For paper that is title “designing a system for better oral history reuse” I am not going to spend a lot of time talking specifically about oral history or design. The reason for this is because designing a system for better oral history reuse involves a whole bunch of topics, which for the sake of this talk I decided to map for you to give you a better picture of my work. This is a pretty rough map, there are many things I can talk about and I realise that there are also many overlapping and interconnected themes and all of this will probably change in a week. I am not going to spend my precious ten minutes talking you through this whole map. Instead I am going to expand the themes that I am currently interested in at this point of my journey.

In 1969 Mierle Laderman Ukeles published her Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!, in which she describes how the world consists of two systems: Development and Maintenance. Development involves the creation of stuff, while Maintenance is about keeping the created stuff in good condition. This theory also applies to Oral History, the Development is recording the oral history and Maintenance is the archiving and reusing of those recordings. Now my research does have a Maintenance focus but in order to do Maintenance you still need to have Development and currently I am doing some development. I am recording oral history interviews with people and I have recently come across a very interesting problem that I am going to talk about first and then I will move on to Maintenance part which is also offers plenty food for thought. 

“When I was being trained in museums, conflict over cultural heritage was a constant source of surprise – like the first hot day each summer, when, year after year, one is somehow shocked by what are, in fact, seasonable temperatures.”

I find this a very amusing comparison by Liz Sevcenko, who was Founding Director of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, which is a network of historic sites that foster public dialogue on pressing contemporary issues. The institutes within this coalition are often sites of very intense trauma with many of the sites handling issues like genocide, war, and other atrocities. 

This is Seaton Delaval Hall. Built in the 1720s the hall and its residents, the ‘Gay Delavals’ became renowned for wild parties and other shenanigans. In 1822 the hall went up in flames severely damaging the property. In 2009 after the death of Lord and Lady Hastings the property was taken over by the National Trust. A face value Seaton Delaval Hall is not necessarily like the institutes that make up the Sites of Conscience. It is a National Trust property near the sea, it has a nice rose garden, and a cafe that does excellent scones. But it is also a grand hall built in 1720s in Britain, which can only really mean one thing the Delavals, who were the family that lived in the hall, got some of their income from the British Empire. This is from a report done by the National Trust addressing various properties history with slavery and the British Empire. Sevcenko is right, summers are warmer than winters and there is conflict in all cultural heritage sites no matter how twee they look. 

In a paper about the Sites of Conscience Sevcenko points out “Heritage can never be outside politics – it is always embedded in changing power relations between people”. Seaton Delaval Hall and many other National Trust properties are no exception, however these changing power relations go far beyond the British Empire. 

A couple of weeks ago I meet the child of the old estate manager who, their whole life, lived and worked in the hall until they had to move out of the East Wing due restoration work, I will refer to them as Robin. Robin remembers when a different family the Hastings lives at the hall. Lord and Lady Hastings lived at the hall until their deaths in 2007, nearly also long as the original Delaval family. During their time there, the Hastings opened the hall to the public and regularly threw medieval banquets to raise money for the restoration of the hall. Robin also remembers the German Prisoners of War who were held at the hall during the Second World War. Their whole life Robin has been witness to the changes at the hall seeing it gradually evolve over time. 

But Robin’s history does not really fit with the narrative the National Trust has for the hall. For those who are unfamiliar with the National Trust a lot of the properties are very busy with the idea of “spirit of place.” Seaton Delaval Hall’s spirit of place is deeply connected to the original Delaval family, who were known to be pranksters and excellent party people, think 18th century Gatsby, only with the aforementioned connections to the British Empire. A lot of the hall’s promotional material is built around this and it has functioned as a source of inspiration for various installations. The history that Robin remembers is seemingly under represented at the hall, because it does not really fit with this spirit of place. 

