Episode 3:
A conversation with Meta Knol
Meta Knol is an art historian and museum director, currently director of Leiden European City of Science 2022 (leiden2022). She is working on the crossroads of culture, science, and society - in a place without walls. With a 365 days science festival, Leiden2022 is strongly relating to our current ‘knowledge society’, posing questions like: How should we deal with vast amounts of scientific knowledge and how does academic research relate to society? Meta’s interest in society has always been there. In 2006, she wrote a manifesto on museums as reserves, more or less standing apart from society, and about the complexity of interacting with society from behind those brick walls. Now, she explores the same mechanisms with regard to universities.
Kristina Petrasova has a background in Cultural Heritage Studies and production of cultural cross media projects. From 2019 she works at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision as project lead digital heritage and public media, focussing on education and re-use of digital audiovisual heritage in creative industries. She is part of the inDICEs project in the area of European intellectual property framework.
Melissa van der Lingen holds a MA in Museum and Heritage Studies and has a background in community projects and heritage development. She conducted research for the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision on the New European Bauhaus to align the policies of cultural heritage institutions with Europe’s vision to transition society in sustainable, inclusive and aesthetically enriching ways. Melissa is a member of the network Erfgoedjong, a platform that gives voice to younger generations to provide new and fresh perspectives on heritage.
KP: Meta, let’s start with Leiden European City of Science. What is your approach?
MK: With Leiden European City of Science we are deliberately operating outside, on the streets, in markets, in shopping malls, schools and community centres – everywhere in the public space. It is going extremely well. My trust in humanity has been increasing as I notice how curious and interested in science and academic research people actually are. How much they like to know about things. How inspiring it is to interact directly with citizens. So I am really learning a lot this year.
KML: What makes this interaction so easy for you, while it remains a challenge within museums?
MK: A lot comes from professional attitudes. People in museums are passionate about their work, and they have great knowledge. As do scientists, who also often communicate their knowledge in a top-down way. However beautiful and inspiring this may be, it remains a challenge for many people to really listen to what scientists have to say. It’s really a different language. And it’s all about pre-fixed patterns, because many professionals are constrained by traditional ways of doing things. In my experience, the capacity to improvise in museums and academics is low, and risk-averse behaviour is very high. This easily leads to the inability to really listen to and respond to the needs of others. What is really necessary for participation and co-creation is letting go of control and building on trust. Try to be truly open to the questions and issues that are relevant to others. Having a curious, listening attitude and improvisational ability. But it is also about conditional management or leadership: set the right conditions to provide someone else the opportunity to create, learn and flourish. Creating these conditions, as an institution, means adopting very different methodologies.
KP: To look for ways to appeal to that grey area much more and maybe also find some openings to break through is what we try to work on every day.
MK: Absolutely. These behavioural patterns and organisational systems are ingrained and difficult to change. It is really about involving people. System change is tough though – imagine how difficult it must be to push sustainable transitions, let go the huge changes that are necessary to tackle climate change! It requires very big, ridiculously big systemic changes.
ML: What makes this interaction so easy for you, while it remains a challenge within museums?
MK: A lot comes from professional attitudes. People in museums are passionate about their work, and they have great knowledge. As do scientists, who also often communicate their knowledge in a top-down way. However beautiful and inspiring this may be, it remains a challenge for many people to really listen to what scientists have to say. It’s really a different language. And it’s all about pre-fixed patterns, because many professionals are constrained by traditional ways of doing things. In my experience, the capacity to improvise in museums and academics is low, and risk-averse behaviour is very high. This easily leads to the inability to to really listen to and respond to the needs of others.
What is really necessary for participation and co-creation is letting go of control and building on trust. Try to be truly open to the questions and issues that are relevant to others. Having a curious, listening attitude and improvisational ability. But it is also about conditional management or leadership: set the right conditions to provide someone else the opportunity to create, learn and flourish. Creating these conditions, as an institution, means adopting very different methodologies.
