Heritage Legacy and Leadership

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heritage, legacy andleadership:ideas and interventions


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The Cultural Leadership Programme and the Mayors Commission on African andAsian Heritage were delighted to present Heritage, Legacy and Leadership:Ideas and Interventions on 22 February 2008. This international symposium wasconceived as a cutting-edge intervention to stimulate analysis and debate thatwould enrich leadership development within the heritage sector.

The event brought together an eclectic and stunning mix of senior managers, practitioners,

academics, policy makers, advisers and experts. This gathering of influential stakeholders

produced a rich synergy as they explored the thinking, experiences and practices needed to

develop bold, creative and progressive heritage leadership.

By placing the challenges facing the sector within an international context, the symposiumprovided a rare trans-national forum. The exchange between renowned speakers and the

heritage sector at large produced a stimulating dialogue, marking priorities and igniting

possibilities for a dynamic and diverse twenty-first century heritage leadership.

The Heritage, Legacy and Leadership symposium featured a range of engaging and sometimes

provocative presentations, some of which are represented in this report. The key message

emerging from the symposium was that cultural leadership is a collective responsibility and that

we as individuals must strive to create, support and contribute to the leadership paradigm we

envision. We are the ones we have been waiting for was the phrase that resonated most

powerfully throughout the proceedings.

Doudou Dines thought-provoking keynote address is featured, along with a selection of theinspirational and at times challenging presentations that have been revised for this publication.

Three complementary papers provide a commentary on the symposiums value and legacy for

the sector. Taken as whole this report bears witness to the aspirations and issues facing the

leadership of the cultural sector in the UK and further afield.

We invite you to fully engage in the symposium through this report, adding your voice and

visions to the call for transformative cultural leadership.

Dame Jocelyn Barrow

Chair, Mayors Commission on African and Asian HeritageDr Hilary S Carty

Director, Cultural Leadership Programme


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A key and energising message from the thought-provoking symposium,Heritage, Legacy and Leadership: Ideas and Interventions, was that changedemands action. Successive speakers from the podium and the floor movinglyand graphically described the vivid and inspiring opportunities that lie withinour grasp.

Many expressed frustration that progress has been hesitant and patchy. I agree with them. We

need to be even more determined to take up the cause and work together towards

improvement, excellence and engagement with all people.

In a time of economic uncertainty, people and communities can derive strength, purpose and

reassurance from experiences involving culture, the arts, learning and the celebration ofheritage and identity. But in a modern age we simply must apply these ideas to all people

people of all backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, genders, orientations and means.

Creativity and imagination can help us to see ways to remove barriers to understanding; to

deploy the widest possible array of media; to see that the legacy of heritage can be understood

and appreciated through a stimulating blend of music, performance, art, dance, display, study

and reflection.

Collections, references, information and materials belong to us all. These resources can be

presented, interpreted and applied for everyone but more emphasis is needed on the

approaches to making it so. The built environment is part of the story. Buildings can speak but

they have to be arranged in ways that convey a welcome. Open spaces are vital too, and weneed to use them dynamically as part of the expression of a truly embracing and broad-based

narrative.

Stresses and strains in our cities, towns and villages will not be healed by politicians or by

someone else. The only people who can help fix the issues, bridge the gaps, improve lives,

make things happen and realise the potential of the rich diversity in our midst, are those who

read this foreword. You and me.

Enjoy the report. Read it well. Then lets act together for the sake of all people.

