Engaging Refugee Audiences Through Process and Performance in Multivocal, Community-Based Programs

Abstract

This chapter explores multivocality, when working with refugees, as an approach to challenge and destabilize homogenizing narratives. Museum as Sanctuary is a long-term program at the Tucson Museum of Art that leverages community partnerships to engage refugee audiences through art-making and in-gallery activities. The author will explore how museums can foster multivocal, community-based programs by creating opportunities for participants to share their opinions, observations, and experiences in response to works of art on view and through their own artistic products. The theories of Trinh T. Minh-ha provide a lens for contextualizing the multivocality that emerges from collaborations and that honors difference, builds comfort, supports individual strengths, and welcomes change. Through a methodological blending of critical narrative inquiry and decolonizing theories, the author examines pedagogical strategies that include performance and process in order to unsettle monolithic ideas to make space for multiplicities.