Totaal Moluks officially starts a large-scale language project
Museum Maluku is proud to be a committed collaboration partner of Totaal Moluks and is therefore happy to share that, as of October 2023, Totaal Moluks is officially starting a large-scale Moluccan Malay language project. With an app and new media, founder Jamie Schaduw wants to make content available on a large scale for everyone who wants more depth and knowledge through language.
Totaal Moluks
Totaal Moluks is an organisation whose aim is to record Moluccan Malay, Moluccan regional languages and dialects as intangible Moluccan cultural heritage. The organisation recently received two grants, from Cultuurloket DigitALL and Vfonds, through the ‘Houd je erfgoed in leven’ scheme. This helps make it possible to realise the extensive language project ‘Healing through the revival of Moluccan Malay’. The results of research into Moluccan language and culture within the community, and experiments on social media, were an important part of the case made in the project plan.**
“Language was the key for me to a completely new Moluccan cultural frame of reference”
Founder Jamie Schaduw responds with relief: “Setting up a new organisation and taking on a subject like language is not something you can do without solid grounding and collaborations. As a teenager I struggled with my bicultural background, until I lived with my family in Ambon for a longer period. Language was the key for me to a completely new Moluccan cultural frame of reference. An enrichment of my life, without all the traumas and heaviness of our history of arrival here in the Netherlands. With an app and new media we will soon be able to make content available on a large scale for everyone who wants more depth and knowledge through language.”
Collaboration partners
Museum Maluku is one of the partners in the project. Henry Timisela, director of the museum, is enthusiastic about it: “The importance of effective communication cannot be stressed enough, especially when it comes to strengthening the bond between the Moluccan communities here in the Netherlands and our brothers and sisters in the Moluccas. Smooth communication lays the foundation for mutual understanding and connection. Through language we can build bridges and share our heritage with others, and this project will help us strengthen that communication.”
Other partners in the project are: the podcast Molukse Takkie, the online magazine MOZA and the language platform Bahasa Basudara. The project starts in October and the aim is to go live after about 6 months. The launch will take place in collaboration with Museum Maluku. For an impression, see Totaal Moluks on Instagram and TikTok.
