Paper short abstract:

What are the methodological implications when new forms of dialogue change the patterns of interaction with the public?

Paper long abstract:

How shall we engage with historical collections of everyday life in the future? Without efforts connecting people to the past and to each other, cultural heritage institutions such as the archive are nothing more than "an empty box, an institution whose special role is the guardianship of the document" (Appadurai 2003). The challenges of the digital era and the archives are diverse. In the last few years citizen humanities as public engagement and even as scientific citizenship is increasingly presented as an answer to this question. But what are the methodological implications when new forms of dialogue change the patterns of interaction with the public? This paper discuss possible impacts of the "participatory turn" on the relation between concepts like oral history, intangible heritage and vernacular storytelling.

Paper short abstract:

The purpose is to discuss with a reflexive perspective the intentions behind writing a short biographical article for a museum magazine. I will emphasize the aim of remembering three women who recently have died and expose some tracks from their life stories through this kind of documentary context

Paper long abstract:

It is difficult to retell long life stories of people who have lived more than 80 or 90 years. In a rather short article it is necessary to only pay attention to some tracks for example; what these three women have had in common and what were characteristic for their individual personalities. I will also briefly give the readers the background of how I got to know them. Two of them participated in 'writing workshops' I organized and the third lady was my mum. There is not enough space in the museum magazine to describe all my reflexive thoughts and interpretations from different interactions through; stories told at workshops, my memories of my mother and how I remember her talking about her life. However, in this paper metrological issues will be to focus on the emancipatory potential of 'writing workshops' as well as reflexive aspects of the researcher's analysis and texts. The life stories I have collected have been related to my research interest of memories from 1950's and 1960's. I have also observed workshop participants reconstructing a home, of that time, to a museum setting and listened to their guiding there. In the article I will take ethical consideration, even though they are dead now, but another dilemma bothers me more. The challenge of writing this short biographical text in the concept of popular science with the aim to mediate life experiences to readers of younger generations.

Paper short abstract:

Since the 1960s Indigenous Sámi yoikers and storytellers has performed their traditional songs and stories in the annual Jokkmokk market. We have a continuum for more than 50 years. One of the strongest theme are their own life stories, embedded in humor and their meeting with the majority society.

Paper long abstract:

The Sámi peoples of the north are Indigenous to northern Fennoscandia and Kola peninsula, Russia. One way expressing oneself are through singing (yoik) and storytelling. Being a Sámi or yoiking were for a long time during 20th century both a social stigma and to the Church of Sweden a sinful act, but this starting to change during 1960s. Three Sámi men born in the 1920s and early 1930s started a performance during the well known annual Jokkmokk market in February. The market has a long tradition since 1605 and the national and international interest has been very high. These performers created new insights and became cultural brokers among the Sámi peoples. They went from local storytellers to role models for a new generation. They filled in a gap for searching the intangible cultural heritage. Analysing their stories, we find different levels of their narratives. One for the general audience and one for the insiders in the same story. With funny episodes of their first meetings with the modern society and also political implicit statements. One of the original performers 90 years old are still alive, but he is not performing anymore. Todays performers are siblings to the original three. How do the content change and how much of earlier stories continue in this new setting? I want to discuss entextualisation to decontextualisation. Is it possible to see results of recontextualisation? Will this create new kind of stories? This paper is a dedication to the Sámi elders.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the use of autobiographical narrating in migrant adult education, on courses and museum workshops. Working with stories is an important pedagogical tool helping to (re)create identity, coherence and authority and to invoke empathy and identification.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the use of autobiographical storytelling as a pedagogical tool and a way to address the cultural and social diversity in migrant adult education, in a project "With your own words" for young migrants, and in Västerbottens museum's workshops. It is based on ethnographic methods: observations (of museum workshops and events at "Narrative festivals" where several groups presented for a wider public); interviews (with a teacher, a project leader, and a museum pedagogue); the project's activities on social media and printed material from the project. The museum's narrative workshops and the public presentations at the Narrative festival aimed at new forms of engagement and inclusion of little represented and seldom participating groups. In the interviews, a strong belief in autobiographic storytelling's emancipatory, integrative and democratic potential was articulated. It was regarded as an excellent way to improve language skills and to make one's life more comprehensible to oneself and to others by everyday, common memories and not only the biographical "disruption" of migration (the reports from media, however, still focused rather on the dramatic narratives of oppression, escape and otherness). Inclusion and social emancipation lied at the heart of the pedagogical stance (with mostly non-prestigious activities) and documentation practices of the studied courses, workshops and events. Stories about personal experiences were considered to be a crucial and creative human practice; implicitly a tool for (re)creating identity, coherence, authority and continuity of the self, and a way to make oneself comprehensible, invoking empathy and identification.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines public displays about death, which have become popular in museums in the US. The paper argues that the displays stand in for and evoke personal narratives, and by drawing people into public spaces and the sharing of stories, the displays sustain the broader storytelling revival.

