So, in terms of impact and sustainability of the project,
there are two sides to this, in my opinion.
On the one hand, because our citizen science initiative
was a temporary exhibit, by definition
it was meant as a sort of one shot initiative with
limited duration.
And so in that sense,
the project, the completion of the project
at the end of the nine months of the show meant that we folded
and we closed our doors and the project ended there,
leaving a number of productions in its wake, I must say,
an exhibition catalog, we are working currently on an edited volume,
more analytical than the catalog, to reflect
over this exhibition initiative and our
joint experience involving the tour guides
and a number of people who shared their memories with us in that edited volume,
we still have our website, which we try to maintain and
also nurture through new material.
But the exhibition ended in June 2022.
On the other hand, the specific character of that exhibition was that it was meant
from the get go as a sort of trial run for a future permanent
brick and mortar museum in the working class suburbs of Paris.
So in that sense, a number of ideas,
a lot of the feedback we got, also the reputation that we built
with donors and also the news media will carry over
hopefully to that next step of ours, which is the museum.
Also, a number of
video interviews and artifacts
that we gathered from witnesses
that couldn't be featured in the exhibition
will be part of the collections of the museum.
That was the agreement we struck with people who entrusted us
with those kinds of materials.
So again, that's a sort of link
between the exhibition and the next project of ours.
As for the citizens who participated in the exhibition,
they let us know various times that they felt acknowledged
and moved by taking part in this initiative.
Nowadays,
the school curricula, the entertainment industry, the general discourse
still does not make a lot of room to social history.
And so people don't really know that history is also history from below,
made by regular workers and working
families and stay at home mothers.
And so one impact of the project was to change
their perspective on their own history and history in general.
As for visitors more broadly, we were able to attract,
beyond only the schoolchildren, a number of people from the area.
And one of the strategies to attract them was to really give
a proper thought to the entrance fees.
So I would recommend you to think hard about this
if you devise
an exhibition or a public project like this.
So we decided to have the entrance fee
completely waived, so the entrance was free for
all the residents of the particular town we were working in.
Then it was half price for the entire area around that town, which is made of
also working class suburbs.
And so through this
particular entrance
fee of ours, this free entrance that we had decided,
we were able also to attract people who wouldn't have
necessarily crossed our
threshold and come in the first place.
And to be fully
complete on this, I would say that the participation
of the people who helped us was featured
all over the exhibition.
We had a wall with all the contributors of the exhibition, so
their contribution was acknowledged and that's very important as well.
They were identified by name, their photographs were there.
So in that sense, we really wanted to show
everyone that this project was co-constructed with the inhabitants
of that building complex and the neighborhood around it.