Knowledge Exchange

With the visitor programmes, the Consortium invites museum professionals from countries of origin to visit the Netherlands to share their experiences surrounding colonial collections, to get acquainted with relevant museum and collection management institutions, and to lay the foundations for long-term relationships and possible collaborations. These vistor programmes contribute to strengthening the museum infrastructure in countries of origin, or can be an initial exploration for more provenance research to a certain collection or a possible request for return.

Visitor programmes are initiated by one of the five Consortium partners, and organised by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. Visitor programmes usually consist of a four to five day itinerary. A group of heritage professionals take part in each visitor programme, for example from different institutions from one country of origin or for an international group of professionals working on the same topic.

The Consortium Colonial Collections offers training courses for museum professionals in countries of origin. These trainings always take place in a country of origin, so that there is greater local reach, and multiple museum professionals are able to participate. The trainings are given by curators, collection managers or registrars or other experts working at one of the Consortium partners (Museum Bronbeek, NIOD, Cultural Heritage Agency, Rijksmuseum and/or Wereldmuseum)

The museum trainings are always co-organised by a local partner, and are fully in line with certain questions or challenges in the museum sector of a country of origin (tailor made). This could relate to the excisting general infrastructure of the museum sector, or be completely focussed on a specific topic of interest. Examples of such topics could include: collection management, risk and crisis management, prevention, climate control, provenance research, selection and disposal of objects within a collection, collection valuation, digitisation of collections and archives, depot management or restoration and conservation of specific materials (such as linoleum, glass, wood or metal). Museum training courses can also be used to train participants to become trainers themselves for other professionals (train-the-trainer), so that one training course has a greater impact.