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http://divercitysite.weebly.com/

TRAINING MATERIAL ON AGE DIVERCITY ITINERARIESA narrative report

"The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein."

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URBAN WALK DESCRIPTION MUSEUM OF ETHNOGRAPHYNéprajz úton útfélen – Ethnography on the move

General description

The Museum of Ethnography tried out a totally new method by preparing an urban walk. First it widened the topic of ethnography into the town; second: it tried to look at the town from the view of locals and visitors of the museum and not from the view of experts.We worked with young adults and during the workshops we prepared them to find links between the museum, the town and themselves. We, the trainers tried to find connections between the museum collections and the different fields of interest of the youngsters, and they looked for connections between themselves and the city. In this way we could find points in town that bound together the story of the place, the story of a participant and the story of a museum collection or some chosen objects.

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Thanks to the walk the Museum of Ethnography became an entity out of time and space. We approached the museum from its nowadays physical place to a non-existing future place, where it’s going to move in the upcoming few years, from the Museum of Ethnography to the New Museum of Ethnography. The move to a new building gives us, experts and museum workers an opportunity to think about the new concept of ethnography and a social museum that is closer to our public, that is part of everyday life. That’s why we were focusing on the nowadays relevance of ethnography in our walk and not the classical, historical part of it.The aim was not only to make the audience to look in a different way at the museum, the city and the culture, but also to make our own colleagues and the museum to look in a different way at the audience. We had to learn the language of each other. An extra view was the difference between the thinking of the generations. The participants who led the walk, the trainers and the audience who participated on the walk where all from different generations and different levels of society what occurred a very diverse interaction between all of us.

Detailed description of workshops and methods

Workshop 1: Getting to know each other and the museum, discovering the city with the eyes of an ethnographer (4h)• Frontal discussion: presentation of the project:

• the goal is a thematic urban walk which links the museum (ethnography) and the city,

• which reflects on the move of the museum to its new place, • which is sustainable during the closing of the museum (approximately

2017-2020)• Frontal interactive discussion: getting to know the specialization and the fields of collections of the Museum of Ethnography, the different collections of the Museum and their possible objects, examples given from the present material culture that could become part of the different collectionsYoungsters were invited to give their opinion about the content of each collection, to give examples and to try to find out if certain objects mentioned by the trainer could be integrated to a given collection or not, or at all if they fit into a museum collection or not.

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The mention of concrete objects made it possible to speak about the method of the selection of museum objects, and gave more context to the objects.• Visit of the small temporary exhibition “Two Continents, One Soul: the Emil Torday Congo Collection”. Besides the concrete presentation of the exhibition to the youngsters, the goal was to find out with them general notions and subjects on the basis of the exhibited objects or types of objects, that we (trainers) knew already about, that they can also be found in the city around the building. • Walk around the museum building: discovering the same themes and notions that were chosen in the exhibition in an urban space. Finding links between the old Congolese objects and urban phenomena (urban objects, spaces, building decorations, shops, restaurants, etc.) with the aid of themes and notions chosen by them in the exhibition (e.g. communication, forest, hunting, dogkeeping, invitation of guests, entertainment, sources of knowledge, power, healing etc.). A concrete example is the signs of power. A Congolese chief’s staff that was symbol of power has been connected by participants to the Hungarian Parliament (government of a country) situated facing to the Museum of Ethnography. It was an interesting experience that the participants found much more connections as we expected, and not only connections with the Congolese exhibition and it’s topics, but also with the earlier discussed collections of the Museum. • On the basis of this common experience, youngsters were invited to reflect on these connections between general ethnographic notions and urban spaces, and to observe the city from this point of view during their everyday life until our next workshop. They were also asked to connect their personal interests to these links, and to speak about them during the next workshop.

Workshop 2: Connection of urban, ethnographic and personal interests (3h)• Discovering some main points (historical buildings, urban spaces) on a short itinerary between the Museum of Ethnography and the St. Stephen’s Basilica. The points where chosen after the personal interests of the participants. • Trying to determine their functions, significations on the basis of their architectural position and decorations.• Linking these discoveries to some ethnographic fields, meanings and objects, and to the personal interests of the youngsters (for instance: building of the

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Hungarian National Bank – trade, exchange, value, globalization, traditional currencies – personal collection of coins)• Due to the discussion with the youngsters about their personal interests, we selected together the final buildings and ethnographic themes, and the future guides (youngsters) also selected one of their personal stories connecting to the subject or collection.

