Wednesday 25 May 2005

Day I: Orientation to District Six and Community Engagements

08h30

Registration
Welcome and Introduction to the District Six Museum
Speakers: Valmont Layne, Director District Six Museum

Sacks Futeran Building, Buitenkant Street, Cape Town

Tea

10h00 – 12h30

Orientation to District Six and communities: Engagements with Langa, Manenberg and Protea Village

12h30

Busses depart for Langa, Manenberg and Protea Village

13h00

Manenberg :
This session will discuss the impact of forced removals on communities, as well as the formation of social and cultural identities in the past and present. Other than ‘returning’, what other mechanisms of restitution might be possible for displaced communities? The notion of ‘the township’, in which marginal voices have often been represented as a singular, unified and unproblematic voice will be considered in communities like Manenberg, located 20kms outside of Cape Town, who have drawn from their local knowledges to create forms of learning through interactive processes. In this session community practitioners and session participants will reflect and theorise on their own practices to provide models for others to study, critique and affirm. We will also explore how museum practitioners, such as the District Six Museum , might interact with communities such as Manenberg and develop practices that engage with issues beyond the often singularly-represented story of forced removals.

Speakers:
Rosieda Shabodien, Elaine Salo, Manenberg People’s Centre

Langa:
Situated three kilometres from the centre of Cape Town, Langa serves as one of the geographical zones through which the influx of African workers to the city was controlled. This session challenges the one-dimensional touristic experience of Langa – where African customs and people may be viewed as a curiosity. Through activities with the Langa Heritage Foundation and community groups in the area, the workshop addresses the challenges of heritage practice in Langa – and its relation to the township tourism industry in Cape Town . Ndabeni land claimants, Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum and the newly established Langa Heritage Foundation together with Gugu S’thebe will share their views on the politics of heritage institution-making as a community development practice. The session will reflect on the dis/enabling possibilities around government policies around heritage, arts and culture in Langa.

Speakers:
Sikhumbuzo Ngubo, Curator, Langa Heritage Foundation

Protea Village :
This excursion will question existing and emerging heritage practices by calling attention to the significance of mapping a range of environmental and societal relations for living memory in Protea Village , a small community that arose at the nexus of three colonial farm estates demarcated along the slopes of Table Mountain . The session explores how exhibitionary practices may contribute to community political and cultural goals of connecting living memory to land restitution claims.

Speakers:
Cedric van Dieman, Chairperson of the Protea Village Action Committee (PROVAC)

18h00 – 20h30

Official Opening at the District Six Museum .
Speakers: Valmont Layne, District Six Museum 

District Six Museum

Thursday 26 May 2005

Day II: Key debates in Memorialisation, Human Rights and Heritage Practice

07h30 – 08h30

Registration

Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC)

08h30 – 09h00

Review of Day One

09h00 – 10h30

Keynote Presentations
Short presentations will raise questions about discourses of power in national memorialisation processes and projects. Speakers will consider how political spaces of dialogue and contestation over memory and heritage may open up and hence change implicit theoretical and pedagogical understandings of existing heritage management, museum development and memorialisation practices. Case studies from South Africa and internationally will be raised to explore the particular features of the South African memorial complex, as well as to understand the spaces, critical memorial practices, and heritage site work of South Africa in relation to sites of trauma internationally.

Speakers:
Richard Werbner, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester
Ciraj Rassool , District Six Museum Trustee, History Department, University of the Western Cape
Luli Callinicos, Chairperson, National Heritage Council
Karen Till, Space and Place Researcher, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London
Premesh Lalu, History Department, University of the Western Cape

10h30 - 10h45

Coffee Break

Parallel Workshops:

10h45 – 13h00
(2hrs15 min, inclusive of break)

Workshop 1: Towards a National Heritage Site: District Six as a national site of forced removals. 
This session raises questions around how the introduction of ‘intangible heritage’ as a legal category might act as a means to strengthen the work of ‘living heritage’ practitioners. It seeks to bring existing theoretical and legal definitions of heritage into dialogue with existing heritage practices that affirm knowledges located in ‘non-traditional’ sources, such as performance, oral traditions and oral histories.

