New Sites of Conscience Programs
The Coalition’s Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund provides both financial and technical support for member sites to develop projects that use their histories to open dialogue on a pressing concern facing their communities today. Below is a list of projects the Fund is supporting.
Gandhi-King Youth Conference – Memphis, United States
The National Civil Rights Museum (NCRM), located at the Lorraine Motel, the site of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, chronicles key episodes of the American Civil Rights Movement and the legacy of this movement to inspire participation in civil and human rights efforts globally, through our collections, exhibitions, and educational programs. For more information, please visit www.civilrightsmuseum.org.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund is supporting NCRM to hold the Gandhi-King Youth Conference in October 2009, and ensuring strong youth participation by providing scholarships to underprivileged students. The youth conference examines Gandhian and Kingian nonviolence through art, interactive workshops, and a dynamic plenary address. The Youth Conference will provide participants with lasting knowledge of the connections between the history of the Civil Rights Movement represented in the Museum and its connections to the current struggles for human rights.
The Youth Conference will build on a partnership with a local youth organization, BRIDGES, their local affiliate program, PeaceJam, the Mid South Peace and Justice Center, and the National Civil Rights Museum. The three organizations are partnering to develop a year-round series of programs that will keep Memphis youth engaged in Kingian nonviolent learning and training opportunities.
Mapping Sites of Memory in Peru, Lima Peru
Movimiento Ciudadano Para Que No Se Repita (PQNSR) coordinates 38 active groups (in the field of human rights, education, development, and media) in 25 regions in Peru. The PQNSR is recognized for being the most comprehensive grass-roots movement in the country and for its effective contribution to the process of truth, justice and reconciliation. For more information, please visit www.paraquenoserepita.org.pe/.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund is supporting PQNSR to launch a project to identify, register and promote memory initiatives in Peru. The project intends to promote dialogue and reflection on memory by creating opportunities for public participation; encourage the exchange of experiences among organizations working on preserving sites of memory; contribute in the transmission of memory in the most affected areas during the internal conflict; and encourage the Government to support and preserve sites of memory throughout the country.
Pilorama 2009 – Forum for Civic Engagement Art – Perm, Russia
The Gulag Museum at Perm-36 is dedicated to promoting democratic values and civil consciousness in contemporary Russian society through the preservation of the last Soviet political camp as a vivid reminder of repression, and an important historical and cultural monument.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund is supporting the Gulag Museum at Perm-36 to hold a groundbreaking art and music forum to engage audiences in dialogue on the theme of “Art and Civic Responsibility” in Russia. The project will use the Gulag Museum at Perm-36’s imposing barracks and guard towers to connect the history of the camp with issues of civic responsibility in Russia today. The forum will feature musical, theatrical, and literary performances by national and international artists exploring contemporary civic issues. Audiences will engage in dialogue on these issues on a variety of levels, from post-performance discussions to creating installations and other art-making on democracy and human rights issues.
Educational Guided Visits and Workshop on Citizen Dialogue: Reflections with Youth on Discrimination – Santiago, Chile
Founded in 1996, Corporación Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi (Villa Grimaldi Park for Peace Corporation) strives to preserve the historical memory of Villa Grimaldi and other centers of torture and detention; to promote a culture of human rights; to develop programs and activities to achieve the above goals; and to manage, conserve and promote the Parque de la Paz (Park for Peace) for the benefit of the community of Peñalolén. For more information, please visit www.villagrimaldicorp.cl
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund is supporting Corporacion Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi to offer new educational guided visits that integrate interactive workshops to promote reflection and discussion on topics related to the promotion, dissemination and protection of human rights. The workshops will be geared towards high school students and will be developed to generate debate on issues of discrimination, one of the most current pressing issues in Chilean society. With this project, Corporacion Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi aims to strengthen the collaboration with teachers and students and integrate Villa Grimaldi’s educational programs into the schools’ curricula.
Connecting past, present and future to foster integrated communities – Sophiatown, South Africa
Established in 1999, the Huddleston Centre carries the name of activist and anti-apartheid veteran, Trevor Huddleston. The Centre draws inspiration from the experiences and hopes of the ‘new’ South Africa and the heritage of ‘old’ Sophiatown. The Huddleston Centre’s mission is to establish Sophiatown today as a place where diversity and humanitarian values (a culture of humanity) can be experienced positively, where through encounters with others, understanding, and action the values underpinning the Constitution can be enhanced.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund is supporting the Trevor Huddleston Centre to launch a multi-faceted project that aims to enable people across the social spectrum in South Africa, as well as visitors to the Centre, to engage in a dialogue through stories about Sophiatown’s rich heritage, to foster a sense of connectedness, and to promote action towards greater integration, appreciation and tolerance of different cultures and viewpoints. The participants will be students (ages 18-30) from a range of different backgrounds, who are currently unemployed, youth, who have been identified for their leadership qualities to facilitate the workshops, and elders who were firsthand witnesses to the Sophiatown story in the 1950s.