Workshop 3: Entering into urban spaces and their deeper meaning (3h)• Selection of three urban points (from the previously chosen ones) to get to know them more deeply and also from inside. Common discovery and discussion about the meaningful signs found on and in the buildings (spaces). Emblems, functions, representations, past and present were discussed, and some main features of the places were highlighted. The trainers added their special knowledge to the one of the youngsters, and gave the ethnographic context and link to the Museum and its collections.

1. Hungarian Secession House (Bedő house): determination of the characteristics of the Art Nouveau style on the façade of the building and inside, where a café and a museum functions. Links to the motifs of folk art. Curator’s added information: the owner of the house was a private collector who gave some African objects to the Museum. Presentation of these objects in a catalogue of an exhibition, where they exhibited at the moment.Common discussion about the differences of a private and a state museum, and about the personal and common interests of object-collecting, as well as about the dealing with collections in a private space. As a result of sharing the “secrets” of the personal collections with each other, we discussed the importance of having a private collection in our life. E.g. the participants had coin collections, soft drink lid's collection, Japanese card game collection, chocolate paper collection etc. 2. Postal Savings Bank: determination of the building’s exterior signs linked to its function and to the main architectural style of the time of its construction. Visit of the hall of the building and its exhibition about its history and about its decorations which are both visible and hidden.

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Curators added information, that folk art was an important source of the Hungarian Art Nouveau style, and they presented the analogies of the motifs creating fashion of that time.Common discussion about fashion, its importance and meaning in our everyday life and its presentation in the museum and private collections of objects. Youngsters expressed and shared their interest to different elements of fashionable clothings. E.g. one of the participants is really fond of fashion, and she collects caps with different brandings. 3. Market at Hold street: analyzation of the building’s exterior and interior architectural signs and decorations linked to its function. Discussion about the past and present roles and characteristics of the markets and the changes occurred in recent times due to globalization, changing way of life and fashion. Discovery of the different levels of the market and their specialization: food market and eating areas. Discovery by curator guidance of the effects of globalization and multiculturalism on the decoration of the eating spaces and on food-making. Discussion about the meaning and use of “national food” and bio products linked to the personal shopping and eating customs and experiences of the youngsters and their family, as well as to the cultivation of vegetables and plants in private gardens. The visit ended up with tasting a hybrid food invention, the “Hungarian kebab”.

Workshop 4: Finalisation of the urban points (2h)• Selection of the final urban points on the itinerary of the walk and their responsible participant (who had a personal interest and link to it before). Where special interest of the youngsters were shown at more than one point, then these were given to the same person for presentation• Where the subject or the urban space was interesting and had an important role in the process of the itinerary, but none of the participants had a personal link to it, then the trainers were charged to present them (for instance the future place and building of the museum)• At the end of this walk, 12 urban points and subjects were selected on the itinerary

Workshop 5: Reconnection of urban points to the museum (4h)

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The goal of this workshop was to reconnect the ethnographic subjects and personal interest spoken about during the walk, to the museum sphere, objects and museum presentation. This workshop-part was located at the museum.• Visit of one of the storage rooms of the African collection. By this, the youngsters could have a view about the background of a state museum, the quantity of objects and their storing methods, in comparison with a private collection (Hungarian Secession House). Characteristic objects of the collection (masks) were presented and also the objects that the youngsters were especially interested in (e.g. East African ear disks, chosen because of the participant responsible for the subject “body art”, who wears such disks herself too)• Visit of the permanent exhibition of the museum and looking at presented topics or objects that are related to the urban points chosen for the itinerary. Common discovery and discussion about the traditional and contemporary ethnographic phenomena.• Presentation of some selected ethnographic subjects of the urban walk by museum catalogues (for instance motifs of the shepherds’ coats which can be seen on and in the building of the Postal Savings Bank for the fashion part) Workshop 6: Collecting textual and visual documentation about the selected urban points and ethnographic subjects and objects in individual mentoring system (5h in total)At this part of the project we started to work with an individual mentoring system where after the professional interest of the three trainers, the urban points and the participants responsible for them where divided. In this way we could work more intensively (one mentor with 2-3 participants) and focus on the chosen topics, buildings and ethnographic links more deeply. Practically it was also easier to work this way, because we could choose meeting points and appointments that were comfortable for both of us (the mentor and the participant), and could work with individually fitted methods and tempo. Also it was easier to enable them to think individually, to empower them for self-confidence, to tell their individual opinion about things, to speak out loud etc.• Research for textual and visual sources on the internet in common and individual work about the selected urban point, ethnographic subjects and personal links as well as about data and notions arose during the common discussion about

