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8/2/2019 Heritage Legacy and Leadership
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heritage, legacy andleadership:ideas and interventions
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The Cultural Leadership Programme and the Mayors Commission on African andAsian Heritage were delighted to present Heritage, Legacy and Leadership:Ideas and Interventions on 22 February 2008. This international symposium wasconceived as a cutting-edge intervention to stimulate analysis and debate thatwould enrich leadership development within the heritage sector.
The event brought together an eclectic and stunning mix of senior managers, practitioners,
academics, policy makers, advisers and experts. This gathering of influential stakeholders
produced a rich synergy as they explored the thinking, experiences and practices needed to
develop bold, creative and progressive heritage leadership.
By placing the challenges facing the sector within an international context, the symposiumprovided a rare trans-national forum. The exchange between renowned speakers and the
heritage sector at large produced a stimulating dialogue, marking priorities and igniting
possibilities for a dynamic and diverse twenty-first century heritage leadership.
The Heritage, Legacy and Leadership symposium featured a range of engaging and sometimes
provocative presentations, some of which are represented in this report. The key message
emerging from the symposium was that cultural leadership is a collective responsibility and that
we as individuals must strive to create, support and contribute to the leadership paradigm we
envision. We are the ones we have been waiting for was the phrase that resonated most
powerfully throughout the proceedings.
Doudou Dines thought-provoking keynote address is featured, along with a selection of theinspirational and at times challenging presentations that have been revised for this publication.
Three complementary papers provide a commentary on the symposiums value and legacy for
the sector. Taken as whole this report bears witness to the aspirations and issues facing the
leadership of the cultural sector in the UK and further afield.
We invite you to fully engage in the symposium through this report, adding your voice and
visions to the call for transformative cultural leadership.
Dame Jocelyn Barrow
Chair, Mayors Commission on African and Asian HeritageDr Hilary S Carty
Director, Cultural Leadership Programme
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A key and energising message from the thought-provoking symposium,Heritage, Legacy and Leadership: Ideas and Interventions, was that changedemands action. Successive speakers from the podium and the floor movinglyand graphically described the vivid and inspiring opportunities that lie withinour grasp.
Many expressed frustration that progress has been hesitant and patchy. I agree with them. We
need to be even more determined to take up the cause and work together towards
improvement, excellence and engagement with all people.
In a time of economic uncertainty, people and communities can derive strength, purpose and
reassurance from experiences involving culture, the arts, learning and the celebration ofheritage and identity. But in a modern age we simply must apply these ideas to all people
people of all backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, genders, orientations and means.
Creativity and imagination can help us to see ways to remove barriers to understanding; to
deploy the widest possible array of media; to see that the legacy of heritage can be understood
and appreciated through a stimulating blend of music, performance, art, dance, display, study
and reflection.
Collections, references, information and materials belong to us all. These resources can be
presented, interpreted and applied for everyone but more emphasis is needed on the
approaches to making it so. The built environment is part of the story. Buildings can speak but
they have to be arranged in ways that convey a welcome. Open spaces are vital too, and weneed to use them dynamically as part of the expression of a truly embracing and broad-based
narrative.
Stresses and strains in our cities, towns and villages will not be healed by politicians or by
someone else. The only people who can help fix the issues, bridge the gaps, improve lives,
make things happen and realise the potential of the rich diversity in our midst, are those who
read this foreword. You and me.
Enjoy the report. Read it well. Then lets act together for the sake of all people.
Roy Clare, CBEChief Executive, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
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contents
1 I PrologueNima Poovaya-Smith 06
2 I Heritage and identityDoudou Dine keynote address 10
Samuel Jones response 20
3 I Leadership, national identity and inclusionRoshi Naidoo 24
Lonnie G Bunch III 29
4 I Leadership and change in the twenty-first centuryJames Early 34
Patricia Glinton-Meicholas 41
5 I Transforming heritage leadership: challenges and goalsTemi Odumosu 46
6 I Circles of interaction, dialogue and exchangeJanice Cheddie 60
7 I Appendix: symposium programme 66
Acknowledgements 69
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1 prologueNima Poovaya-Smith
Nima Poovaya-Smith is foundingdirector of Alchemy, a culturalenterprise company with a particularinterest in the confluences ofdifferent cultures. Alchemy isundertaking a number of major
cultural programmes in partnershipwith cultural, academic and publicsectors. She currently serves on theCouncil of the University of Leeds andis a Trustee of the Beecroft Bequest.She set up the Transcultural Gallery atCartwright Hall and previously heldsenior positions at the NationalMuseum of Photography, Film &
Television, Bradford Art Galleries andMuseums, and Yorkshire Arts.
06
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Three defining events have taken place
between the staging of the Heritage, Legacy
and Leadership symposium in February 2008
and the writing of this prologue. Barack
Obama, in the most thrilling presidential race
in recent history, was elected as leader of
arguably the most powerful nation on earth.
Lewis Hamilton greatly added to the gaiety
here in Britain by becoming the youngest ever
Grand Prix world champion. And the
inimitable Ken Livingstone was replaced as
Mayor of London by the equally distinctive and
flamboyant Boris Johnson.
Looking back on the symposium it surfaces as a
series of surprisingly vivid snapshots. The soaring
architecture of City Hall matches the imposing
conference title, rich in abstract nouns: Heritage,
Legacy and Leadership. There is something bothuplifting and surreal about sitting in a light-filled
atrium in the heart of London, listening to
speakers from all around the world. Local
governments, I remind myself, have often been
agents for transformational change, particularly
in Victorian and Edwardian times, and were not
bashful about asserting their prosperity and
success through some rather spectacular civic
architecture.
In fact, the keynote speaker, Doudou Dine, theUnited Nations Special Rapporteur on
contemporary forms of racism, racial
discrimination, xenophobia and related
intolerance, alludes to architecture and its ability
to retrace or deny hidden heritage. The
transatlantic slave trade resulted in a wealth of
buildings, monuments and prison forts from
Africa to the Western hemisphere. The recorded
histories of these structures, however, almost
invariably make no mention of the enslaved
Africans who built them.
Dine cannot fail to impress as he addresses theconference without notes, speaking with
enviable lucidity in English, effectively his third
language. He provides compelling examples of
what I label victor heritage, where the
dominant communities are the memorialists or
gatekeepers of heritage and the dominated
communities are characterised by invisibility and
silence. I shiver in the bright winter sunshine.
There is something chilling about vast swathes of
heritage being deliberately suppressed or
unrecorded, a kind of cultural genocide. Eventhough it was the cultural resistance to slavery, as
Dine reminds us, that ultimately destroyed the
slave system. However, as Samuel Jones from
Demos points out in his response to Dine, even
a large country like China, with its growing
economic clout, is not able to impose cultural
leadership easily. Millions of Chinese read
contemporary Chinese literature yet those
outside of China would be hard-pressed to name
a single Chinese-language, best-selling writer.
Languages such as English therefore continue
their dominant hold on heritage, legacy and
leadership through the supremacy purchased by
their colonial histories.
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08
The symposiums joint presenters include the
relatively new but increasingly influential
Cultural Leadership Programme, deftly led by
Hilary Carty, working in close tandem with the
Mayors Commission on African and Asian
Heritage. It is well supported by a wide range of
cultural agencies. As is my style with events such
as this, I listen attentively but in a state of mild
reverie as presentations and discussions ping
pong slightly mystifyingly but always
interestingly from global issues such as racism
and xenophobia to the importance of
diversifying governing bodies of British cultural
institutions a point made with particular
passion by Roy Clare, Chief Executive of the
Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. In fact,
Clare issues a challenge and an invitation: the
Council is seeking a Chair and he wants as manypeople present at the conference as possible to
apply for it. I ponder about the wisdom of this
clarion call - will this raising of expectations lead
to even greater disillusionment and cynicism?
