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Symposium: Memory in a time of Freedom

by | 12 Oct 2015 | APARTHEID, Education, FORCED REMOVALS, Supper Club, Symposium

Hosted by the District Six Museum and the Steve Biko Foundation.

Fri, 23 – Sat, 24 October 2015

District Six Museum Homecoming Centre

15 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town

For directions: https://goo.gl/maps/5JzPziztK5J2

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WHAT IS THE SYMPOSIUM ABOUT?

District Six Museum and the Steve Biko Foundation aim to host and facilitate a multi-disciplinary symposium to explore the status and nature of memorialisation in our 20th year of ‘freedom’. This symposium will provide a platform for scholars, community-based activists, expressive artists, designers, policy influencers, youth, amongst others, to reflect on various notions of freedom and restitution. The symposium will take the form of a series of critical appraisals over two days with the aim of bringing into sharp relief the key initiatives since 1994 that have either entrenched or started reversing colonial and apartheid legacies of inequality, racism and marginalisation. We will reflect on this in relation to memorialisation and its important role in imagining an egalitarian future.

WHAT THEMES WILL WE EXPLORE?

  1. Re-imagining divided and unequal cities – cultural geographies of racial and class identity;
  2. Race, identity and voice – mediating popular and difficult discourses on difference, diversity, multi-culturalism, ethnicity, gender and class;
  3. Stories of hope, social justice and a vision for a new humanity.

The symposium will consist of mediated panel discussions, workshop sessions and presentations in a register that encourages participation across multiple experiences in society (community organisation, university, research institution, public spaces and projects, etc).

CHOOSE HOW YOU WOULD LIKE TO PARTICIPATE:

A.   Contribute to a workshop (See themes above);
B.   Display your organisation’s material;
C.   Contribute to a blog / social media;
D.   Share your organisation’s work (see themes above);
E.   Creative expression (see themes above);
F.   General participation;
G.   Tell your story to a ‘Born Free’ (Saturday)

IDEAS TO EXPLORE IN SESSIONS

We encourage reflections on the role of memory projects as places to connect, enact and sharpen acts of participatory democracy in two spheres:

  1. The collective reconstruction of a past that makes visible what colonialism and Apartheid Laws rendered invisible;
  2. The application of important lessons from the past in the present to strengthen grassroots agency and democracy;

How do we develop this into a codified body of practice for community-based organisations to use as a tool for developing our coherent voice in ‘a time of freedom’?

WHAT DOES IT COST?

R100 for one day or R150 for the entire symposium to cover teas, coffees, water, and the SUPPER CLUB.

REGISTER: http://goo.gl/forms/Sh63YH7SE3

FOR MORE INFORMATION: lornahouston@gmail.com

Contact the Museum:
Zahra Hendricks – reception@districtsix.co.za / 021 4667200 (during office hours)

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