Funding Acknowledgements
The Shared Island Stories research project was selected by the European Research Council (ERC) and funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) with reference: EP/X023036/1.
We also thank all the institutions that contributed to fund the international conference held in New Caledonia in October 2023: Association des musées et des établissements patrimoniaux de Nouvelle-Calédonie, Université de Nouvelle-Calédonie and research team TROCA, Province Sud, Province Nord, Province des îles, Mission des Affaires culturelles de Nouvelle-Calédonie and the Gouvernement de Nouvelle-Calédonie.

1From a continental European perspective, islands have long been considered as separated and isolated spaces, disconnected from one another and from the rest of their environment. Colonial histories, as well as cultural and scientific movements, have further created boundaries between islands, people and things. This double special issue of the ICOFOM Study Series aims to rethink such a perspective on islands by bringing together papers from around the world that draw on alternative views, notably from the Pacific and Caribbean regions concerning oceanic islands (i.e. those formed of coral or undersea volcanic eruptions [Deleuze, 2002]). Resonating through many of the papers will be the type of island thinking associated with the poem cited above by the Marshallese poet, performer, educator and activist Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner, which expresses a view of interconnectivity between people and the ocean and a native resistance to displacement. Tongan-Fijian scholar Epeli Hau‘ofa (1939–2009) (“Our Sea of Islands”, 1994), and Martiniquais scholar and poet Édouard Glissant (1928-2011) (Poetics of Relation, 1996) previously emphasised related ideas of sea connectedness and subterranean relationality rather than separateness; a key concept common to many of the papers that follow.

2Island studies and its misconceptions have been shaped by the distinctive features of islands, not least their state of being surrounded by water and being seen to be “remote” from a mainland perspective. For example, the term insular/insularity, derived from the Latin, differs in use between the French (insulaire, where it implies an idea of remoteness and mental isolation), and the English (where it has been associated at times with a negative form of introspection). Similarly, ideas of boundedness associated with islands can be construed as adverse if seen as a form of enclosure. From an islander’s point of view, however, the richness of their culture, sense of place, and world view (dùtchas in Scottish Gaelic), negates metropole perceptions of the “remoteness” of islands (Brown, 2019), and opens more pathways to interconnectivity.

3In the field of memory studies, the term transnational prompts discourse about collective memory beyond the nation state (De Cesari & Rigney, 2014). This allows new understandings of networks of commerce and exchange across national borders, and of the concept of “local” within broader transnational imaginaries (Bond, 2023). In the words of De Cesari and Rigney, transnationalism “recognizes the significance of national frameworks alongside the potential of cultural production both to reinforce and to transcend them”, so that we might rather study “non-linear trajectories and complex temporalities” through a more open framework (De Cesari & Rigney, 2014, pp. 19, 23). Taking these premises as a cue for a discussion among island museums and heritage communities, the transnational prompts us to ask questions: How do island memory cultures work? How do museum narratives interact transnationally, notably along the fault lines created by colonialism, as “transnational cross-currents were also at the heart of colonialism, slavery, and other forms of exploitation by globalized capital involving the violent asymmetrical entanglement of racialized communities” (De Cesari & Rigney, 2014, p. 24)?

4As noted above, writers from different islands have suggested that islands are spaces of connectivity through the sea surrounding them. Many islanders, notably those from Oceania, have a long history of multigenerational oceanic voyages of encounters (Lowenthal, 2007). In his foundational and highly cited article “Our Sea of Islands” (1994), Hau‘ofa describes how Pacific islanders were not living on “islands in a far sea” but are inhabitants of a “sea of islands”, rebutting the long-term continental perspective. For him, “outsiders often conceive of islands as separated and confined as well as defined through their (national) borders, which often arose from colonial and decolonial dynamics thereby overlooking connectivity, heterogeneity, and complexity” (p. 152). Hau‘ofa invokes the myths, legends, oral traditions and cosmologies of the peoples of Oceania, which include the ocean, heavens and underworld as part of an Oceania that is anything but focused on smallness of scale as characterised by continental views.

