Showing posts with label museums. Show all posts
Showing posts with label museums. Show all posts

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Intangible Cultural Heritage Collections in Museums - A Workshop in Trinity, NL

1:00 – 4:30 pm
Friday, October 12, 2012
Trinity, NL

Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) is also known as “living heritage” and it encompasses many traditions, practices and customs of a group. These can include the stories we tell, the family events we celebrate, our community gatherings, the languages we speak, the songs that we sing, knowledge of our natural spaces and our healing traditions. In this workshop participants will learn how to document ICH and living traditions in their community, support and encourage the passing on of knowledge and skills, how to digitize this material for easier access, and explore the potential of ICH as a resource for community development.

Instructor: Dale Jarvis, Intangible Cultural Heritage Development Officer
Enrolment Limits: Maximum of 25

Space is limited!! Register early!!

Financial assistance for transportation costs is available for MANL members: please contact the MANL office for more information. You may also visit www.museums.ca to find out more about the Canadian Museums Association Travel Bursary. 

For further information, please contact the MANL:
manl@nf.aibn.com ¨ Ph 709-722-9034 ¨ Fax: 709-722-9035

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Tales of Town at Christmas. Wed, Dec 7th, 7pm


Working on History - Tales of Town at Christmas: 
Wednesday, December 7th, at 7:00 p.m.
The Rooms Theatre

Christmas in St. John’s is a very special time. Join folklorist Dale Jarvis as he sits down to chat with author Helen Porter about her memories of Christmas in Southside St. John’s, and with local businessman Bruce Templeton, who for the past three decades has been a very special assistant to Santa Claus himself!

This presentation is part of a series of programs connected with the Working on History exhibition at The Room. 

Tickets $5, free for members; a cash bar will follow the presentation.

SPOILER ALERT: may not be suitable for young children, or those not initiated into the mysteries of Santa Claus!

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Remember, Remember: Bonfire Night Memories at The Rooms


Coffee and Culture at The Rooms
November 3, 2011 @ 2:30pm

Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night, was a tradition looked forward to with great anticipation in many communities throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, particularly by young people. Faced with concerns about fire safety and vandalism, the tradition faded, though it is now seeing a bit of a revival. At this special Coffee and Culture, graduate students in Dr. Jillian Gould's Public Folklore course at Memorial University present oral histories with some of the people they've interviewed who have warm memories of Bonfire Night from years past.

Coffee and Culture programs are included with the cost of admission to The Rooms.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Tales of Town, this Wednesday night at The Rooms


HFNL and The Rooms kick off the Tales of Town series this Wednesday night, at 7pm. I'll be sitting down with three engaging locals: businesswoman Margaret Dunn, music shop owner Gordon O'Brien, and author Lisa Moore. We'll be sharing memories and stories about growing up in St. John's, and hope you will join us!

The Rooms, Wednesday, October 5th
7pm
Tickets $5, free for members

Monday, April 18, 2011

Intangible cultural heritage alive and well in Scotland - a review


Alright, this is it, my last report from the Measures of Support for Intangible
 Cultural Heritage conference in Quebec City!

On Sunday morning, the Scots were up bright and early after a night of dancing to Quebecois folk music, ready with “Intangible Cultural Heritage in Scotland: developing appropriate methodologies” presented by Alison McCleery, Edinburgh Napier University (ENU), and Joanne Orr, Museum Galleries Scotland (MGS) (twitter.com/JoanneMGS).

Orr, who isn’t half bad at a fast polka, by the way, started off by explaining how MGS represents over 350 museums and galleries in Scotland. 50% of the workforce are volunteers (which will sound familiar to the museum community in Newfoundland and Labrador). The sector contributes over 800 million pounds in value to the Scottish economy. The members are widespread geographically, and many serve as cultural hubs for their communities, a theme which was repeated in the presentation.

McCleery gave a history of their ICH work. A research team from ENU was commissioned to scope ICH activities in Scotland, map support mechanisms in place to safeguard ICH, review, evaluate and make recommendations. They decided that an inclusive definition of ICH should be used in terms of level of participation, diffusion and ethnicity (i.e. ICH in Scotland, rather than Scottish ICH). The study noted that recording ICH is an inventory is the first step towards ensuring that ICH is safeguarded, and that safeguarding of ICH should take the form of supporting education channels and community groups.

In Scotland, the emphasis has been on living practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and skills, that communities, groups and individuals themselves recognize as part of their own ICH. Ideal approaches to safeguarding should be community centred and owned, unforced, uncontrived, and authentic. McCleery, admirably, also made the point that celebrating diversity promotes social cohesion.