Roy Clare, CBEChief Executive, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council


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contents

1 I PrologueNima Poovaya-Smith 06

2 I Heritage and identityDoudou Dine keynote address 10

Samuel Jones response 20

3 I Leadership, national identity and inclusionRoshi Naidoo 24

Lonnie G Bunch III 29

4 I Leadership and change in the twenty-first centuryJames Early 34

Patricia Glinton-Meicholas 41

5 I Transforming heritage leadership: challenges and goalsTemi Odumosu 46

6 I Circles of interaction, dialogue and exchangeJanice Cheddie 60

7 I Appendix: symposium programme 66

Acknowledgements 69


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1 prologueNima Poovaya-Smith

Nima Poovaya-Smith is foundingdirector of Alchemy, a culturalenterprise company with a particularinterest in the confluences ofdifferent cultures. Alchemy isundertaking a number of major

cultural programmes in partnershipwith cultural, academic and publicsectors. She currently serves on theCouncil of the University of Leeds andis a Trustee of the Beecroft Bequest.She set up the Transcultural Gallery atCartwright Hall and previously heldsenior positions at the NationalMuseum of Photography, Film &

Television, Bradford Art Galleries andMuseums, and Yorkshire Arts.

06


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Three defining events have taken place

between the staging of the Heritage, Legacy

and Leadership symposium in February 2008

and the writing of this prologue. Barack

Obama, in the most thrilling presidential race

in recent history, was elected as leader of

arguably the most powerful nation on earth.

Lewis Hamilton greatly added to the gaiety

here in Britain by becoming the youngest ever

Grand Prix world champion. And the

inimitable Ken Livingstone was replaced as

Mayor of London by the equally distinctive and

flamboyant Boris Johnson.

Looking back on the symposium it surfaces as a

series of surprisingly vivid snapshots. The soaring

architecture of City Hall matches the imposing

conference title, rich in abstract nouns: Heritage,

Legacy and Leadership. There is something bothuplifting and surreal about sitting in a light-filled

atrium in the heart of London, listening to

speakers from all around the world. Local

governments, I remind myself, have often been

agents for transformational change, particularly

in Victorian and Edwardian times, and were not

bashful about asserting their prosperity and

success through some rather spectacular civic

architecture.

In fact, the keynote speaker, Doudou Dine, theUnited Nations Special Rapporteur on

contemporary forms of racism, racial

discrimination, xenophobia and related

intolerance, alludes to architecture and its ability

to retrace or deny hidden heritage. The

transatlantic slave trade resulted in a wealth of

buildings, monuments and prison forts from

Africa to the Western hemisphere. The recorded

histories of these structures, however, almost

invariably make no mention of the enslaved

Africans who built them.

Dine cannot fail to impress as he addresses theconference without notes, speaking with

enviable lucidity in English, effectively his third

language. He provides compelling examples of

what I label victor heritage, where the

dominant communities are the memorialists or

gatekeepers of heritage and the dominated

communities are characterised by invisibility and

silence. I shiver in the bright winter sunshine.

There is something chilling about vast swathes of

heritage being deliberately suppressed or

unrecorded, a kind of cultural genocide. Eventhough it was the cultural resistance to slavery, as

Dine reminds us, that ultimately destroyed the

slave system. However, as Samuel Jones from

Demos points out in his response to Dine, even

a large country like China, with its growing

economic clout, is not able to impose cultural

leadership easily. Millions of Chinese read

contemporary Chinese literature yet those

outside of China would be hard-pressed to name

a single Chinese-language, best-selling writer.

Languages such as English therefore continue

their dominant hold on heritage, legacy and

leadership through the supremacy purchased by

their colonial histories.


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08

The symposiums joint presenters include the

relatively new but increasingly influential

Cultural Leadership Programme, deftly led by

Hilary Carty, working in close tandem with the

Mayors Commission on African and Asian

Heritage. It is well supported by a wide range of

cultural agencies. As is my style with events such

as this, I listen attentively but in a state of mild

reverie as presentations and discussions ping

pong slightly mystifyingly but always

interestingly from global issues such as racism

and xenophobia to the importance of

diversifying governing bodies of British cultural

institutions a point made with particular

passion by Roy Clare, Chief Executive of the

Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. In fact,

Clare issues a challenge and an invitation: the

Council is seeking a Chair and he wants as manypeople present at the conference as possible to

apply for it. I ponder about the wisdom of this

clarion call - will this raising of expectations lead

to even greater disillusionment and cynicism?

