In this news section you will find Archival Platform announcements. You can also download Archival Platform newsletters.
Archival Platform June Newsletter
Dear colleagues
The Recessionary Archive?
In this time of recession and global turmoil the debate about the past is hotting up in southern Africa: I can’t keep up with the conferences, 2010 funding opportunities, and debates in every corridor. While the sector faces significant challenges (the resignation of the entire Council and the CEO of the Robben Island Museum being one recent example) people also seem to have renewed energy and resources to cope with them.
The Archival Platform is a research, networking and advocacy project hosted jointly by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the University of Cape Town. The aim of the Platform is to improve networking and debate between various sectors of the archive, memory and heritage field, including government, academics, practitioners, and the public. Our networking efforts, while based in South Africa, will reach out not only to people in South Africa, but also elsewhere in Africa and on other continents to expand this debate. Key areas of focus for the Platform in the medium term will include the economics of heritage, digitisation and use of digital tools in archives and heritage management, and heritage education.
Entries for this newsletter are gratefully taken from lists like SAHO, ICOMOS, Australia ICOMOS, UNESCO, ICOM, AFRICOM, ICCROM, OCPA and your contributions.
Please contact me with your news / ideas.
Best wishes
Dr. Harriet Deacon
Director, Archival Platform
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
NEWS and CURRENT EVENTS
Interrogating the archive: problems and possibilities
Plenary panel at SAHS conference
22 June from 16h00 to 17h30 at UNISA
Public and private archives face numerous challenges in southern Africa today including lack of funding, capacity, and political will to support their important role as locations of public memory. How does this affect the ability of archives to mediate and reflect public memory? Other external pressures shaping archives include the uneven digitisation of collections, competing claims over intellectual property rights, and political pressures to ‘delete’ or render inaccessible certain archives. How are these problems affecting specific archives and how are they being addressed? Historians need to access archives: how are we coping with these problems, and what solutions can be proposed?
Chair: Carolyn Hamilton, UCT
Panel members: Graham Dominy, DAC; Sello Hatang, NMF; Antonia Malan, UCT; Jabulani Sithole, UKZN
We have also set up an online discussion site to give you an opportunity to raise issues. If you would like to participate in the online discussion and do not already have a login please email Harriet Deacon, Director, Archival Platform, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
First Euro-African Campus on cultural cooperation
22-26 June 2009, Maputo
The main aim of the Campus is to provide a meeting, training and exchange point for cultural agents in Africa and Europe to reflect, transfer knowledge, exchange experiences and discuss possible joint initiatives in the field of cultural cooperation, in the broader context of the contribution of culture to sustainable development.
Intangible Cultural Heritage on the Fast Track
One hundred and eleven nomination files were examined in May 2009 by a subsidiary body of the Committee for the safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity and recommendations were made for inscriptions on the Representative List. A number of these nominations came from Africa.
Since the list of domains provided in the Convention is not intended to be complete or exclusionary, the Intergovernmental Committee may one day wish to enlarge the number of domains, or to explicitly mention subdomains for the domains already established. This might concern such (sub)domains as, for instance, “traditional play and games”, “culinary traditions”, “animal husbandry”, “pilgrimage” or “places of memory”—all of which have already been employed in one or more of the inventories of States Parties to the Convention.
Theft at the Kitale Museum, Kenya
AFRICOM
The museum was the first of the Inland museums to be developed in Kenya. It used to be known by the name the Stoneham Museum. It got its name from an amateur naturalist who lived in Kitale, by the name Lieutenant colonel Hugh Stoneham. He had a collection of insects, other animals and books from 1894 when he was only five years old. He continued his collection until 1966 when he died. Mrs. Linda Donley a peace Corp volunteer was the first curator in 1974.
In 1926, he founded the Stoneham Museum, a private museum and later willed his collections as well as funds for a new museum building to the Kenya Nation. A new building was erected on five acres of land on the outskirts of Kitale town. In December 1974, the National Museums of Western Kenya was opened and became the first regional museum in the Kenya Museum Society.
The Kitale Museum has a lot of ethnographical materials collected from surrounding ethnic groups in addition to Stoneham’s collections.
On the 21st May 2009,robbers broke into the gallery at night and took away 54 World War I and II medals, as well recognition medals that were given to heroes, who fought during the wars. The stolen medals were the Stoneham collection which he bequeathed to the museum and are dating as far back from 1798- 1950.
Event: THAMI MNYELE REMEMBERED: there goes a man…
WEDNESDAY, 17th June, 11h30 for 12h00pm, TH Barry Lecture Theatre (at the Iziko South African Museum, top of Company’s Gardens, 25 Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town)
Free entrance
ABOUT THAMSANQA MNYELE:
Thamsanqa Mnyele was a visual artist, whose life was cut short by the apartheid system on the 14th June 1985. History has brought to our attention an opportunity for us to celebrate Thami, whose life and presence was a series of brave actions, advocating for the betterment of those whose “voices” had been deliberately silenced, suppressed and ultimately erased by the then government. His art reminds us of the many sacrifices that have been made to create a better future for all. His life may have been snuffed out, but his visual imagery lives on.
