Stadtmuseum Mini-München (2026)
In collaboration with Amrei Kapfhammer
As part of Spielstadt Mini-München
with participation of Deutsches Theatermuseum,
Dritte Orte Archiv
The city museum and archive constitutes a central part of every bigger city, by recording history, keeping important artefacts, and presenting them to the public. Just like in a real city, also in the playcity Mini-München, the museum and archive become a space to learn about history and to record the current life and events of the city.
Using various techniques from mapping to copying, from surveys to interviews, from drawing to writing, together with the children, we designed one permanent and two special exhibitions. Taking the Mini-München archive as the starting point, the “permanent” exhibition focused on the history of the play city. While this exhibition was constantly converted and added to, it focused on elements that the children deemed important.
The entry point was a city map of “big§ Munich, showcasing all the places that had hosted the small city. From there, examples included a wall on passports, an essential object for every participating child; a wall looking at the events of one day at three different points in time; a wall focusing on money and models of certain departments of the city from this year and the past. Sometimes the exhibition also interplayed with the different levels of reality at play in Mini-München: One section compared a reenacted epidemic in the play city in 1985 with the real effects of COVID on the city.
A central element of the city museum was the real archive of the playcity. Dating back to the first version of Mini-München in 1979, the children were encouraged to engage with original documents and artefacts. By searching through the archive for stories to show in the museum, the children were invited to think critically about the process of archiving: Who decides what is stored in an archive? What is missing? How is an archive collected? How is it organised?
Especially the question of what is missing became relevant when the children wanted to know more about a specific document and its context or backstory. One way to deal with that was interviewing “historical witnesses” in the form of both children and adults who had participated in previous editions.
Another important element was documenting this year’s version of the play city: Which documents are important to keep? What stories are we recording for the future? How do we represent everything happening in the city? What can be kept and what is simply too big to keep?
Pasinger Fabrik (Munich, Germany)
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