Speakers:
Luli Callinicos, Chairperson, National Heritage Council
Karen Till, Space and Place Researcher, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London;
Phakamani Buthelezi, CEO South African Heritage Resource Agency

Workshop 2. Contestation of Memory in a post-liberation / democratic society : building national consensus around memorialisation
Using examples from throughout South Africa , this session questions the role of the state and independent initiatives in contemporary practices of memorialisation and nation-building. What does it mean to represent or understand a historic site as a national space of memory? How do projects such as the District Six Museum , Freedom Park and the Sophiatown initiatives, promote national consensus? In which ways is this problematic?

Speakers:
Verne Harris, Project Manager, Centre for Memory, Nelson Mandela Foundation

Workshop 3. Site Museums of Conscience: The Pedagogy of Memorialisation – possibilities for influencing a human rights culture
This session engages with questions around the origin and the purpose of the need to memorialise/remember; the nature of memorialisation in relation to a social justice /human rights agenda as well as the notion of a ‘hierarchy of victimhood’. We will explore human rights issues and strategies, the identity of the District Six Museum as a place of memory work and share perspectives and interpretations of pedagogical practice across a range of sites of conscience. The key focus of the session is on the pedagogy rather than the facts of the traumatic events we deal with in our daily work. In this respect we will explore the educational relationships and practices that emerge from the memorialisation of socio-political trauma and what the underlying theories are that drive our work.

Speakers:
Patricia Tappatá de Valdez, Memoria Abierta, Argentina,
International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience
Liz Sevcenko, Lower East Side Tenement Museum, New York, International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience
Roberta Pellizzoli, Monte Sole Peace School , Italy
Crain Soudien, District Six Museum Trustee, Education Department, University of Cape Town

13h00 – 14h00

Lunch Break

14h00 – 14h30

Workshops continue: finalising reports for plenary

14h30 – 16h00
(1hr30mins)

Plenary:
Workshop reports (40 mins)
Discussant’s comments (20mins)
Open discussion – critique, additions (30 mins)

Friday 27 May 2005

Day 3: Methodologies and Public Engagement

08h00 – 8h30

Registration

CTICC

08h30 – 10h00

Methodologies of the District Six Museum : the culture, ethos and visuality of community based museums and places of memory

A reflection on some methodological inter- relationships in the memory work of the District Six Museum and their impact on the development of aesthetic form.

The aesthetic form of the District Six Museum - spatial, visual and aural, initially provided a generative framework which facilitated memory work and the restorative purpose of the project. Of current concern is the danger of the museum space losing its living function as a receptive, critical arena for working with memory - through inscription, interpretation and the expression of identity and experience - and becoming a rigid, unshifting aesthetic environment. How do we keep alive and continue to renew those working principles that were simple, receptive and effective and which brought ex-residents and others into the museum as a space of healing?

Speakers:
Peggy Delport, District Six Museum trustee
Ciraj Rassool, District Six Museum trustee

10h30 – 10h45

Parallel Workshops - Overview

10h45 – 13h00
(2hrs15 min inclusive of break)

Workshop 1: Living Memory & ‘Collections’
In this session we wish to consolidate our understanding of how we work with notions of living memory and intangible heritage. To develop the concept of ‘living collections’, we will re-examine traditional museum archival practices that define ‘the archive’ as a repository of memory, and propose instead archival practices defined by a human rights and restorative justice agenda. We privilege the voices speaking through the District Six Museum collection by inviting those people who contributed to the collection to speak of the processes and the meaning of these for them. The session will provide an interactive platform for others with comparable experiences based on their practical, as well as theoretical engagements, with their projects.

Speakers:
Sue Krige, Sophiatown Living Landscapes Project
Yazir Henry, Direct Action Centre for Peace and Memory
Sello Hatang, Archivist, South African History Archives

Workshop 2: Exhibitions & Education: Exploring Dynamic Possibilities
The exhibition is, for many, the connecting point with the work of a museum and its interpretation of place, space, politics and identities. In the case of the District Six Museum this connecting point for visitors was shaped by artists, academics, poets, activists and former residents of the area. This workshop will take place and critically engage with three exhibition spaces in the museum namely, the central space defined by the floor map of District Six and the memory cloth, the Gallery and the Memorial Hall. Participants will be asked to reflect on experiences and heritage practices within their own organisations. The relationship between the museum space and the site of District Six in the creation of exhibitionary and pedagogical tools will be a key focus. We will deal with issues related to the pedagogical challenges and possibilities of dynamic exhibitions that leads to the creation of spaces for exploration, living testimony and storytelling, conservation and ongoing development.