Questionnaire on Museum education
Contribute to international research on the place of education in museums if you are in charge of education in a museum. The questionnaire can be filled in at the following location:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Nkyo1x3byUu_2beCLbM0HcSg_3d_3d
Contact:
Alexandra Zbuchea
PhD, Assistant Professor
Dep of Communication and Public Relations National School of Political and Administrative Studies Bucharest, Romania .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Culture and Africa in the UNESCO Draft Programme and Budget for 2010 – 2011
The Document 35 C/5 contains the proposals of the Director-General to be presented for decision to the General Conference in October 2009. Its Major Programme IV concerning Culture is structured around two biennial sectoral priorities and five main lines of action, with special emphasis on the needs of Africa and gender equality. See details at http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001811/181173e.pdf
CONFERENCES:
First Apartheid Archive Conference: “Facing the Archive”
18th June 2009, 08h00-21h00
Great Hall, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Our speaker line up includes:
Prof. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela Prof. Gillian Straker
Prof. Jonathan Jansen Prof. Abebe Zegeye
Dr. Noor Nieftagodien Commissioner Jodi Kollapen
Dr. John Kani Prof. Mahmood Mamdani
The full programme is available at http://www.apartheidarchive.org
RSVP to Nomonde Gogo by Thursday 4th June 2009 at:
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address); Phone: (011) 717-4524, Fax: (011) 717-4559
National Heritage Council Heritage Funding Conference
9-10 JULY 2009 at Gallagher Estate, Midrand
NHC calls all International and National Heritage Funding Agencies, Public and Private Corporate Business, Government and Government Agencies, Heritage Experts and Academics, Civil Societies, NGO’s and Communities to come together and participate in the process of enhancing heritage as a sustainable anchor for socio economic development. The Heritage Funding Conference will reveal results of a survey of South Africa’s funding trends in Preserving South Africa’s most valued treasure – our Heritage.
An exhibition that will showcase successfully implemented projects in the Heritage sector will be accessible during the conference. Breakaway sessions will be results driven and afford all to participate in the sharing of opportunities, opinions and experiences. The two-day Summit will be attended by the Minister of Arts and Culture, MS Lulu Xingwana, Deputy Minister of Arts and Culture, Mr Paul Mashatile. President Jacob Zuma will be the Keynote Speaker at the Gala event.
For more information or enquiries:
Please call Sydney Mokumo or Phumzile Nene @ Litha Communications on:
Telephone: 011 480 - 4922, Fax: 011 480 4921
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
World Heritage and Cultural Diversity – Challenges for University Education
23 - 25 October 2009. Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus, Germany
This conference deals with the expansion of the notion of heritage to include intangibles, embrace cultural diversity and expand the world heritage list.
http://www.tu-cottbus.de/whs/conference2009/documents/concept.pdf
http://www.tu-cottbus.de/whs/conference2009/documents/programme.pdf
2009 RAI Ethnographic Film Festival: followed by Emotion in Motion, The Passions of Tourism Travel and Movement
1 - 4 July 2009, Leeds, UK
4 - 7 July 2009, Leeds, UK
The 11th Royal Anthropological Institute International Festival of Ethnographic Film will be held in Leeds in July 2009.
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or visit the Festival’s website at http://raifilmfest.org.uk/
The Best in Heritage
Dubrovnik, Croatia, 24 – 26 September 2009
The Best in Heritage is an annual presentation of the best, awarded projects in museums, heritage and conservation. A Creative Heritage Forum (CHF), a special session on excellence and innovation, will also be part of the event.
For further information, visit the links below:
2009 programme at: http://www.thebestinheritage.com/event/programme.php
To participate, please register at: http://www.thebestinheritage.com/event/prijava_eng.php
Archives and the new media: the past in the future?
Digital and biodigital lives: making, consuming and archiving the lives of technoscience: 14 July 2009, 9am - 5.30, EDB, University of Sussex
The aim of this one-day workshop is to examine issues and questions about digital and biodigital life, lives and identities. From the lives of scientists to the technologisation of life, ‘Digital and biodigital lives’ indicates biotechnological and informatic forms and practices of identifying, archiving and storying life, as well as potentially diverse forms of new/digital mediation and informatics as they pertain to accounts of people, and non-human lives.
Further information: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/rcmdc/1-2-5.html
CollAsia 2010 - Conservation of Underwater Archaeological Collections
Applications are now open for the Regional course on ‘Conservation of Underwater Archaeological Collections”, to be held in Philippines from 8 to 29 September 2009. Application deadline: 30 June 2009
http://www.iccrom.org/eng/01train_en/announce_en/2009_08CollAsiaPHL_en.shtml
COURSES
Course on Conservation of Built Heritage 2010
Dates: 5 March - 30 April 2010
Place: Rome, Italy
Application deadline 31 July 2009
ICCROM is pleased to announce the third training course on Conservation of Built Heritage in Rome. The course aims at serving a wide range of conservation practitioners and decision makers by placing technical issues within the broader conservation context in order to link them to planning and management concerns.