5Other oceans and seas across the globe have been serving as roads that connect peoples and spaces, allowing the circulation of tangible and intangible things. The Indian Ocean, for example, has long been a commercial road that connected East African empires and Asia (Bouchet, 2019; Nativel & Ragoanah, 2007). In the context of the Caribbean, the triangular trade route is another oceanic passage carrying not only peoples and goods but also diverse cultures, histories, practices, livelihoods and memories. Through these routes, tangible and intangible things were taken from one space to another across national borders. For enslaved peoples who had been displaced from West Africa to the Caribbean islands, the trade routes created a diasporic culture rooted in the idea of exile and absence (Chamoiseau, 2016; Chivallon, 2004; Cottias et al., 2010). The mental trans-oceanic connection fostered the idea of a “Black Atlantic” that brings together African peoples with islanders of African descent in the Caribbean islands as well as continental America (Gilroy, 1993; see also the authors of the French-speaking Négritude).

7Island heritages today, therefore, do not see the ocean as a barrier or the land as security. Rather, as explored by Foley et al. (following the works of Tsing, 2015; Pugh & Chandler, 2021), island studies today often focuses on the power of island thinking beyond the linear progress and development associated with modernity (Foley et al., 2023), through an emphasis on islands’ relationalities and Indigenous practices. In the end they conclude: “Island cultures and islandness can emphasize mobility and movement while also remaining deeply connected to place” (Foley et al., 2023, p. 1809).

Island museologies and heritages: what are they?

8In this context, what do island heritages in the world have in common? It is difficult to consider island heritages as a whole, considering how diverse they are. However, as many authors show in this special issue, island heritages from different territories and trajectories do share some similarities. Indeed, island heritages have suffered – some are still suffering – from dispersion, disconnection, loss, destruction, lack of interest, absence of preservation and transmission, misrepresentation, and marginalisation, amongst other issues.

9During colonialism and the establishment of nation states, intangible cultures were forbidden or forgotten. Many languages, for instance, were not allowed to be spoken or they were practised secretly, whereas over the past few decades, island communities have been defending their identities through their cultures and their heritages. Simultaneously, waves of “island collecting” (Longair, 2024) caused the dispersion of material cultures (see papers by Widdis & Reisz and by Scuderi in this volume). Collecting happened in different ways, from gift-giving to violent looting. Through the history of collecting, material artefacts from islands circulated across the world and entered private and public collections (Melandri & Guiot, 2021).

10Since the 1960s, museums and local communities have been working together to redefine relationships and authority, as well as change representation and narratives (Peers & Brown, 2003). As shown in this volume, collaborative projects, digital databases, exhibitions, and productions with artists are used as tools to reconnect material objects with the descendants of those who created them. The establishment of colonial societies in this “confetti of empire” has also favoured the emergence of new heritage objects: curios, trade goods, Western-inspired artistic or decorative art productions, graphic arts, military and religious heritage, and shipwrecks. The heritage – or status – of these objects, which serve as cultural and historical witnesses, still raises questions among island populations today. These examples illustrate the plurality of island heritages, the complexity of their history, and the challenges that their contemporary enhancement may face. What, then, are appropriate ways to share island heritages?

