Subsidy 2023-2025 granted

The Colonial Collections Consortium has been awarded a subsidy of 3.1 million euros. With this working budget, the Consortium will actively focus on collection accessibility, knowledge sharing and collaboration. This happens within the Consortium and in collaboration with museums, collection-managing institutions, the advisory committee, countries of origin, and other countries where similar collections are present.

Objectives of the consortium

• Supporting the implementation of the Dutch restitution policy by sharing knowledge and expertise about collections acquired in a colonial context.
• Support collection managers in the Netherlands in the process of provenance research of collections from a colonial context.
• Supporting and facilitating good research, documentation and (public) accessibility of these collections.
• To be a central entry point (or hub) for source countries for questions about colonial collections and provenance research.

The Consortium’s activities include developing a data hub with accompanying research guide so that collections from a colonial context are accessible, providing financial support to the field for conducting provenance research and digitizing collections, organizing museum training, visitor programs and fellowships. For information about these activities, please keep an eye on this website.

The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs provide the operating budget from 2023 to 2025.