On 7 April 2022, after 14 months of development and revision, the Memorial Museums Forum was launched and given a new look and expanded functions.
The former Memorial Museums Forum was characterised by its clear structure and simple information display. Nonetheless, more than ten years after its last update, it was time to give the site a new design. On this occasion, new functions were added to make additional information quickly and easily accessible to all users.
The Memorial Museums Forum will continue to be a place of information for memorial museums representatives, as well as for multipliers and people interested in history. The forum is intended to present the work of the memorial museums s for the victims of National Socialism in its entirety and to further promote networking. It is to provide more information and offers for the institutions in order to present and promote good practice examples and new developments.
The Memorial Museums Forum will be a place for internal communication. To this end, a protected communication area will be created in which interested parties can exchange information about current topics of memorial museums and remembrance culture. In principle, the social media channels of the Memorial Museums Forum will be used increasingly and will also serve as discussion spaces. This will initially take place in the Memorial Museums Newsletter platform and, later, in a public discussion space.
The relaunch is taking place within the framework of the restructuring of the entire web memorial museums. The Memorial Museums Forum website is to become even more central and linked to other external content, such as from social media.
There has been no shift from the previous focus on information about memorial museums work. Users will continue to be informed on a daily basis about press articles, events, projects, job listings, and publications in the respective areas. Here, particular attention has been paid to helping the editors process the information they receive and research from the institutions.
Contact by email
In addition, two further areas are being introduced: “Digital Mediation” and “Young Adults Remember”
In the “Digital Mediation” section, successful digital projects for remembrance work are presented. In the “Young Adults Remember” section, successful educational projects are presented, similar to the “Digital Mediation” section. Since 2020, the memorial museums department has served as a contact point for institutions participating in the Young Adults Remember program funded by the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Thus, the memorial museums department is increasing its in-depth knowledge of the educational work of memorial museums.
As the biggest innovation, the Memorial Museums Overview is now part of the Memorial Museums Forum. The forum and overview sections are linked. For example, news, events and articles from the Memorial Museums Newsletter can also be found and accessed via the respective memorial museums in the Memorial Museums Overview
From the Memorial Museums Overview, those sections of the Memorial Museums Forum that explain the historical crime complexes and the differences between various types of memorial museums are easily accessible. An overview of other pre-existing memorial museums overviews is a part of the Memorial Museums Forum and contains the corresponding links.
BE|YOND strategic consulting GbR advised the Memorial Museums Department during the initial development phase, and the design agency publicgarden GmbH was responsible for the implementation.
The entire relaunch of the website took place in the context of the project Young Adults Remember and made possible with the funding from the Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media).