To a certain extent I am trying to solve this particular problem by recording oral histories however in the case of Robin I have come across a problem. Due to their relationship with the National Trust Robin refuses to speak about their history with the National Trust. They will only give me stories from before the National Trust took over. This is because they know that if archived their recording will be donated to the National Trust archive. This means I cannot record the oral history I would like to because of current power structures. 

To recap the political situation of the hall: firstly we have the hall’s connections with the British Empire, which nationally is slowly being addressed with things like the report and yet the hall’s spirit of place I feel is currently not fully considering these connections. And then we have a more recent power dynamic with Robin and the more recent history which clashes with the spirit of place. In case you were wondering Robin is not alone there are some local people who are also not happy with the National Trust. 

Liz Sevcenko concludes in her paper on the Sites of Conscience that: 

Sites of Conscience do not try to suppress controversy in order to reach a final consensus. Instead of being regarded as a temporary problem to be overcome, contestation might be embraced as an ongoing opportunity to be fostered.

The National Trust might decide to stop suppressing the narrative of slavery and move away from the glorification of those who benefited from the crimes of the British Empire, but this does not solve new power dynamics that are appearing, the one blocking Robin from telling their story. In order for Seaton Delaval Hall to become a Site of Conscience, they need to be open to criticism now. They need to open up a dialogue and allow the historical narrative to change and morph over time.

So the Development side of my work is very complicated but it is essential that I do not get to bog down in the Development because that is the reason why I am doing this CDA in the first place. Currently within oral history there is a preference to record over reuse. As the oral historian Michael Frisch describes oral history archives are like “a shoebox of unwatched home videos.” This valuing Development over Maintenance is exactly what Mierle Laderman Ukeles addresses in her manifesto and her art. The big reason for the inequality according to Ukeles is because Maintenance involves tasks that are either seen as domestic and ‘feminine’ or labour done by the working class. 

However, this under valuing of maintenance can have really annoying consequences for example, I always get frustrated when I clean my fridge. There are so many little ridges that stuff gets into it is infuriating. As a designer I know that this problem could easily have been avoided if someone has just asked a cleaner some questions about how they clean a fridge. But they didn’t because people do not value maintenance. But in reality cleaners are extremely powerful, if cleaners go on strike you have a big problem.

Archivists are also part of the Maintenance system. In an article title ‘When The Crisis Fades, What Gets Left Behind?’, a direct quotation from Ukeles’ manifesto, Charlie Morgan, who is the oral history archivist at the British Library, describes how there was a rush to record the varied COVID-19 experience, but little thought was put into how the recorded material will be stored, let alone archived. 

This article reminded me of a meme my friend sent me a couple of months ago, because Morgan did not treat ‘the archive’ as a concept but as a physical institution with staff, coffee machines, and opening times. Shortly after reading this article I had a meeting with the lead archivist at Tyne and Wear Archives Newcastle. They echoed both Morgan and Ukeles when they explained that the reality of being an archivist means you spend the majority of your time on management tasks rather than on the act of archiving. I need to bring these ideas of maintenance and the everyday archive into my development and design of this oral history reuse system. I cannot be like the fridge designers and forget about the person who cleans the fridge, because cleaners are powerful and archivist are the maintenance staff of our history. If archivists stop doing the maintenance then we are in deep trouble. 

Rounding it off. One of the founding ideas behind oral history is that it gives a voice to the voiceless, however this has now become an outdated view as you can see from the things I have outlined here. Firstly, I currently am experiencing a situation where I am unable to give a voice to the voiceless because of the power structures that are present in at hall between people like Robin and the National Trust. And secondly if oral history does give a voice to the voiceless but then does not consider how to keep that voice alive by neglecting ideas around sustainable archiving and maintenance, then that voice is again lost. The aim of my project is to incorporate these ideas into my design for this oral history reuse system that will be housed at Seaton Delaval Hall. 

I hope you enjoyed my little talk on what I am currently obsessed with within my web of topics. If you ask me in a couple of weeks time what I am thinking of it will probably be something completely different.