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Jan/Feb 2005 |
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Join the Movement: Become a Member of the Coalition
Become a member of the Coalition and help sustain a growing movement which helps communities around the world remember their pasts and build a lasting culture of human rights. Network with sites of conscience addressing issues of concern to you and receive program designs and other resources for using history to foster civic engagement.
Visit www.sitesofconscience.org/eng/about.htm to sign up today!
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CONTENTS:
Hands on District Six: Landscapes of Postcolonial Memorialisation
Wake Up Everybody!: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Birthday Concert
Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of the War in Iraq
Teaching the Japanese American Experience: An Educator's Tool Kit
Activating the Past: An International Symposium on Historic Sites of Conscience |
19 Princelet Street, London, England
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Hands on District Six: Landscapes of Postcolonial Memorialisation: Cape Town, South Africa
(May 25-28, 2005)
The District Six Museum is hosting an international conference to reflect on ten years of its growth as an institution, and to prepare to play a role in the return of community to the barren landscape of District Six. The conference will engage local and international participants from other museums, as well as scholars, practitioners, and activists working with 'sites of conscience', urban justice and restitution, performance, and human rights.
The conference will provide a critical space to reflect on emerging practices of memorialisation, heritage and engagements with living memory. It will also consider challenges for building a humane and democratic public culture in South Africa, ten years into its democracy. The conference will explore the relationships between landscapes and postcolonial memorialisation in terms of human rights, urban justice, and the creation of civil society, and invite discussion in the following areas:
- Reflections and debates on new directions in memorialisation in South Africa, Africa and around the world. Identify the specific features of the South African memorial complex and consider questions around cultural ownership and politics, as people reclaim spaces in the city
- Consider the cultural economy of commemoration in relation to histories of trauma, genocide, wars and struggles for liberation. Also evaluate the powerful influence of genocide and holocaust studies in the cultural field of commemoration and memory.
- The role of expressive arts in the performance of memory
- Critiques of World Heritage, destination and sustainable tourism
- Consider comparative methodologies of heritage site management with particular emphasis on managing and conserving historic sites for contemporary audiences. Critique of heritage site management, particularly relations of knowledge and power in key disciplines such as architecture, archaeology
- Consider museums in relation to international theatres of citizenship and sites of conscience - places of memory committed to using their histories to foster civic dialogue and promote democratic and humanitarian values. Explore the shape and meaning of sites of conscience in the South African context and internationally
Current Partners: The International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience; District Six Beneficiary and Redevelopment Trust; Institute for Justice and Reconciliation; Ford Foundation; South African Heritage Resources Agency; Constitution Hill.
The District Six Museum extends an invitation to: museum professionals; human rights practitioners; scholars; activists; persons affected by forced removals and dispossession and other interested persons.
To register or for more information, contact Shamila Rahim at shamila@districtsix.co.za. Please visit the conference page at the museum website: http://www.districtsix.co.za/.
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How can historic sites and museums collectively use their strengths, tackle their weaknesses, and continuously learn from one another in order to serve as effective sites of conscience? Launched in November 2004, our professional staff exchange program allows accredited Coalition members to collaborate on fostering effective dialogue and drawing connections between past and present, to gain consultation in areas where they require specific professional expertise, and to identify best practices for the network as a whole.
In December, Memoria Abierta (Argentina) hosted participants from District Six Museum (South Africa); Lower East Side Tenement Museum (US); National Park Service Northeast Region (US) with the aim to: allow Coalition colleagues to better understand the work of Memoria Abierta in relation to the historic creation of the Museum of Memory; demonstrate international support for the Museum of Memory through contact with representatives from local and national government; and articulate strategies for the role of Memoria Abierta during the creation of the Museum of Memory, and the ways that it can promote debate and civic participation throughout the process. A series of internal discussions, public fora and meetings with government bodies and groups, including the Bipartite Commission and the Space for Memory Institute, were held to discuss the planning for the Museum of Memory at the site of the former Navy School (ESMA). Participants shared their experiences of work of their sites, their particular relevance to the process of constructing the Museum of Memory, and discussed the following questions: What contemporary issues are raised by your site? In what way, if any, is the experience of your site similar to the current landscape and the creation of the Museum of Memory? How can the tactics from your site be applied in Argentina?