Dialogues on Inter-Religious Harmony and Tolerance – Jamalpur Gandhi Ashram, Bangladesh
The Jamalpur Gandhi Ashram (the Ashram), a historic site marked by a past of repeated resistance to its mission to follow Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violence and non-cooperation movement, represents Bangladesh’s long anti-colonial struggle in the 20th century. The Ashram is in the midst of a rebirth period, with help from local community members and the international community, to work toward the establishment of ideals of peace, non-violence, tolerance, equality and humanity.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund is supporting the Jamalpur Ganhi Ashram in launching a multifaceted project to raise awareness of religious and ethnic harmony, secularism, pluralism, tolerance and human rights, to engage participants in stimulating dialogues on religious and ethnic harmony, tolerance, equality, and human rights, and to promote peaceful co-existence among different religious communities and ethnic groups in Bangladesh. Religious and ethnic leaders of different religious and ethnic groups, community leaders of rural and urban areas, teachers and students, journalists, cultural activists, human rights activists, lawyers, peoples’ representatives and development activists will participate in the project’s various activities.
Addressing Caricatures and Stereotypes of Immigration – San Diego, United States
Opened to the public on June 20 2008, the New Americans Museum is housed in San Diego’s historic Naval Training Center (NTC). NTC closed in 1997 after 70 years as a military base and currently functions as a cultural and business centre in the city. Within this historic space, the New Americans Museum provides inspiring educational and cultural programmes and activities around San Diego’s diverse immigrant experiences and aims to be a catalyst to celebrate America’s past and promise.
Located on the border of the United States and Mexico and sharing a bi-national metropolitan area, San Diego has been home to some of the most aggressive anti-immigrant groups in the U.S. during the past few years, and is an example of the wave of anti-immigrant propaganda sweeping the country.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund supports the New Americans Museum in developing and implementing a dialogue programme that engages high school students in conversations about immigration issues in their community. With this programme the New Americans Museum hopes to address misconceptions of immigration and combat negative stereotypes and anti-immigrant propaganda in San Diego.
The Project will invite four to eight high school classes (grades 9th through 12th) to two concurrent exhibitions, Immigration and Caricature: Ethnic Images from the Appel Collection and A Community Between Two Worlds: Arab-Americans in Greater Detroit. After visiting these exhibits the students will discuss images and caricatures of immigrants in the past and explore their own assumptions and stereotypes of immigrants today. Working with schools in areas known for their diverse student populations, the programme will reach out to different ethnic and racial groups in order to build dialogue across difference and provide participants with a more comprehensive picture of immigration in San Diego informed by individuals’ experiences and encounters with each other.
Shaping a Comprehensive Story of Historical and Contemporary Immigration Experiences – Chicago, United States
The Chicago Cultural Alliance (CCA) is a consortium of 25 community-based ethnic museums, cultural centres, and historical societies in Chicago, USA. CCA seeks to effect social change and public understanding of cultural diversity through the first voice perspective of community members. By leveraging partnerships between member organizations and major institutions, CAA increases the visibility and impact of Chicago’s ethnic assets.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund supports CCA’s pilot programme aimed at developing immigration dialogue programmes in four community-based ethnic museums and cultural centres in metropolitan Chicago: the Cambodian American Heritage Museum & Killing Fields Memorial (CAHM), the Polish Museum of America (PMA), the Swedish American Museum Center (SAMAC), and the Chicago Japanese American Historical Society (CJAHS).
During this pilot programme, each institution will receive training on dialogue facilitation and then bring together community members with historical and contemporary experiences of and different perspectives on immigration. Through these community dialogue sessions CCA hopes to learn how to best engage the public in dialogue and will incorporate their learning into concrete methodologies and formats for productive dialogue. The resulting dialogue programme design will be implemented at the four participating institutions, and will serve as a model for all CCA member organizations.
Ultimately, the pilot will lead to dialogue programmes at all CCA member organizations, with the goal of shaping a more comprehensive understanding of the multiple waves of immigration and exploring how previous immigrants’ experiences compare with immigration issues in Chicago today.
Engaging the Process of Reconciliation, Forgiveness and Peaceful Co-Existence – Freetown, Sierra Leone
Established in 1996, Campaign for Good Governance (CGG) is one of Sierra Leone’s oldest local non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Through advocacy, capacity building, and civic education, CGG aims to increase citizens’ participation in governance in order to build a more democratic state with a well informed civil population.
The Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund supports CGG’s multifaceted programme engaging people from different political, social, and cultural backgrounds in Sierra Leone in constructive dialogue on peace, forgiveness, reconciliation and matters of regional divide. Reconciliation remains a challenge in Sierra Leone. Nine years of civil war left tens of thousands people dead and more than 2 million Sierra Leoneans displaced. Issues linked to causing the conflict in 1991, such as discrimination, marginalization and regional tensions linger in society today. As part of a broader national effort to consolidate peace, strengthen democracy and foster reconciliation among Sierra Leoneans, CGG’s programme seeks to follow up on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s recommendations on symbolic reparations and promote reconciliation and peaceful coexistence through constructive dialogue, using the power of sites of memory.