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them. Linking, comparing historical information to the present functions of the buildings.• Research for ethnographic objects and their photos in the database of the museum in order to illustrate the ethnographic subjects.

Workshop 7: Preparation of the structure and content of the urban points, ethnographic subjects and personal relationships (3h)The aim of this workshop was to have a common lecture of the common and individually selected documentations in order to highlight their main points and to structure the content of the presentation. Youngsters expressed their needs to do that, and after having defined the important information with the aid of the trainers, who gave also the explanation and context to them, they could make their own selection. The trainers helped them to understand the links of their selected point to the other urban points on the itinerary (for instance history of a larger urban area, parallelism of the architectural style). Preparation of notes and a draft of the presentation by the youngsters.

Workshop 8 : Individual trial of the urban walk in mentoring system (1h)On the basis of the collected, selected and treated documentation and on the personal interest of the youngsters, presentation of the subject at the concrete urban point by the participant and by the trainer with his part. This module was offered and highly required by the youngsters to increase their self-confidence. It was also an occasion to test the temporal framework of the presentation and the technics of the guidance and the presentation (how to guide the group during the walk, where to stop, how to start the presentation and how to speak to the public - position of the speaker and the group, methods of rising interest of the public, etc.). The different parts of the presentation of the participant and the trainer, and the links between them were structured on the spot. If needed, the presentation was repeated. By this we wanted to help them to be comfortable with the situation that they have to lead and talk to a group of strangers on the street. The goal was to make them prepared, so during the final walk we can stay in the background and help them from there when needed, to enable them to lead an urban itinerary together on their own.

Workshop 9: Common trial of the walk - final trial (2h)

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• Presentation of each urban point and ethnographic subject by the youngsters before the group in the museum educational room• Ordering of the visual presentational tools (photos) for the walk, preparation of the dossier of the presentation (notes, photos)

Workshop 10: Public presentation of the final urban walk “Ethnography on the move” (3h)• Presentation of the urban walk to the public (journalists, urban walk organizers, museum workers, parents, friends) starting from the Museum building until the belvedere of the St. Stephen’s Basilica. The walk was led by the young adults, they were taking at the points where we stopped, the mentors were standing next to them and encouraging, assisting them from the background.• Individual video journal, reflections given by the young urban walk guides and by the participants of the walk at the final point of the itinerary• Common celebration of the walk at an ice-cream shop

Objectives

Our aim was to organise an intergenerational workshop connecting concrete buildings in the town, concrete objects from the museum with concrete personal stories of the participants.Our stops (12) were:· woods, hunting – ex-building of National Society for Forestry· collecting, collectors – House of Hungarian Art Nouveau· safety, alliance – Embassy of the USA· colonial contacts – House of Colonial Trade· fashion, folk art – building of the Postal Savings Bank· comfort, everyday needs – Market hall at the Hold utca (Moon street)· beauty, body art – beauty saloon· money, trade – Hungarian National Bank· healing – Holy Mary Pharmacy· Japanese culture – Marumoto Tearoom· showman – square in front of the St. Stephen’s Basilica· future – view from the belvedere of the Basilica

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We wanted to look at the museum and the city through the view of the participants, we wanted them to show us what is important and what is less interesting for them. We wanted people (participants on the public urban walk) and museum workers too to see that the places and frames, categories, borders they use physically and in their thoughts during their everyday life can be seen from another point of view too. That there is ethnography everywhere on the way, everywhere in our life, everywhere in the museum, so the New Museum of Ethnography can be a place of everyday life, everyday spaces and everyday people.

