photo cc: masoud.nyc 

How can museums do more than entertain us (or bore us) about curiosities of the past? How can change feed on the past? As part of October's tactical discussion on the Power of Place, I have compiled a list of seven wonders that historical sites tap into to bring some awareness, conscience, and change to the world.

1. Conflicts create emotion. Did you ever walk into a place where real torture was inflicted, actual executions conducted? Did you ever stand over the actual site of a tragic human conflict or shattering historical event? What did you feel? Some of these places have soaked up so much blood, sweat and tears that they’re still haunted by the pain. Historical sites bring back the conflict's latent emotional energy. Their power derives from that.

2. Emotions create meaning. Emotions are one of the most universal and potent forms of energy. Emotions also form the template where human memory is recorded — this is how we humans remember events. This can be put to good use. With proper set-up, powerful places can help us "make sense" of the world. They help us create meaning. 

3. Truth is in the details. Faced with attempts to suppress inconvenient realities, the first purpose of a historical site is to make facts impossible to negate. The truth is sometimes bigger in the small things than it is in the larger arguments. By preserving some meaningful bits of memory — shards, soot, and grime — historical sites make the past real again. That's what makes museums so compelling. Long silenced and isolated, victims and survivors now say loud and clear: "I was not alone".

4. Personalization allows rehumanization. Stories humanize situations. As the past is personalized, history is scaled down to its impact on an individual, where it becomes comprehensible. Complex issues become understandable across ideological barriers. Historical sites that re-enact lives lived help us relate.

5. Safety in distance. Detachment from seemingly distant events lowers defensiveness and creates safety. Looking at past conflicts allows us to see the parts — the good and the bad, the prisoner and the guard — played out from a  distance. A "spectator's" eye on the situation can serve as a basis for non-judgemental sharing and discussion. 

6. New places bring fresh perspective. A complete change of scenery can be somewhat destabilizing. This is good news, because destabilization can act as an equalizer. A different environment can jolt people out of their comfort zone, help them forget about their socially defined roles. And as they step outside their well-rehearsed parts for a moment, new possibilities for dialogue open up. 

7. From monuments to monumental change. So how is this all useful? By taking on past conflicts to bring the facts into full view, the personal impacts, the emotions, sites of conscience create conditions for safe, non-judgemental debate. This takes dialogue light years ahead of the usual tour guide scripts. Doing this well means a tireless search for the prolonged stems of conflict into present-day experience, and cutting-edge facilitation techniques to help us all jump from "THIS WAS THEN" to "LET’S ACT NOW". 

Through constant reinvention, sites of conscience achieve one of the most difficult things one can do in the world: help people change their hearts and minds towards ending needless suffering. Moving us from the past into the present, museums of the past become laboratories for the future. At historical sites of conscience, this is how the true power of history becomes manifest: through present-day action. 

— Philippe Duhamel, interTactica.org