Over the next five years, more than 200 refugees and asylum seekers will be taught as tour guides at two Oxford University museums, as part of the award-winning Multaka initiative, which began in Berlin. Multaka-Oxford has been running since 2017 at the Pitt Rivers Museum and the History of Science Museum and owing to a £1 million contribution from the Saudi foundation Alwaleed Philanthropies, it will continue. The new Oxford program was unveiled this week at a ceremony in Riyadh attended by Saudi princess Lamia bint Majed Saud Al Saud, the foundation's secretary general, and Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford. Alwaleed Philanthropies, which is backed by billionaire Saudi businessman Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, has previously financed Multaka tours and museum renovations at Berlin's Museum of Islamic Art and Paris's Musée du Louvre.
Multaka, which means "meeting point" in Arabic, was founded in 2015 by Berlin State Museums and the Deutsches Historisches Museum with the goal of training Syrian and Iraqi migrants to lead museum tours in Arabic for their peers, thereby improving their skills and fostering a better understanding of Islamic culture. The Oxford museums were inspired by the notion and teamed up with local refugee community organizations to establish their own version of the project. To far, almost 100 volunteer guides from Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Zimbabwe, and Sudan have helped interpret and co-curate collections at the History of Science Museum and Pitt Rivers Museum, with an emphasis on Islamic artifacts. The Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund, run by the UK Museums Association, provided initial support for the project.
The expanded project will enable a new team of volunteers from around Oxfordshire to give museum tours in Arabic and English, object handling sessions, and co-curated exhibitions and events online and in person, according to a news release. In the following years, the organizers will also establish a UK Multaka network to promote the creation of comparable projects at other museums. "This program, by welcoming refugees and assisting them in integrating into the local community via the power of art and culture, strengthens cross-cultural understanding in society," explains Princess Lamia of Alwaleed Philanthropies. "Islamic art conveys a story about our heritage that is frequently misunderstood; the Multaka-Oxford program fills in the gaps and brings museum exhibits to life."
Jean Dubreil