The appointment is not, it has to be said, in Roy

Clares gift. The current Poet Laureate, Andrew

Motion, has since been appointed to the post

and I understand that there were an

unprecedented number of applications from

people who would not have otherwise thought

of applying. While I am still ambivalent aboutClares strategy, there is no denying his was a

bold intention to engineer a genuine culture

shift.

In almost all the presentations, including those

from our transatlantic and European colleagues,

there is a sense of tapping into an increasingly

powerful twenty-first century zeitgeist. There is a

noticeable emphasis on the creation of a new

paradigm for diversity and minority heritage

discourses are firmly shifted from their other

status. Academic and writer Roshi Naidoo points

out the connection between the failure to create

more diverse cultural leadership in this country

and the way we conceive so-called minority

histories and the nature of their incorporation

into largely unchallenged heritage narratives.

Baroness Lola Young draws attention to the

danger that the 2007 Programme relating to the

Bicentenary of the Parliamentary Abolition of the

Slave Trade could result in a narrowing down of

issues or treating enslavement as a single linearnarrative. Sandy Nairne, Director of the National

Portrait Gallery, points out that the challenge is

not in 2007, the challenge is beyond that as to

where we shift the interpretation.

In one of those rare confluences, the worlds of

commerce, marketing, politics, culture, human

rights, arts and academia came together on that

day. The concerted and orchestrated demand for

fundamental change in how we perceive

heritage, invest in securing its legacy and ensure

a more diverse and sophisticated leadership, has

strengthened my view that something different

and important was happening at the symposium

and it was. A landmark event.


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Barack Obama typified leadership at its most

inspirational by demonstrating how the heritage

of disenfranchised communities of people can

become a mainstream message of hope for an

entire nation, its legacy the opportunity to start

afresh with new narratives and discourses

emerging from the margins into the mainstream.

Big historic events such as Obamas election to

the US Presidency are built on smaller historic

moments such as this symposium. On this wave

of collective energy and optimism, we have the

opportunity to make seismic cultural shifts.


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2 heritage and identityDoudou Dine

keynote address

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Dr Doudou Dine gave the keynoteaddress at the symposium, takingheritage and identity as his theme. Heexplored two key dimensions ofheritage: the ultimate expression ofcultural interactions and the way that

it has been instrumental throughhistory in legalising domination andexploitation.

Doudou Dine has recently completedhis tenure as Special Rapporteur oncontemporary forms of racism, racialdiscrimination, xenophobia andrelated intolerance for the UnitedNations Commission for Human

Rights. He is a Vice-President of theInternational Council of SocialSciences and Philosophy, a member ofthe International Council of Aurovilleand the Niwano Peace PrizeCommittee, and a professor ofIntercultural Tourism in France. In hisprevious role as a Director of UNESCOhe led various projects on

intercultural dialogue. He wasawarded the Concours General inPhilosophy in Senegal in 1962.


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I suggest that we forget about the concept of a

keynote speech. Keynote is such a big word

and suggests that I have something

enlightening to share with you. I dont have

anything enlightening to deliver or any final

solution to such a complex issue as heritage

and identity. I just have questions and

reflections that Id like to share with you.

The first thing I would like to share is that I am

Senegalese. In my country, heritage is at the heart

of culture and we value both in a very creative

way.

I have been working for the United Nations

Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation

(UNESCO) for around 30 years, in charge of

intercultural and inter-religious projects such as

The Integral Study of The Silk Road: Roads of

Dialogue, The Slave Route Project and Roads of

Faith. I was appointed in 2002 as United Nations

(UN) Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms

of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and

related intolerance. My mandate is to investigate

racism worldwide and to report to the Human

Rights Council and General Assembly. The most

important part of my mandate is to investigate

racism in the UN member states and reach out to

victims thus breaking their silence and invisibility.

So far I have investigated around twentycountries. My reports can be found on the UN

Human Rights website1.

One thing that has arisen from these experiences

is the fact that discrimination, racism and

intolerance threatens and denies heritage, which

is central to building and preserving identity. This

is a critical issue particularly in the so-called global

context.

