Curation & Interpretation in the Age of Digital Media

[Chris Hutchison]

Programme of the symposium ...:

Curation & Interpretation in the Age of Digital Media

C-SCAIPE, Kingston University, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT1 2EE

Friday, 26th June 2006 (Free Event, Free Lunch)

Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have in the past decade or so changed not only the ways in which culture and heritage institutions (museums, galleries, national monuments, archives, etc) present themselves and their collections to the public (trivially, for example, there can hardly be a museum or gallery in the world that does not now have a web presence) but also--and increasingly--the relationship between the public and the institutions. ICTs enable cultural and heritage institutions and their publics to engage with collections in new ways, in principle--and, in many cases, in practice--empowering audiences by democratising (digital) access and inviting participation. And yet frequently, with the increasing privatisation of memory institutions and the commodification of culture, the emergent digital media technologies may define and constrain the boundaries of cultural (re)production, access, and ownership.

The event brings together professionals and practitioners in the fields of culture and heritage to reflect on their professional practices in the light of recent trends and innovations in heritage informatics, focusing as much on the changing role of the cultural institution as on the technologies that have both driven and enabled such change. This entails that, in addition to the core concern with technological innovation, we shall also be critically scrutinizing the cultural, social, political, economic, and legal frameworks within which digital 'memory institutions' are designed and presented to public view.

It is within this context that we at Kingston University aspire to foster and catalyse equitable working relationships with stakeholders and community partnerships leading to tangible outcomes beneficial to all, and led and owned by all, in line with recommendations of the Mayor's Commission on African and Asian Heritage.

The programme for the afternoon will be structured around key themes, introduced by short presentations and followed by plenary discussions, leading to an informed understanding of how new media impact upon and transform heritage practice and ownership.

12:30—13:30 Registration, networking and buffet lunch. Students' posters on Digital Curation on display for viewing

13:30 Welcome Address: Chris Hutchison, KU Heritage & Regeneration Working Group, & ProjectKingstonAfrica

13:45 Keynote Address: Arthur Torrington, OBE, Secretary, the Equiano Society

14:00 Theme 1: Community and Curation

Presentations: Theresa Nash, Fabian Tompsett, Leslie Ikomi Braine

Chair: Cliff Pereira

14:45 Theme 2: Representations and Interpretations

Presentations: Indie Choudhury, Jennie Baptiste, Ida Horner, Roy Stephenson

Chair: Mykaell Riley

15:30 Tea Break

15:45 Theme 3: Contemporary Culture and the Creative Arts

Presentations: Mykaell Riley, Michael McMillan, Corrine Bougaard, Gloria Ojulari Sule, Inua Ellams

Chair: Indie Choudhury

16:45 Theme 4: Intellectual Property, Human Rights and Heritage

Presentations: Cliff Pereira, Asif Khan

Chair: Kalliopi Fouseki

17:15: Plenary on practical strategies and knowledge partnerships

Chair: Kofi Maluwi Klu (reflections on submission by Tunde Zack-Williams)

Lead Discussants: Lucie Amos, Mykaell Riley, Arthur Torrington, Theresa Nash

Informal post-event drinks.

Organisations and projects represented at the event include (in alphabetical order): African Studies Association UK (ASAUK) Black and Asian Studies, UK Black Arts Alliance Bristol Libraries
British Museum
Ethnic Supplies, UK and Uganda
Glo-arts, Bristol
Health through History, Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organisation (THACMHO)
Heritage2Health, Kingston University
Historic Royal Palaces
Maroon Project
Museum of London Archaeology Service
ProjectKingstonAfrica, Kingston University
Queens University Belfast
Rendezvous of Victory
Royal Geographical Society
Tate Britain
The Equiano Society
Union Dance
WorldEquals
University of Westminster, Faculty of Music
Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past, University of York

Profiles of presenters

Welcome Address:

Christopher Hutchison conceptualised, and teaches, the curriculum in 'Culture & Heritage informatics' in the Faculty of Computing, Information Systems & Mathematics. He is a member of the university's cross-faculty Heritage, Arts, and Regeneration Working Group, as well as a chief collaborator in ProjectKingstonAfrica. A graduate in Modern Languages and Linguistics, with a MSc in Intelligent Knowledge-Based Systems and a PhD in Cognitive Linguistics, Chris has more than 30 years experience of teaching and research in the cognitive and computing sciences, with a special interest in their cross-disciplinary application in the areas of e-heritage, museums and digital curation, cultural anthropology, and the verbal and visual arts. Chris has more than 50 publications, ranging from co-authorship of computer science books such as the 1989 textbook Computers and Thought: A Practical Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (MIT Press) to journal papers in the arts and humanities. He has worked on digital museum projects projects for, inter alia, Historic Royal Palaces (London), the Museo della Lana di Scanno (Abruzzo), the Plantin-Moretus Museum and City Prints Gallery (Antwerp). His current research interests are in heritage informatics, knowledge-based interfaces to digital heritage, representations of intangible heritage, and oral histories as indigenous knowledge / social remembering in the construction of Self and Other.

