them share the fact that they are new in this country, whether they were students, whether they were migrants, whether they were asylum seekers or whether they were already refugees. This is a connection with the state that we wish not to kind of attribute to a certain person. New comment is a more basic and more inclusive, let's say, term, which basically includes everybody that comes new to a country. Of course, that was in 2015-2016. In 2020, we also have to kind of update our vocabulary as well. And this is also something that we are working on at the moment, because language basically offers some challenges that kept up with. The Multaqa project has also reached over 16,000 participants through their offers. Most of these participants were basically Arabic-speaking newcomers, but also there were university students, there were politicians, there were basically people who were interested in listening to the other perspective, especially in the German Historical Museum. We have given many, many tours in German for German politicians and German locals under the motto of the other perspective, which is also very important to mention, because this is also about seeing history from an entirely different perspective, and especially people who grew up in Germany and learned about the German history in school. It's very important to see how other people view Germany's history. We've also organized workshops, because we believe that working only on one aspect of society and only giving, let's say, tours for Arabic-speaking communities would not help in the creation of a shared environment. I'm trying to avoid the word integration, because as I said, it's very specific and we should change a lot of the vocabulary used around social issues. And the aim of the workshop was to bring two parts of the society together and offer them tours at the museum, and then on the other day the possibility to kind of create material or to create artifacts with their own hands. There was an exhibition afterwards to kind of display the objects that were created within the workshops. This is the big team, let's say. Unfortunately, we're only 19 guides now, 18, and not 24, but 24 was the biggest number that we've reached. And as you can see, the, let's say, gender quota was also taken into consideration while looking or while searching for members of the team. This is something that's also very, very important and we're very, very proud to present. And Mutaqa project was, let's say, due to its time and due to its success was also basically implemented by other European institutes and by other museums around Europe. Mutaqa Oxford is in Oxford, Mutaqa Ben is in Ben Historic Museum, and there's an Amir project in Florence, which is basically seven museums and over 40 guides. Mutaqa Oxford has also over 40 guides, and there's the initiative Lucky Who Speaks Arabic. As you can see, this Mutaqa International Network has basically spread around four countries. It has 15 participating museums and over 100 guides. The situation of the guides may vary in different countries, for example, and even their position, but we all share the concept of the project about enabling people with migration background or refugee experience to reclaim agency and talk about history and art. And also have the chance to express their perspectives on everything and be an active part of society is basically the concept that brought all these projects and museums together. Of course, if we would also love if any other museum would join this network. This is about press and the press coverage that also helped make the project a bit more known, but it's also important to know and this is because we of course have to be very critical about the situation that we're living in. We also have to say that in 2015 and 2016 there was huge attention to the situation of migrants and asylum seekers. And that said, we are really trying to kind of be very critical about everything that happened then and everything that's happening now and this is why we are trying to kind of the project in a way where we as newcomers also would break out of the fact that we are only newcomers. Because we also don't want to fall in the trap that people are only listening to our perspectives because we are newcomers because this is also something that's very important to us because whether a person would like to be called a refugee or an asylum seeker or a newcomer. We have to be very careful when talking about the social role of the museum that people should not be stigmatized whatever the term is whatever people would like to be called or. This is not something that should be stuck to the person for their entire life. I just wanted to be very clear about this because this is again a struggle. And this is also the project has won five awards but this is also I don't think is very relevant right now because we're short on time. And as you can see this is like the cooperation of the museum or the cooperation of this project is as I've mentioned the four museums. The point disguise of the museum Islamic art the second museums of Berlin and the project is funded by and really philanthropies. And it's also very important to mention that the project is not. I mean in comparison to other museums that were presented. It's a project that is a cooperation between four museums. So what I think and what I would definitely like to end with I think it's very important for all the museums to kind of include such initiatives or such concepts within the museum itself. And not only make it an extra project that is added to a certain museum program. Thank you very much for listening and I'm looking forward to all of your questions. