Reflection and co-creation are two of the key concepts in the META-MUSEUM project. Swedish project partner NCK (the Nordic Centre for Heritage Learning) explored these concepts together with colleagues from both the museum sector and academia during the conference Det museale – a National Conference for Cultural Research held in Trondheim, 3–5 June 2026. The three-day interdisciplinary conference attracted a large audience, which came together to explore the roles and potentials for museums to play in our lives.
Workshopping at the Justice Museum
The conference mainly took place at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology with activities also held at other venues across Trondheim city centre. The META-MUSEUM workshop specifically, took place at the Norwegian National Museum of Justice, which is responsible for preserving and presenting the history of Norway’s police, judiciary, and correctional services. The museum is notable for its moving exhibit on the Nazi occupation of Norway and its impact on the city of Trondheim in the Second World War. In this exhibition ten participants gathered with Helena Kuhlefelt and Charina Knutson of NCK.
Confidence, Empathy, Resilience
The participants were divided into three groups. Each group was assigned one of META-MUSEUM’s three core feelings that the project aims to strengthen: confidence, empathy, and resilience. Each group was also asked to relate that feeling to a specific object in the exhibition. For example, the group working on confidence was asked to relate the feeling of confidence to an Enigma machine on display in the exhibition. The Enigma machine was an electromechanical cipher device used by Nazi Germany to securely encode and decode military communications during the Second World War. Its code was famously cracked by British mathematician Alan Turing, an achievement that shortened the war and saved millions of lives.
Together with Charina and Helena, each group formulated a question that could be posed to the visitors and that would encourage reflection while also strengthening their sense of either confidence, empathy, or resilience.
Fruitful Practice
Despite the limited time available for this delicate task, all three groups succeeded in formulating powerful and thought-provoking questions for future visitors. The Confidence group developed a sequence of two questions for visitors viewing the Enigma machine. The first encouraged visitors to reflect on something they were particularly skilled at or interested in – perhaps not mathematics or coding, but something entirely different. The second question invited visitors to consider how they might use that talent to address any current challenge of their choosing.
This workshop provided an excellent opportunity to test and learn from META-MUSEUM’s innovative approach to connecting cultural heritage with everyday life through unexpected reflections. It sparked creativity and generated numerous ideas, inspiring curators and researchers alike to unlock the potential of cultural heritage to strengthen visitors’ confidence, empathy and resilience.