ABSTRACT
The story of the War Childhood Museum dates back in 2010 when young Jasminko Halilović (who was four years old at the outbreak of Bosnian war), started collecting short answers to the question: ‘What was a war childhood for you?’ After the publication of a highly evocative book and the formation of an interdisciplinary team for the creation of a museum that answers the same question, the War Childhood Museum opened its doors in 2017. Its aim is to tell the stories of the children who grew up during the 1992–1995 Bosnian War, through donated personal items and their contributors’ descriptions. The museum’s aim is broader than its territory, to study and present the multi-layered experience of childhood in times of war both in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in other major conflict and post-conflict zones in the world, and thus fill a gap by documenting war experiences from children’s perspective. As a project, it testifies to the power of museums to address wider societal problems and serve as sites for individual and communal healing. In 2018, the museum was awarded the Council of Europe Museum Prize, in recognition of its focus on peace, reconciliation and the value of cultural diversity.