The appointment is not, it has to be said, in Roy
Clares gift. The current Poet Laureate, Andrew
Motion, has since been appointed to the post
and I understand that there were an
unprecedented number of applications from
people who would not have otherwise thought
of applying. While I am still ambivalent aboutClares strategy, there is no denying his was a
bold intention to engineer a genuine culture
shift.
In almost all the presentations, including those
from our transatlantic and European colleagues,
there is a sense of tapping into an increasingly
powerful twenty-first century zeitgeist. There is a
noticeable emphasis on the creation of a new
paradigm for diversity and minority heritage
discourses are firmly shifted from their other
status. Academic and writer Roshi Naidoo points
out the connection between the failure to create
more diverse cultural leadership in this country
and the way we conceive so-called minority
histories and the nature of their incorporation
into largely unchallenged heritage narratives.
Baroness Lola Young draws attention to the
danger that the 2007 Programme relating to the
Bicentenary of the Parliamentary Abolition of the
Slave Trade could result in a narrowing down of
issues or treating enslavement as a single linearnarrative. Sandy Nairne, Director of the National
Portrait Gallery, points out that the challenge is
not in 2007, the challenge is beyond that as to
where we shift the interpretation.
In one of those rare confluences, the worlds of
commerce, marketing, politics, culture, human
rights, arts and academia came together on that
day. The concerted and orchestrated demand for
fundamental change in how we perceive
heritage, invest in securing its legacy and ensure
a more diverse and sophisticated leadership, has
strengthened my view that something different
and important was happening at the symposium
and it was. A landmark event.
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Barack Obama typified leadership at its most
inspirational by demonstrating how the heritage
of disenfranchised communities of people can
become a mainstream message of hope for an
entire nation, its legacy the opportunity to start
afresh with new narratives and discourses
emerging from the margins into the mainstream.
Big historic events such as Obamas election to
the US Presidency are built on smaller historic
moments such as this symposium. On this wave
of collective energy and optimism, we have the
opportunity to make seismic cultural shifts.
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2 heritage and identityDoudou Dine
keynote address
10
Dr Doudou Dine gave the keynoteaddress at the symposium, takingheritage and identity as his theme. Heexplored two key dimensions ofheritage: the ultimate expression ofcultural interactions and the way that
it has been instrumental throughhistory in legalising domination andexploitation.
Doudou Dine has recently completedhis tenure as Special Rapporteur oncontemporary forms of racism, racialdiscrimination, xenophobia andrelated intolerance for the UnitedNations Commission for Human
Rights. He is a Vice-President of theInternational Council of SocialSciences and Philosophy, a member ofthe International Council of Aurovilleand the Niwano Peace PrizeCommittee, and a professor ofIntercultural Tourism in France. In hisprevious role as a Director of UNESCOhe led various projects on
intercultural dialogue. He wasawarded the Concours General inPhilosophy in Senegal in 1962.
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I suggest that we forget about the concept of a
keynote speech. Keynote is such a big word
and suggests that I have something
enlightening to share with you. I dont have
anything enlightening to deliver or any final
solution to such a complex issue as heritage
and identity. I just have questions and
reflections that Id like to share with you.
The first thing I would like to share is that I am
Senegalese. In my country, heritage is at the heart
of culture and we value both in a very creative
way.
I have been working for the United Nations
Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO) for around 30 years, in charge of
intercultural and inter-religious projects such as
The Integral Study of The Silk Road: Roads of
Dialogue, The Slave Route Project and Roads of
Faith. I was appointed in 2002 as United Nations
(UN) Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms
of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and
related intolerance. My mandate is to investigate
racism worldwide and to report to the Human
Rights Council and General Assembly. The most
important part of my mandate is to investigate
racism in the UN member states and reach out to
victims thus breaking their silence and invisibility.
So far I have investigated around twentycountries. My reports can be found on the UN
Human Rights website1.
One thing that has arisen from these experiences
is the fact that discrimination, racism and
intolerance threatens and denies heritage, which
is central to building and preserving identity. This
is a critical issue particularly in the so-called global
context.
What precisely is a world marked by diversity?
This issue came up even as I arrived in London
from Paris yesterday. I switched on my television
and saw your Prime Minister, Gordon Brown,delivering a speech on the issue of granting
nationality to migrants. The comments the press
made about the Prime Ministers new policies
concerned the concept of Britishness, its values,
content and the role of history in its
determination. This confirmed how important
heritage is in the definition of national identity.
Another example that demonstrates the
complexity and ambiguity of this burning issue
involves an incident that took place before the
Afghan war started: the destruction of the huge
statues of the Buddha in Afghanistans Bamiyan
Valley.
The construction of identity
In September 2007, when I submitted my report
on racism worldwide to the Human Rights
Council, I highlighted the fact that the issue of
identity lies at the heart of racial discrimination
and xenophobia. Identity is not something that
comes from the cosmos, it is a construction. One
of the challenges I shared with the Council
members was the idea that even geographical
names are ambiguous and carry prejudices. Take
Latin America, for example. Using this term is
1 www.un.org/rights/
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akin to calling Africa Catholic Africa or
Norwegian Africa or Latin Africa. Latin America
means that the identity of that part of the world is
Latin. What about the Indian Americans, the
indigenous people? What about the African
enslaved people who arrived later? The indigenous
and the African roots of the Northern hemispheres
identity are ignored, hidden and denied by the
seemingly innocent geographical term Latin
America. The people invisible in this naming are
precisely the two communities historically
dominated and discriminated against in the
Northern hemisphere. This renaming is a telling
example of the role of memory, history and
consequently heritage in the construction of
identity. The national heritage promoted until
recently in most South American countries through
their national celebrations, the naming ofcountries, cities, streets and squares is
overwhelmingly that of the Spanish or Portuguese
conquistadores. Heritage, instrumentalised in this
way, is the expression of the ideological
reconstruction of memory and history in the
process of domination and discrimination.
We need to revisit the notion of national heritage.
Different groups and peoples reinterpret it
differently. In Europe, for example, the current
dominant policies and statements on so-called
integration and assimilation comprise what I call
stripped-down integration. This is because - and
here again we come back to heritage - those
coming from outside Europe, the migrants, asylum
seekers and so on, have to literally undress at the
border of European countries.
12
Migrants must step out of any kind of
cultural, religious and, if possible, even ethnic
specificity and leave it behind in order to
become accepted and integrated into the
country they are entering.
In the concept of Britishness, the notion ofintegration is based on the idea that those
coming from outside Britain or its immediate
neighbours are coming from nowhere. It implies
they have nothing. They arrive naked, without
cultural or spiritual values. They have nothing to
contribute to the country they are coming to.
Political leaders statements on integration require
something very basic: that those coming from the
outside migrants or asylum seekers, for instance
learn the language of the receiving country.This is normal. But more and more countries,
especially in Europe, are adding integration
programmes that require the foreigners or
newcomers to answer questions on the countrys
history and values. Newcomers have to engage
and be familiar with the broader heritage of the
country they are moving to and then pledge to
accept it. The implication is that newcomers have
no values to share with, or contribute to, the
receiving society. A fundamental criterion of their
integration is the full, non-critical acceptance of
the values, memory, history and therefore the
heritage of the receiving country.