In addition, Coalition members met to review Memoria Abierta's proposed "Journeys of Memory" project, a city-wide tour exposing sites of detention and torture during the reign of military dictatorship and disappearances from 1976-1983. Participants shared their experience collaborating with communities to develop tours involving multiple perspectives around controversial issues - such as tours of of Cape Town Townships and sites of anti-apartheid struggle, of the diverse and often conflicting ethnic histories on the Lower East Side of New York, and of civil rights trails such as the Selma to Montgomery trail in the American South. Participants explored the following questions:
- Of the hundreds of sites located throughout Argentina related to the period of state terrorism, how do you determine which ones to preserve and recover? What are the criteria?
- What further ways can Memoria Abierta promote national debate about the form and content of a museum that incorporates diverse voices and civil society actors?
- How can we utilize display techniques to foster effective dialogue and draw connections between the past and present?
- How can we gauge public opinion on the creation of a Museum of Memory?
In early 2005, staff from The Workhouse (England) visited the Tenement Museum (US) to develop approaches to engaging their visitors and community in dialogue on social welfare issues. Staff from both sides exchanged effective practices in: developing concepts for building relationships with communities; using the arts to draw connections between past and present and engage target communities; fostering dialogue on contemporary issues through live costumed interpretation; and effectively managing a site of conscience. Workshop sessions involved local community activists as well as artists and arts project managers, and culminated in a mutual exchange of ideas and an outline of clear guidelines which will be compiled into a set of flexible best principles and practices for developing and maintaining sites of conscience projects.
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Wake Up Everybody!: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Birthday Concert, Memphis, USA
(January 14, 2005)
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated nearly thirty-seven years ago, but the issues he addressed are still relevant today. The National Civil Rights Museum (NRCM) is charged with linking the work of King and others to the ongoing struggle for human and civil rights. In commemoration of King's birthday and the national holiday, NCRM hosted a commemorative concert featuring songs from the 1960s and '70s, performed by local Memphis talent alongside the National Civil Rights Museum Choir. The event was held at the Historic Mason Temple, the very location from which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous prophetic speech, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," prior to his assassination in 1968.
The Museum chose to commemorate King through a concert for several reasons. Music was an important aspect of the Civil Rights Movement, serving to unify and inspire non-violent protestors, and several exhibits in the museum feature samples of the kinds of songs heard from demonstrators. Music also has a wide appeal, believed to be the perfect medium for reaching middle and high school students, who were the target audience, while the use of well-known songs and popular local artists strengthened the appeal. NCRM also highlighted the link between the issues facing civil rights leaders of the past and the issues facing America and the world today. Speakers introduced four divisions of music while elaborating on continuing struggles: songs of faith that were sung to open civil rights rallies; songs promoting peace, community and compassion; empowering and inspirational songs of action toward change; and songs of celebration which were typically heard after the many successes of the Civil Right Movement while acknowledging the need for furthering progress. The show taught students about the struggles of the past while demonstrating to them how they can effect change in the future.
The concert was a resounding success with participation from nearly 1,000 local students and musicians. Many other organizations assisted in making the show a reality, from a generous grant from the ExxonMobil Corporation, to organisational help from Temple of Deliverance, the Memphis Area Transit Authority, NCRM Board Member Leonard James, and Memphis City Schools. The Museum is considering making Wake Up Everybody! an annual event, possibly with a different musical focus and a schedule that would allow greater participation by the general public.
Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of the War in Iraq, Memphis, USA
(January 28-30, 2005)
National Civil Rights Museum (NRCM) and the Joysmith Gallery recently joint-hosted Eyes Wide Open: The Human Cost of the War in Iraq, a travelling exhibit developed by the American Friends Service Committee Chicago, a Quaker organization. The purpose of the exhibit was to recognize the human costs of the war. A line of military boots representing American troops who died fighting in Iraq are displayed together with shoes representing the Iraqi civilian and military casualties. The stop in Memphis was further supported by the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center, and hosted by the NCRM, a site dedicated assisting the public in understanding the lessons of the US Civil Rights Movement and its impact and influence on the human rights movement worldwide.
