From Education Officer to Exhibition Manager

Interview with Michael Charbonnier

ELM: You designed the new exhibition in the Ludwig Harms House and are responsible for its construction and continued operation. How did you become exhibition manager?

Michael Charbonnier: I was previously an education officer at the ELM and responsible for youth work and global learning. At some point - it must have been early summer 2021 - I was standing with two heads of department in this space in the Ludwig Harms House which had previously been used for exhibitions, and asked: "Shouldn't there be another exhibition here? We do a lot of youth work on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, so it would fit in well here." I was then asked to come up with a concept, and then we could take it from there. For a long time, I thought I would write it so that someone else could then implement it. But at some point I had reached a point where I had already defined so much in this concept that I thought: "either someone else will do it now, and it will be really good  - then the thought that I myself could have done the implementation will annoy me, or it will turn out bad and I will be just as annoyed - since I know how it could have been better.

What appealed to you about the task?

I was attracted by the ability to design, to be able to work out so many things. And - as a former teacher - I always had this educational idea in mind: I wanted it to be a lot of fun to go through this exhibition. What makes an exhibition attractive for you? I know many exhibitions where you can only read and look at something. But my aim was to create something where you can do something yourself, where you can play and experience something. That's challenging because the SDGs are very theoretical. Compared to a "games exhibition on physics", for example, it is much more difficult to design something that can be experienced. However, there are many methods that can wake people up, inspire them, get them doing and exchanging ideas, and everything has to be in the right place and implemented using the right methods. Then it works. A great method in the wrong place is no fun. In the exhibition, I tried to design the stations and areas in such a way that you go through different moods in such a way that you come out at the end feeling as refreshed as possible and haven't just read through some texts for two hours.

What do you hope to achieve with the exhibition? What do you want the visitors who go through it to take away with them at the end?

The official aim is to encourage and motivate people to contribute to a better world themselves. During the planning phase, I sometimes thought it was all a bit ambitious, but in the end I think that's what it's all about. At the moment, there is a lack of positive images of the future. It looks like a crisis everywhere. Many things are changing and the focus is always on where the problems are and where we need to react urgently. But there is no vision of how things could improve overall. In the past decades, there have always been positive stories about what the future will bring. But at the moment, the future brings the climate crisis, the migration crisis, the extinction of species and populism is growing stronger. There is no big positive narrative about what could be. My hope for this exhibition is that people will go out there and say: this is no longer a utopia, these goals, the SDGs, have been worked on for 15 years and are becoming real policy. The European Green Deal, for example, can be traced back to the SDGs. All of this is already a reality, it just doesn't get as much attention.

My wish is to help ensure that we are aware of this - the world is pretty good, too. The exhibition should also encourage people to set out on their own journey, to work towards a better future and to get involved. How does that happen?

In one area, for example, there is a type test where you can find out what type of commitments you make. And once you have found out, there are suggestions for activities that you can take part in. The SDGs also provide information on what you can do to contribute to them. We can all do something ourselves, things can get better. For me, one example of how everyone can make a difference is Netflix's policy. In everything they produce themselves, they cast diverse roles, i.e. queer people, disabled people, people of all skin colours, without explicitly making it an issue. This leads to people finding it completely normal. The exhibition is also a place where people go simply because they want to experience something and here they see that it can be normal for everything to be diverse, sustainable, fair and peaceful. The more people come into contact with this, the more they think this way themselves.