What precisely is a world marked by diversity?

This issue came up even as I arrived in London

from Paris yesterday. I switched on my television

and saw your Prime Minister, Gordon Brown,delivering a speech on the issue of granting

nationality to migrants. The comments the press

made about the Prime Ministers new policies

concerned the concept of Britishness, its values,

content and the role of history in its

determination. This confirmed how important

heritage is in the definition of national identity.

Another example that demonstrates the

complexity and ambiguity of this burning issue

involves an incident that took place before the

Afghan war started: the destruction of the huge

statues of the Buddha in Afghanistans Bamiyan

Valley.

The construction of identity

In September 2007, when I submitted my report

on racism worldwide to the Human Rights

Council, I highlighted the fact that the issue of

identity lies at the heart of racial discrimination

and xenophobia. Identity is not something that

comes from the cosmos, it is a construction. One

of the challenges I shared with the Council

members was the idea that even geographical

names are ambiguous and carry prejudices. Take

Latin America, for example. Using this term is

1 www.un.org/rights/


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akin to calling Africa Catholic Africa or

Norwegian Africa or Latin Africa. Latin America

means that the identity of that part of the world is

Latin. What about the Indian Americans, the

indigenous people? What about the African

enslaved people who arrived later? The indigenous

and the African roots of the Northern hemispheres

identity are ignored, hidden and denied by the

seemingly innocent geographical term Latin

America. The people invisible in this naming are

precisely the two communities historically

dominated and discriminated against in the

Northern hemisphere. This renaming is a telling

example of the role of memory, history and

consequently heritage in the construction of

identity. The national heritage promoted until

recently in most South American countries through

their national celebrations, the naming ofcountries, cities, streets and squares is

overwhelmingly that of the Spanish or Portuguese

conquistadores. Heritage, instrumentalised in this

way, is the expression of the ideological

reconstruction of memory and history in the

process of domination and discrimination.

We need to revisit the notion of national heritage.

Different groups and peoples reinterpret it

differently. In Europe, for example, the current

dominant policies and statements on so-called

integration and assimilation comprise what I call

stripped-down integration. This is because - and

here again we come back to heritage - those

coming from outside Europe, the migrants, asylum

seekers and so on, have to literally undress at the

border of European countries.

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Migrants must step out of any kind of

cultural, religious and, if possible, even ethnic

specificity and leave it behind in order to

become accepted and integrated into the

country they are entering.

In the concept of Britishness, the notion ofintegration is based on the idea that those

coming from outside Britain or its immediate

neighbours are coming from nowhere. It implies

they have nothing. They arrive naked, without

cultural or spiritual values. They have nothing to

contribute to the country they are coming to.

Political leaders statements on integration require

something very basic: that those coming from the

outside migrants or asylum seekers, for instance

learn the language of the receiving country.This is normal. But more and more countries,

especially in Europe, are adding integration

programmes that require the foreigners or

newcomers to answer questions on the countrys

history and values. Newcomers have to engage

and be familiar with the broader heritage of the

country they are moving to and then pledge to

accept it. The implication is that newcomers have

no values to share with, or contribute to, the

receiving society. A fundamental criterion of their

integration is the full, non-critical acceptance of

the values, memory, history and therefore the

heritage of the receiving country.

Two profound manifestations of discrimination

underline this concept of integration: the

silencing of the newcomers memory and heritage


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and the invisibility of their identity. Paradoxically

this approach to integration is the strongest

indictment of colonialism as an enterprise of

enlightenment and civilisation because the

newcomers, most of whom come from former

colonies, are considered to have nothing worth

contributing to the receiving country, which is

often the former coloniser.

So we return to the idea that heritage is central

to the issue of identity. In my work at the UN

over the past six years I have realised that one of

the key causes of the increase in racism and

xenophobia worldwide, and particularly here in

Europe, is what I call the identity crisis. European

countries are going through a profound identity

crisis because their national identities were,

understandably, shaped a long time ago. A

country or group has to define its identity. Butthe prevalent notion of national identity is that

which reflects the ideology of the nation state.

