Winter 2010 Project Support Fund Grantees
Northern Ireland’s Healing Through Remembering received funding for their project “Everyday Items Transformed by Conflict.” Healing Through Remembering has been working since 2002 to develop a Living Memorial Museum, which will remember the conflict in Northern Ireland in order to build a better future. Their new project aims to facilitate dialogue among diverse constituents, looking at the issue of how objects and artifacts tell a story in a museum setting, and how to address the curation process when multiple, conflicting narratives are at play. Collectors from Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland will be invited to lend objects for the forthcoming exhibits and will participate in dialogue sessions on the exhibition’s design.
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Photo: National Stadium of Santiago
In the aftermath of the September 1973 coup d’état that overthrew the Government of Chilean President Salvador Allende, the National Stadium of Santiago (Estadio Nacional) became the largest “concentration camp” in Chile. It is estimated that over 40,000 people spent time in the Estadio Nacional during the junta regime. Today, the Regional Metropolitan Association of Former Political Prisoners works to preserve the site and its historical memory as a concentration camp, a political prison and a torture center. Since 2005 the Association, in collaboration with survivors, organizes guided visits for students and the general public.
The Coalition’s Project Support Fund will strengthen the organization’s educational capacity by supporting formal training on human rights, history and memory to 30 guides. Guides, who are often young people, community members, and survivors’ relatives, will not only learn techniques for teaching history but also how to encourage visitors to reflect on political repression today.
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Alarmed by the rising tide of violence and discrimination towards migrants and minorities in Italy, the Peace School Foundation of Monte Sole is launching M.E.T.A.: Memory, Education, Theatre, Action, a project that aims to use theater to reflect on Fascist Italy during World War II and on the meaning of European citizenship today.
Students aged 18 to 25 will experience this founding Site of Conscience, walking the hills where a massacre of Italian villagers took place in 1944, all while exploring questions about human behavior and the mechanisms of violence. Then, participants will design their own theatrical piece after reading and discussing different texts. With this activity, Monte Sole’s educators aim for the students to critically analyze and understand how violence happens in order to understand why it still threatens us today.
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Memoria Abierta is capitalizing on Argentina’s current judiciary processes – 12 trials related to the country’s dictatorships taking place throughout the country – to increase awareness about the value of justice. In a new, multi-layered project, Memoria Abierta brings personal voices to the judicial process. The organization, which aims to preserve the memory of Argentina’s repressive regimes in order to build democracy, will collect research and oral histories about the process of reparations, exploring the subjective experiences of victims, relatives, and witnesses. Based on this study, Memorial Abierta will create an audiovisual piece, to be on display at Parque de la Memoria in Buenos Aires, featuring different perspectives on war crimes, repression, and justice. This piece will serve as a tool to encourage reflection on these issues and to encourage active involvement in democratic institutions.