The increasing ease of mobility is progressively diluting the traditional notion of monolithic national populations confined within single countries, thereby fostering the evolution towards more diverse and multicultural societies. If we look back to the 1960s, there was a significant migration to Europe. Many people from Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia left their home countries to work in factories in Western European countries. This caused the host nations, like the Netherlands, to get confronted with new cultures and behaviors of these immigrants within their own society. Among them, Turkish people made up the largest group of immigrants in the Netherlands. Over time, they've reached their fourth generation in the Netherlands. However, it's worth asking how much the Turkish community, which was initially seen as "guests," is socially connected to and close with the Dutch community, who are considered the "hosts". These questions formed the basis of this graduation project.
In contrast to the evolving diversity of society, art museums have consistently drawn a specific demographic: individuals with higher education and income levels. To adapt to the evolving multicultural landscape, these institutions must engage diverse communities and incorporate varied perspectives to foster a sense of inclusive belonging. The Van Abbemuseum, a contemporary art museum in Eindhoven, has made this objective central to its mission. However, while aspiring to be more inclusive of diverse cultures, the challenge lies in rendering existing artworks more pertinent and reaching out to these communities effectively. This connection to the Van Abbemuseum forms the foundation of this project's focus.
Commencing with these two components-two cultural communities of the Netherlands and the Van Abbemuseum- a comprehensive research was conducted where (1) the existing literature was reviewed to assess prior findings on the main components of the project, (2) contextual research was conducted on Van Abbemuseum, (3) user research was conducted on Turkish immigrant and Dutch communities. The insights gleaned from the literature review served as the groundwork for preparing the context and user research. The findings of the next two research was used as inspiration for the design goal and design requirements for the next stages.
After this stage, the design goal was formulated as:
“My design goal, within the context of Van Abbemuseum, is to inspire Dutch and Turkish communities to create a moment of a playful merge of cultures to achieve a sense of belonging in the diverse community of Eindhoven.”
The ideas created during individual and group ideation sessions lead to different concepts which have been tested with the target users and developed further according to the results. At the end of three iterations, the final concept: MERGE was formed.
MERGE is a museum experience for Dutch and Turkish visitors where the users first undergo a digital museum tour which explores the artworks from a cultural perspective, showing reasonings behind different cultural behaviors to understand each other better. Then the concept introduces a common space and interaction cards in the museum cafe which let the users come together and interact in a neutral environment.
According to the final evaluation, the concept performs well in meeting the design goal and the criteria of users & stakeholders. However, it was realized during the final evaluation that setting the goal to making the communities feel belong to the diverse Dutch society was a challenging to reach with a simple museum experience. Thus, further recommendation on improvements on the design, changes in the goals and future activities to conduct has been made by the end of this report.