DOMiD wins future prize "Kulturgestalten"

08 July 2021

• Mediation approaches for inclusive remembrance culture honored: DOMiD receives award from Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft
• Project "Meinwanderungsland" participatively collected stories of the migration society
• Prize is awarded every two years for innovative, forward-looking cultural policy
• Jury praises "completely new way of mediation

Berlin/Cologne, 08.07.2021 - The project "Meinwanderungsland" of the Documentation Center and Museum on Migration in Germany (DOMiD) receives the first-ever "Kulturgestalten" prize of the Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft. The prize is endowed with 5,000€ and honors visionary cultural-political action. As part of "Meinwanderungsland," stories about the migration society were collected throughout Germany from 2017 to 2020 and a multi-perspective history of Germany was conveyed.

Robert Fuchs, Managing Director of DOMiD, sees the project as preparation for the Migration Museum that DOMiD will open in Cologne in 2025: "With Meinwanderungsland, we have already been able to show what we mean by multi-perspectivity. Every person in this country contributes something to our society, which is shaped by migration in many ways, and thus becomes an integral part of Germany's history. When voices become audible that are otherwise too often sidelined, we have the chance to rediscover ourselves as a society. This commitment to the migration society, for which our house stands, has become the motto of Meinwanderungsland: Every story counts. The award is an incentive for us to continue on our path for a new type of museum that emerges from society."

Participatory in every federal state: every story counts

"Meinwanderungsland" was DOMiD's first major outreach and mediation project and was funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Migration, Integration and Refugees, Annette Widmann-Mauz. From 2017 to 2020, the team traveled to 24 cities in 16 German federal states. Using a mobile exhibition and storytelling platform, the project team brought objects, photos, and stories from the DOMiD collection to public places while collecting voices and stories from the migration community. In a participatory process, a new culture of remembrance was thus worked on in many places throughout the Federal Republic. In addition, digital mediation formats were used on various social media platforms under the hashtag #Meinwanderungsland.

Jury: Project is a symbol of our pluralistic society

In its laudatory speech, the jury praised the project's exemplary character as a way of communicating the history of migration: "#Meinwanderungsland (...) takes a completely new approach to communication: Here, not just one story is told. Rather, a wide variety of stories find their way in and are heard, so that the project becomes a symbol of our pluralistic society. It encourages a change of perspective: In the history of Europe, migration has always been the rule, never the exception. (... ) The project is highly relevant for cultural policy, because as a next practice it shows new possibilities for the development of contemporary program work and actualization of participation processes."