Dialogue with a Teenager: A Collection of Articles
Masha Shchekochikhina — team member of Inclusive Programs Department at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, compiling editor.
Inclusive Programs Department presents a collection of articles called Dialogue with a Teenager. The collection brings together projects on working with teenagers that were organized by the department in 2022.
Compiling this collection was an incredibly long and complex process, but as the editor I thought it important to tell the reader about it. This book is published by Inclusive Programs Department, although it is not connected to the broadly accepted understanding of the term inclusion and most of the materials are not linked to the inclusivity agenda. How did that happen?
In August 2015, Inclusive Programs Department appeared at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Its main aim was to adapt the exhibition space and public events for viewers with disabilities: blind and partially sighted people, deaf and hard of hearing people and people with developmental disabilities. Over the next three years the department published three methodology handbooks for working with visitors with disabilities. The three handbooks had the overall title Experiencing the Museum, which was a tag for all of the professional programs organized by Inclusive Programs Department. However, by the time the third handbook was published, the department was involved in a much wider range of activities, including programs for visitors with experience of migration, support for digital accessibility, researcher into diversity, the new ethics, and stigma, and also projects on preventing the spread of HIV. While we were working on the latter projects, this collection unexpectedly appeared.
The scale of the HIV epidemic in Russia and the stereotypes around the virus were of interest to a number of Museum staff from various departments. The aim of this joint project was to research HIV as a socio-cultural phenomenon. As we got deeper into the issue, we realized that almost everything should be an object of our research: from official documents that regulated doctors’ practice to questions of education, upbringing, and family relationships. And this was what led to the project Dialogue with a Teenager, which ran throughout 2022 and included an eponymous podcast, a series of meetings with parents of teenagers, and the book that you are now reading.
Why did I think it was important to tell you this convoluted story? The fact is that this (almost) detective story about how the collection appeared is a clear demonstration of how difficult it is to define inclusion and the fields it resides in. Today, the staff of Inclusive Programs Department—Luda Luchkova, Asel Rashidova, Sonya Lukyanova, Alina Zhekamukhova, Lera Shparlo, and I—are inclined to leave the definition of inclusion open-ended in order to allow it to be edited and to incorporate more and more new aspects. One of the general definitions that we stick to is the following. Inclusion is dialogue between various people, it is attention and care, considerate relationships, and the willingness to listen, and also the willingness to accept that your interlocutor may refuse to speak; it is a variety of views and opinions and their equal representation. This is why this collection is not the fourth methodological handbook from Inclusive Programs Department but a collection of ideas about how to find a common language.
The collection is in two parts: «The Teenager, the Museum, and Inclusion. What Happens When They Meet?» and «What Does the Museum Have to Do With Sex Education?» The first part is about teenagers and being a teenager, and also about how we gathered this knowledge. In this sense, the first part will be of interest to adults (if, of course, the opposition «adult–teenager» makes any sense) who interact with teenagers and aim to better understand their teenage interlocutors and also to museum staff, since each of the materials includes a narrative about how and by whom it was put together. The title of this part makes it clear that as well as the theme of being a teenager, it includes materials about designing museum programs for teenagers and about how to talk to teenagers about otherness, sometimes without mentioning the theme directly. So the first part reveals one of the aspects of the story of how the collection came about: it answers the question why the collection Dialogue with a Teenager is being published by Inclusive Programs Department, even though staff from other departments at Garage were involved, as were people from outside the museum world, and also explains why the collection is a continuation of the series of methodological handbooks but is not called Experiencing the Museum and is not a handbook as such.
The material in the second part references another aspect of the appearance of the collection, research into the HIV epidemic in Russia. Here there are texts about comprehensive sex education, including many sub-themes: from establishing trusting relationships within the family to safety and care for oneself and one’s health.
To conclude, I would like to note that this collection is a search for answers to the question of how we can be more careful and attentive in relation to each other. It is a cross-section that allows us to trace what has changed regarding the idea of inclusion and how to design museum programs and events. I hope that this book will prompt consideration not only about the theme of dialogue with teenagers but also with each other.