Keynote Address:

Arthur Torrington is the co-founder of Windrush Foundation and The Equiano Society. The Society publicises the life of Olaudah Equiano, a former slave, writer and abolitionist who lived in 18th century England, and Arthur worked with Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery in 2007/2008 on a national exhibition that focused on the life and times of Equiano. With a grant of £653,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the exhibition broke new grounds in the UK. Arthur also publicised the work of Windrush men and women who settled in Britain 22 June 1948, a date that is said to be the dawn of multicultural Britain. Arthur was awarded an OBE in 2002 for his services in community relations in London over many many years.

Theme One: Community and Curation

Clifford Pereira (chair) is a renowned and prolific writer, historical geographer and curator. Born in Kenya of Goan origin, he originally came to Britain in 1971. One of two world authorities on the Bombay Africans, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) and chair of the Black and Asian Studies Association (BASA), recently he has been a consultant to the Mayor’s Commission on African and Asian Heritage, RGS, Royal Dockyard Chatham and to the UNESCO Slave Route project. His publications include The View from Shooters Hill – the Hidden Black and Asian History of Bexley (Nov. 2008), and chapters within Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia (Sep 2008), TADIA the African Diaspora in Asia (Oct 2008) and Les Africaines de Bombay et la colonie de Freretown (2006)

Heritage2Health presenters: Malik Gul, Tom Clarke, Mark Martin, Lenka Gourdie and Hannah Byrd.

Theresa Nash is a Principal Lecturer in Primary Care and Enterprise Lead for the Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences (FHSCS) Kingston University and St Georges University of London, and member of the Royal Society of Medicines General Practice and Primary Care council. Her background is in Public Health practice, education, research and social enterprise. Theresa has undertaken a range of primary care research studies most recently a national survey for the Royal College of Nursing to understand the issues, and care principles of nurses who work with young people. Research projects have focused on service access, primary care intervention evaluations and understanding the culture of youth. Theresa has led the development of a range of services and multidisciplinary projects including setting up new services for vulnerable young people, publishing national resources for practitioners and coordinating multi disciplinary initiatives. She has recently led on developing the enterprise strategy for the FHSCS and is now co-ordinating its delivery. She is the Founder and lead facilitator of Heritage2Health which seeks to build collaborative partnerships between people and places to enhance community wellbeing. Heritage2Health (TM) is being developed in collaboration with colleagues from the Kingston and St George’s University, Staffordshire University,South West London and St George’s Mental Health Trust, Wandsworth Community Empowerment Network (WCEN), the Wolfson Neuro Rehabilitation Unit, Disabled Parent International, the National Trust and English Heritage.

Malik Gul is the Director of WCEN and has a 25 year background in community development. His academic career has spanned from Philosophy and Politics; Law and Public Administration. With the network team he has been instrumental in facilitating the strategic direction of WCEN in empowering communities to partner with public sector decision makers. WCEN is currently forming a collaborative partnership with Heritage2Health to design and deliver new community facilitator programmes to enhance communities capacity to co – create new initiatives across all sectors – heritage, education, health and community safety.

Tom Clarke is Associate Director of Nursing with South West London & St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust and Honorary Research Fellow, the Faculty of Health & Social Care Sciences, Kingston University. Tom is a recipient of an UnLtd Millennium Award for CANnurse which enablesg nurses to share knowledge and expertise across borders and is the inventor of POEThealth, a software package for evaluating inpatient environments. Special interests include social enterprise and community empowerment initiatives.

Mark Martin is a Principal Lecturer in the School of Social Work, Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences, Kingston University and St George's University of London. After eight years working with adolsecents in the youth justice system Mark qualified as a social worker and went on to manage a care home for older people. Here he was involved in a project funded by central government and facilitated by the National Institute for Social Work to develop training programmes for care staff, an early example of service user involvement in identifying training needs of staff. He moved from here to the training department of a local authority before taking up a post at the university. His academic focus has been on community care and law, organizational theory, and the inter-professional context of service delivery and development. He developed an ran an MA in Community Care Studies that incorporated post-qualifying awards in social work. Currently he teaches on a wide range of programmes from Foundation Degree to Masters levels. Interested in enhancing the way the institutions respond to the diversity of student needs during their courses, he is currently researching into the induction needs of students on practice placements. Involved in developing Heritage to Health for three years , Mark is involved in promoting the faculty enterprise agenda. He has provided consultancy and training to local authorities and chairs local authority Stage 3 social services complaints panels. In addition he is a qualified cricket umpire.