11National and large municipal museums are often derived from former colonial museums built in the 19th and 20th centuries and, therefore, sometimes still adopt narratives embedded in imperial and colonial histories. Yet they are limited in number around many archipelagos. For example, in the Anglophone Caribbean, the prominent museums are the National Museum and Art Gallery in Port of Spain, Trinidad (established in 1892), the National Gallery of Jamaica in Kingston, Jamaica (established in 1974), and the National Gallery of Grand Cayman (established in 1996). Such institutions, critiqued by Alissandra Cummins in relation to Western practices as well as colonial narratives (Cummins, 2004), have been explored further through the lens of a constructed nature/culture divide in the development of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society. At the same time, this small number of national museums is balanced by the predominance on the islands of community museums and grassroots community heritage initiatives, a number of which arguably model best practice in sustainable island livelihoods (Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, 2018; Brown et al., 2019; Brown & Caesar, 2020). In Pacific islands, national museums have been reformed since the 1980s while, simultaneously, many cultural centres and community museums were created to promote and empower Indigenous cultures and heritages, a topic explored further by Conal McCarthy and Tarisi Vunidilo in this volume. The practices behind these different models of heritage management came together: national museums were tasked with considering Indigenous perspectives and practices regarding heritage. This is particularly the case in Aotearoa (New Zealand), where Te Papa Tongarewa, the national museum, was built as a bicultural institution with a strong focus on Maori culture and the Mana Taonga policy recognises the ancestral value of the collections for Maori people. The Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta in Port-Vila (Vanuatu) is also an institution that has a strong focus on communities of the archipelago (Geismar, 2003). However, one of the difficulties faced by these museums is the ability to create a national narrative that reflects postcolonial societies and their diversity, namely Indigenous people, several waves of immigrants during the colonial regimes, and capitalist expansion (Bertin, 2020), as Cassandre Decorce shows in the case of New Caledonia in this issue. Marine Vallée’s paper further presents the difficulties of representing a wide range of communities into one national narrative – in this case French Polynesia, which includes 118 islands.

Presentation of the volume

14These two conferences started with a similar idea: to give a broad overview of island museologies and heritages. Working in island heritage, we recognise that taxonomies created by the Western hegemonic disciplines cannot authentically reflect how people, things, and environment are deeply interconnected – as Conal McCarthy reminds us in his essay based on his keynote speech delivered at the University of St Andrews in June 2024.

15The papers received and included in this issue represent a wide range of disciplines from museology to art history, colonial history, memory studies, heritage studies, and environmental studies. The methodologies used in the papers are, by necessity, often interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary in order to consider transnational island stories and heritages in their complexity. They address common subthemes, such as narratives and power relations behind island heritages. Who tells and controls the stories? How can island heritage open up to unheard stories of Empire? Island communities were marginalised in colonial regimes and nation-state contexts: challenging national narratives to present a better representation of island heritage and identities is still an issue, as shown by essays in this volume by Nicole Bittencourt and Yi-An Chen in the context of the Ainu Indigenous peoples in Japan, and by Yi-An Chen regarding Taiwanese oceanic legacies that defy the continental Sinocentric perspectives. These papers remind us of the important role of heritage in building identities: heritage and museums can be strong tools in helping to define identities, but at the same time they are power institutions and create inclusion/exclusion dialectics.

16Transmission of traditional knowledge was a key topic for the two conferences. The case studies presented in the papers illustrate the variety of modes of transmission used when talking about island heritages. Collections of artefacts and museum exhibitions are far from the only way to transmit those heritages into communities and the population at large. Transgenerational transmission – the role of the younger generation in particular – is important, as the Shared Island Stories Project exemplifies (see Jamie Allan Brown and Kaye Hall in this volume). Their paper together with that of Leilani Wong’s case study of the ecomuseum of Te Fare give an overview of the different stakeholders involved in the transmission of island heritage: young people, NGOs, governments, Indigenous and source communities, artists, heritage practitioners, museums and other heritage institutions. Ultimately, several Indigenous ways of learning, transmitting, and understanding heritage were presented at both conferences, including oral testimony and experience. These Indigenous understandings of heritage and transmission are a means to unpack the museum model inherited from the European world and the Enlightenment. Both Conal McCarthy and Tarisi Vunidolo quote from the essay by the scholar of Maori descent Hirini Sidney Moko Mead (1983) about Pacific models of preserving and sharing heritage. Cultural centres, houses, ecomuseums, community museums, micro-museologies, amongst others, are models adopted by islands around the world to better fit with their source communities (see, for example, chapters by Alexandria Bounia and Darko Babić in this volume). In doing so, these island museologies build stronger relationships with the local communities who are really a part of the museum work. They also place experience and emotions at the core of transmission, even for outsiders. A number of testimonies of island cultures are now scattered around the world as part of museum collections. Collaborative projects and sometimes new technologies, such as databases, have been used to reconnect and encourage new ways of preserving this heritage while respecting and involving the local communities. Shared authority and knowledge are important steps toward inclusion of new voices to museum collections (see in this volume Barsinas et al., Bertin & Tissandier, Vunidolo).

