Participatory Memory Making: Creating Postcolonial Dialogic Engagements with Namibian Youth

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As technologies become pervasive, so does participation in memory making. But in contested environments and discourses, certain voices are rarely included in public memory. In this paper, we explore how everyday postcolonial memories of Namibian youth engaged the wider public into a dialogue revisiting narrative of the past in order to explore alternative futures. Voices of the youth were amplified through an experimental participatory public exhibition leveraging interactive technologies. The exhibition resulted from collaborative memory making with marginalised voices, highlighting the role of youth as agents for change in postcolonial Namibia. Experiences from the exhibition showed how meaningful dialogues and interactions between museum audiences, interactive installations and the youth, created new perspectives on postcolonialism, and how exploring everyday memories and materials from the past may contribute to creating inclusive futures. We conclude that new forms of dialogic engagements are created through ‘blurred boundaries’ between people, their collective memories and technologies.