A subject specialist network promoting folklore collections and intangible cultural heritage across the museum sector
Folklore Society council members Dr Matthew Cheeseman and Dr Paul Cowdell have been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to run a research network through 2024.
The network aims to understand how to embed greater equality, diversity,
and inclusion (EDI) within UK folklore. It hosts an international knowledge exchange on folklore theory, method, and creative and curatorial practices.The network is focused on the UK and has already begun. Most of its initial members are from England, with participants from Wales, Scotland, Norway, and the United States. The Folklore Museums Network are very pleased to be members of this network, and you are invited to join it too.
We’re conceiving of UK folklore as an assemblage collecting researchers, practitioners, creative industry professionals, entrepreneurs, and communicators, all working across three domains: academia (researchers, teachers), independent stakeholders (practitioners, artists,
writers; entrepreneurs), and cultural industries (museums, galleries, archives; media).
All our participants recognise diversity issues in folklore. Some are systemic to Higher Education (HE), creative arts practice and entrepreneurship in the UK (the erasure or under-representation of the minoritized; whether racially, disabled, LGBTQ+, female, particularly at senior career stage), some are specific to the discipline (such as advocacy, representation, and agency within folklore research), and some take heightened form in the UK, where interest and involvement in folklore is overwhelmingly white, with an absence of disability, urban, working class voices, diverse genders, races, and sexualities.
To facilitate knowledge exchange, the network has two Learned Societies as partners: the Folklore Society and the American Folklore Society. The latter’s Cultural Diversity Committee has, since 1994, developed practice and research in diversifying folklore.
In addition to the FMN, there are two further partners: the Folklore Library and Archive, and Bloc Projects, a contemporary art gallery.
The network seeks to understand and share the cultural value of folklore. How can the perception of folklore as something available to and practised by all groups enter the practice of those who work with folklore in the UK? A series of six digital meetings and three two-day events are designed to stimulate discussion and generate collaborations.
All of the network events help us discover ourselves through promoting and discussing rigorous enquiry-led research in folklore. Membership of the network is open to anyone, and all physical events are blended to make attendance possible by digital means.
If you’d like to join, please email m.cheeseman@derby.ac.uk We’d also be particularly interested if you know of, or have examples of diversity, equity, and inclusion in UK folklore.
The FMN has been asked to disseminate the Department of Media, Culture & Sport's invite to some upcoming online roundtable discussions on Intangible Cultural Heritage in the UK.
These public roundtable discussions sit alongside the online consultation survey launched in Dec 2023 - Consultation on the 2003 UNESCO Convention for Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
In these meetings there will be discussion of some of the decisions regarding the first stage of implementing the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage: specifically, to define and identify Intangible Cultural Heritage.
These roundtable discussions are themed first by country (see below) and then by aspects of ICH as defined by UNESCO.
The first part of the session will be a presentation, then a discussion, with a ten minute break halfway through. DCMS will include a short introduction to ICH etc.
Please sign up to this roundtable discussions below.
List of ICH roundtable discussions
Thanks
Buxton, Derbyshire, United Kingdom
30 June to 3 July, 2024
Celeste Ray (Sewanee: University of the South, Tennessee USA), David Petts (University of Durham) and the Folklore Museums Network are delighted to announce an exciting conference on the subject of holy wells and sacred waters, to be held in the spa town of Buxton in 2024.
The preliminary programme of speakers is now available: https://sacredwaters7.wordpress.com/preliminary-program/
Please see details of registration for speakers and participants here: https://sacredwaters7.wordpress.com/fee-information-and-pay-portal/
Image: Sign to a Holy Well near Blackwater Bridge, Co. Kerry © Copyright Phil Champion and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
It is very welcome that the UK Government has signalled its intention to ratify the UNESCO Convention regarding Intangible Cultural Heritage (as of 23rd Dec). It is also fantastic to see that a public consultation on some of the finer points of UNESCO's conceptualization of ICH is being offered by the Government here: 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) This also offers the opportunity for people to nominate their local traditions for inclusion on a national inventory, an example of which can be seen here: ICH Scotland Wiki | ICH Scotland Wiki
The Folklore Museums Network will act as a project partner for an exciting new project that will consider magical and spiritually invested objects from museum collections and how a diverse array of contemporary practitioners today view and conceptualize them. The project will first work with collections at the Pitt Rivers in Oxford via a workshop but will have many important outcomes. The FMN are part of ‘Amulets, charms, and witch bottles: Thinking about ‘magical’ objects in museum collections through collaborative interaction between academics and curators with Pagans, witchcraft practitioners and other communities with spiritual investment’ - a MOLA Impact Acceleration Account project supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/X003523/1) and led by Nigel Jeffries at MOLA and museum and heritage consultant Tom Crowley. More exciting details to follow!
On the 29th September 2023, the International Council on Monuments and Sites UK (ICOMOS UK) invited Peter of the Folklore Museums Network to a meeting to vote upon creating a National Forum for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the UK.
The discussion was informed upon three recommendations, brought forward from previous work by ICOMOS UK; specifically, the need to:
1) establish a national inventory of ICH to encourage regional efforts in devolved countries and work with individual agencies to safeguard the five domains of ICH (as defined by UNESCO)…
2) To invite the UK government to share its reasons why the ICH Convention has not yet been signed…
3) To impress upon the UK government the urgent need to sign the 2003 Convention for Safeguarding the Intangible Cultural Heritage soon as possible, and that it should develop a unique approach for the UK situation, i.e., its devolved governments who have responsibility for heritage, as well as the varied regions of the UK, including overseas territories.
It was agreed that a National Forum should indeed be founded, with attendees of the meeting forming the core membership (which will be open to others too).
The meeting was attended by Phil Foxwood of the Cultural Diplomacy team at the Department of Digital, Culture, Media & Sport. It was good to hear first hand the options available to the UK should the Westminster government sign the 2003 UNESCO ICH Convention. The most realistic option going forward, according to Foxwood, was that the UK government would act as convenor of organisations already working in this field; this would manifest as encouragement and assistance to help implement the convention. It is fairly clear, but not certain at this stage, that financial help to do this would not be forthcoming, and the UK's ICH 'agencies' should not expect the creation of a single body or offshoot government department for ICH, like the Dutch Centre for ICH, for example. As these were informal discussions however, this is not set in stone, but was illustrative of the Westminster direction of travel at this time.
If you are interested in ICOMOS UK’s work in this area, check out Exploring-ICH-in-Museum-Context-report.pdf (icomos-uk.org), their most recent Bulletin ICOMOS Bulletin.pdf (icomos-uk.org) and their website.
The Folklore Museums Network was invited to join these discussions and we look forward to working with ICOMOS UK and its partners within the National Forum to help promote intangible heritage and folklore in the UK. If you would like to know more, email peter-hewitt@folkloremuseumsnetwork.org.uk