17But what happens when knowledge transmission ends? What are the risks faced by island heritage? They include the decline of native practices brought about by colonial and missionary activity that caused destruction and loss and slavery; the climate crisis and rising sea levels; and natural disasters. What can be done? How resilient are islands?

18In relation to the threats of unsustainable tourism, coastal erosion and rising sea levels, the digitization of island heritage is often posited as one solution. In a global post-pandemic world, the visibility of island heritage is increasing through digitization. Yet digitization projects can be equated with the touristic gaze, which has its roots in colonial administration (Thompson, 2007), an issue addressed by several authors of this issue, including those from the Marquesas Islands. How can museology work in tandem with these histories and the growth of technology, cognisant of the digital fractures experienced by some populations or communities and the facilitation of remote exchanges with the rest of the world? Are other forms of visibility preferable? Furthermore, is the visibility of island heritage dependent on the appropriate functioning of the tourism sector? What are the economic issues behind the visibility effort?

19Related to this issue is the fact that in the face of the climate emergency, islands are often held up in the media as sites of endangered land and livelihoods. Internationally, there is growing recognition of the wisdom within Indigenous and native knowledge regarding climate resilience and the preservation of human and biodiversity. Yet while Indigenous biocultural diversity is increasingly valued, it is also being eroded at an alarming rate. Approximately one-tenth of the world’s population live on islands (Lowenthal, 2007). Islands cover “only 6.7% of land surface area” of our world, but “they harbor ~20% of the Earth’s biodiversity, but unfortunately also ~50% of the threatened species and 75% of the known extinctions since the European expansion around the globe” (Fernández-Palacios et al., 2021).

20A major motivation behind this volume is therefore to better understand what intergenerational transmission of Indigenous and traditional knowledge brings to debates on climate justice, especially as they relate to the role of young people. This approach builds upon the recent trend in museum studies to engage meaningfully with the climate emergency. For example, Fiona Cameron, Jennifer Newell, Robert Janes, Richard Sandell and others have advocated for museums to ‘wake up’ and engage in climate action (Cameron et. al., 2012; Cameron et. al., 2015; Newell, 2017; Janes & Sandell, 2019). Meanwhile, museum support organisations, including ICOM and NEMO, are strongly engaged in promoting the role of museums as partners in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (McGhee, 2022). A great many heritage and related networks have also been formed to build networks and increase capacity at a variety of levels towards impactful climate action. Several papers selected for this volume therefore engage in new ways of thinking about island heritage and islandness in relation to the ecological crisis. Considering not only ideas of the Anthropocene but also more-than-human worlds, these texts are ​​building on thinking emerging through the work of scholars including Fiona Cameron, Kirsten Wehner, Jennifer Newell, and Libby Robin, who touch on relationships between people and nature that would normally be the premise of anthropology in the context of museums (Cameron & Neilson, 2015; Newell et al. [eds.], 2017; Moran, 2017). Wehner, for example, defines ecological museology as a way of thinking that combines nature and culture to develop new understandings of the interweaving and inter-reliance of human and non-human worlds in the context of Australia. This is the context where this ICOFOM Study Series volume hopes to fill a gap and bring food for thought for the present and the future in museum and heritage studies.

21In this special issue, we seek to build knowledge around relationships between Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and museology, recognising the value of museums and heritage sites as loci of research to help us all to understand how we have adapted to climate change over time. Several papers herein seek to better understand the ways in which such traditional knowledge is influencing academia and public policies from a global perspective. At the same time, intergenerational transfer of traditional knowledge helps to safeguard identities and memories at risk of being lost. Museums, heritage sites and cultural centres can be focal points for this work by offering opportunities for people from different generations to engage with their heritage, thus strengthening their sense of identity and place. In seeking to move towards an ecological museology in times of climate emergency, we therefore ask: What does Indigenous heritage and traditional knowledge in rural, coastal and island areas teach us about resilience in the face of climate change, biodiversity loss and coastal erosion? In what ways can museums and heritage sites work with local biodiversity, language and the unique nature of places to work towards local resilience? What are the challenges and opportunities in engaging with the sustainability debates from an environmental humanities perspective, notably oceanic imaginaries? What does intergenerational transmission of Indigenous and traditional knowledge bring to debates on climate justice, especially as they relate to the role of young people?

