What is the MultiMemo Playbook & How to use it?
This Playbook consists of texts and case studies presenting best practices in working with difficult heritage in inclusive and intersectional ways. It was inspired by Michael Rothberg’s concept of “multidirectional memory”, which refers to a framework for understanding what happens when different histories of extreme violence confront each other in the public sphere. While acknowledging the struggles and contestations that accompany public articulations of memory, the theory of multidirectional memory seeks an explanation of the dynamics of remembrance that does not simply reproduce the terms of partisan groups involved in those struggles¹.
The concept also suggests that memories do not crowd each other out of the public sphere, but rather work productively through negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing. As Rothberg stresses, the result of memory conflict is not less memory, but more, even of subordinated memory traditions².
Multidirectionality thus describes processes and developments that unfold simultaneously in multiple directions or influence one another. In the context of memory culture, it refers to the idea that different memories and historical events do not exist in isolation but can influence, overlap, and interact with each other. Multidirectional memory can facilitate constructive dialogue between different historical traumas while preserving the uniqueness of each event, whose remembrance should not compete.
Dialogue between these memories is encouraged to understand better the complexity of history and the various perspectives it encompasses. Rothberg strongly cautions against viewing memory culture as a zero-sum game where the recognition of one group’s memory comes at the expense of another’s. Instead, he envisions memory culture as a space where different memories and perspectives can coexist and enrich each other. In this sense, recognizing the memory of one group should not diminish another, but contribute to a more comprehensive and diverse understanding of the past.
In the MultiMemo project, we attempted to test the concept in practice by working with sites where numerous difficult histories overlap. We are well aware of the fact that in different contexts the results of applying this approach to a given site may have different results, and the Playbook presents selected attempts to see how and to what extent one memory can support voicing another difficult history.
In the Playbook, you can explore examples of such innovative formats, as:
- green commemorations: commemorative interventions with the use of plants and landscaping,
- performative commemorative actions,
- educational activities combining community engagement, arts, and activism,
- working with sensitive legacies, such as human remains or sacred objects in university and museum collections,
- digital documentation of cultural assets, which included 3D scanning, photogrammetry, photography, and 3D modeling,
- participatory actions and activities addressed to multiple stakeholders,
- other experimental formats developed in the course of the project.
The MultiMemo Playbook was created in the course of the “MultiMemo” project. It presents reflections, case studies, and best practices emerging from activities carried out in Poland, Belgium, and Germany as part of the project as well as expert input and state of the art that was discussed with various stakeholders during project events and beyond. The ideas and approaches discussed in the Playbook were shared with heritage professionals, activists, decision-makers and policy-makers, and community leaders through Knowledge Dissemination events.
MultiMemo Playbook consists of a set of best practices of an intersectional approach to Holocaust remembrance that can be reused, modified, and adjusted to the needs of a particular context and communities, as well as a network of memory activists and experts who can support further efforts in the field.
If you are interested in similar resources, check out our Difficult Heritage Remembrance Framework developed under the EU-funded project NeDiPa – Negotiating Difficult Pasts, accessible here: [link]
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¹ Michael Rothberg, “Multidirectional memory”, Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire [Online], 119 | 2014, Online since 01 January 2016, connection on 31 March 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/1494; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/temoigner.1494. For further development of this theory see: Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford University Press, 2009).
² Michael Rothberg, “Multidirectional memory”, Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire [Online], 119 | 2014.