This is often defined by a mix of ethnic, religious

and cultural components and has been the

bedrock of nationalism and the cause of most of

the bloodiest wars and conflicts in Europe.

The concept of national identity is now clashing

with the multicultural dynamic of modern society.

The challenge of diversity, particularly as it is

expressed through non-European immigration, isconsidered a threat to the national identity

redefined in terms such as Britishness. The

defence of national identity against

multiculturalism is the new ideology used by

political leaders in electoral platforms and has

been legitimised by the media and scholars. This

redefined national identity includes not only

language but also undefined national values and

the knowledge and acceptance of history and

recognition of national heritage. One of the

causes of the rise in racism and xenophobia is the

fact that the more diverse and multicultural a

society becomes, the more political leaders and

scholars are tempted to introduce legislative or

intellectual barriers to differentiate between

those inside and those outside.

The more diverse the people on the streets, the

more you see this as central to the speeches of

political leaders and scholars who have been

defending national security since 9/11. These two

concepts, identity and security, are sources of the

increase in racism and xenophobia.

Memory and values

The two key challenges of any multicultural

society are those involving memory and values.

Memory brings me back to my first point about

integration and the associated question of

heritage. What is heritage? Where does our

heritage come from? Who defines it, shapes it,

preserves it and why? Here we touch on the

critical ambiguities of the concept.

Let me give you two examples based on my work

in UNESCO. I launched The Silk Road Programme

around 15 years ago. The idea was to study,

research, document and understand the dynamics

of interactions between the so-called East and


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bodhisattvas physical features and dress, asking

him to examine them closely. He said, Look

carefully at their features, look at their dress -

they are Persian. The point was that heritage had

been used to legitimise national identity but it

more profoundly expressed the interactions and

multicultural contacts between peoples.

Another interesting example of heritage as an

expression of intercultural dialogue is the

massive, beautiful and rich Angkor Wat temple

complex in Cambodia. The complex is the

national emblem of Cambodia and is depicted on

the flags of various political parties and

communities. But following our multidisciplinary

discussions we realised that Cambodia cannot

consider Angkor Wat as a symbol of national

identity as it is a Buddhist structure. The spiritual

tradition from which Angkor Wat incarnatedBuddhism came from the place now called Nepal

in North India. Angkor Wat is ultimately the end

result of the trail of Buddhism from India to

Cambodia. It has been transformed and enriched

along the way both in its spiritual content and in

its artistic expression. So Angkor Wat is the final

expression of that long journey of intercultural

exchanges between a great number of peoples

and civilisations.

The idea here is that, whatever national heritagemonument you encounter, you should consider

heritage as the ultimate expression of a

multicultural dynamic and interaction. This point

is essential because it is the only way to challenge

the dangerous practice of nationalising heritage,

using it both to marginalise communities and to

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West. Africa had been forgotten in this equation.

But it so happened that, as an African, I ran that

programme. That was ideal. When we launched

it, one of the key and most original ideas was to

organise international expeditions in the field,

rather than simply debating in meeting rooms

the story between the so-called East and West.

The expedition, which included academics,

archaeologists, historians and poets among

others, retraced the route of the so-called Silk

Road to document more holistically the breadth

of intercultural exchanges involving people,

language, music, food, architecture, religion and

more. We studied what happened in the original

landmass we call Eurasia. We organised seminars

along the way with academics from the different

countries we were visiting.

One thing we quickly realised was how

heritage has been used throughout history to

shape and legitimise national identity: the

identity of one community or group was used

as a model to be accepted by other groups.

For example, we visited Dunghuang, an oasis in

the Sinkiang region on the west side of China

where there are 400 Buddhist caves. As weentered one an eminent Chinese academic

showed us a statue of a seated Buddha

surrounded by bodhisattvas. The Chinese scholar

told us this was an example of their national

identity. Then one of my colleagues, a brilliant

Iranian scholar, drew our guides attention to the


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promote the view and identity of a given

community, religion or culture. We all know how

important and urgent it is to consider the

dynamic of a ghetto identity, the ultimate

source of stigmatisation, discrimination, racism,

and xenophobia.