22The papers in this volume have been selected by six members of the scientific and organising committees of the conferences held in New Caledonia and Scotland, representing a diversity of territories and disciplines. Our aim is for the volume to offer a strong addition to the field of island heritage and museum studies, supplementing ICOFOM’s collection of publications focused on decolonising museology and under-studied territories (Caribbean museology, for instance). In what follows, we have arranged the papers into three overarching themes: Colonial Collecting and the Archive – Contesting Histories; Rethinking Indigenous Island Museologies; and Intergenerational Transmission and Island Ecologies.

Colonial collecting and the archive – contesting histories

23Colonial collecting forms the basis of the opening papers of this volume. Briony Widdis and Emma Reisz’s paper, “Collecting ambiguity: Objects and the afterlives of Empire on the island of Ireland,” challenges narratives around the legacies of Empire on the island of Ireland (principally Northern Ireland), by adopting a novel combination of object biography, autoethnography and “non-public” history. Exposing how objects accumulate histories through time, the authors explore the role of Empire in shaping Ireland’s divisions in a country in the early stages of addressing the legacies and afterlives of colonialism. They highlight how co-production alone does not answer the challenge of decolonisation processes in the context of entrenched collective histories and argue that autoethnography can elucidate entanglements with global imperialism and colonial exploitation. Museums, they suggest, can transform from repositories of contested histories to platforms for reflection, education and exchange.

24Maria Chiara Scuderi’s paper, “From Borneo to Leicester: Colonial entanglements in the Dryad ‘Handicrafts’ Collection,” looks at the early 20th-century global circulation and reuse of crafts from the island of Borneo in the commercial and educational context of Leicester in England. The author draws on extensive new archival evidence from the collection of Harry Peach concerning the use of photography to enhance and propagate knowledge about Bornean material culture.

25Scattered museum collections and archives are also central in the context of the inventory of the Kanak scattered heritage, a corpus of objects preserved in museums around the world and recorded on a database led by the Musée de Nouvelle-Calédonie. This database and the inventory process are described by Marion Bertin and Marianne Tissandier in their essay, “The Inventory of Dispersed Kanak Heritage: Transnational museology and entangled territories.” The authors demonstrate how this database is an example of transnational museology on several levels: it records the scattered Kanak collections in museums, it circulates the data, and it operates in consultation with databases around the world. Bertin and Tissandier also insist on the local importance of this database, in that it gives back information about museum collections and provides more space for Kanak knowledge.

26The essay written by Vainui Barsinas, Jean-Daniel Tokainiua Devatine, Vaiana Giraud, Hélène Guiot, Tamara Maric, Magali Mélandri, and Marine Vallée, “Collaborative practice, material and immaterial knowledge transmission in French Polynesia”, is a perfect example of collaborative methodologies in examining scattered collections. It looks at traditional fans from French Polynesia preserved in the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac. The project, called Rara’a, aims to challenge and decolonise museum knowledge of scattered collections, decentre the thinking behind the collecting, and give access to the descendants of those who created the fans. This project addresses Indigenous sovereignty in the context of collections and data.

Rethinking Indigenous island museologies

27Opening the next section is “Learning from Pacific museologies: Heritage, culture and environment in the islands of Moana Oceania” by Conal McCarthy, which introduces several salient themes addressed in subsequent case studies. Drawing on scholarship and examples of Indigenous and Oceanian museologies, McCarthy highlights examples from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand in particular to illustrate how, in the end, the people of Moana Oceania have already shown the way to safeguarding our heritage and planet. Moving beyond a focus on museums and things towards a relational approach to museums focused on a broader continuum, including traditional heritage practices of care for “country”, culture and other people, can ultimately lead to a more embedded community-led climate activism.

