Cultural Societies and Local Community Museums: A case study of a participative museum in Greece

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role of cultural societies in the establishment of regional museums in Greece. It uses as a case study the Museum of Refugee Memory on the island of Lesvos, a small local institution, created and supported entirely by a local cultural society; the museum, despite its size and professional shortcomings, has become a vehicle of social cohesion and an expression of a distinct local identity. This paper argues that this museum forms an example of a grass-roots museum initiative that deserves to be studied and even copied, since its operation provides an alternative model of cultural heritage and museum management that reaches to the local communities and resources instead of national or top-down ones. First, it presents in brief the development of the local cultural institutions policy in Greece and then it turns its attention to the case study and presents the information gathered through in situ research, multiple visits and interviews, in order to argue, in the final part, about the importance and role of such institutions.