Workshop 3: Performing Identities/Performimg Memory
Rather than treat memory as a static site or narrative, this session explores how memory is performed, and remade through music, theatre, carnival, live poetry, festivals and other acts and spaces of performance. The session reflects upon and performs the memory of forced removals through bodies, artefacts, music, mobile processions, festivals, and rituals. Artists and will introduce their creative performances and together with workshop participants consider why performance arts are important in the (re)constitution of living memory and heritage. The session will also reflect critically upon its failings. Through performative cultural practices, we examine the concepts of community participation and inscriptions as integral to heritage practices, including the process of place making.

Speakers:
Rustom Bharucha, Cultural Heritage Practitioner
Mark Fleishman, Magnet Theatre, Drama Department, University of Cape Town
Feizel Mamdoo, filmmaker, Fietas Festival
Nadia Davids, playwright, University of Cape Town
Julian Jonker, Independent Researcher

Workshop 4: Urban Reconfiguration & Public Participation: Shaping Urban Justice
This session attempts to articulate ways of working with memory to ensure socially just engagements with new projects of urban development. The concern with memory stems from the District Six Museum’s work in Cape Town over the past ten years, during which it succeeded in preventing the development of the site of the razed District Six. The museum now enters a new phase where it is challenged to engage with the ex-residents’ return to the area and the redevelopment of the site. Questions will be raised around the ways to inspire and sustain effective public engagement in issues raised by various developments which are shaping the city. It is hoped that the session will draw from the experiences of practitioners in the fields of memory, urban design, housing and settlement development who have each in their different ways grappled with the problems of participatory and community processes. The session will include short presentations, discussion groups, and mapping/sketching activities that highlight the value of acknowledging different forms of expertise. Annotated and diagrammatic outcomes of the session will be integrated in the Open Day activities and rituals of ‘returning’.

Speakers:
Astrid Wicht, Architect
Zubeida Jaffer, Institute for Justice and Reconciliation
Stan Abrahams, District Six Museum and District Six Beneficiary and Redevelopment Trust trustee

Lunch Break

14h00 – 14h30

Workshops continue

14h30 – 16h00
(1hr30)

Plenary:
Closure
Discussant reports
Concluding remarks

Saturday 28 May 2005

Day IV: Hands On District Six: Healing the City *OPEN DAY IN DISTRICT SIX

10h30 - 11h00

Registration

Lydia Williams Centre for Memory, Chapel Street, District Six

11h00 – 11h20

Welcome and Introductions

1. Valmont Layne, District Six Museum
2. Remembering the Hands Off District Six Campaign of 1988 and the formation of the District Six Museum . Dr Crain Soudien.
3. The District Six We Want, Dr.Anwah Nagia, Chairperson of the District Six Redevelopment and Beneficiary Trust

11h 20-12h00

Tea/Lunch and activities

• Van Kalker photographic studio
• Exhibitions of photographs of youth involved in the Van Kalker photographic project
• Walking tour of Chapel Street

Lydia Williams Centre classroom

12h00 – 14h00

Photographic workshop
Facilitator: Roderick Sauls, artist and District Six ex-resident

These workshops will be repeated on the hour

12h00 – 14h00

Activities in the Main Hall

Mapping Exercise: Love Letter to the City
Creation of map that documents the point of origins for community members, sites of forced removal, claimant organisations and delegates. Signing of a giant postcard or ‘love letter’ to the city reiterating the resolutions of the conference.

Networking Centre:
A platform for various organisations dealing with land restitution, memory work, heritage and memorialisation practices and human rights work to engage with each other.

14h 30 - 15h00

Procession to Memorial Park site
Please remember to bring an umbrella, your most comfortable shoes, a water bottle and your sunscreen!

15h00 - 15h45

On site programme
Site ritual occurs as people walk up the Memorial Park.

• Interfaith Ceremony
• Poetry Reading
• What is the Memorial Park? Valmont Layne, District Six Museum