When the Balkan wars started in the early 1990s,you may remember that one of the first acts of

destruction was the bombing of the Bridge of

Mostar. It was hundreds of years old and the Serb

military leaders destroyed it because they

considered it to be a symbol of the identity of the

communities they were trying to slaughter. Acts

of genocide are often accompanied by the

destruction of symbols of the victims national

heritage. This is why it is critical that we challenge

and revisit this notion of heritage and give it a

more complex meaning as a dynamic process ofencounter, interaction, exchange and dialogue

between people.

This deeper understanding of heritage is critical

in the promotion of tourism as a fundamental

and unique tool of intercultural dialogue - not

just as an economic exercise, the way it is

practised today. I have been teaching this concept

in a French University for the last three years. In

cooperation with the World Tourism Organisation

I strongly promote this reading of tourism,underlining the common heritage of the

countries of Central Asia, for example, where

governments are tempted for nationalist and

economic reasons to infuse the notion of ghetto

identity into their national heritage.

Hidden heritage

Now I want to look in more detail at the way

heritage has played a role in something that

Britain is very familiar with: the transatlantic slave

trade. In my work with UNESCO on intercultural

programmes I have identified the two features

that dominate the process of capturing andnationalising heritage: the invisibility and the

silence of the dominated communities. Invisibility

and silence - these two notions are at the heart

of racism. The dominated community is made

invisible socially, economically and politically. That

communitys own history and its historic

contribution to its adopted country are silenced

in the writing and teaching of history but more

profoundly in the definition and celebration of a

national heritage.

Two key issues in the transatlantic slave trade are

closely linked to heritage. One is the fact that the

all-powerful trade from Africa to the Northern

hemisphere can be architecturally retraced.

There are buildings, monuments and forts in

which enslaved Africans were kept on the coast of

Africa. For example, the Cape Coast and Elmina

forts in Ghana and forts on the Island of Gore in

Senegal. There are forts along the coast of South

America and the Caribbean. There are huge cities

such as Santiago de Cuba, Cartagena de Indias inColombia and Salvador da Bahia in Brazil. All

these are architectural expressions of the slave

trade. But when you read the history of those

structures, those monuments, there is no trace, no

mention of the enslaved Africans who built them.


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Important places have also been hidden. When

you walk through Havana, Kingston or any big

Caribbean city, especially in this era of mass

tourism, what is highlighted is the sun, sand and

sea. Tourists speed through in their cars but they

do not realise that the places they are crossing

were built on violence and oppression, killing and

suffering, because the traces of that suffering

have been hidden. Where are the slave markets?

They exist but the identity of the cemeteries and

mass graves, even some of the forts which are

beautiful architectural structures, are hidden.

A key point I want to emphasise with regard to

the slave trade is that heritage has been used to

perpetuate the silence and invisibility of what

one of the key French historians of slavery, Jean-

Michel Deveau, called the biggest tragedy of

mankind because of its centuries-long durationand for the number of victims - millions, tens of

millions. I think is important to highlight the way

the physical heritage of the enslaved Africans has

been reinterpreted to hide the tragedy.

Cultural resistance

Even more telling, I think, is another part of the

trade that has a bearing on heritage: the whole

issue of the cultural resistance to slavery. We allknow that, despite what historians have said,

from the first day of their capture until the end

of slavery, the enslaved fought. They kept

fighting. From the villages where they were

captured in the African countryside, often by

African feudal lords; on the way to the coast; in

the forts where they were kept before the

middle passage; across the Atlantic Ocean, inside

the ships where they lay in chains; to their arrival

in the Americas and the Caribbean they were

fighting back. Physically fighting back. Physical

resistance.