28This point is furthered in “Pacific museums and cultural centres: Redefining & indigenizing museum spaces the Pacific way” by Tarisi Vunidilo, which emphasises the role of museums in fulfilling community needs according to traditional Polynesian Indigenous ways of designing educational programmes for all generations. Significantly, Vunidilo points out, the most effective ways to do this in the Pacific region are not so much through museums inherited from Western colonisation as through cultural centres promoting the resilience of living cultures and environments at risk through collaborative efforts. The Vanuatu Cultural Centre, for example, is defined as a living space for such work, including the promotion of sand drawing art beyond the outer islands. Here, Indigenous communities participate not only as participants but also as trainers.

29In their paper “Narratives and island heritage representation: Navigating the Ainu exhibitions on Hokkaido”, Nicolle Bittencourt and Yi-An Chen also engage with the representation of Indigenous culture – in this case, the people of Hokkaido Island in Japan. In examining four exhibitions from the island, they question ideas of cultural expression and agency. Engaging in critical debates based on museology relating to the rights of marginalized groups, as well as postcolonial theory more broadly, they showcase how there is a challenge in places, including but not limited to the national museum and park, to engage critically with legacies of settler colonialism, contemporary Ainu struggles, and “a more just and inclusive national memory.” Their text reminds us of the important role of museums in shaping national identities and narratives through inclusion and exclusion. Chen’s paper “Empowering narratives: Rethinking Taiwan through the National Museum of History in Taiwan” then looks in depth at the Oceanic Taiwan exhibition at Taiwan’s National Museum of History to open more debate on national identity through museum narratives at the crossroads of the Pacific Ocean and continental China.

30Also focused on a marginalized and disenfranchised community, Leilani Wong’s paper “Museums as social action: Building equity in marginalised communities” takes the case study of the ecomuseum of Te Fare Natura (“the house of nature”) in Moorea, French Polynesia, to illustrate a success story of youth empowerment through museum development. By addressing specific needs identified by the community, the ecomuseum has brought over 400 Ma’ohi students out of a situation of poverty and social issues under a dominant colonial administration to a place of growth through the revival of knowledge around Polynesian ecosystems of land and sea in a delicate insular environment. By uplifting traditional practices and cosmovisions through non-Western forms of learning, including oral transmission, the project has enabled youths to understand their value as agents of environmental protection through ancestral lineage and begin a path of emancipation. Viewing the concept of ecomuseum in a Polynesian context, this example shows how a museum can be a bridge between different knowledges and communities.

31The case study of the Maison de la Nouvelle-Calédonie (Paris, France), described by Cassandre Decorce in her essay “The exhibition as an emanation of voice: Symbolism and spatial design at the Maison de la Nouvelle-Calédonie”, demonstrates an attempt to bring more of our senses into exhibitions. The exhibition refers to Kanak metaphors such as the importance of the voice, the invisible, and routes and passages, as well as the other communities living in the archipelago in the context of the definition of New Caledonian identity and nation-building. In addition to the exhibition itself, Decorce stresses the importance of people behind the scenes, here the director of the institution. Being a “house” instead of a “museum” the Maison de la Nouvelle-Calédonie invites us to rethink models, including the role that heritage can play as an ambassador when outside its original territory.

32In their essay entitled “Rediscovering the voice of our objects: Museological approaches and cultural claims in the fenua ènata,” Guillaume Molle, Marine Vallée, Anatauarii Tamarii, Nestor Ohu, Ranka Aunoa, and Joseph Vaatete shine a light on several topics discussed in this volume, such as the reappropriation of knowledge and heritage by source communities. Presenting examples from the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia, they discuss the role of museums in keeping “objects alive” (i.e., meaningful to the communities) and in keeping objects inside the archipelago rather than exported. The authors present the case of community and local museums made for the communities.

