ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores case studies of community museums, ecomuseums, grassroots heritage organisations and their networks from Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. It builds upon and complements the growing literature on the broad topic of ‘museums and community’ through its specific focus on museums that have been created from community action, respond to local challenges and are reliant upon local systems of governance. This book makes island and remote communities the focus of an international museological book for the first time. It focuses on partnership in co-creation as integral to the development of museums as generative rather than recipient knowledge centres. The book will also have resonance through its focus on new research issuing from the Caribbean and Central America, in particular, which have been virtually ignored as regions in the current academic literature.
