Strengthening culture, community and professionalisation through documentation

26-30 August 2024, San Jose, Costa Rica

This workshop has been organised by International Committees on Documentation (CIDOC), Textiles (COSTUME) and the National Committees of Costa Rica, Mexico, and Guatemala together with ICOM LAC, in collaboration with the National Museum of Costa Rica, the Dr. Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia Museum, the University of Costa Rica, and the Latin American Institute of Museums (ILAM).
Documentation is essential for all museum activities. This workshop will present a holistic vision of documentation and provide tools for the formalisation of processes in different contexts, unifying the various activities of the museum through documentation. The documentation specialist will learn best practices and latest standards; museum staff will learn how to innovate and generate value through documentation; and relevant communities will gain empowerment and voice. This is what we call ‘inclusive documentation’ at CIDOC. For a week, documentation will be discussed in three groups focusing on the key concepts of Knowledge Infrastructure, Documentation Culture, and Inclusive Documentation to culminate in a space for dialogue and collaborative learning among all participants.

Objectives

• Increase the documentation capacity of museum staff, including those directly responsible for the area, as well as empower management, curators, and all staff involved in museum management. Participants will learn about best practices in documentation and the standards available to develop a heritage infrastructure of robust information about collections in their own institution and within their own contexts (infrastructure, knowledge, institutional support). This knowledge will allow innovation based on information as a valuable resource (e.g. to identify patterns of knowledge, explore the use of advanced digital technologies and artificial intelligence, and position the museum as a future-proof institution).
• Engage communities in “inclusive documentation”, by inviting and structuring contributions from community members (outside of museum staff) in the practical exploration of the new museum definition. Through inclusive documentation we enable multiple contextual views of the collections, which allow for different interpretations based on different age groups and/or geographical locations.
• Explore the potential of transversality in documentation, through the “Culture of Documentation” that includes (1) processes, operations, and systems; (2) to take advantage of and extend the use of documentation in all museum activities; and (3) co-create, engage, and link the community to information about the museum’s collections.

Development of the workshop

This conference is conceived as a 1-week hands-on workshop in Spanish to learn in a didactic way the best documentation practices, live and with the support of specialists, following CIDOC standards. We will work with collections from local museums.
Total of 30 hours of workshop (5 days from 9.00 to 16.00 hrs with lunch break).
Monday: keynote session 30 participants
Tuesday to Thursday: 3 groups of 10 participants each
Friday: space for dialogue with presentations of the collaborative learnings of the 3 groups to the general public
The documentation workshop presents a holistic view of documentation and offers tools to formalise processes in their own context, unifying the museum’s various activities through documentation.

Group 1: “General Documentation” given by Vanessa Valverde (Chile)

Aimed at museum professionals who work with collections management and want to implement better documentation practices with more innovative standards on a technological platform, this workshop aims to:

• Understand the documentation process, based on the collections of local museums with real examples.
• Learn how to use the most important standards to advance cutting-edge documentation, using limited resources, and the network of online tools. The software used to document endangered heritage has been developed by the Latin American Institute of Museums ILAM.

Group 2: “Documentation Culture: Integration of Documentation in Museum Operations” Taught by Lucía Sánchez (Mexico)

Aimed at museum professionals (such as curators, managers, conservators) who will learn to innovate and generate value through documentation within the framework of the integral management of museums, the workshop will take participants to:

• Recognize documentation as a process of integral and collaborative management in museums
• To discover new ways of linking the information of the collections, with the processes of management-administration, planning, registration, conservation, education and public derived from the museological plan
• Develop an empowerment and leadership strategy based on heritage documentation within the framework of the integrated management of museums

Group 3: “Inclusive documentation: co-creation and participation in social networks for museum documentation”. Taught by Pedro Ángeles Jiménez (Mexico)

Aimed at communities associated with textiles, who wish to contribute their perspective, who will gain empowerment and voice, this workshop contemplates the following objectives:

• Become familiar with the concept of inclusive documentation
• To generate a space for the exchange of perspectives around local textile collections as a way of integrating knowledge
• Develop a proposal for the visibility of new voices

Organisation

This workshop is provided free of charge to 30 participants from all over Latin America, who have been awarded scholarships and will receive support for transportation, lodging, and lunch during the work week.
This documentation workshop is possible thanks to the collaboration with ICOM SAREC, ICOM CIDOC International Documentation Committee, ICOM COSTUME International Textile Committee, ICOM Mexico, ICOM Costa Rica, ICOM Guatemala and the ICOM LAC alliance. In addition, we have the support of the University of Costa Rica, the National Museum of Costa Rica, the Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia Museum, and the Latin American Institute of Museums (ILAM).
The program of the workshop also includes a guided tour of the Pavas headquarters where the collections of the National Museum of Costa Rica are located, an afternoon reading with the students of the University of Costa Rica, and a series of concerts.