Scotland is developing a very open inventory, that anyone can contribute to, which is in an easily edited wiki format: www.ichscotlandwiki.org. McCleery gave the Heart of Midlothian as an example of a cultural space and practise that is recorded on the inventory.

Orr presented on a few projects that member organizations have undertaken with an ICH focus. One was a knitted fish project, where traditional knitting techniques were used to knit fabric fish which including local sayings. The project has resulted in regular groups meeting to knit, which has moved the tradition forward in terms of subject matter.

Another project was conducted by a local fisheries museum – a boatbuilding project which included rowing clubs that compete against each other. In this way, skills are maintained, and the tradition moved forward to fit people’s lives today, and to involve people who never would have considered themselves part of the tradition.

Orr argued that the local memory of family and village histories is the heart of community collections. There is a strong wish in villages to hold on to traditions, a sentiment that certainly, again, sounds familiar here in Newfoundland and Labrador.

McCleery noted that ICH in Scotland faces two problems. There is what she called the “authenticy/ownership challenge” - for whose benefit is cultural tourism? Should it be outward facing for tourists, or inward facing for locals? She also noted a generational mismatch challenge – older people have knowledge of ICH, while the younger generation has technology and virtual knowledge to share it, but not the interest the material. She argued that we must find a compromise between doing nothing and doing something, and that we need to find a way to bridge gap. She suggested that education in schools is one important approach to this question.

Orr then described an online “Remembering Scotland at War” project, which contains curated exhibitions by museums in one part, and user generated content in another part. People can post their own material, which can then be moved into the curated section.

“When people engage and share their knowledge, we are richer,” Orr said.

Orr also argued that we need to combine the tangible and intangible, with less focus on materiality, and more on meaning. Museums can be cultural meeting places, where the process of ICH can be witnessed daily. She referenced the Festival of Museums, which encourages museums to share tangible and intangible in creative ways.

You can check out one example, a fishtastic festival. Other museums developed projects around basket weaving and peat cutting.

“ICH is dynamic, about living processes,” said Orr. “We’ve got to move the perception of heritage to something that is dynamic.” Right on!

Overall, ICH is alive and well in Scotland, embedded at community level. People are comfortable with the concept of ICH, and ICH benefits from the gentle support of the museums network. Inspiring work, Scotland!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Call for papers - Canadian Museums Association Conference 2010

Call for Papers
Canadian Museums Association National Conference 2010
Evolving Boundaries: Linking People, Place & Meaning
St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador
May 10-15, 2010


As we grapple with the impact of the global economic crisis, it is even more critical that museums deliver meaningful visitor experiences.

Traditionally museums focused on collecting and presenting the “tangible”, whether these were works of art, natural history specimens or cultural artifacts. Increasingly, we have included an understanding of the “intangibles” of traditional knowledge and cultural practice as essential to a full spectrum of content and experience. This conference will feature exemplary work in human and natural history museums and art galleries that fulfill our traditional mandates.

There will also be a community museums stream of sessions. As a highlight of the 2010 conference, we will be placing a special focus on Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), providing a forum for discussion of practical approaches by which museums can creatively link people and place to collections in order to inspire meaning.

Key themes/topics:
The conference will be built around the following themes:

1) ICH: Incorporating ICH into the core museum functions — collecting, research, programming & exhibition. Exemplary projects and their impact on museum audiences.

2) Best practices: New technologies, new partners, new approaches to programming, new organizational models. Innovations that improve the effectiveness of our work.

3) Sustainability: New strategies to help museums to do more with less. New paradigms for securing new resources.

Session formats:

The 2010 Conference Committee will accept proposals for the following session formats:
• Panel: Consists of three or four speakers, who present for up to 20 minutes each, relative to the session theme;
facilitated by a moderator.
• Case study: Consists of one or two persons, usually from the same organization, and focuses on one actual situation,
program or project, the decision-making process involved, implementation, outcome(s), and lessons learned.
• Or something completely different? The 2010 welcomes original session formats! Please include a brief explanation
of your proposed format with your session proposal.
• Cross-disciplinary panels or presentations are particularly welcome.
Selection criteria:

Priority will be given to proposals that are relevant to the key themes (above), are clear and well developed, and confirm a commitment from the presenters to delivery of a high-quality, thought-provoking session.

Proposals will not be accepted if they appear to be a show and tell session or product/service endorsements.

Please note: The CMA is unable to provide speakers with travel funds, honorariums or allowances.

Submit your proposal, NO LATER than JUNE 1, 2009
Email: sramsden@museums.ca
Fax: 416-236-5557

Questions? Sue Ann Ramsden, 416-231-1251

Download the Call for Papers application form in pdf at:
http://www.heritagefoundation.ca/media/2708/callforpaperscma2010.pdf