Educación patrimonial e identidad. El papel de los museos en la generación de cohesión social y vínculos de pertenencia a una comunidad

What is the role that museums play in the development of a concept as complex as “identity”? How can they contribute to the formation and knowledge to the different collective and individual identities that coexist in our societies? By answering these questions we expect to bring some ideas to the debate about identity growing through heritage. According to Molina, Rodríguez and Sánchez (2013: 4), History has been elaborated in academics environments “as an identity, and therefore, as an opposition to the other”. On the contrary, museums have the opportunity to use one of the primary sources of History: heritage, as a unifying link of these multiples identities. Through this article we will defend that this is one of the biggest challenges museums have to face nowadays and we will expose some proposals.