Paper long abstract:

This paper begins with a brief survey of the storytelling revival in the US, since the early 1970s, and its potential intersections with other changes in society, including the emergence of new tools for self-curation within visual fields. Then, with reference to a few key photographs, I turn to an examination of two kinds of temporary, participatory public displays that have become popular in museums and related venues in the Eastern US. The displays feature photography, paintings, assemblages and other forms of art and heritage, and deal innovatively with the subject of death. One kind of display consists of reimagined, reconfigured altars for the Mexican Day of the Dead; the other kind of display encompasses "memorial walls," public art, exhibitions and other displays that address recent deaths from opioid addiction. I focus on an example of each kind of display, drawing from observations and interviews in museums and addiction recovery communities; discuss changes in museum practice, including a turn away from authoritative narratives, that have contributed to the development of the displays; and consider the affect that the displays have on spectators. The paper argues that the displays stand in for and evoke personal narrative performances, and as strategies for drawing people together in public spaces, for participation in novel forms of sharing stories, learning and shaping the self, the displays respond to and shape the broader storytelling revival.

Paper short abstract:

Storytelling and local knowledge often are seen as aspects of each other. This presentation will focus on how stories of local conditions and history are used as a strategy for enforcing the identification of people as locals and thus function as a tool for political mobilization across party lines.

Paper long abstract:

Storytelling and local knowledge often are seen as aspects of each other. This presentation will focus on how storytelling events of local conditions and history are used as a strategy for enforcing local identification. The case study presented is from a small countryside municipality in northern Sweden, where a local storytelling society has focused on the building of community. This is a contribution to the survival of the municipality, which faces strong urbanization trends that affects the possibilities to keep up local public service.

As a consequence of this stance, the society has concentrated on internal meetings for villagers rather than staged entertainment or tourism events, thus choosing a somewhat different way of working than the contemporary ideas of regional development and local branding would have it. By staging the events as local meetings rather than shows, and focusing themes and places rather than entertainers, the society try to act for inclusion of all inhabitants and thus try to function as a tool for political mobilization across party lines. However, this inward-looking perspective is also balanced with outward contacts tying up with other volunteer actors in regional development, cultural heritage, and the storytelling movement. With this case study, I want to direct attention to and raise questions about how storytelling as a place-making strategy is promoted, adapted and communicated.

Paper short abstract:

With tools of multi-species ethnography and the research on narrative cultures, I follow wolves' traces through the stories different actors tell about Lusatia region. I reflect on how other-than-humans can be included and how they enrich our understanding of storytelling and identity politics.

Paper long abstract:

Lusatia, a region in Eastern Germany, is shaped and negotiated by narrations from internal as well as from external perspectives. While Lusatia was a central region for the GDR's power supply due to its numerous strip minings, tables have turned: Since the German reunification and due to the steady abandonment of fossil energies, renaturation of former mines shapes the landscape and narratives of Lusatia change. Industrial landscape becomes wilderness, agglomeration de-grows into wasteland. Negotiating these rivalling images, one non-human actor comes into play: The wolf. Or rather wolves; beings I want to conceptualize in a pluralistic way and who pluralize themselves in an ongoing process - in bio-physical as well as in a narrative sense. When the region Lusatia is discussed by, with and through the means of wolves, structural transformation and (a lack of) perspective(s) are at stake. Different voices need wolves to underline their stories, and to emphasize their drafts of a Lusatia of the future. Lusatia as wolfland can be an utopian or dystopian narration; and wolves can give those different perceptions the decisively positive or negative drift. Industrial site, desert, tourist attraction, recreational area - wolves are constitutive for all these narratives. Therefore, I understand them as other-than-human catalysts in the process of anticipating possible Lusatia(s). Who drafts a future with, who without wolves? What does that reveal about ongoing struggles about identity, prospects, human-world-relations and the concepts of a region, whose place within national narratives moved from center to(wards) periphery?

Paper short abstract:

This presentation will discuss the use of storytelling as an articulation of heritage in the context of gardening, when 'old' plants and gardens are turned into heritage products. We will show examples of how such stories are used as tools to enhance the value of plants as well as entire gardens.

Paper long abstract:

"Garden phlox 'Alma Jansson' comes from a smallholding in Roslagen. It has been on the farm at least since 1939 when Stina Jansson moved in. It was her mother-in-law, Alma Jansson, who took care of the plants in the garden. 'Everything comes from Grandma. She had such beautiful flowers', said Stina. We do not know where she received or bought this variety, but it was not newly planted in 1939."

This story is told in marketing material for an old variety of garden phlox (Phlox paniculata), a perennial flower found and propagated within the Swedish programme for cultivated diversity, POM. Under their trademark Grönt kulturarv® ('green heritage') a number of heritage plants have been (re-)released on the market during the last five years - and there is clearly a demand. The story of Alma Jansson is now part of a product sold in nurseries all over Sweden.

This presentation is based on an ongoing research project studying the intersection between heritage, markets and gardens. The project's aim is to examine how cultural heritage is produced and articulated within contemporary, formal as well as informal, markets for garden-related items and services. Here, we will focus on the ways in which storytelling is used as an articulation of heritage in the context of gardening, for plants as well as entire gardens. We will show how stories are used also to enhance the value of gardens with a history to visitors; connecting plants, places and gardening practices to people, past and present.