Tag Archives: Democracy

OHD_WKS_0129 Creating Space for Voice

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Miro Board

A link to the workshop Miro Board

Workshop Plan

In this workshop the participants will be asked to reflect on which spaces restrict or elevate voice and what elements, methods, or tactics are used to make these spaces. They will be challenged to turn to archives and question how this space handles voice and what it could learn from other spaces. It is a workshop where no idea is a bad idea, and thinking outside of the box is a must. 

All of the activities will be using a miro board to capture what is being said and explored. 

Intro (2 mins)

I will very briefly introduce myself, my project and what we are going to do in the workshop. 

Activity One: What is an archive? (10 mins)

Aim: To break down the symbols and language of the archive

Task: The participants will be deconstruct the archive through the five senses. What doing they see, smell, hear, feel, and taste when they are in an archive or think of when they hear the word ‘archive’?

Activity Two: The Scale of Voice (10 mins)

Aim: To map different spaces on a scale of suppressing the voice to elevating the voice and identifying where people feel they are most listened to 

Task: The participants will be asked to think of the spaces where they feel their voice heard and where they feel their voice is suppressed. Hopefully, spaces from museums to dinner tables to secondary school classrooms to Twitter will be mapped along a scale, which in the end will show us where people feel most comfortable to speak. 

Activity Three: What are these spaces? (10 mins)

Aim: To break down the symbols and language of the spaces where the participants feel their voice is most elevated 

Task: Just like the first task the participants will deconstruct the space where they feel the most listened to through the five senses. What doing they see, smell, hear, feel, and taste when they are in these spaces? Depending on the number of people participating each space can be tackled consecutively if there are not many participants or in break out rooms where each rooms breaks down a different space.

Activity Four: What now archive? (15 mins)

Aim: To generate ideas and concepts that could transform the archive into a space more like those where people feel heard

Task: The participants will be invited to compare and contrast the experiences of archives and the spaces dissected in the previous activity, and use this as inspiration to create concepts and ideas that could make archives into a more voice friendly space. 

Final thoughts (What ever time is left)

At this point people can ask questions, add any additional thoughts and ideas to the miro board, and generally reflect on the workshop as a whole.

OHD_BLG_0045 Leaching off Public History MA trips

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Two thing I learnt while tagging along with the Public History MA trips to various heritages sites.

Chasing funding

We went to three different heritage sites of varying status and every single one of them mentioned funding many, many, many times. Like many things in the world money is the foundation of any project, endeavour, or system, without it nothing happens, even in the heritage sector where a considerable amount of the labour is free because of volunteers. The majority of funding is project based. That means you write a proposal for a project, which has target outcomes and needs to be completed in a set amount of time. Once the project is finished and you have used up all the funding you have to go look for another project and a new funding. This is often referred to as the funding cycle. The funding cycle is not necessarily good in supporting legacy long term projects. “What will happen when the funding runs out?” is constantly looming over any project and many people actually spend a lot of time writing funding bids instead of working on projects. I therefore not the greatest fan of the funding cycle but there was one person we talked to during the week that gave me a new perspective on the whole thing. They said that the funding cycle allowed them to constantly be reflecting on their practice and what they should be doing next. This is interesting to me because reflective practice has been taught to me as a new and innovative groovy thing. New systems keep on being developed in order to incorporate more reflection but in the funding cycle it has always existed, kind of… It is probably a lot easier to have this attitude when you know you are going to get the next funding anyway, which this person definitely did.

Democratisation of Space

The second thing I realised/changed my perspective on during these trips was how you can view a lot of the politics through the idea of “whose heritage is it anyway?” but somehow I realised that it might be helpful to view it within the context of space and ownership of space. This is quite common in art I guess as people often talk about who gets put in certain gallery spaces and who does not. Every group has their history which they can keep but where it is displayed is where the power truly lies. Sure you can have a history of black people in the black history archive but a far more powerful space to have the exhibition would be the British Library or National Gallery. My theory is: that when we talk about democratising heritage what we really are talking about is democratising space. How can we represent our multilayered history in our limited heritage space? I am thinking that the answer is probably something along the lines of nonpermanent exhibitions…