Sustainability is one of the biggest challenges of contemporary life. It’s urgent the cautious use of planetary resources, naturals or not, respecting the biological systems and the balance between the environment and human communities.

Museums for a sustainable society is the theme launched by ICOM (International Council of Museums) for the International Museum Day (18th May), 2015. This 

date, celebrated worldwide, is celebrated in Brazil by the National Week of Museums. At the 13th edition of this action, to embrace the ICOM’s proposals, it emphasizes the important role of museums in the development process to sustainability: either through their good performance practices, or by raising public awareness about the need of a more cooperative and supportive society.

There are many views one can analyze sustainability. 

Here we highlight three: environmental, economics and socio-cultural. The environmental one refers to the possibility that we can live in balance with available resources, in order to offer the planet as much as we remove it. One of possible applications of this perspective is the improvement of sustainable museum management or even the construction of a bank of projects about sustainability.

We can also think about a sustainable life with the establishment of an economically viable relation with the world. Such conception can be applied to museums, for example, through the use of its generating potential for employment and income, as well as the establishment of partnerships with local entrepreneurs, in order to foment the regional development and promote the balance of what is around.

The socio-cultural sustainability involves issues like the strengthening of local traditions, identity and belonging ties, the improvement of people’s quality of life; the distribution of more equal income and the reduction of social differences, with popular participation and organization. From this perspective, museums can, for example, promote activities to bring awareness on individual responsibility for building the community as well as the importance of community participation, solidarity and creative economy, besides valuing the local culture, in order to foment balance between tradition and innovation.

In museums, sustainability provides an opportunity to rethink practices, review actions, discuss issues, question formats, mobilize the community and, above all, improve social participation for the construction of a world that responds to these actions. The 13th edition of the National Week of Museums brings these issues to debate, it foments society ́s greater awareness of man’s action on our planet and reinforces the urgent need to align our economic and social model to the perspective of continuity and innovation.

Check on the next pages the 4,570 activities prepared by 1,378 museums from all over Brazil for the Week of Museums 2015.

Brazilian Institute of Museums

fonte Ibram - @edisonmariotti #edisonmariotti #semanamuseus2015