33By contrast, in their paper “Transmission, archipelagos and audiences: the renovated museum in Tahiti”, Marine Vallée and Tamara Maric discuss the new display and narratives in the Te Fare Iamanaha – Musée de Tahiti et des Îles, which opened in March 2023 in the administrative centre for French Polynesia. The challenges behind the new permanent display were to bring a more Polynesian perspective on collections and history (instead of a very European-based one), as well as to equally represent the five archipelagos of French Polynesia. One of the key questions here is: Who are museums for? How can they provide knowledge and languages for communities as well as for outsiders?

Intergenerational transmission and island ecologies

34The development of professional skills and cultural reconnection is a theme of the paper “Tides of change: Youth, museums and heritage in the climate emergency” by Jamie Allan Brown and Kaye R. N. Hall, which argues for the “transformative potential of youth-led initiatives” in the case study of the Shared Island Stories youth exchange between Barbados and Scotland’s Outer Hebridean islands. Noting the agency of young people today through their enhanced political awareness and adeptness with new technologies, the example shows how communities affected by the worst impacts of climate change, including sea level rise and biodiversity loss, and sharing histories of colonial legacies and extraction can exchange ideas and practices for more sustainable futures, ultimately influencing museum policy. For example, engaging in workshops on traditional plants and TEK in both countries was seen to promote sustainable behaviours.

35This is a topic explored in depth by Hannah Reid Ford in her paper “Reactivating traditional environmental knowledge to increase plant awareness.” Engaging with ideas of “plant blindness” on the small Caribbean islands of Cayman and drawing from archival and ethnographic research, Reid Ford recognises the links between loss and degradation of biological diversity and cultural diversity (naming this phenomenon “biocultural diversity”) and argues for the revitalisation of Caymanian awareness of plants through museum education aimed at enhancing nature-connectedness and awareness of more-than-human worlds, resulting in pro-environmental behaviours.

36These two chapters, therefore, join a major theme in this special issue, that of the role of museums – especially small, local, community, ecomuseums or micro-museums – in fostering cultural sustainability through a living connection between the past and present, preserving personal and collective memory, and promoting intergenerational learning, notably about traditional knowledge and climate change. This topic is further explored in the essay “The Betina Museum of Wooden Shipbuilding: Small step for museology, giant leap for local community” by Darko Babić, which showcases this European award-winning museum on the island of Betina in Croatia. Begun as a bottom-up community initiative, the museum is shown to be very sustainable in a local context through its collections, open-air museum, community engagement and surrounding activities, including an inspired initiative to display living heritage in the local harbour by mooring active and maintained boats to both preserve traditional crafts and promote sustainable island tourism.

37Also highlighting the role of the sea as a vital component of local heritage is “Layered legacies: Building the future on the knowledge of the past” by Ana Katurić. It discusses how the Croatian Coral Centre at Zlarin Island goes beyond presenting the history of coral harvesting to become a platform for climate action, cultural memory and participatory heritage-making involving the local community, NGOs, and the scientific and artistic communities. In exploring the relationship between the community and the sea, co-creative activities have ranged from exhibition design and equitable resource management to plastic-free island action. In this way, important artefacts become interwoven with accurate scientific data and artistic intervention to display and share island lives and society in an effort to move towards cultural revitalisation and community empowerment.

38These themes are present in the paper by Alexandra Bounia on the topic of “Micromuseology in Lesvos: Reflecting on large ideas through ‘small places’,” which reflects upon three grassroots museums on the island of Lesvos in Greece that are focused on refugee memory, resin collection, and local folklore. Usually created by elderly members of the community to preserve the memories of their past, to transfer memories and a sense of shared value to younger generations, and to support community futures, these institutions are presented as alternative, emotive and protected forms of memory-making. In so doing, the author also seeks to answer the question, “How can the knowledge and expertise generated by and in these small institutions introduce new ideas and/or allow for new perspectives in debates that are very pertinent to museology today?” Here, the author describes how emotions are part of the community museology, a topic that relates back to the idea of emotions as revealed in Widdis’s and Reisz’s essay opening this volume.

39We hope that this double issue will give voice and light to the numerous island heritages and museologies presented here, and that it will encourage more research on them in the future.