Paper will be devoted to the educational exhibition “What does Lace and Windmills Have in Common? The Low Countries” which took place at the National Museum in Poznań, Poland in 2013 . The exhibition was a result of so called co-creative participatory project (according to Nina Simon).
The community members were teachers. Teachers as members of participatory team realized all functions which usually belong to curators. They selected objects for the exhibition, its title as well as defined themes of particular parts of the exhibition. Teachers also created interpretative plan, they helped to design exhibition and created rich educational kit for schools which was published online on the museum web site.
The pedagogical experience of teachers was an opportunity to create the exhibition, which differed from the exhibitions organized at the National Museum in Poznan. The exhibitions draw from the assumptions of constructivism and referred to the theory of multiple intelligences. The teachers knowledge of contemporary Belgium and the Netherlands was the starting point for determining the choice of topics and objects which were presented. The way of presentation of objects (involving also senses of touch, hearing and smell) enriched the experience and understanding by the visitors.
The exhibition has become a challenge for the everyday curatorial practice of the National Museum in Poznan. For that reason the paper will consider changing of such traditional assumptions of creating exhibition as the paradigm of the individual authorship, paradigm of transferring knowledge to public and the habit organizing exhibitions without the participation of the potential recipients. Instead, the exhibition was created by the team, based on the experience of team members and relied on the exchange of knowledge between the museum staff and members of the community.