Two profound manifestations of discrimination
underline this concept of integration: the
silencing of the newcomers memory and heritage
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and the invisibility of their identity. Paradoxically
this approach to integration is the strongest
indictment of colonialism as an enterprise of
enlightenment and civilisation because the
newcomers, most of whom come from former
colonies, are considered to have nothing worth
contributing to the receiving country, which is
often the former coloniser.
So we return to the idea that heritage is central
to the issue of identity. In my work at the UN
over the past six years I have realised that one of
the key causes of the increase in racism and
xenophobia worldwide, and particularly here in
Europe, is what I call the identity crisis. European
countries are going through a profound identity
crisis because their national identities were,
understandably, shaped a long time ago. A
country or group has to define its identity. Butthe prevalent notion of national identity is that
which reflects the ideology of the nation state.
This is often defined by a mix of ethnic, religious
and cultural components and has been the
bedrock of nationalism and the cause of most of
the bloodiest wars and conflicts in Europe.
The concept of national identity is now clashing
with the multicultural dynamic of modern society.
The challenge of diversity, particularly as it is
expressed through non-European immigration, isconsidered a threat to the national identity
redefined in terms such as Britishness. The
defence of national identity against
multiculturalism is the new ideology used by
political leaders in electoral platforms and has
been legitimised by the media and scholars. This
redefined national identity includes not only
language but also undefined national values and
the knowledge and acceptance of history and
recognition of national heritage. One of the
causes of the rise in racism and xenophobia is the
fact that the more diverse and multicultural a
society becomes, the more political leaders and
scholars are tempted to introduce legislative or
intellectual barriers to differentiate between
those inside and those outside.
The more diverse the people on the streets, the
more you see this as central to the speeches of
political leaders and scholars who have been
defending national security since 9/11. These two
concepts, identity and security, are sources of the
increase in racism and xenophobia.
Memory and values
The two key challenges of any multicultural
society are those involving memory and values.
Memory brings me back to my first point about
integration and the associated question of
heritage. What is heritage? Where does our
heritage come from? Who defines it, shapes it,
preserves it and why? Here we touch on the
critical ambiguities of the concept.
Let me give you two examples based on my work
in UNESCO. I launched The Silk Road Programme
around 15 years ago. The idea was to study,
research, document and understand the dynamics
of interactions between the so-called East and
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bodhisattvas physical features and dress, asking
him to examine them closely. He said, Look
carefully at their features, look at their dress -
they are Persian. The point was that heritage had
been used to legitimise national identity but it
more profoundly expressed the interactions and
multicultural contacts between peoples.
Another interesting example of heritage as an
expression of intercultural dialogue is the
massive, beautiful and rich Angkor Wat temple
complex in Cambodia. The complex is the
national emblem of Cambodia and is depicted on
the flags of various political parties and
communities. But following our multidisciplinary
discussions we realised that Cambodia cannot
consider Angkor Wat as a symbol of national
identity as it is a Buddhist structure. The spiritual
tradition from which Angkor Wat incarnatedBuddhism came from the place now called Nepal
in North India. Angkor Wat is ultimately the end
result of the trail of Buddhism from India to
Cambodia. It has been transformed and enriched
along the way both in its spiritual content and in
its artistic expression. So Angkor Wat is the final
expression of that long journey of intercultural
exchanges between a great number of peoples
and civilisations.
The idea here is that, whatever national heritagemonument you encounter, you should consider
heritage as the ultimate expression of a
multicultural dynamic and interaction. This point
is essential because it is the only way to challenge
the dangerous practice of nationalising heritage,
using it both to marginalise communities and to
14
West. Africa had been forgotten in this equation.
But it so happened that, as an African, I ran that
programme. That was ideal. When we launched
it, one of the key and most original ideas was to
organise international expeditions in the field,
rather than simply debating in meeting rooms
the story between the so-called East and West.
The expedition, which included academics,
archaeologists, historians and poets among
others, retraced the route of the so-called Silk
Road to document more holistically the breadth
of intercultural exchanges involving people,
language, music, food, architecture, religion and
more. We studied what happened in the original
landmass we call Eurasia. We organised seminars
along the way with academics from the different
countries we were visiting.
One thing we quickly realised was how
heritage has been used throughout history to
shape and legitimise national identity: the
identity of one community or group was used
as a model to be accepted by other groups.
For example, we visited Dunghuang, an oasis in
the Sinkiang region on the west side of China
where there are 400 Buddhist caves. As weentered one an eminent Chinese academic
showed us a statue of a seated Buddha
surrounded by bodhisattvas. The Chinese scholar
told us this was an example of their national
identity. Then one of my colleagues, a brilliant
Iranian scholar, drew our guides attention to the
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promote the view and identity of a given
community, religion or culture. We all know how
important and urgent it is to consider the
dynamic of a ghetto identity, the ultimate
source of stigmatisation, discrimination, racism,
and xenophobia.
When the Balkan wars started in the early 1990s,you may remember that one of the first acts of
destruction was the bombing of the Bridge of
Mostar. It was hundreds of years old and the Serb
military leaders destroyed it because they
considered it to be a symbol of the identity of the
communities they were trying to slaughter. Acts
of genocide are often accompanied by the
destruction of symbols of the victims national
heritage. This is why it is critical that we challenge
and revisit this notion of heritage and give it a
more complex meaning as a dynamic process ofencounter, interaction, exchange and dialogue
between people.
This deeper understanding of heritage is critical
in the promotion of tourism as a fundamental
and unique tool of intercultural dialogue - not
just as an economic exercise, the way it is
practised today. I have been teaching this concept
in a French University for the last three years. In
cooperation with the World Tourism Organisation
I strongly promote this reading of tourism,underlining the common heritage of the
countries of Central Asia, for example, where
governments are tempted for nationalist and
economic reasons to infuse the notion of ghetto
identity into their national heritage.
Hidden heritage
Now I want to look in more detail at the way
heritage has played a role in something that
Britain is very familiar with: the transatlantic slave
trade. In my work with UNESCO on intercultural
programmes I have identified the two features
that dominate the process of capturing andnationalising heritage: the invisibility and the
silence of the dominated communities. Invisibility
and silence - these two notions are at the heart
of racism. The dominated community is made
invisible socially, economically and politically. That
communitys own history and its historic
contribution to its adopted country are silenced
in the writing and teaching of history but more
profoundly in the definition and celebration of a
national heritage.
Two key issues in the transatlantic slave trade are
closely linked to heritage. One is the fact that the
all-powerful trade from Africa to the Northern
hemisphere can be architecturally retraced.
There are buildings, monuments and forts in
which enslaved Africans were kept on the coast of
Africa. For example, the Cape Coast and Elmina
forts in Ghana and forts on the Island of Gore in
Senegal. There are forts along the coast of South
America and the Caribbean. There are huge cities
such as Santiago de Cuba, Cartagena de Indias inColombia and Salvador da Bahia in Brazil. All
these are architectural expressions of the slave
trade. But when you read the history of those
structures, those monuments, there is no trace, no
mention of the enslaved Africans who built them.
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Important places have also been hidden. When
you walk through Havana, Kingston or any big
Caribbean city, especially in this era of mass
tourism, what is highlighted is the sun, sand and
sea. Tourists speed through in their cars but they
do not realise that the places they are crossing
were built on violence and oppression, killing and
suffering, because the traces of that suffering
have been hidden. Where are the slave markets?
They exist but the identity of the cemeteries and
mass graves, even some of the forts which are
beautiful architectural structures, are hidden.
A key point I want to emphasise with regard to
the slave trade is that heritage has been used to
perpetuate the silence and invisibility of what
one of the key French historians of slavery, Jean-
Michel Deveau, called the biggest tragedy of
mankind because of its centuries-long durationand for the number of victims - millions, tens of
millions. I think is important to highlight the way
the physical heritage of the enslaved Africans has
been reinterpreted to hide the tragedy.