Leslie Ikomi Braine is a curator from Manchester and a vast collector of material representing African and Caribbean peoples in the Diaspora. Leslie is lending key artefacts for Museum of London Dockland’s London, Sugar & Slavery permanent exhibit and is invited regularly to the museum's community dialogue forums to speak about his collection and its interpretations from a community point of view. He is a member of the Manchester Community Heritage Consultation group. Much of his collection should prove of significant value to dealing with human rights, access and anti racism in museums and in society at large today.

Fabian Tompsett is a social historian, a founding member of the London Psychogeographical Association, and founding editor (now production editor) of the journal Transgressions: A Journal of Urban Exploration (University of Newcastle).

Theme 2: Representations and Interpretations

Mykaell Riley (chair) began his career as a performer with pioneering Reggae outfit Steel Pulse before moving on to found the Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra. He has been a professional writer/producer/arranger for the last fifteen years, producing music for TV and film and over thirty albums. He has worked for artists such as Soul II Soul, Courtney Pine, Baba Maal, and a host of others. A Senior Lecturer in Music Production at the University of Westminster, Mykaell is also Senior Trustee for the Black Music Education Trust, a new initiative borne out of the need to document the history of black music. A Fellow and RSA Music Producer and Manager, he specialises in Educational Project Development in Music. He is Senior Lecturer BA (Hons) Commercial Music. As a professional writer/producer, his work encompasses TV and Film and Theatre, but mainly albums, over thirty of them - resulting in over nine top twenty positions, and three number ones. Mykaell S Riley's career spans over twenty years, during which he has performed, produced, managed and consulted on many artists and their projects. He's worked as A n R, for labels, as in house writer for a publishing company, and as music researcher for television. He's also heavily involved in project development, main funding bodies like the British Council, London arts, the PRS and the BP, the Prince of Wales Trust, the Lottery Fund, as well as for broadcasters such as Channel 4, ITV, and the BBC.

Ida Horner grew up in Idi Amin’s Uganda and the first 20 years of her life were marked by civil wars. Ida left Uganda on a scholarship from the Austrian government to study at Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management and eventually moved to the UK. Ida enrolled on a degree program in Housing Management and development at Westminster University in London and had a successful career as a District Housing Manager for a London Housing Authority prior to the events of December 2006. In December 2006 Ida went to her native Uganda for Christmas and whilst there she was invited to New Year’s eve party in South West Uganda. She had never been to this part of Uganda and found it difficult to reconcile the beauty of that part of the country with the poverty – she resolved to do something on her return to the UK and the result is Ethnic Supplies. Today Ida is a sought after inspirational speaker who shares her life’s journey with great passion. Ida is passionate about sustainable development and issues affecting poverty stricken African women. Ida Horner is Managing Director of Ethnic Supplies Ltd. Websites: http://www.ethnicsupplies.co.uk and http://lethemhelpthemselves.org

Roy Stephenson is a medieval and post-medieval pottery specialist at the Museum of London, where he has worked since 1986, developing an expertise in dealing with large assemblages of ceramics recovered from kiln sites. In 2000 Roy became a senior manager with particular responsibilities for developing and promoting the environmental, finds and conservation work of Specialist Services. In 2005 he left commercial archaeology to be manager of the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive, housed in a warehouse in Hackney that consists of 10 km of shelves and over 150000 boxes of finds as well as site records and photographs from 100 years of archaeological work in London. The LAARC team curates collections, facilitates research and creates opportunities for members of the public to be involved in archaeology in a positive mutually beneficial fashion. Currently Roy is acting as the Head of the Early London History and Collections Department at the Museum of London. Roy has contributed to MoLAS Publications including: ‘Excavations at the Priory and Hospital of St Mary Spital, London’, ‘The Limehouse Porcelain Manufactory: excavations at 108–116 Narrow Street, London 1990’ ‘Bankside: excavations at Benbow House, Southwark. He is co-author of ‘A Fourteenth-century Pottery Site at Kingston upon Thames, Surrey: excavations at 70–76 Eden Street’ and is co-author of a major MoLAS monograph ‘The Delftware Industries of Southwark and Lambeth’. He is a member of the Institute for Archaeologists, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and has recently been asked to be an Honorary Lecturer at UCL’s Institute for Archaeology.