Course fee: € 900
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Website: http://www.iccrom.org
Directory of African Cultural Administration Training Centres Online
In cooperation with UNESCO and ENCATC (European Network of Cultural Administration Training Centres), OCPA has developed a regional directory of African training centres and institutions existing throughout the continent in the field of cultural policy, administration and management as well as cultural development.
The objective of the project is to collect the information existing in this field and make accessible on-line, free of charge. The results of the inquiry, the data concerning some 70 African training institutions and programmes, are posted at the ENCATC/UNESCO Directory web page (http://www.encatc.org/directory/). The latter already contains information concerning Europe, Russia, the Caucasian countries and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
GRANTS
AFRICOM Re-Advertises the Consultancy Services Fund
AFRICOM’s consultancy services fund is supported by the Ford Foundation. AFRICOM is re-advertising this fund, which provides direct services to the African heritage field and assists in eliminating barriers that small and medium institutions have in organizational development and programme planning. The initial launch for the small grants and consultancy services fund attracted interests biased towards the small grants. Applications for a total grant of US$ 5000-7000 should be received at the AFRICOM secretariat by 30th June 2009.
Africom Secretariat [secretariat@Africom.museum]
Conservation Guest Scholar Grants
The Conservation Guest Scholar Program at the Getty Conservation Institute supports new ideas and perspectives in the field of conservation, with an emphasis on the visual arts (including sites, buildings, objects) and the theoretical underpinnings of the field.
The program provides an opportunity for professionals to pursue scholarly research in an interdisciplinary manner across traditional boundaries in areas of wide general interest to the international conservation community.
These grants are for established conservators, scientists, and professionals who have attained distinction in conservation and allied fields. Grants are not intended to fund research for the completion of an academic degree. Applications are welcome from researchers of all nationalities.
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
RESOURCES
Nelson Mandela Foundation anti-apartheid movement (AAM) archive resource
http://www.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/aama/
May 18, 2009 – The Nelson Mandela Foundation recently launched an anti-apartheid movement (AAM) archive resource on its website. The aim of the resource is to create an overview of archival records of international anti-apartheid activities. At the moment, the archive contains those organisations for which the Foundation managed to locate records in the time that was available for this project.
Unfortunately, many countries and organisations are not included in this overview – partly because the study relied largely on internet resources – and as a result the view of history that emerges is biased towards Western Europe, North America and Australia. While, at the moment, there are only South African records available under Africa, the Foundation is hoping to populate this region with records from other African countries at a later date as and when those records become available.
Developing and Revitalizing Rural Communities Through Arts and Culture
An International English-Language Literature Review and Inventory of Resources. Vancouver – The Centre for Policy Studies on Culture and Communities at Simon Fraser University and the Creative City Network of Canada are pleased to announce the release of a new project on cultural development in rural communities. The report is a comprehensive review of research on cultural and creative business development in rural communities and includes information from Canada, Australia, the United States, and Europe. This new research helps set the stage for rural communities to determine the best approaches to reach out and take advantage of their creative capacity. All papers are available in electronic form on the Creative City Network of Canada website at
http://creativecity.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=239&Itemid=218
Two studies assess the economic impact of cultural festivals
http://www.impact.arts.gla.ac.uk/newsletters/impact_update0509/
New Issue of Africa e Mediterraneo on “Tourism and Heritage”
Tourism is a subject of interest for anthropology because it brings with it important issues and concepts as authenticity, modernity, ethnicity, identity, memory, invention of tradition, that are all components of social changes and the focus of both anthropology and cultural studies. The second point of the dossier deals with tourism and its relations with culture and heritage politics.
Website: http://www.africaemediterraneo.it
Email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Cultural Banks
http://www.epa-prema.net/english/activities/projects/banks08.htm
http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/banqueculturelle/
http://www.sudplanete.net/index.php?menu=arti&no=6724
(In French)
Internet Archive Digitization Project
In 2008, the Getty Conservation Institute identified a number of Conservation Collection books to include in the Getty Research Institute’s Internet Archive Digitization Project. The materials selected for digitization relate to the history of technology—specifically pre-twentieth-century artists’ recipe books. The books describe materials and processes used by early craftsmen and artists and are useful to members of the conservation community working with a wide range of materials, including paper, glass, textiles, wood, and paint. To date, nearly half of the 200 titles selected from the Conservation Collection have been digitized, cataloged, and made available for free online.
ICOMOS Bibliographic Database
Updated online (May 2009) / Base de données bibliographique mise � jour sur internet (Mai 2009)
http://databases.unesco.org/icomos
Global Heritage Review (GHR) Spring 2009 bulletin
http://www.globalheritagefund.org/news/publications/ghr_spring2009.html
Audiovisual preservation
The SOIMA (Sound and Image Collections Conservation) programme has introduced a website aimed at highlighting the issues and challenges that some cultural and research institutions face in preserving their sound and image materials.
http://www.iccrom.org/eng/news_en/2009_en/various_en/06_02webSOIMA_en.shtml
New Web Site: Underwater Cultural Heritage
http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=39222&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
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