Cultural resistance
Even more telling, I think, is another part of the
trade that has a bearing on heritage: the whole
issue of the cultural resistance to slavery. We allknow that, despite what historians have said,
from the first day of their capture until the end
of slavery, the enslaved fought. They kept
fighting. From the villages where they were
captured in the African countryside, often by
African feudal lords; on the way to the coast; in
the forts where they were kept before the
middle passage; across the Atlantic Ocean, inside
the ships where they lay in chains; to their arrival
in the Americas and the Caribbean they were
fighting back. Physically fighting back. Physical
resistance.
A fundamental dimension of resistance to slavery
that has not, in my view, been clearly grasped or
even studied and documented by historians is the
cultural resistance. In the context of the UNESCO
Slave Route project I have called this the maroon
culture where culture was used as a powerful
weapon to escape enslavement. I think it is
important because the cultural resistance to
slavery was the most powerful resistance and it
ultimately destroyed the slave system.
What is cultural resistance? Lets look first at the
fact that, from the beginning, the enslaved
Africans realised that the position of their so-
called masters was weak in the long-term because
they were blinded by their prejudices. The
masters saw the enslaved as merely a physical
workforce. Muscle. Bodies strong enough to work
in the new lands. They selected them by touching
their muscles, checking their teeth etc. The basic
ideology of slavery, the essence of racism, the
concept that enslaved Africans were humanly andculturally inferior, was the root and pillar of the
masters mindset. The enslaved realised that the
masters did not see them as human beings.
Throughout the history of slavery the enslaved,
like all dominated people, kept watching the
16
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darkness and violent oppression. It is one of the
most incredible stories of cultural creativity and
resistance; one of the most important and
ignored historical episodes in the context of
modern human rights. The full story has not yet
been told. I will give you some examples of this
intangible heritage concerning people and
communities from this history.
What was their cultural strategy? The enslaved
could not say no or refuse anything the master
demanded. He demanded that the enslaved
worship Mary and Christ because as you know
the central institution of Christianity, the Pope,
gave his blessing to this enterprise from the
beginning, as long as the masters converted the
enslaved to Christianity. Obeisance to the master
was deemed and defined in writing as a Christian
virtue that could lead people to paradise. Whenthe enslaved were required to worship Christ they
could not refuse. They said Yes, master. But
and this is the most fascinating aspect of the
cultural resistance they used Christ by giving
him a new identity, that of their gods from their
homelands Orisha, for example. They renamed
Christ. They integrated him in their cosmogony
and their spiritual world. While apparently
worshipping Christ, they were worshipping their
own god. Their master did not see what had
happened. The Saint-Domingue revolution of
August 1791, the historic combat that profoundly
shook the slave system and established Haiti as a
free republic, was itself sparked by a Vodou
religious service.
masters, watching them very closely, because
their survival was conditional on knowing how
the master moved, what he liked, what he did,
how he ate, what he ate, what made him angry
or happy. They kept watching in order to survive.
This is when the cultural resistance started and
here I am touching on the dimension of heritage
that has been neglected the intangible
heritage.
If we have to revisit heritage we have to
revisit it in two dimensions. The physical or
tangible is the dimension you can see and
touch, such as monuments. The intangible
dimension the one the masters were
blinded to by their prejudice is the one the
enslaved relied on to survive.
Slavery may have been one of the most terrible
tragedies of humankind as the enslaved were
defined by the black codes as goods to be used,
killed or maimed. They had no rights because
they were not considered human beings and
these conditions lasted for over four centuries.
But the enslaved quickly realised that the master
did not see their intangible heritage, their inner
richness and their inner life force. They started torely on their intangible heritage to survive: their
gods, their rituals and their beliefs. Africans had
been taken from their lands, their villages and
their culture but they took their intangible
heritage with them into four centuries of
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and values to survive through cultural resistance.
In the slave ships they lay tightly packed side by
side. In order to survive they had to communicate
with each other, to check whether the person
next to them was alive, for example, or where
they came from. In order to connect through
words and sounds in these awful conditions they
invented a new language on board the ships.
They found a way to communicate by putting
Wolof, Yoruba and other African languages
together to try to understand each other. Afro-
American slang is still full of words from these
languages.
From the beginning they put in practice their
traditional values of compassion and solidarity in
order to survive - values denied to them by the
prejudices of the slave traders. They practiced
their values in conditions of extreme suffering.One of the key values that emerged from the
transatlantic slave trade, which still profoundly
permeates post-slavery societies of the Americas
and the Caribbean, is the value of family. When
the enslaved left the cotton fields or the mines in
the evening and returned to their quarters it was
their time for recharging emotionally at family
gatherings. Women played a central role in
preserving and strengthening family bonds in
these settings, which is why the notion of family
is so strong, so important in the societies and
communities descended from slavery.
Another key dimension that remains
undocumented is the role of women as central
figures in resistance, physical and cultural, to
18
Another example concerns one of the key rules of
that period. The enslaved were forbidden to use
any modes of physical resistance. In Brazil, they
invented Capoeira, which is both dance and
aesthetic movement and also a form of martial
art. But the master saw only the dance
dimension. The enslaved used it and kept
inventing, every day, every minute, a means to
survive.
Food provides another example. Cultural
resistance nourished every dimension of daily life.
Forty per cent of the enslaved Africans landed in
Brazil. When their masters ordered the slaves to
kill a pig on feast days the masters kept the flesh
and gave the enslaved the bones, thinking that
was all they deserved. We now know that the
slaves used those bones, mixed them with
seafood, fruit and herbs to invent a dish calledFeijoada. This is now a main dish in Brazil. Here
again is a construction.
The enslaved subverted, transformed,
changed and recuperated in an incredible and
creative process of reconstruction; inventing
from different elements, putting together,
assembling, and giving new sense, meaning
and purpose to their daily obligations and
impositions.
The ethical dimension of this cultural resistance
has also been overlooked. I have said that the
enslaved used their intelligence, emotions, beliefs
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slavery. Women not only worked in the cotton
fields and in the mines like the men; but in some
places, such as the island of Reunion, women
used herbs to end their pregnancies so their
babies would not be born into slavery. Herbs
were also used by maroons to kill the dogs the
masters sent to track them down when they were
hiding in the mountains.
Another example of creative cultural resistance is
the way the enslaved Africans and their
descendants invented festivals and carnivals not
simply as opportunities to break their isolation
and get together; but also as opportunities to
exchange information, preserve cultural traditions
and expressions and organise revolts and
resistance.
Cultural resistance was the lifeblood of the
enslaved. It permeated all dimensions of life
through the centuries of darkness and total
oppression. Slowly and painfully cultural
resistance enabled them to recapture the
humanity denied to them by the slave systems
ideology of racism. The powerful dynamics of
cultural resistance, exemplified by maroon
cultures, are still alive in the communities of
African descendants in the Americas and in
Europe. These cultures represent a profound link
between ethics and aesthetics and demonstratethe multicultural dynamics of preserving cultural
identities while promoting universal values.
Heritage in this light is a central challenge to
multiculturalism. Heritage has been
instrumentalised historically as a tool to render
silent and invisible those communities that are
dominated and discriminated against. But
heritage was, and still is, a powerful force for
resistance and building equal, democratic and
interactive multicultural societies.
Heritage is both physical and intangible;material and spiritual. The most profound
aspect of heritage is the inner heritage of
beliefs, values and emotions that define our
humanity by linking the ethical and aesthetic
dimensions of culture.
