The Ledra Palace Museum project: exploring difficult history in Cyprus

Abstract

The Museum Lab at RISE Centre of Excellence, in Cyprus, has embarked on a project that aspires, through the creation of a re-invented – or activist if we dare say – museum, to deal with issues of ‘difficult history’ in a nonauthoritative way. More precisely, the ‘Ledra Palace Museum’ project deals with the representation of difficult history in museums and investigates ways in which technology can facilitate participatory and collaborative approaches, actively engage different groups and communities (especially excluded or silenced ones) and help bring out contested histories. The starting point of this project is the Ledra Palace Hotel, a site that can be seen quintessentially representative of Cyprus’s difficult heritage. The emphasis is on untold stories narrated in the present and on the ways these stories can help us re-imagine a more peaceful future. In the context of the project we use existing archival material from various sources, conduct interviews and elicit objects and photographs from people from different communities and backgrounds, in order to ‘deep map’ this site and bring it to light as a unique cultural site, not via the conventional method of building a traditional museum, but through the use of emerging technologies. We are especially interested in the co-creation of content and narratives that influence a museum’s collection and archiving practices. Finally, in our project, the museum does not claim to have the right answers, does not adopt an authoritative voice and recognizes that the socio-political environment of an institution influences its narratives.