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for this very interesting presentation about how museum should be open for different views and different interpretations. And we had a great opportunity to see one presentation from the museum in Slovenia and one project from the Berlin. And I would give opportunity to all of you to rise up questions. But first of all, I will give answer to one question which they sent to me. And that is both for Kaia and for me and the question is that we both mentioned important of cooperation with other museum in Europe. And then the question is what was the biggest learning you took from working across the borders. So I will start and I will say that through the cooperation with other museum, we realize that it is not important are you coming from the big or small country or are you big or small museum do you have millions of visitors of or thousands of visitors. The main issue that we are dealing with in all museums is how to be a better museum and as I already said how to be relevant how to be ethic how to be responsible and how to make better society through the better museums. So I think that we all share common goals and we all share common issues. So that's why we need this new definition of the museum for 21st century, which will give us support to be much more than museum was in 19 or in 20th century to be a more than museum of everyday life of people so that that is what we learned that we need to have a same standards, and that we need to share same values, whenever wherever we are working so Kaia what was your answer to this question. There are several answers, but the first thing to say is we were in many projects and I would say for our colleagues who would like to start European projects that first it's really important to know your partners really this is the most important thing. Actually, we went to through several turbulent periods within all the projects. We are different. We are different even in the same environment we were different and we were acting completely different within the several European projects that we we work with and of course we should see our cultural boundaries as our challenges. In order to do better and to work better. It was very challenging at the beginning. Of course, first you have the first phase when everyone is a friend and then you have the second third and the last phase, when everyone is from talking and discussing about what everyone should do within the project, but I would say that at the end. I found out very good friends and maybe I think that this is the most important part of all the projects that we did. We were colleagues and at the end we were friends and I appreciate all my friendships all around Europe because now we can rely one on another and we can still work together and basically we all work for the same. It's all good and this is to build a better environment within the museum for all the stories for all the past interpretations and actually we are building better museums. I agree with you about the friendships we also always finish every cooperation with great friends and colleagues, but now one question for Salma. Someone asked how me how much the Museum of Islamic art integrate the views and interpretation of the newcomers guides in their exhibitions. Yeah, thank you for the question. This is actually the perfect time to ask this question because right now the program and museum is being rebuilt, let's say, and the Museum of Islamic Art is going to reopen in 2026. And with the permanent exhibition of the Museum of Islamic Art, there's going to be a section for, let's say something that's called also different perspectives. In the different perspective segment, the opinion of the multiple guides with is planned to be portrayed as well as the, let's say, classical curator description of a certain object. This will not be regarding all the objects in the Museum of Islamic Art. This is going to be, let's say a fine choice of objects that the guides have personally made connections with or let's say see fit. I would also like to highlight the concept of the project and diversity of the guides as well. So it will be integrated. And I would also like to mention that the Mutaqa Oxford, our partners in Oxford at the Pit Rivers Museum and the Museum of History of Science. They have already managed to kind of change the already existing description of the objects within the museum. So this is also something that's very important. I think this is also very related, very much related to the structure of the museum that is operating a certain project. And unfortunately, the State Museums of Berlin are a bit too bureaucratic to kind of make this change as fast as our partners in Oxford have managed to. And I have one personal question for you. Is it hard to find the people or refugees who wants to be a part of this project and be a guide in the museums? Actually, not at all. I mean, of course, like the first 19 guides were very diverse and we've also managed to get new eight guides in the summer of 2016. So we had also over 40 applicants in 2016 in the summer where we're applying to become Mutaqa guides. And it's also very important to mention, which I also should have mentioned within the presentation. And as the aim of this project is to diversify the museum structure itself and also the visitors of the museum. And as we do not want to be any part or take any part of any kind of exclusion processes, we are also working on including Farsi speaking guides within our project because we've also over the five years we have also gotten many requests for Farsi speaking tours, first of all, and also by Farsi speaking people because they wanted to also be a part of the project. So this is also something that I should have mentioned. Okay. Thank you very much. And now one question from Kaia. You worked on a large thematic spectrum of common social issues. Did you face opposition from parts of the public and also internally from the museum team itself? Of course, always. But I mean, this is the other perspective. You will have people who understand the museum as a very conservative place, a very, you know, fixed narrative. And we think that actually the new generation pretends and wants a completely different environment when we are building a new museum and a new museum narrative. But the first challenge that I had was within the first European projects is that many colleagues at the museum did not understand the importance of having multi-layered, multicultural interpretations about our own objects and how to fit within several European narratives, not just one but several because there were several museums involved. And step by step, you know, also the generation