Experiences during the workshop you appreciate the most

The participants prepared an urban walk for people from and elder generation and from a highly educated level of society. They had their own preconceptions about the language and interests of these people (complicated words, lots of data etc) and they tried to talk and act during the walk to serve their audience by using this language of their guests. We, the trainers wanted to act in a way to serve our preconceptions about the youngsters to make the communication between as more fluent, so we tried to make everything more simpler and easier as they wanted. We tried to act as youngsters, they tried to act as highly educated elder, we changed roles and spoke the imagined language of the others. Actually this is a method in drama pedagogy, called expert game – here it became a serious real life situation.

Difficulties – how to solve them on future workshops

It was really difficult to get rid of our museum-view to leave behind our everyday positions and stay in the background. Our aim was to leave the participants to act, to find out everything by themselves, to make their own decisions etc – so to stay in the background and help them from there when needed. We had difficulties not to cross this border and not to modify their thinking. The too many information we gave them during the preparation (originally to inspire them) became much more like a school situation where they have to remember all of the information and repeat them in a frontal position.

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In the future during the preparation we have to give them more experiential knowledge and less lexical.

What does your workshop add to a new way of thinking about the city? Innovative aspects

For the youngsters it was an interesting aspect to learn about ethnography through the city they use in their everyday life.For the adults it helped to slow down, look around and learn the examining glance that ethnographers use during their work. It was an experience for them that their town is not just an operative place, but a rich and meaningful surrounding that is part of their life, part of themselves.For a social museum the society and the place it lives in is the source, the surrounding and the goal. The Museum of Ethnography got closer to this idea with this urban walk by making the audience to understand that we are and what we make is part of the city, by realizing the character of our audience, how do they think, how do they live and how do they use the city, the culture and the ethnography. We made a small intergenerational and intercultural step that brought us closer to each other, the audience and the museum., our audience

Does your workshops accomplish the indicators you managed in the first part of the project?

We accomplished our goals:• we involved the target group into the process and the final introduction of the urban walk,• we empowered them to be brave, to share their own stories, to think critical and complex, to feel responsible and to have more self-confidence,

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• we managed to prepare a situation between different generations (mainly on the public urban walk, but also during the preparation) and look at the intergenerational connections and relations• we managed to highlight the diversity of society even in a group from the same age, and also between different generations• we managed to get closer the museum and the society, our audience

Why do you think your workshop adds diversity to the city? Diversity aspects

It adds new, diverse, ethnographic aspects to the thinking about the city, the usage of the city.

Open concepts that the workshop has opened and can be applied onwards, in future workshops on the city.

We think, this walk was a success in general. We want to repeat it and we would be interested to try it out with different target groups, different interpretators (the target group that prepared the walk – young adults), or in a different part of the city.

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SCULPTURE MEMORY Helsinki - HAM

General description

The HAM Helsinki Art Museum has an internet page of more than 400 works of public art all around the city of Helsinki (hamhelsinki.fi/en/public-sculptures). This map is widely used by the people in Helsinki. Especially teachers have been using the map to build tours for school groups. The texts about the artworks have been written by art historians. We in HAM started to get interested in other type of narrations. What are the stories of Helsinki citizens about their public art? Museum wanted to collect everyday stories connected to the public art. We just didn’t know how to collect them. That is why last summer we started to work with young adults to get the ideas on what sort of format would people be interested to share their stories. The possibilities were anything from

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visual storytelling to 3D pictures. In a week of workshops (IO3) we surprisingly realized that even the young people were not interested to spend that much time on playing with technology. It turned out that most people favored written form of storytelling. Although the world of young adults is more and more visual the memories are still told and most easily distributed with words.During winter 2015-16 we tried out story collecting two times. Once in a huge youth happening and once with the senior club of art museum. Because the textual form of storytelling was seen as the most convenient way to tell the memories, we decided that we would do a story collection project with paper and pen, but we would also open a webpage (hamhelsinki.fi/en/public-sculptures/sculpture-memory) where people could write their stories directly. We were also collecting information, if people have pictures or other visual material of their memories, but over 90% of the memories are pure text. And no complains of not having a cool gif-application etc form of storytelling has emerged. The world isn’t as digitally 3D as we easily think.

