As part of the Brazilian Institute of Museums (IBRAM) Museum Week program, whose theme challenges reflection on "The future of museums in rapidly transforming communities," the event "Ancestral Futures: Recreating Memories, Communities, and Museums" proposes an urgent dialogue between the past, present, and future of museums and their integration with communities. Organized by the Museum of Tomorrow, the International Committee for Social Museology (SOMUS) of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and the Experimental Museology and Image Research Group (MEI)—which celebrates a decade of research focused on Experimental Museology with this event—the meeting invites us to rethink the role of cultural institutions as bridges between ancestral knowledge and contemporary innovations. In a world marked by increasingly accelerated paces and changes, how can museums become living spaces for listening, co-creation, and social transformation, honoring the diversity of the communities that sustain them, and following temporalities that are, for the most part, made at such different paces?

The proposal is to explore museological practices that integrate collective memories and diverse technologies, recognizing ancestry as a fertile field of knowledge and the foundation for more just and plural futures, expanding the notion of "knowledge." The debates proposed here will highlight initiatives that place communities at the center of the narrative, from the preservation of oral traditions and sustainability in museums to collaborative curation projects. The celebration of MEI's 10th anniversary reinforces this trajectory of critical research, which questions hierarchies of knowledge and amplifies historically silenced voices. In this context, the Museum of Tomorrow, a symbol of innovation, becomes a stage for imagining more flexible institutions, capable of learning from the past and adapting to the demands of a constantly evolving present. Together, museums and society can weave networks of care, where memory is not static, but a seed for ancestral futures—connected, sustainable, and deeply human.