AQUAMUSE
Facilitating Just and Sustainable Water Futures through Water Museums, Digital Media, and the Arts
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Project Overview
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Working across three river basins–the Blue Nile (Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt), the Nakambé (Burkina Faso) and the Ganga/Sundarbans (India)--AQUAMUSE is supported by the Water and Development Partnership Program at IHE-Delft. It envisions a future where water museums, both physical and digital, are not only unique repositories of our liquid heritage, but also play a role in reconnecting communities to water through education, public outreach, and art. Museums as colonial establishments that record and remember the past through art and artifacts, don’t generally deal with a dynamic present much less the unknown, “fluid” future enmeshed in complexities like climate change. While extreme weather phenomena related to water are a lived reality in these river basins, the knowledge of rivers and community memory of everyday encounters with water are slowly disappearing. Our project aims to bring inclusivity to education, media, and museum making through oral storytelling and traditions of marginalized communities.
Objectives
Design and deploy a methodological framework that combines archival and ethnographic approaches towards an inclusive and plural water epistemology
Educate school students in these river basins on their hydro history and hydro heritage by collecting and archiving narratives on water-related risks and hazards
Strengthen the capacities of water museums to promote the conservation of cultural heritage and local knowledge of water-related risks and hazards, especially floods
Support museum curators, teachers, and water professionals with training programs to effectively mobilize art and cultural heritage in water education.
OUR
PARTNERS
The Living Waters Museum, India; Musee de l’Eau, Burkina Faso, and IHE-Delft, members of the Global Network of Water Museums (WAMUNET), which is also a collaborating partner; the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur; SciCommX, UAE; University of Khartoum, Sudan; and the design consortium HAE, Ethiopia.