KP: To look for ways to appeal to that grey area much more and maybe also find some openings to break through is what we try to work on every day.
MK: Absolutely. These behavioural patterns and organisational systems are ingrained and difficult to change. It is really about involving people. System change is tough though – imagine how difficult it must be to push sustainable transitions, let go the huge changes that are necessary to tackle climate change! It requires very big, ridiculously big systemic changes.
ML: For such transitions, what is your view on it now? Where do we start to take those first steps towards such a big change, the sustainable transition?
MK: There is no fixed recipe for it. The important thing is that everybody does something. Because if everyone starts doing small things, you can make big differences together.
If we sit back and think, ‘the government has to do it’ then nothing changes, nothing will happen. I do understand that for many people, climate change is all too big and overwhelming, one feels powerless and it seems not to matter what you do. I felt the same, once. But then I decided, the only way for me to tackle cynicism is to do what I can in my own sphere of influence: in my own household, at work, in my own town, etc. I can do something where I am, now. Then it becomes a local, personal effort by definition.
I was impressed by the books of the American poet, writer and farmer Wendell Berry (essay in Dutch, Groene Amsterdammer nr. 47, 2021). He was born in 1936, and when he was about 30 years old he went to live on a ranch in Kentucky. His artist friends told him being a farmer was a waste of his talents. And yet, he developed his poetry there: he won a Pulitzer prize, and became a local activist, fighting against the pollution of Kentucky rivers. The way he navigates through his local, direct environment is very inspiring. He describes that you have to seek out how you can balance your life with nature, within your own environment. And his recipe for change is easy and effective, First, you must learn everything about where you are. You should be endlessly curious about your own place. Secondly, you should make small changes in that place every single day. Thirdly, stick with those changes! If you keep on doing that, you will notice that small changes, over the years, add up to real, sustainable change. And personal transformation.
These are simple, but workable rules. If you do it as a museum director, for example, it would require pursuing small changes every single day, It would also require cherishing a more holistic view in which nature and culture are balanced. Please note that whilst growth exists in nature, unbridled growth does not exist in the natural world. Growth always comes with decline. It is a cycle true for everything. But in our growth-addicted societies, all our dashboards seem to be set up for infinite growth. We have to change that paradigm, and strive for balance instead of growth, quality above quantity, meaning above materiality. You can’t keep inflating a balloon. One day it will burst.
I think if you can do that on a small scale in your own environment every day, and you just keep going, and if you connect with others who are doing the same in other places, you might be able to make a difference locally, then regionally and then maybe even on national and international scales. For example, my own change in thinking and behaviour led to the Ministry of the Future., of which I became a founder together with future-oriented peers like Klaas Sietse Spoelstra and Merlijn Twaalhoven. We found a community of changemakers throughout The Netherlands. It is the locale that invests communities with their power, and you can see the results all over the country now – at the Waddenzee, in Leiden, at the Floriade and Arcadia Leeuwarden.
Together, we created local sites where where citizens, changemakers, and politicians meet: in Dutch, we call it a Plekberaad voor de Toekomst – in fact, it is a bottom-up Citizens Assembly about the future of a specific place, be it a village, or a town, or a community centre, a school, a sports club, a family, a company, whatever. As long as it is a clear, physical place.
ML: Is that also the Japanese Method? That long-term thinking?
MK: Yes, indeed. Representatives of this place come together to discuss the future of their place, using the Japanese Future Design Method. Part of the group gets a special jacket (in Japan it is a kimono, of course) which turns them into representatives of future generations. Their job is to examine a local problem from the perspective of future generations. That kind of intergenerational thinking is very important. It puts your decisions under the microscope of long-termism. Imagine if all city councillors in the Netherlands would do that every once in a while?