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22
Picking up on Doudous comments about slavery, I
was reminded of an exhibition about the life of
Olaudah Equiano that I saw at the Birmingham
Museum and Art Gallery. The curators had used
Equianos story to present a very different context
of the citys sense of its own heritage and
identity. The exhibition chronicled Equianos life
and journey as he was first taken from his home
in Africa, forced into slavery in the Caribbean and
finally his struggle for freedom and his
emergence as a prominent figure in eighteenth-
century London. Visitors to the exhibition were
presented with a very different way of thinking
about their own attitudes to the past.
Much of the industrial success of modern-day
Birmingham is built upon trades that depended
upon slavery and exploitation. For example, many
of the slave ships were equipped with weaponsand objects that were made in Birminghams own
foundries. So, the industrial artefacts displayed in
the same museum and celebrated as a source of
pride and regional identity were at the same
time presented as being intertwined in the
terrible networks associated with slavery.
The Equiano exhibition provided a public space
within which Birminghams black community
could represent their own thoughts on heritage
and history. Furthermore, it allowed visitors tobecome aware of new and varied perspectives of
British heritage, which is of course essential to
good relations within our communities.
I think cultural presentation has a crucial role to
play as it provides opportunities for us to think
about the past and its legacies in these different
ways. It is an area where policy makers and
cultural providers must continue to collaborate.
I would like to take this one step further in
reference to Doudous thoughts on heritage as an
expression of human interaction. It strikes me
that during my schooldays we understood thepast by looking at cultural forms, everything from
pots to shoes; from documents to paintings.
However, we are not taught to do this now.
Culture impacts on every aspect of our lives
through attitudes, lifestyles, clothes, food and so
on and it is bound up in society as a whole, and
through all the cultural forms that we encounter.
We need to approach these cultural encounters as
a form of conversation. Cultural institutions are
important in providing the skills by which we can
interpret the different cultures around us. Theycan provide the context for these conversations.
Reading, as Doudou puts it, the intangible in the
tangible.
This is far from saying that everybody has to
know everything. However, it is important that
cultural institutions enable and participate in
conversations that respond to the different
cultural forms we encounter. This is where new
opportunities for collaboration between cultural
providers and people who present our heritage,including policymakers and those in education,
can come in. Cultural institutions have a role, not
just as guardians and presenters of our heritage,
but also as places where we can learn to think
anew about our past and therefore the present.
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3 leadership, national identityand inclusion
Roshi Naidoo
24
Dr Roshi Naidoo was one of the panelmembers exploring the challengesand ethical issues concerning the roleof heritage institutions as custodiansof history and their responsibility asmediators for shifting notions of
cultural diversity and nationalidentities.
Roshi Naidoo is a research consultantspecialising in cultural politics in theheritage sector. She is co-editor ofThe Politics of Heritage: the Legaciesof Race and she researched andwrote Exploring Archives forMuseums, Libraries and Archives. In
2007 she was a member of theadvisory board for the Victoria &Albert Museums African DiasporaResearch Project, and the advisoryboard to discuss the Governmentsresponse to the commemoration ofthe bicentenary of the abolition ofthe slave trade.
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The main question I want to address is whether
there is a connection between the failings in
creating a more diverse cultural leadership in
this country and the ways in which we
conceive so-called minority histories within the
cultural and political life of the nation as a
whole. I think there still is a desire to
accommodate and incorporate difference into
largely unchallenged heritage narratives. This
add-on approach to such histories mitigates the
development of an inclusive leadership within
the cultural sector.
The best way of explaining what I mean is by
citing a few examples from my own experience.
I recently worked on a cultural diversity project in
the heritage sector in a home county. I declined
the invitation to work with children of African
descent and talk to them about African animals
at a local natural history museum - I kid you not,
you cant make some of this stuff up. I also
showed minimal enthusiasm for various
multicultural festivals that were suggested.
The parts of the project that recorded migration
stories, particularly those of Travellers and
Gypsies, were more interesting to me. But only, I
said, if they were placed in the bigger context of
the countys everyday history rather than treated
as an exotic add-on.
I made the point that I think many of us in this
room have made over and over again. Namely,
we should stop tinkering around the edges and
think about the ways in which, for example, the
histories of people of Caribbean, African and
Asian descent are at the centre of the countys
heritage in the histories of its stately homes, the
economies of its industries and in every aspect of
its culture.
I made what I thought at the time to be the
wholly non-contentious claim that Britain is made
up of waves of migration and diaspora and thatthe legacies of colonialism domestically and
internationally require closer scrutiny and
representation in the heritage sector. However, the
implication that we are all in some sense migrants
and, to borrow a phrase, a mongrel nation was a
troubling idea for most people.
The objections that I met from many corners -
although not all - were based on some complex
issues.
Proving our comfort with difference
The fear of addressing Britains diverse history in
this way seemed to be based on the worry that it
would be too diffuse to rewrite heritage narratives
to locate this nation as always having been shaped
by migration. This approach would not be as easy
as organising a multicultural event that would
visibly illustrate ones commitment to diversity.
How would people know that it was a diversity
project and that the museum sector was now
being more inclusive if this approach were taken?
It became clear in this case, and in other
experiences Ive had in the heritage sector, that
there was a preference for projects where visible
differences could be marked for example, by
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26
brown faces on websites, different dress
providing the kind of evidence that allows you to
tick the ethnic boxes. Without these visual
signposts how would heritage institutions
indicate that they are comfortable with
difference? Everyone is familiar with the policy
document that always has a small black child
engaged in some kind of learning activity on the
front!
To be critical of this can be seen as churlish and it
is difficult to air some of these grievances.
Audience figures for museums and archives show
that there is still an under-representation of
certain groups. Therefore it is only right that
special attention is made to bring them in. There
needs to be a specific appeal to difference.
But we also have to ask in whose interests is it to
mark certain differences, and how does this work
to secure a view of the institution as somehow
ethnically neutral, magnanimous, inclusive and
therefore universal? Is the primary focus of these
initiatives the welfare and inclusion of so-called
minority communities, as they so often have us
believe? Or is it just as much for heritage sector
institutions themselves?
I would be less cynical if this strategy of the
pursuit of visible differences went hand in hand
with changing the narratives around the colonial
objects in museums. Such an approach would
show a more profound commitment to ethnic
minority audiences and demonstrate a clear shift
towards new ways of framing how we all
understand our collective national heritage.
1 Paul Gilroy,After Empire Melancholia or Convivial Culture?Routledge, Abingdon, Oxford, 2004
A genuinely inclusive approach to heritage
would mean accepting the fact that we are all
caught up in the same historical and
geographical momentum, rather than
desperately trying to shoehorn different
histories into the same old historical
frameworks.
These shifts may not lead to immediate visible
changes. They may not necessarily result in a lot
of minorities instantly turning up at your
museum. They may not help in your institutions
funding application for a community project.
However, by taking this approach you make a
long-term commitment to shifting views of what
our national heritage really is.
In his bookAfter Empire1 Paul Gilroy talks aboutBritish culture being characterised as one of
national melancholia, punctuated by moments of
manic celebration, such as when there is a
sporting victory. When I was reading this I
thought immediately of a woman working on the
project I mentioned earlier, who seemed to
occupy that place between a melancholia for a
past England and a pragmatic awareness of the
need for a new voice of multiculturalism.
For example, she talked of the first anti-racist busboycotts in England. But this was coupled with
an acute sense of loss for simpler times,
something acted out in her participation in World
War II and medieval re-enactments. For people
who understand British history within the binary
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of a white past/multicultural present, it is not
difference in its present guise that poses a threat
but the fact that it was always so.
