Marlene Mouliou

Marlene Mouliou led a small group of cultural practitioners and developed the concept of ​​creating a different participatory museum on the Internet. This is “The Museum Inside Me.”

As confinement at home deprived us from a new museum experience for inspiration and entertainment, the team behind “The Museum Within Me” addressed a public invitation to social media users to co-create an online museum of positive thoughts, declaring at the same time that museums will remain open within us.

Posing two key questions, such as “What things from your own private space make you feel joy, hope, relief, and peace?” and “How do you remember yourself in a museum?” the team curated two different collections of photos and stories, on Facebook and Instagram respectively, with the participation of citizens. The collection created on Facebook, starting on March 28, 2020, soon exceeded 110 entries and the corresponding one on Instagram, 100. Today, almost 22 months after the beginning of the project, the collections have tripled, while the Facebook page has reached 4,800 followers and the respective on Instagram almost 1,400.

With its characteristic visual identity, “The Museum Within Me” has gathered many positive comments and press coverage, has been presented at international conferences, has inspired educators (in Greece and internationally) to pursue their own activities with school groups. At the same time, it has organized a public debate with people who participated as ‘donors’ of stories and photographs, in the form of a campaign for the forging of original slogans for museums. Finally, “The Museum Within Me” has already been evaluated by the moderators of the page, through an online questionnaire, which was completed by many followers of the initiative.

“The Museum Within Me” will further pursue its work with new activities in 2022.