Glammons: On Commoning Museums and Other Cultural Memory Organisations

This paper presents findings from the GLAMMONS project (2022-2025), an EU Horizon-funded research project focusing on small, community-run GLAMs (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums). Framed by the concept of the commoning (Dardot & Laval, 2019; Linebaugh, 2008), this research aims to understand how self-organised communities address their cultural needs and explores how communities generate mutual wealth through the collective production and sharing of cultural resources, highlighting the collaborative and participatory processes that underpin them. A commoning perspective broadens the understanding of the diverse forms and processes involved in 'doing GLAMS', which seek to challenge dominant economic narratives, by proposing alternative models and frameworks for how these institutions can operate in a more socially engaged way. This approach demonstrates the capacity of community-driven GLAMs to promote cultural sustainability and collective ownership outside traditional institutional frameworks of the market or the state. The presentation will introduce the project, the methodology and the first findings on one aspect we are investigating: how different financial practices can facilitate and sustain community building in cultural memory institutions. To ensure long-term sustainability, all commons activities need resources to sustain their commoning - gifts, donations, volunteer work or financial practices that align with commoning principles such as indirect social reciprocity, autonomy, and self-organisation (Perilleux & Nyssens, 2017). A commons perspective raises many substantial questions for the GLAM sector and cultural policymaking. For example, contemporary public cultural funding often perpetuates neoliberal principles of competition, newness, efficiency, and market-orientation. Yet how would a more equitable, non-extractive funding paradigm look like that would enable heritage commons in the GLAM sector?