A book that inspired us is by Roman Krznaric, a philosopher from Oxford: The Good Ancestor. It is about what he calls cathedral thinking. In the Middle Ages it was quite normal to build a cathedral knowing you would never see it finished. And it didn’t matter, because people were building the cathedral as an imagined, idealised goal. There were many things built in the past that literally took more than a person’s life to accomplish, and today, we should also adopt projects that are not primarily about us, but that secure the wellbeing of future generations.
We need a long-term perspective within the current mediatized political landscape. In our mediatized world, the opinion of the average part of the population is often more moderate than that of political parties that represent them. Swiss research has proven that politicians often polarise under the influence of the media, while voters remain more nuanced. Civil society often does not share polarised opinions! Which also explains the magic behind Citizens Assembly’s. While the short-termism of politics is actually harming our wellbeing, civil society must step up to defend long-term perspectives.
And museums certainly have a role to play in this paradigm shift. They are the caretakers of cultural heritage, the long-term perspective is in their DNA. Museums are specialists of deep time. Now, they should start acting upon it.
Let me reflect upon a painting by Lucas van Leiden in Museum De Lakenhal. It was painted in 1526 – 1527. We’ve taken perfect care of it for almost 500 years. When you stand in front of it, it looks like it was painted yesterday. That’s a true miracle: it survived for 500 years in good shape. But will it still be there in 500 years? When it comes to stewardship, this is the question. Because if we keep on colonising our world, consume all the natural resources and exhaust the earth, Leiden will be flooded and the painting might literally drown. But if we act as stewards of the natural world, and we foster and value that gift of eternity, then the triptych might still be there 500 years from now.
The heritage sector is doing far too little, and far too late, to change this. They are stuck in short termism. Museums should massively shift towards long termism, embrace sustainability, change their value systems, and adopt a more activist attitude with regard to the future. Yes, it is encouraging that museums are starting to take measures to better insulate their buildings, purchase green energy, waste less materials, et cetera, but they are still hesitant to engage their audience in these efforts, and I really think they should.
ML: There are indeed different perspectives in institutions, and there are clashes of values within institutions too. They too could perhaps also be more in harmony.
MK: That’s right, maybe if you have that conversation with each other, things would change faster and more impactful. However, that doesn’t happen very often, mostly it’s business-as-usual. When De Lakenhal opened in 2019, after its restoration and expansion, we programmed a big Rembrandt show. It was only after the festive opening, that I realised we really shouldn’t do these kinds of blockbusters anymore, because they are really not sustainable. So we organised talks with workers from throughout the museum, who also felt that sustainability issues needed to be discussed. Others really wanted to talk about what the museum can do more for society. In my experience, if you put a curator, a security guard, a collection manager and someone from PR together in a pressure cooker to think about what to do differently, it creates an empathic interaction that makes it easier to bring about change.
In every museum you have different compartments, different blood groups, like the administrators, custodians, and archivists on the one side and the public-oriented, community-oriented crowd on the other side. Conservatives and forward thinkers. Dreamers and do-ers. If you let those two interact with each other, they may collaborate instead of defending their positions. Try to bridge the gaps. Always.
KP: How can we address our top management, who think in terms of revenue models and traditional business models, how can we present them something new that also creates confidence in that change?
MK: Yes, that is a very difficult process. Of course, it depends on who they are, what kind of personalities they represent, and how they influence the culture in their organisations. I would say it is always important to foster an open conversation based on trust instead of control. But whatever the case, it takes courage to address these issues within your organisation.
Do align your peers, don’t do it alone! For example, you may organise a meeting with a peer group from the museum and ask the management to get onboard. Choose a work of art from the collection, sit in front of it on a Monday morning and say, “Hey guys, this painting has been hanging here for 146 years now, and it has been around for 238 years, but what does its future actually look like? What will our museum look like in 146 years? Will the painting still exist, 238 years from now?” Make it as tangible and as concrete as possible. Invite a climate scientist to give a presentation on the future of your area. And then take another look at that painting.