For more information about Eyes Wide Open, visit http://www.afsc.org/eyes/host-the-exhibit.htm.
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Teaching the Japanese American Experience: An Educator's Tool Kit
The Japanese American National Museum has recently published a CD-ROM containing a curriculum designed for elementary, middle and high school students, which teaches tolerance and respect for difference and diversity through the Japanese-American experience. It represents the culmination of many years work and was made possible through a partnership with the University of Arkansas Little Rock and funded by Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, The Boeing Company and others. It is available to educators at no cost under certain circumstances. Please visit www.janm.org for more details.
Activating the Past: An International Symposium on Historic Sites of Conscience, University of Michigan, USA
On March 19, 2004, the University of Michigan Museum Studies Program and the Arts of Citizenship Program, in collaboration with the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience, held an international symposium exploring the latest practices of sites of conscience and their implications for places of memory and museums in the development of democracies. Presenters included the District Six Museum, Lower East Side Tenement Museum, Slave Galleries at St. Augustine's Episcopal Church, Japanese American National Museum, and the Gulag Museum at Perm-36. The full report of the symposium proceedings, including presentations, strategies and outcomes, is now available online at http://www.umich.edu/~ummsp/events/hsc_report.htm.
The Coalition Secretariat would like to especially thank Ray Silverman and Bradley Taylor from the Museum Studies Program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor for making this site possible.
Submitted by 19 Princelet Street, London, England
During a recent outbreak of Islamophobia in France, the French newspaper Libération described 19 Princelet Street in London as 'a lamp that lights up the world'. It is a tangible symbol of immigration and diversity. It tells the human stories of movement across national and cultural borders. It explores the complex narratives of identity that we make as individuals, and as communities.
Immigration, and the cultural diversity to which it gives rise, are not simple issues. So at 19 Princelet Street, we approach them from multiple perspectives. In one small, evocative site, a 300 year old refugee house in London's Spitalfields, we tell many stories. But we do take apparently simple approaches.
In one project, Suitcases and Sanctuary, nine year olds learnt from historians, writers, politicians and poets about earlier histories of arrival. They did what many of us find hard, they looked at the world through another pair of eyes. Muslim children, from Bangladeshi-British families, wrote diaries of being a Jewish refugee escaping persecution in the 1880s. Children from Irish and Caribbean families debated how to react to the Liberation War, whether they would leave or would stay in Bangladesh. What small holders of memory, what spices or rugs might they have brought? The Irish diaspora was explored in poetry and on potatoes themselves.
This simple show, made by children for adults, has attracted over thirty thousand visitors. Visitors are touched, and disarmed. Inside one suitcase, fragile boats sail to safety. A silk sari is printed with children's images of strange people and fruits. These simple displays reach inside the visitor, helping them to wonder what is cultural and what is human.
We build on that 'inreach', to encourage dialogue between people who do not normally meet. We gently challenge preconceptions and prejudices through the use of story. One volunteer might talk about her own experience of racism, another describes the lively reaction to a visitor's self definition as 'cappuccino'.
We empower others to continue the discussion beyond the walls of the museum. One class of seven year olds made their own powerful museum, re-building on our techniques to show family elders how sharing histories might prevent racial conflict.
Those children used their encounter with us to understand what it is to live in a world of global migration, of multiculturalism. It is a great tribute, an effective demonstration of our strategy to prompt encounters across generations, across cultural and other barriers; to create a 'safe space' for discussion of the difficult even frightening issues of racism, discrimination, inclusion, citizenship and conflict that confront us in all our societies.
To find out more, and to understand why despite international acclaim and public support this place still struggles for funds to open the site permanently, visit www.19princeletstreet.org.uk.
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Matters of Conscience is supported in part by the Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation. |