In many parts of the local heritage sector World
War II is by far the most visited of all historical
moments. And here there is space for some
acceptance of difference. For example, whilethere is much talk of the contribution of military
personnel of Caribbean, African and Asian
descent in the war, the notion of contribution
keeps these figures at a distance from all those
other heroic war figures. What if such soldiers
and sailors didnt simply contribute to the war
but won it? Does this interfere too much with our
national myths? How do you bring these people
back into the main narrative?
So, our shared mongrel identity must make us
shift how we think of heritage.
Add-on histories; add-on staff
Noting and accommodating difference might not
currently be the most radical move. It might be
that heritage narratives which embrace a radical
sameness are more enlightening or challenging
than those which only foreground difference. For
example, a recent series of the BBC family history
programme Who Do You Think You Are? located
a migrant background not just for British Asian
film director Gurinder Chadha, but also for
comedian Julian Clary, actor and impressionist
Alistair McGowan, and Stephen Fry, a figure who
is widely seen as representing quintessential
Englishness. To make a migrant connection with
figures such as these is in fact a very important
step in shifting our understanding of Britishness.
What does this mean for leadership in the
heritage sector and for those of us who work as
consultants within it?
The effect of the add-on approach in terms of
peoples professional lives is this: if so-called
minority histories are the extra bits, the
people who do this work are perennially the
extra add-on staff.
We mostly do the short-term work; come in for
the one-off projects; the special events; the talk
for Black History Month; the temporary exhibitionand the online exhibition. We do the work
loaded at the service-delivery end, such as
projects to do with perennially new audiences,
communities and learning. We are seldom asked
about acquisitions, for example.
We are phoned up at short notice and asked to
throw something together for a project with very
little acknowledgement given to the fact that we
have a field of expertise. This is most clearly
captured in meetings when it is mooted that we
should ask communities what they would like to
see within our heritage institutions. This is
different from consultation and dialogue with a
community. This is implying that while an
exhibition on, for example, the Surrealists is a
specialised field that requires expertise, anything
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to do with, say, Caribbean histories and cultures
comes from essentialised community knowledge.
This leads us to the idea that consultation and
specialist input should be provided free of charge
because either the consultants are just
expounding some essentialist folk knowledge, or
they should wish to do things for the communityas a piece of voluntary social work rather than as
career development.
There is also very little interest in the other things
we know. I have been lucky in the last few years
to work with some culturally diverse people who
have broad knowledge. Some of us actually also
know about European art, Hollywood films and
the history of punk rock etc. But we become
fragmented within the sector, our racial identities
either over-determined or dangerously ignored.
Stonewall is running a great anti-bullying
campaign at the moment which says, Some
people are gay get over it. I think it is a
sentiment we can borrow. We really need to get
over the fact that some Brits are not white or of
English descent. It really is time to move on.
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Let me begin by quoting a letter that I received
recently. It began, Dear Left-Wing Historian. In
the States that means you are in trouble! What
the letter writer asked me was, What
happened to the Smithsonian I love? What
happened to that museum that used to
celebrate America, that reminded us of how
good we were? He wanted to know why we
needed a museum that explores questions of
race and African-American culture. Then he said
something that I think is so important: After
all, Americas greatest strength is its ability to
forget. He then went on to say things like:
God I hope you do not get this building
built. I hope you go away. I want the museum
to disappear. I want historians like you to
disappear. He threw me off because he then
signed the letter, Best wishes for yourcontinued success! I love America, I really do.
The importance of remembering
The crucial point is what do we remember and
what do we forget? Often we know that what is
forgotten in America are the questions of
diversity - African-American culture as well as
issues around race. I would argue that despite
what the author of that letter wanted America,
or indeed any country, is better off when it
remembers. By that I mean when it remembers
the great challenges that the country has
experienced.
The importance of remembering is simple. While
remembering can cause great pain, it also brings
30
great power. While remembering really does
reveal great hurt, it also opens the possibility of
healing. It seems to me we are only made better
when we remember. Even more importantly, I am
struck by the words of one of my favourite
authors, the wonderful James Baldwin, writing in
the 1960s in his great novel The Fire Next Time.
He says something that I really think captures
what it is we need to remember. He says:
History does not refer merely or even
principally to the past. On the contrary, the
great force of history comes from the fact
that we carry it within us. That we are
unconsciously controlled by it and that
history is literally present in all that we do.
I want to take a moment and share with you
some of the challenges that I think affect the way
American museums wrestle with questions of race
and diversity, and the implications that they may
have for the work that you are doing here in the
UK.
I would argue that no one can deny that during
the last 15 or 20 years in museums all over
America, the question that they have tried to
answer is What do you do about (and you can fillin the gap) African-Americans or Asian-Americans
what do you do about them?
What you see in these museums are literally
hundreds of exhibitions that have been crafted
during the last 15 years. While no one can deny
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32
In some ways, the challenge for American
museums is to realise that the complexity that they
explore in other communities is the same
complexity that needs to be brought to the
African-American experience.
Embracing ambiguity
I would argue that the third challenge is really
that of ambiguity. American museums fulfil a need
in America. Americans love simple answers to
complex questions. Museums in America do that
all the time with great aplomb. Too few American
museums go beyond simple celebration.
Frequently these museums have created
exhibitions to satisfy this American need, this
human desire for celebration, comfort and closure.
Our goal should be to provide opportunities foraudiences to embrace ambiguity. By helping our
audiences find nuance and agency we help them
understand that ambiguity is a better lens through
which to understand life rather than as simple
victors. I would suggest that one of the signs of a
successful museum, exhibition or programme is if
the audience over time becomes more
comfortable with ambiguity and complexity. I
think that American museums fail miserably when
it comes to that.
in their desire to placate criticism, have created
exhibitions that obscure as much as they
illuminate. In doing so the exhibitions fail to
provide audiences with a richly nuanced history
that is replete with joy and success but is also ripe
with difficulty, challenge and struggle.
From monolith to mosaic
The second challenge that I believe shaped
American museums is the inability of resisting
monolithic depictions of the past. One is struck by
a richness in the mosaic of African-American life
when one reads African-American literature,
whether its by an urban poet like Langston
Hughes or in the work of playwright August
Wilson or when one taps ones toes to Aretha
Franklin, Sam Cook or even LL Cool J. In thismusic and literature one is introduced to a black
world that abounds with differences based on
class, gender, colour and region. Yet very few
exhibitions in America explore this complexity.
Whats presented is a striving middle class as an
example of what the black community was, is and
will always be.
By rushing to this monolithic depiction of the
past, I would argue American museums fail tohelp visitors understand the conflicts,
negotiations and the shifting coalitions that
have comprised the African-American
community and other communities of colour.
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failed in our museums to even begin to present
interactions among African-Americans and non-
African-Americans.
One of my favourite museums is a large state
museum in the south of America. It has a huge
exhibition on slavery and there is no mention of
any non-African-American. It is almost as if slavessaid, Oh, I think I like being on this plantation in
the middle of Alabama by myself. It seems to me
that, while change has occurred, race is vitally
important when you are wrestling with these
questions of how to re-centre African-American
culture. I would suggest to you that while there
has been great change in America, we are
nowhere near the promised land.
Let me close with a quotation from an enslaved
African who was asked in an interview in 1937:
Now that slavery is over and most people who
were slaves are gone, what should we
remember? This man, Cornelius Holme, said:
Though the slavery question is settled, its impact
is not. The question is with us always. It is in our
politics, it is in our courts, it is on our highways, it
is in our manners, it is in our thoughts, all the
day, every day.