For instance at Sound & Vision, you could seek out the oldest analog film in the collection and show it. Ask your peers what the world looked like back then. Transfer it to an imaginative future and consider what that will look like. You could have such a profound conversation! So that’s the trick: look for tangible content in the proximity of things, be curious and use your imagination.
KP: Large institutes have a certain policy, a certain attitude, people are given the space to develop things. However, the culture in different institutions is different. That renewal is going to happen anyway, because new generations take over. But with many smaller institutions, people are working on their own island, there is very little in common with what is happening in the world. In life actually.
MK: Wherever you are, draw a circle around that place and start wondering what you can change. And just start doing it. Margaret Mead once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”: We all just need to start doing it.
I say ‘just do it’ because I often see we get stuck in talking, in becoming aware. We need to act and make it real. I’ll give you an example. Recently, I was at a Rector’s Assembly of European universities. A scientist from Geneva University gave a passionate speech about the sustainable transition of universities. His talk was about ideas, about major systemic changes that are required to tackle climate change. After his talk, the moderator asked him how the audience could start changing their habits the very next day. What could they do differently? He couldn’t tell, he was literally stuck in the abstract level of theory. So I thought: “These people came here to talk about climate change, they got goodie bags with things to throw away, there’s too much food at the buffet. Nothing is changing, it’s business as usual. The only difference is that they are talking about change now, which they didn’t do last year.”
Trust in science is key, we have to trust scientists. Their reports on climate change are 98% provably correct, There’s really no doubt about climate change happening. It is an inescapable truth. And yet, scientists themselves often do not take action, and universities are changing their policies far too slowly. How is that possible?
ML: Yes, that makes you question. Yet, that’s also the principle, the breeding ground of the New European Bauhaus. Who actually wants to bring everything, all institutions, all sectors, universities, science and culture, and citizens together in order to make that sustainable impact? It has to be more interdisciplinary. Then I wonder, what are good first steps for cultural institutions, where it is still a problem that institutions are not yet integrated with other sectors in order to make a sustainable impact?
MK: As I described earlier: the compartmentalization in the institutions themselves and their attachment to fixed structures, fixed patterns, that’s complex. But remember, we all have our small or big habits, and there is always a moment in your life when you change them very consciously. And then, with some perseverance, new habits become automated and internalised. In people, but also in organisations. Of course, when you have to put that record into a different groove, it takes effort. But things can change. They change all the time.
And then, Interdisciplinarity, it’s a buzzword these days, also in academia. Just like the word ecosystem: everyone is talking about ecosystems. I remember in 2013 the concept of inclusivity emerged for the first time. Until then, in the cultural sector we worked with the concept of exclusivity. It was very important that you were exclusive in the sense of being original, special, unlike anything else. In those days we only used the word inclusive for VAT. And now, of course, that very same word is widely used as a new set of values that shapes our society, which is becoming more and more inclusive. It’s a wonderful development. You don’t hear the word exclusive that much anymore.
Now you have the same with the word ecosystem, which is emerging. Biologists, micro-nerds such as Merlin Sheldrake and economists like Mariana Mazzucato are talking about underground fungal networks and all the dependencies and relationships in nature, using it as metaphors for the transition from endless growth to natural balance. Ecosystems are about interaction, about constantly changing relationships. The other buzzword is interdisciplinarity. University visions written this year are all about interdisciplinarity. What does that mean? I think it means we’re at the beginning of a new, interconnected era. It’s a great development. We need to open up, let in new perspectives and collaborate much more to tackle today’s big challenges. It fuels me with optimism.
I am almost certain that the heritage sector will also follow, although I wonder if it’s going fast enough. I hope that the pioneers in the sector step up and become visible. Organisations like Europeana or NEMO, the Dutch museum association and Eyecom really need to put those pioneers on the shield for a while, because they can inspire all of us to speed up change.
