Presentations from the conference
Gunilla Sand, Stundars Open Air Museum, Finland
What are the special challenges we are facing and what single elements do we have to take into account when working in a multilingual setting? When working in multilingual groups or in situations where you cannot work in your own mother tongue you have to be better prepared and more concentrated. You will have to involve the audience more and in the best case, communicate more. Your own attitude and decision to function in a multilingual way is crucial. The question of what languages should be spoken in a museum deals with the concept of museums and their values. This is closely linked with the idea of the museum as a public space. Who has the ownership of the museum? This is also connected to a larger question of access to cultural heritage.
Time Travel as "counter- language"
Birgitta E. Gustafsson, Department of Education, Växjö University, Sweden
The Time Travel method is an exciting educational method full of possibilities. It creates experiences, genuine feelings and an understanding of the past time-present time. The time travel method also stress the importance of local places and their stories for peoples meaning making and understanding of the self. But to develop the time travel method further it needs to get challenged. How can a Time Travel in a local environment generate an experience that challenges the individual conception of oneself, the present time and the past?
Seen from a pedagogical perspective the learning individual needs to get challenged. Time Travels could then act like a "counter-language" to established conceptions. It could function like a challenger of prejudices and taken-for-granted ness, thereby becoming visible and possible to reflect upon and to discuss. In order to let time travels challenge the habitual ways of seeing and thinking what is then needed? To create background for time travel as "counter-language" some questions need to get remarked.
- What places are chosen for the time travel? What challenging potential has the place?
- How take advantage of this potential?
- What kind of story is the place carrying?
- What challenging potential has the story?
- What taken-for-granted knowledge is the story carrying that needs to get provoked?
- In what way does the story involve ambiguity and complexity?
- How can the story get staged as a time travel?
- What drama is possible to stage with this particular group of visitors or pupils?
In many ways we face a challenge to care about diversity, polyphony and uncertainty that reflects the time we live in. This requires that pupils/visitors at the museum are offered opportunities to be challenged in their imaginary world in order to strengthen the critical and self-critical ability.
Which places are we selecting to be of interest and whose traditions are we keeping up in a multicultural country?
Ewa Bergdahl, National Board of Antiquities, Stockholm, Sweden
Diversity and global influences characterize modern societies. It is important to create a world, where culture and history is presented from many perspectives and with a great range of disparity. Time travels is an interesting method of interpretation. In my paper I also present some examples of interpretative methods raised in the need of given more space for reflections and discussions in order to use history and culture heritage as a tool for the future.