Jennie Baptiste is a renowned London-based celebrity photographer and artist and has curated various exhibitions in New York, London and the UK, Jamaica, Berlin, Paris on a diversity of youth culture themes, including on Hiphop. She has also published widely in Touch, Trace, Popworld, Straight No Chaser, Attitude, Warp, Pride, You Magazine, Rime. Her clients include Levi’s, Compaq, Polydor, Virgin Airways, Sonymusic, Wale Adeyemi Deal Real and Anti Slavery International. She has also done video stills (Liberty X Jump’in, Jump’in 2003; Daniel Bedingfield Friday 2003; Girls Aloud Jump 2003). Collections include The National Portrait Gallery, London 2004 and Photograph Roots Manuva (lith print). Videos: Phats & Smalls 2001; Luc Skyz Raise Up 2007; Maroon Short Film 2007; Radio: Choice FM Angie La Mar Show 2007; BBC Worldservice Talking Africa 2003 and Choice FM. www.jenniebaptiste.com

Theme 3: Contemporary Culture and the Creative Arts

Gloria F. Y. Ojulari Sule is a Visual Artist, and holds a B.A.Hons in Fine Art Painting Norwich School of Art & Design 1996. A Bristol based artist with a studio at Spike Island, her practice is influenced by her own experience as a black woman of Nigerian heritage and Yoruba cultural art traditions. In her practice the artist explores ‘Black Britishness’, race, culture and identity. Gloria works as a community artist in the South West nationally and internationally. In 2000 the artist worked with Education Action Zone to help raise attainment of students in Bristol schools and later went on to be part of the "Black Bristolians: People Who Make a Difference" Learning Resource, developed by the Bristol Black Archive Partnership. In 2004 she won a place on the ‘Calling’ Digital media residency a project based at the Watershed and curated by Folake Shoga. In 2006 Gloria visited the Dakar biennale of Contemporary African Arts in Senegal on a research trip to document showing artists and their work. The resulting work is a valuable resource for workshops. During the trip she teamed up with the Dakar Media Centre to shoot footage for a moving image installation later developed with the support of ‘Picture this’, and ‘Small Wonders’. HLM Costume was shown in 2008. This showed with Firstborn Creatives on the Me deya, short films and audio-visual project in 2007, a legacy of transatlantic slavery presented through a media workshop format and on ‘Unfinished Business’ - BBC with Rob Mitchell and Shawn Naphtali Sobers in a polemical look at the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade through the eyes of a mixed-heritage Bristolian. Her projects are concerned with visualising black history through Contemporary African arts and maintaining a dialogue around the Black British experience. Web: http://www.gloarts.co.uk

Corrine Bougaard Artistic Director. Born in South Africa, Corrine’s distinguished career at Ballet Rambert preceded her role as founder member, choreographer, teacher and Associate Director of Extemporary Dance Theatre. Corrine went on to found Union Dance in 1986. Awarded the first Arts Council England bursary for an Artistic Director of Dance, Corrine was also a recipient of the Winston Churchill Fellowship; the first British choreographer to research contemporary dance in Cuba. Corrine, as a producer, has also choreographed for many of the twenty touring Union Dance productions, including a commission for The Henley Festival of Music & the Arts. The latest Union Dance project is Fit Fresh Start- everything on a plate, a dance, finess, dietary and wellbeing programme challenging obesity, devised for young people. Former senior lecturer at Central St Martins in MA Design and from Sept 08, a lecturer in contextual theatre studies at BA level. Web: http://www.uniondance.co.uk

Michael McMillan is a writer, playwright, curator/artist of Vincentian parentage. Recent plays include: “Babel Junction” (Maya Productions - 2006) & “Master Juba” (Theatre Is & GLYPT - 2006). His exhibition “The West Indian Front Room” (Geffrye Museum 2005-06) had over 35,000 visitors and inspired other international commissions and the BBC4 documentary “Tales from the front room”. See http://www.thefrontroom.org “The Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home” will be publishing by Black Dog in September 2009. His recent exhibition is “The Beauty Shop” (198 Contemporary Arts & Learning 2008). His is Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the LCC (University of the Arts, London).

