About the project
In the next few years, the Museum Selma – a project of the Documentation Center and Museum of Migration in Germany (DOMiD) – will be coming to the heart of Cologne's Kalk district. The museum will house permanent and temporary exhibitions exploring how migration has been inscribed on Germany history and how it has shaped the ways we live together in society.
The project DOMiDLabs: Making Museum Design Participatory (DOMiDLabs) grew out of DOMiD's wish for the wider community to be involved in the development and formation of the museum. DOMiDLabs was funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation from 2021 through 2024. The goal of our project was, over the course of four laboratories (labs), to develop design concepts and content covering different topics with various people.
Each lab-team engaged with a variety of questions, such as: How can people meet and interact with each other in the museum? What would an exhibition that enables the museum to react to current debates look like? How can topics and stories be respectfully exhibited? The resulting discussions and answers will help DOMiD to create a multifaceted and engaging museum.
Each lab run for about eleven months and concluded with an exhibition. The ideas and findings resulted from the labs were presented to the public in these exhibitions, and visitors tested and commented on them. The exhibitions displayed in various locations in Cologne between 2022 and 2024.