In spring 2016 we had a group of 16 young adults in a series of workshops between 10th of March and 21st of May. The workshops were divided into two sections.

FIRST SECTION 10 hours of preparation about story telling, public art and story collecting.

10th of March We went through the idea of memories. What place-related memories the young adults had? We also got acquainted with the public art map of HAM. Participants looked for a statue that they have memories of. At the end we told the memories to each other. Between first and second meeting a WhatsApp-group was created for the group to communicate about timetables and meetings. The idea was to do the workshops together with the participants, not so that there would be pedagogical workshop leaders. We just gave the ideas, what we could do, but we went along with the process ourselves as well.

17th of March

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More formal information was given about public art from memorial statues to multiplaced contemporary public art, Can a performance be a statue? We had a game about public art. The young adults had to find different kinds of statues on the public art map: A male figure, a female figure, a statue of 70/80/90’s and one statue from a district that the participant had never been to.

24th of MarchThinking about the themes of memories. What sort of memories are interesting, what sort of memories make a good story or a good walking tour. This was a task that the participants had a week to think about. Everyone came to the meeting with three idea for themes. Some ideas: Childhood memories, memories of students, collective memories (like the parties when Finland won world championship in ice hockey and everyone was hanging form the statues in the center etc.), memories of love, swimming memories of fountains, skateboard memories, night memories, making-out memories, party memories, drunken memories.

14th of April The preparing for the actual collection. How to approach people, what to ask, how to get people to give more accurate information and detailed stories.

SECOND SECTION20 hours of story collecting all around the city and in the museum.

The methodology of collecting was that participants talked with people and asked if they had any stories connected to the public art. Participants helped people to find from the map the sculpture they remembered and then the storyteller filled a form that can also be found it the museums webpage (hamhelsinki.fi/en/public-sculptures/sculpture-memory). For story collecting happenings we had printed out a thousand forms.After every story collecting happening the participants shared new tips, how to get people more interested in telling more elaborate stories about the memories connected to the public art.

23th of April

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Launching of story collecting in a central park with historical statues.

29th of AprilStory collecting at the museum’s free day happening inside at the incoming hall and outside of the museum.

13th of MayStory collecting in Kamppi in a shopping mall.

14th of MayStory collecting in a new area Arabia’s street festival. The Arabia is an area with a lot of contemporary public art.

21st of May Story collecting in “East village party” in the biggest eastern suburban. Very diverse area with some contemporary public art.

Objectives

We wanted to get young adults into the art museum world. We wanted to learn from them, how they see that the public art should be talked about. We wanted to give them the possibility to do art museum work, to collect everyday stories about the public art. We wanted to give the young adults the possibility to influence and actually participate in art museum’s public work. We also wanted to create a connection between the young adults and other age groups. The young people are often separate from the adult world and rarely in interaction with elderly people outside their family. In this project the young adults were the proactive ones. They were the ones taking connection with the other age groups.Museum’s own task was to try new ways of communicating. How to build a workshop by using Facebook groups and WhatsApp groups? How not to have specific art educator’s timetable, but to flexible discuss about the next meeting in WhatsApp. To update art education to contemporary time.

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Experiences during the workshop you appreciate the most

Working with youth! Young people have such fresh view. The memory organizations as museums can truly benefit from giving more power to young people.Meeting and connecting with the people telling sculpture memories. People were genuinely surprised and happy that someone from an art museum was interested in their stories. Hearing about citizens thoughts and experiences was interesting.New forms of creating workshop structures. Discussing and sending emoticons in face book group and whatsapp gave to the whole project a non-formal and chatty feeling. As in normal life, you call your friend, send a message, haggle the meeting time and place… Never thought that that would work in a museum educational workshop, but it did. This time museum educators didn’t have a certain structure in mind. Also the story collecting dates were mutually organized with the participants. Everything was agreed upon co-operatively. Leaving the museum space, and meeting people on the streets of Helsinki. Museums should get more out of the buildings. The street festivals and district festivals are a great place to connect with people and create a positive image for a museum. And it’s interesting that further you get from the city center, the more interesting it gets.The realization how much people enjoy listening to stories and how rare this practice has become in our society. When participants of the project told the stories/memories we had collected to friends or family (outside of the project), people listened intently and afterwards told how nice it was to listen to stories being told. The stories we hear today are from television/streaming or radio. Perhaps this is also the reason why people had problems telling their memories in story form when we approached them during the project - because we don’t hear or tell stories in this “traditional form” to each other anymore.