Inua Ellams is a Word & Graphic Artist. Born in Nigeria in ’84, he fell for visual art and worked solely in this field until he started writing in ‘02. Constantly striving to merge the disciplines, his work is known for its musicality, beauty and attention to detail. His best selling first book titled “Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales” was published in ‘05, a critically acclaimed collection of “short stories disguised as long poems” and his first full length theatre piece ‘The 14th Tale’, commissioned by The BAC and The London Word Festival is, set to go to The Edinburgh Fringe Fest and for National tour this Autumn. As a workshop facilitator, he has taught in universities, secondary & primary schools, theatres & libraries, delivering prose or poetry workshops, often combined with visual art as a stimulus. Described as the love child of John Keats & Mos Def and influenced by classic lit and hip hop, Inua’s work crosses 18th Century Romanticism & West African tradition of story telling with contemporary diction, loose rhythm and rhyme. Web: http://www.phaze05.com

Theme 4: Intellectual Property, Human Rights and Heritage

Kalliopi Fouseki (chair) holds a BA in Archaeology from the University of Athens. After completing an MA in Cultural Heritage Studies at the University College London she conducted a PhD at the same university focusing on conflict management at in-situ museums. She worked at the New Acropolis Museum (Athens, Greece), the archaeological museum of Ancient Olympia (Greece) and volunteered at the Museum of London. Currently she is working at the Department of Archaeology of the University of York as a Post-doctoral Research Assistant for the 1807 Commemorated project which explores the ways in which the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade was commemorated in Britain and the public memories that were shaped by it (http://www.history.ac.uk/1807commemorated/)

Cliff Pereira (see bio ealier)

Asif Khan manages Bristol Libraries’ community engagement team. Recent heritage initiatives include the Anne Frank + You exhibition, Bristol 1807: A Sense of Place and Sacred On Location. In 2008 Asif led on Bristol’s European Year of Intercultural Dialogue cultural programme. Activities included Slavery Remembrance Day and the civic declaration in support of the Council of Europe Convention on Action Against Human Trafficking. Asif sits on Bristol City Council’s working group for tackling trafficking. Asif organised the launch of the city’s abolition Legacy Commission in April 2008 and spoke about its emerging role in supporting BME educational attainment at a UNESCO TST teachers’ conference in New Orleans in June 2008. In 2007 Asif was seconded from Bristol’s Abolition 200 initiative to the Museum Libraries and Archives Council for the post of senior policy adviser for the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade programme. In this role Asif worked with partners such as lottery funders to raise awareness of Bicentenary events and exhibitions, the Amistad’s Atlantic Freedom tour and a national schools videoconference. In partnership with UNESCO’s Slave Route Project, Asif organised a museums conference focusing on international collaborations between institutions in the UK, Africa and the Caribbean Islands. In 2005 Asif was recognised as Innovator of the Year’ by Bristol City Council for his work with socially excluded groups in partnership with organisations such as the Royal National Institute for the Blind. In 2008 Asif was enrolled onto Bristol City Council’s Management Into Leadership programme.

Plenary:

Kofi Mawuli Klu (chair) is a Jurisconsult specialising in the Praxis of Law as Resistance in Community Advocacy. He is one of the Joint Coordinators of Rendezvous of Victory (ROV), the Abolitionist Heritage Learning movement that has arisen from, and is, therefore, led by the Pan-Afrikan Community. Kofi brings to ROV his vast didactic experience of continuing to work for many years at local, national and international levels within a wide array of organisations, networks and campaigns. He also specializes in Global Citizenship Educational innovations of Lifelong Learning and runs a rich diversity of conscientizational programmes, courses and training initiatives in various institutions and community spaces of mural and extra-mural education in Europe, Afrika and other parts of the World. Kofi is widely known for his passionate championing of Pan-Afrikan Knowledge Integration into Global Citizenship Education, particularly Anti-Slavery Heritage Awareness as germaine to Pan-Afrikan Community Regeneration for Sustainable World Development.

Facilitator and Rapporteur:

June Bam-Hutchison holds a PhD and is a South African. Presently working as a community development and diversity strategist in London in partnership with Black, Asian and ethnic minority diaspora communities in the UK, June has grown up and worked extensively with communities in South Africa during both the apartheid and post-apartheid periods. She has worked at and with a number of universities in both South Africa and Europe, and has presented many talks globally in her field in the area of community, diversity and heritage. She has held several leadership positions in the field of diversity, museums, heritage and community development, amongst others as CEO of South Africa's first national post-apartheid history project for education which included the establishment of local indigenous knowledge networks and partnerships with communities, local government, higher education and the heritage sector. Recent and present positions include as co-chair of the Mayor's Heritage and Diversity Task Force Committee on Equitable Partnerships in London and as Honorary Secretary of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom. June was appointed as a research fellow in human rights and heritage at Kingston University and as Research Associate for the Public Understanding of the Past, York University. Her leadership and contributions were recognized on the world stage in September 2008 with two awards: the 60th anniversary Unesco Peace Education Prize to South Africa in Paris and a prestigious GG2 UK women in leadership and diversity 10th anniversary award presented to her by the British First Lady in London. She is Director of WorldEquals. Web: http://www.WorldEquals.com