at the museum changed, and new people arrived. And now they one third of the staff is completely new. And actually, we are building a completely different narrative and we are building a completely different permanent exhibition. I'm just saying that the other one was bad. I'm just saying that this one is different and is really taking care of several different voices and sensible stories about our past. And that also means that the people coming to the museum, the visitors themselves are saying, why are you putting, you know, stories from, let's say, the ex-Yugoslav territory. It's not more about our national history, but our national history is a part of the broader framework of the Yugoslav history. All the parts of the narrative of the permanent exhibition, I'm not talking only about ours, I'm talking about all the permanent exhibitions all around Europe, which are not telling something, which are neglecting certain parts or even if they are forgetting something, they're not telling the narrative itself because oblivion is the other part of the coin of the memory and not saying something, you say everything. So we are struggling every day, but actually I think that building a better society as I said starts also in understanding our past from several different perspectives. All of them are pleasant, but understanding the pain of the other who has not, who is not sharing your own moral values. It gives you the opportunity to be a better person. Thank you very much. And now again, one question for Salma. The next question is, I'd like to know how the internal museum environment has changed by presence of the project, and for example, the way they expose and tell about those objects has changed. Yeah, thank you for the question. I would say that all the museums that we take parts in or that we are, of course, I'm only speaking about the project Berlin right now because as I've mentioned, there were different experiences in different countries. But at the most of Berlin, let's say, the guides of the museums other than the project who were basically doing the tours have definitely tried to include some of our perspectives within the tours. Structurally, it still hasn't changed that much. Because as I mentioned, unfortunately, the bureaucratic processes are too slow, but in the permanent exhibition of 2026, this will definitely change. But the Multaqa team, the Multaqa guides are definitely being included in all the let's say outreach projects that the museum is also working on because the Museum of Islamic Art does have many outreach projects. And the Multaqa guides are being included in many of these projects, let's say, and this is basically as far as we went right now. It's also about only exchange, verbal exchange and presenting the project and presenting our perspectives to everybody who we could reach. And actually, we are still waiting to the new exhibition, let's say, to open where we would be present, hopefully, and represented in the permanent exhibition. That will be really great to have a new permanent exhibition, but I would like to ask my colleagues today, do you have some question maybe for each other or I should continue with the questions which came to me. Kaya, would you like to ask something, Salma? Salma knows that I'm a true admirer of the project. I started to follow the project of Multaqa from the beginning. I was fascinated in the period when we have, you know, Europe call it the migration crisis or the refugee crisis. That's also a talk that we should have how to call it. We also tried in Slovenia in several ways to connect with the refugees who arrived to Slovenia and of course the debate was as in all European countries with the pluses and minuses. And what I heard about Multaqa, and I realized how easy can people be given back, you know, the self-respect, the respect that you can have about your own heritage, even if it is in several museums all around the world, and that you can build again your positive selfness through the interpretation of the past. I would say that this is probably one of the best project that I came around. So for me, I'm a huge admirer and thank you for your work really. Europe needs, within their museums and their projects, you know, people like you and your colleagues. So thank you very much. And thank you very much for your comments and feedback. This really means a lot. And please feel free to also, I mean, initiate such projects at your institutions as well. I mean, if we've learned one thing by the creation of the Multaqa International Network is that with respect, of course, to the different structures that are in different museums. The concept is very easy to kind of implement. People need basically whether, I mean, everybody just needs to speak for themselves instead of being spoken about. And I think this is basically what what inclusion or integration basically is and I'm doing the quote unquote thing because as you've mentioned, and as I've mentioned before and as we all know vocabulary is very, very, very tricky at the moment. We might not necessarily agree on all the terms that are being used, but we do agree on the concept of participation, let's say, and this is something that is very easy to achieve. So thank you very much for everybody's interest and for your attention and for the presentation. I also enjoyed them very much. Thank you very much to both of you and to Kaya and to Salma. And I'm sorry that we didn't have enough time to give answers to all the questions which came to our presentation. But I believe that you can send us these questions and then we can send you answers to all of you who was a part of this today session. Now I would like to invite Julia because she will take for now, and continue with the conference. Julia. Thank you, Tiana. Thank you, Kaya. Thank you, Salma, for your contributions. That was a really great panel. And Nemo being at the heart of what European cooperation is. I love to hear that this really transformed your museums and that will take a has a European network. I think cross border cooperation is really something that is an added value for everybody at individual level at organizational level. So I'm very happy to hear that.