40
MuseoMag N°I 2025
Archival texts, newspapers and exhibition flyers served as springboards for inspiration in this creative writing workshop at
the museum.
CRAFTING STORIES
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Creative writing at the museum
Last year, our museum attic became the setting for
an inspiring encounter between the treasures of the
past and the creative imagination of our participants
in the workshop “Wordswoven Histories”. Filled
with words and images from the past, the archival
collections of the Lëtzebuerger Konschtarchiv and
the museum were ready to be transformed into
something new. Blacked-out archival texts, news-
papers and exhibition flyers served as springboards
for inspiration. Pens scribbled furiously, borrowing
fragments of history and coming up with new crea-
tions. The result? Surprising and unexpected texts
and collages that emerged as if out of the blue.
WEAVING WORDS, WEAVING STORIES
Participants used various strategies to piece their
stories together. First, we explored different roles in
the art world, collecting words that we associated
with artists, curators, gallerists and others. Next, we
used these words to fill in the blacked-out sections
in the archival texts, sparking our creativity and
reimagining historical content. Finally, participants
were encouraged to interact more freely with the
material – exhibition flyers, newspapers, digitised
archives and more. This process was guided by one
simple question: what inspires you?
Some drew inspiration from the visual material
found in the archives while others played around
with words or textual elements. We also shared our
processes or methods, such as creating poems from
exhibition titles or making collages and translating
them into words. Thus, it was not only the archival
material that sparked inspiration, but also the indivi-
dual methods that were shared within the group in
collaborative fashion.
TYING KNOTS
To share the knowledge and experience gained
during the workshops, we invited the participants to
contribute to this article, offering a space to show-
case some of their work. The full texts are avai-
lable on our MuseoBlog. This initiative is part of the
©
éric chenal