Think about what a gift museums could give if
they could only help their visitors understand that
they are shaped, touched and informed by
diversity, by race and by complexity, all the day,
every day.
A new integration
Lastly, and perhaps the biggest challenge, is the
need for American museums to find a new
integration that re-centres the African-American
experience and the experience of people of
colour. One of the things that is so interesting in
America is that in 1954 the Supreme Courtdeclared that segregation should be outlawed.
However, I would argue that segregation is alive
and well in American museums. Far too frequently
African-American culture is segregated and
remains in the dark corners of the museum. Either
African-American culture is interpreted as an
interesting and occasionally educational episode
that has limited meaning for non-African-
American visitors, or it is trumpeted as a special
attraction that is more exotic than instructive.
What is missing is the new integration that
encourages visitors to recognise that the key
to understanding American identity is to
understand the questions of race.
That museums have failed to centralise this story
so far is the essence of what people have missed
when going to American museums. They have
missed the opportunity to use the richest of
African-American culture as a wonderful lens to
help us understand what it means to be an
American. We have missed that and I think that is
one of the great challenges. In essence, we have
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If you look around the room today what you
are looking at is history on the one hand and
twenty-first century leadership on the other.
Earlier today, someone quoted a line from the
late African-American poet June Jordan: We
are the ones that we have been waiting for.
The point is that there is no one else who willcome to lead. We are the ones we have been
waiting for! Our discussions are often about how
we are going to follow the leadership that
controls heritage institutions. We are clearly
dissatisfied with this leadership. Whether it is
here in Britain, Brazil or in Nigeria the same
questions pertain. But in some cases the problem
is not about white male or Euro-centric
dominance of leadership. In countries such as
Nigeria the issue is often about ethnic-specific
dominance, because different indigenous ways ofknowing and doing - the anthropological sense
of culture - are not being presented as points of
view and skill sets to fashion the public space in
which we all have to live and to be governed in.
Different aesthetic, imaginative, creative and
performance traditions in the arts are often
conflated in discussions about culture and cultural
policy. When speaking about the rubric of culture
many of us are often really talking about the arts
because we work directly in the arts or withartists. We are more immediately attracted
visually and emotionally to the arts and thus
artists. We have not thought deeply enough
about articulation of the more complex nature of
culture and the special, distinctive role of artists
and the arts within culture. We embody culture in
all its complex manifestations. We are the only
culture-producing species on this planet that we
are aware of. In that light, the artists and the arts
occupy a unique dimension of culture so as to be
subjects of special attention, which includes cultural
identity, democratic participation, cultural policy,
and more recently economic development.
The use and misuse of culture
Yet we talk about culture as the soft side of life or
as a soft power, as it is referred to in the foreign
policy departments of Britain and the United
States. This is to imply that economics and military
might are the more serious issues of life, after
which the less serious or soft dimensions of life are
dealt with. One of the previous symposium
speakers reminded us that our deliberations areabout governance. Governance is one reflection of
culture. Governance does not descend from some
place on high beyond the imaginative, creative
expressions of culture makers. There are rituals of
governance. There are imaginative creative ways
integral to arts making in which governance is
conceptualised, organised and implemented. The
topic of this symposium, Heritage, Legacy and
Leadership: Ideas and Interventions, is about the
power of definition in the first instance. But it is
also about how we, cultural professionals, will
organise ourselves. If we do not organise ourselves
there are bureaucrats, often not trained or
experienced professionally in culture foreign
policy specialists, political appointees, or market-
oriented lawyers, for example who are already
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seeking to define what constitutes heritage, legacy
and national identity. To use Doudou Dines
terminology: They are instrumentalists. They talk
about our disciplinary fields and professional skill
sets within culture and the arts in the narrow or
functionalist terms of cultural diplomacy. For
example, sending the great African-American jazz
musician Dizzy Gillespie around the world to foster
US national interests, while Dizzy played his music
to sincerely engage the aesthetic interests and
humanity of people from other nations and
cultures. This kind of functionalist diplomacy or
policy gives practical and utilitarian concerns
priority over aesthetic, artistic or intellectual
concerns.
The use of culture to further economic or military
dominance is born anew in the United States
Government. US Army General David Petraeus,who is organising the so-called war against
terrorism in Iraq, has a plan, not just for me as an
American cultural professional, but for all of you. It
is called embedding anthropologists into our
domain the cultural arena. Anthropology is one
of the humanistic disciplines that underpins the
more encompassing context or meanings of
culture. Will poets and dancers and artists be far
behind? I think they will not be far behind in my
country or your countries, in being recruited and
directed towards narrow instrumentalist goals,
which have little to do with the intrinsic
dimensions of the arts and culture. So we must
take ourselves seriously, not as a sector separate
from the serious dimensions of life, but as
professionals whose disciplines of work provide
deeper entre and context for the pivotal issues of
the twenty-first century, including immigration,
national identity, foreign policy, economic
prosperity, war and a just peace.
Culture and identity
Doudou Dine alluded to the fact that all of the
major conflicts in the world today are centred in
culture: ways of knowing and doing, ways of
worshiping, praying, and languages for example.
He also noted that in this global moment in which,
yes, we do have national identities, we also have
trans-national identities. And all of our countries
are facing a major crisis of national identity,
particularly the major imperial powers of the West.
What is this crisis? The substance of the
immigration crisis, for example, in all of our
countries has to do with national identity: who is a
Brit today? What are the implications of the
answers to what accrues to whom as heritage,
legacy, and socio-cultural, economic and political
validation? A UK government minister, talking
about immigration in the United Kingdom, says it
is not just a question of the quantity of the
immigrants admitted into the country; it is the
quality of the person who is admitted. People in
governance or policy makers are being veryexplicit. If you are black or you are brown, then
you are going to be targeted in addition to race
and ethnicity for a cultural evaluation of fitness to
be accepted within the countrys national identity
and its past and future heritage. If you are Eastern
European with natural blond hair and green or
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we come from or represent. These perspectives
stop short of addressing the issue of national
identity, which is a rubric under which we,and all
others in our diversity are characterised. For
example, I am an African-American, the
descendant of enslaved Africans in the United
States. That is all I can tell you. Even if I do the
DNA test it would not be a qualitative cultural
marker or answer because I still would not have
the historically evolved emotional connections,
that inner spirit that Doudou Dine was talking
about. I may know the geographical location of
historical origin of my family but race and cultural
identity are more than mere geographical
designations of family origins. They are elements
of a larger complex of interior feelings and
meaning, of an intangible quality evolved through
history making, coalescing over time, in what werefer to as heritage, legacy and cultural identity.
Culture is about that imaginative and creative
perspective informed by, if not directly rooted in,
prior developments that we are direct inheritors
of. It allows us to understand the possibility of new
worlds because we our cultures have created
old worlds.
So that, as an African-American, I must be
concerned that in this room there are Europeans or
Americans from various cultural backgrounds. I see
the colour of your skin but I want to know
whether you are a Catholic or Protestant, a
practitioner of traditional African or Asian
religions, what your rituals are and what your
cultural background is. I see my black brothers and
sisters from the African Diaspora but it does not
mean that I feel like you. I was not born in Jamaica
blue eyes but you are not wearing a certain kind of
dress, they will seek to find out about you
culturally. The decisive cultural question in that
example is based on your clothing: are you
Muslim?
The policy crisis around national identity iscentred on the attempt by those who are in
power to hold on to static, essentialist
historical perspectives of what culture and
legacy are about.