Difficulties – how to solve them on future workshops

It is interesting how difficult it is for people to believe that their memories are interesting to others. It was a never-ending task to find the right questions to get the

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best and longest story out of people. We found out that giving positive feedback and by showing personal interest and ask further questions was the best way of building the story with the person. And sad but true - not everyone is a story teller. If a person just can’t see details in his narration, you should not force it.Some of the young adults were a bit afraid to approach strangers. We did some exercises for this in advanced, but should have done more. The fact that an adult might say no, turn back or even be rude, should not be taken to heart.Use of tablets might not be that important. At the beginning of the project we used the tablets, so that we could look the sculptures that were by the storytellers home, but soon we realized that it was just a time consumer. People started to tell the stories better without losing minutes to look for the art work. Also people told more elaborate stories when they didn’t see the picture of the work from tablet. The memories were flowing more free. Part of the reason for dropping the use of tablets was that our public art map’s search engine needs improvement. It’s not possible to word-search a certain district for example.We might have gotten more and better quality (longer and more detailed) memories if the collectors would have been adults. But it was central for us to use young adults for this project. We wanted to see how they would like to collect stories and we wanted to try out different kind of ways to build a workshop. In this case the quality of the collectors was more important than the outcome of the collecting prosess.Letting go was most difficult. Trusting that the participants do their best, or perform even better than needed, if the responsibility is given to them not carried for them by an art educator. As a museum worker / art educator there is a horrible feeling of responsibility that can easily turn into controlling suffocation. From the first meeting we tried to do the project with the young adults nor for them. Handing out the power of planning is a good school for all educators.

What does your workshop add to a new way of thinking about the city?

Sculpture memory makes personal stories visible. All the statues are filled with stories that we don’t know. To give citizens possibility to tell their stories and give

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them space in art museum’s webpage side by side with the art historical explanation is nothing short of miracle. The ivory tower of art historians is opening to the art experience of everyman.Opening the personal stories behind the statues adds to the value of the sculptures, by giving them new meanings and connecting them to everyday life of the citizens. it also shows that city cares about the personal experiences and memories of its citizen.One of the most important parts of the whole project was to remind the citizens that they own the sculptures. Their stories are part of the sculptures as the sculptures are part of their life story and the city of Helsinki is taking care of the works for the citizens.

Does your workshops accomplish the indicators you managed in the first part of the project?

Diversity as main topic of the project – The young adults of the project were from youth culture center Annantalo. They come from different ethnic groups and different parts of the city.Themes: cultural diversity, locality – The main idea of the project was to get stories of the statues that connect to the everyday memories and are in the living areas of Helsinki. Inclusion of target group in process – The target group did the story collecting. They build the whole prosess.

Why do you think your workshop adds diversity to the city? Diversity aspects

We gave a chance to work at an art museum to an age group that doesn’t normally have this possibility. The young adults met diverse group of people trough collecting memories and heard about their experiences.

HAM gave a voice to a non-art historical narration of arts.

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The participants interconnected with people of different age and ethnic background on different parts of the city.

The participants learned about their own areas and art in those areas. The feeling of ownership about public art is now higher for the participants.

Open concepts that the workshop has opened and can be applied onwards, in future workshops on the city.

Using social media as a tool connecting the participants and creating the workshop. Very positive outcome and it gave to the whole project very cozy feeling.Collecting stories and experiences can be applied to many kind of projects. The proses of getting people to open about their stories is interesting. The last story collecting time, the participants were already very good at it and managed to get very long and detailed stories.Giving the power to act away. It was a stressful but a good experience t give the power to non-museum pedagogical people. It takes a lot of planning and a good structure, but inside the structure things like timetables or even the substance of what and how something is done, is better to formulate together with the target audience. The result is way better in this way.