TheMuseumsLab 2026 | Kick-Off Event

#TheMuseumsLab is a pioneering mutual learning and knowledge exchange programme for African and European museum professionals. The project brings together a wide range of professional skills and competences. Museums as well as academic and cultural professionals come together to create space for an engaged discussion on museums past and present for a joint shaping of the museums future as well as to promote mutual learning between African and European museum professionals. This year’s focus, Building Futures from Memory: Museums and Memorial Sites as Agents, raises an important set of questions. It invites the Fellows to consider how memory is not only preserved but activated, how museums and memorial sites can become agents of dialogue, responsibility, repair, transformation and the building of new futures. It also asks participants to consider the ways in which institutions engage with complex pasts while helping to shape new imaginaries, practices, and structures that foster more equitable futures. In 2026, four Co-Curators based at an African and a European museum collaborated to develop the content of the programme - Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy (RCHA) and TheMuseumsLab Team at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (MfN). They collaborated closely with stakeholders from the museum, heritage, and cultural sectors within their respective regions. The Event was moderated by Christopher Ssebuyungo (Conservator, Uganda National Museum & TheMuseumsLab Alumnus) Keynote Speaker Assumpta Mugiraneza (Director & Co-founder IRIBA Center for Multimedia Heritage) N‘Goné Fall (Curator, Editor, and Cultural Policies Consultant) Welcome Video with voices from TheMuseumsLab Companions [0:00:00] Welcome [0:05:28] Introduction to TheMuseumsLab 2026 [0:10:28] Keynote "Holding the Past - Shaping the Future" [0:22:48] Q&A [0:56:07] Closing Remarks [2:06:38]