On the opposite side of this power equation and
I want to be really frank with you about my
feelings we, of immigrant communities, are very
prosaic and eloquent in our ability to complain
about the problems and failures with respect to
diversity being implemented in our professional
cultural arenas. I generally agree with the
complaints but I have not heard many of them
accompanied by transformative perspectives about
what we want national identity to become
tomorrow and in the future. I have heard almost
nothing about the progress we have made over
the generations despite continued obstacles, or
about the progress still to be made. Without an
appreciation of what has been accomplished wetoo have distorted views and understanding about
what capacities we have to build upon to advance
beyond todays problems and to take full
advantage of todays opportunities.
I have heard many cultural-centric and ahistorical
perspectives about the particular cultural groups
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or reared in Trinidad. Essentialist notions about
racial identity that suggest that somehow we as
individual groups in our multicultural nations can
alone deal with the question of national power
in this instance cultural power and policies must
be reconsidered. If national identity is to be truly
representative of the parts that comprise the
official whole we, the multicultural sectors of the
nation, must take full ownership of the whole
national enterprise. We must inform and fashion a
vibrant national identity and not accept or be
comfortable with individualised attention, policies,
pots of money, special initiatives and the like,
albeit that they are important circumscribed
instruments to prime progress.
Culture and democracyMoving onto transformative perspectives, we the
multicultural and multiracial professionals in the
symposium (including gender and sexual
orientation) have to take very seriously the
resources of values, histories, heritages, legacies,
and plural identities we possess. We must seriously
value the work areas we have studied very hard to
prepare ourselves in and not accept or relegate
ourselves as some sidebar ethnic, cultural, or
artistic sector in relationship to the mainstream.
We, all of us who are progressive, who are
committed to culture as living and not static; those
of us committed to identity as vibrant not simply
inherited and certainly not inherited from one
historically dominant group we must become the
mainstream!
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In addressing our local and national cultural policy
issues we must not lose sight of the global
movement that influences those distinct but
connected realities. In this regard, consider the
UNESCO construct of culture as a transversal factor.
It connects and runs across everything. That is why
the General perpetrating this vicious war in Iraq is
embedding anthropologists, because he
understands the transversal and the contextual
nature of the arenas in which we work. That is
why the issue of cultural diplomacy is being talked
about in the United States today, because many in
the world including Western Europeans and
people of colour - hate the policies of the United
States.
We have to take ourselves a lot more
seriously and be more proactive about taking
leading roles in culture, the arts and society
and not be inserted under the narrow scope
of functional objectives plotted by policy
makers.
So, this last forum is focusing on cultural
democracy and what it means. As a black
American who is a cultural leader, if I occupy a
position I must be concerned with everyexpression of culture, obviously first with my own,
but simultaneously with every persons and
groups culture. That is not the discourse I have
heard today. Our discussion has been far too much
about our individual group and not about how
we, the marginalised and often discriminated
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against, can provide leadership for ourselves and
for all. We have been aggrieved and we must be
concerned about ourselves. However, the young
man who spoke from the Department for Culture
has to work laterally with everyones interests in
mind as well as work to move up, to engage
everyone. He cannot just focus on his individual or
group issues and goals if he is going to provide
transformative leadership. In his leadership
position he must represent the different European
strands at this conference, the Southeast Asian
strands, the gay and lesbian cultural issues, and all
people who are here. This is about the power or
authority to decide. This is about politics giving
value and organisation to the state of cultural and
culturally related affairs of national, not just local
or group-specific, interests. This is not about a
single social or cultural sector or training youngpeople in the techniques of leadership. Yes, those
issues are important. But only if they lead us to
understanding that we are on the verge of a new
long march for the transformation of our nations
and our national identities. If not, then we are
going to be sophisticated but marginalised people,
on the outside of real governance and decision-
making about heritage, legacy, innovation and
leadership.
Doing it for ourselves
I want to share an instructive quote from a trade
unionist who, in his lifetime, was considered the
most dangerous Negro in the United States of
America this was the term used during that
period. His name was A Philip Randolph and he
said: At the banquet table of nature, there are no
reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you
keep what you can hold. If you cant take
anything, you wont get anything, and if you cant
hold anything, you wont keep anything. And you
cant take anything without organisation.
In the cultural arena if we want to change
things, be transformative not just critically
reactive, we have to organise ourselves. We
have to be strategic.
We have to deliberately plan and calculate the
ways forward, articulating who we are and what
our roles are transversally, and intersect all aspects
of cultural and public policy. I am trying to urge
you to think of yourselves as more than a sector.
Other people understand how to isolate and use
us as a sector, but we do not understand who we
are and what our relationship is to the whole of
society.
We have to be engaged in the major cultural
policy determinations throughout society. The
police are talking about culture; the healthcare
system is talking about culture. Dances are being
organised to help resolve conflicts. Poets are beingbrought in for peace sessions. They are not simply
instrumentalists. They understand that they are
part of the imaginative and creative communities
whose visions and expressions are critical to
spiritual and material well-being. That is what
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42
The challenges of the twenty-first century are
drawing heritage and culture leaders centre
stage. Issues of identity and disaffection, race
and ethnic discrimination, and attempts to
impose political and cultural hegemony are
fragmenting the world. Many countries have
actually reached the point of combustion, with
ethnic conflict supplying kindling and
demagogues happily providing accelerants.
Interventions begin with understanding. We
are the ones who know enough of the
underlying causes to promote understanding.
We are the ones who know that many of todays
challenges were conceived in rampant
imperialism, which has fractioned and factioned
the world. The arbitrary division of the globe in
pursuit of economic and political pre-eminence
has forced into unstable polities aggregations ofdisparate ethnicities with frequently adversarial
beliefs and ambitions. Colonisation and cultural
domination have given birth to notions of
intrinsic inferiority of subjugated lands, peoples
and cultures. Is not the impact of forced national
constructs exemplified in the destruction wrought
in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq and Kenya?
Heritage and culture leaders understand that the
transatlantic slave trade bequeathed its own
pernicious legacies. The slave system not onlysnatched a potpourri of ethnic groups from their
native milieus, but also attempted to curtail the
self-determination of the enslaved in the New
World. African heritage came to be equated with
invalidity or, at best, limited potential. As a
consequence Atlantic slavery has devised a
convoluted mess of prejudices and identity issues
that pose a constant threat to self-imaging and
self-esteem within the African Diaspora.
In The Bahamas self-imaging has further been
distorted by an all-pervasive tourism industry. For
the sake of the industry history, heritage andculture have been reinterpreted for more
palatable consumption by tourists and, until
recently, distanced in meaning from the people.
My country also suffers the effects of US
dominance and increasing cultural hegemony.
Beaming directly to a majority black nation by
cable and satellite transmissions, US media do not
favour positive images of non-whites. In fact, we
are overdosed on the powerful imagery of the
thug lifestyle. More and more young men are
offering violence to their peers, stronglyinfluenced by the harmful construct of manhood
that this antisocial way of life has engendered.
We understand the challenge of ethnic issues
emanating from what Michael Hechter, Professor
of Sociology at the University of Washington,
terms internal colonialism, focusing on the
relationship between a core English culture and
peripheral ethnicities he calls the Celtic fringe . A
variant can be observed in the relationship
between the British of European origin and non-white immigrants from former British colonies.
The same drama attaches to intra-Caribbean
migration. While acculturation is expected,
members of the core culture tend to place
restrictive terms on access with automatic
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A new and responsible leadership
Heritage and culture leaders are being offered
the unique privilege not only to play a part in
defusing the explosive potential of this age but
also to reveal the spectacular good it is
incubating. Are we equal to the task or is it time
for reinvention? Effective leadership cannotsequester itself in an ivory tower of exclusivity
and esoteric scholarship while the world devolves
into atavism. Too much scholarship is a