CGG will bring together civil society organizations and relevant state actors in a one-day workshop to discuss and strategize about the role of Sites of Conscience in post-conflict Sierra Leone. Following this, CGG will host a two-day dialogue with the local community around reconciliation and forgiveness at a mass grave site in the town of Gbendembu. Additionally, participants will visit the Old Fourah Bay College Building – the oldest institution in West Africa – to examine the importance of this site in the current socio-economic and political climate and share strategies on preserving, developing and interpreting the site. Dialogues at the two sites will serve as examples of how places of memory can serve as places for healing, reconciliation and building democracy.
“Memory on Air”: Radio Discussion of Sites of Conscience and their Contemporary Issues – Marzabotto, Italy
The Monte Sole Peace School works to preserve the memories of one of the biggest Nazi-Fascist massacre in Italy during WWII. On the site where 770 people were killed by Nazi SS troops it organizes education programs and summer youth camps that examine the context that made that system of terror possible, both in Monte Sole and in other places. Engaging young people in dialogue and promoting non-violent transformation of conflicts, respect for human rights and peaceful coexistence among different people and cultures, Monte Sole Peace School offers new perspective and engagement in the development of the proposed European constitution.
With help from the Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund, in November 2008 Monte Sole launched a new series titled “Memory on Air” on a call-in radio program popular with young people. The series features interviews with Coalition members and Trustees telling the stories of Sites of Conscience around the world and raising questions about the implications of their histories for issues young Italians face today. The series includes about a dozen 1-hour episodes, each focusing on the story of a different Site and a different contemporary question. After interviewing the site director about the site’s history and the contemporary questions it raises, the radio show’s host invites young people to call in or send SMS comments on those questions, or additional questions of their own. Featured Sites include the Gulag Museum at Perm-36 in Russia, Corporación Parque por la Paz Villa Grimaldi in Chile, the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, and others. Listen to the show (in Italian only) here: http://www.montesole.org/memory.html.
How Can Sites of Conscience Help Build Democracy after Conflict? – Monrovia, Liberia
Civic Initiative (CI) is a Liberian civil society organization whose focal areas in the pursuit of democracy as well as the rule of law are Transitional Justice (TJ) and Security Sector Reform (SSR).
Last year, Civic Initiative invited the Coalition to conduct a series of workshops, individual meetings, media trainings, and pilot public dialogues to identify how places of memory could serve as new spaces for Liberians to address the legacies of the country’s recent conflicts. Participants stressed the need for community spaces to support and expand the ongoing Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s process, where a broader base of people, for a longer period of time, could confront the past and have ongoing dialogues on how to move forward. As a result, CI formed a Memory Resource Group within the Civil Society Advisory Committee to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and identified three sites to develop into Sites of Conscience.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is beginning to develop its recommendations, due to be completed in 2009. With help from the Sites of Conscience Project Support Fund, CI is conducting a series of dialogues from November 2008-February 2009 in urban and rural communities across the country to identify what sites people would like to see remembered in their local communities; what kind of ongoing dialogues and activities they would like to see at those sites that would help those communities move forward and build lasting cultures of peace in the wake of conflict; and what support they need in order to develop them. These conversations will be developed into a set of concrete recommendations to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. With the Coalition’s support, CI seeks to organize a conference involving all the community members who were consulted in the dialogue process, Truth Commissioners, journalists, and other stakeholders to formally present the recommendations and have them adopted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“Memoria Barrial” (Neighbourhood Memory) Documentary Film – Mendoza, Argentina
“La Casa por la Memoria y la Cultura Popular” (“House for Memory and Popular Culture”) develops educational materials, particularly about the recent military dictatorships, and uses them as the basis for dialogues they run for students of different ages in schools and community centers.
“Memorial Barrial” will be a documentary film about the local experience of state terrorism. To date, La Casa por la Memoria y la Cultura Popular has had to rely on materials about how the dictatorships developed and operated in Buenos Aires or on a provincial or national level. Yet many of those involved in the militancy of the era continue to live in their same houses in the neighborhood. This has allowed the local community to define state terrorism as something that came from the outside, in which none of them were implicated; it means that local people’s unique experiences have not been made public, and finally that local people have not been involved in remembering and confronting their own experiences.
The documentary will feature the stories of five members of the militant group Peronist Youth, together with those of local residents. To help local communities understand how state terrorism grew and developed in Mendoza, the documentary aims to reconstruct the life and death of Hector “Flaco” Pringles, a local Peronist Youth leader killed by paramilitaries in November of 1975; reconstruct the life and spirit of local popular and youth militancy of the era; and explore the actions of local paramilitary groups and their relationship to the state.
The documentary will be used as the basis for local dialogues on the local legacies of the dictatorship and how to address them, through La Casa por la Memoria y la Cultura Popular’s ongoing course, “Making History: Identity and Memory,” which it uses in workshops with Quechua and Mapuche language groups, at-risk youth, and in schools and community centers.