ML: A bit different from the blockbusters so to speak.
KP: Let’s conclude our talk with the topic of blockbuster projects. I read your opinion piece a few years ago. It was such a relief that a leading person in the field speaks out and that it leads to a public discussion. It is difficult to work without being influenced by the market because you are really pushed into the system, while you work with public budgets and a public mission. That makes it difficult for a heritage institution to reconcile with market forces. The market has also to deal with copyrights and heritage organisations being agents of copyright protection. I find it very problematic that institutions are pushed into the function of gatekeepers participating in the market economy. What is your vision for that, for how professionals can adjust their work towards a change in balance?
MK: Yes, that’s difficult. You want to swim in natural water, but you just have to go into that chlorine bath every day. If that is your environment, then it’s almost impossible to change. But yet, as I said, I do think that everyone can make small choices every day. Having a values compass might help, though. Everyone carries his or her values along, either consciously or unconsciously. By putting your values first, taking them seriously and even sharing them openly with your friends and colleagues, it will be easier to make choices and change.
I call it a compass of values. For example, I consciously choose quality over quantity. When I am confronted with a question that tempts me to go for quantity, I choose quality instead. Last year, we were tasked with organising the largest interdisciplinary science conference in Europe, at the Leiden European City of Science 2022. Pre-corona the congress welcomed 4,500 people, and there was a lot of pressure to invite them all again. And yet we have chosen to only admit 1,500 people, half of whom are speakers, employees and panellists. The rest were invited to participate online.
KP: And of course you have to keep defending that. If it becomes a matter of principle, then you pretty much put up a barricade against the system.
MK: You can also have a values compass as an organisation. We are all mission driven and stuff, but what if you take a look at the values that lie beneath it, instead of what you want to achieve. Wouldn’t that be something? Meaning over numbers?
ML: So actually more the culture of an organisation instead of where you want to go.
MK: Yes, exactly. You have the values compass as a point of departure on one hand, and then the big hairy goal of sustainable change on the other hand. The tension between the two shapes the culture of your organisation. Management is just an instrument to process this.
K: One last question that is somewhat related to this. The value of open access, what are the new values that we can promote? That we can tell people so we can put those barricades up?
MK: In a networked society, in a knowledge society, in an ecosystem in which sharing is the new caring. Do I need to say more? Open data is the way to go. I absolutely believe it is. But we also need to protect this culture of openness. While Wikipedia still works very well, look at what’s happening with social media for example. Distributed models become more and more monopolised. It’s not my area of expertise, but someone like digital strategist Michael Peter Edson can tell you a lot about the opportunities and pitfalls of an open internet. It’s always those two options. It’s a dark web, and a huge opportunity to share and scale at the same time.
The way in which the heritage institutions deal with digital heritage is quite old-fashioned. I find it painful to see that those compartmentalised systems are not at all tailored to our contemporary information society. In two ways: the lack of linked open data and the old-fashioned value systems underpinning registration systems. There is enormous indecision about the type of data that should be collected, and a real lack of openness.
KP: That is where the role of education comes in. And digital literacy is also extremely important. In high school computer science is developing, but to really learn digital literacy you have to put in more effort. I think it’s important to look at the fact that heritage institutions also play a role.
MK: The question is whether you train consumers or citizens. We have a new minister. Robbert Dijkgraaf, an open thinker, who emphatically links science to culture and art, He has a clear vision on the position of science in the public domain and actively promotes public engagement with science. Culture and public belong together like clouds and water. As soon as someone started beating a drum, way back, there was an immediate audience. But scientists have been working in splendid isolation for centuries. In our contemporary society, that’s no longer possible: universities need to reinvent themselves with regard to the public domain. They should become part of the public sector and as such, might learn quite a lot from cultural institutions. It’s not enough to communicate top-down through the communication department. Scientists should get used to co-creation, participation, listening, answering questions, and tune in with society. It’s a whole new attitude.