A fundamental dimension of resistance to slavery

that has not, in my view, been clearly grasped or

even studied and documented by historians is the

cultural resistance. In the context of the UNESCO

Slave Route project I have called this the maroon

culture where culture was used as a powerful

weapon to escape enslavement. I think it is

important because the cultural resistance to

slavery was the most powerful resistance and it

ultimately destroyed the slave system.

What is cultural resistance? Lets look first at the

fact that, from the beginning, the enslaved

Africans realised that the position of their so-

called masters was weak in the long-term because

they were blinded by their prejudices. The

masters saw the enslaved as merely a physical

workforce. Muscle. Bodies strong enough to work

in the new lands. They selected them by touching

their muscles, checking their teeth etc. The basic

ideology of slavery, the essence of racism, the

concept that enslaved Africans were humanly andculturally inferior, was the root and pillar of the

masters mindset. The enslaved realised that the

masters did not see them as human beings.

Throughout the history of slavery the enslaved,

like all dominated people, kept watching the

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darkness and violent oppression. It is one of the

most incredible stories of cultural creativity and

resistance; one of the most important and

ignored historical episodes in the context of

modern human rights. The full story has not yet

been told. I will give you some examples of this

intangible heritage concerning people and

communities from this history.

What was their cultural strategy? The enslaved

could not say no or refuse anything the master

demanded. He demanded that the enslaved

worship Mary and Christ because as you know

the central institution of Christianity, the Pope,

gave his blessing to this enterprise from the

beginning, as long as the masters converted the

enslaved to Christianity. Obeisance to the master

was deemed and defined in writing as a Christian

virtue that could lead people to paradise. Whenthe enslaved were required to worship Christ they

could not refuse. They said Yes, master. But

and this is the most fascinating aspect of the

cultural resistance they used Christ by giving

him a new identity, that of their gods from their

homelands Orisha, for example. They renamed

Christ. They integrated him in their cosmogony

and their spiritual world. While apparently

worshipping Christ, they were worshipping their

own god. Their master did not see what had

happened. The Saint-Domingue revolution of

August 1791, the historic combat that profoundly

shook the slave system and established Haiti as a

free republic, was itself sparked by a Vodou

religious service.

masters, watching them very closely, because

their survival was conditional on knowing how

the master moved, what he liked, what he did,

how he ate, what he ate, what made him angry

or happy. They kept watching in order to survive.

This is when the cultural resistance started and

here I am touching on the dimension of heritage

that has been neglected the intangible

heritage.

If we have to revisit heritage we have to

revisit it in two dimensions. The physical or

tangible is the dimension you can see and

touch, such as monuments. The intangible

dimension the one the masters were

blinded to by their prejudice is the one the

enslaved relied on to survive.

Slavery may have been one of the most terrible

tragedies of humankind as the enslaved were

defined by the black codes as goods to be used,

killed or maimed. They had no rights because

they were not considered human beings and

these conditions lasted for over four centuries.

But the enslaved quickly realised that the master

did not see their intangible heritage, their inner

richness and their inner life force. They started torely on their intangible heritage to survive: their

gods, their rituals and their beliefs. Africans had

been taken from their lands, their villages and

their culture but they took their intangible

heritage with them into four centuries of


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and values to survive through cultural resistance.

In the slave ships they lay tightly packed side by

side. In order to survive they had to communicate

with each other, to check whether the person

next to them was alive, for example, or where

they came from. In order to connect through

words and sounds in these awful conditions they

invented a new language on board the ships.

They found a way to communicate by putting

Wolof, Yoruba and other African languages

together to try to understand each other. Afro-

American slang is still full of words from these

languages.

From the beginning they put in practice their

traditional values of compassion and solidarity in

order to survive - values denied to them by the

prejudices of the slave traders. They practiced

their values in conditions of extreme suffering.One of the key values that emerged from the

transatlantic slave trade, which still profoundly

permeates post-slavery societies of the Americas

and the Caribbean, is the value of family. When

the enslaved left the cotton fields or the mines in

the evening and returned to their quarters it was

their time for recharging emotionally at family

gatherings. Women played a central role in

preserving and strengthening family bonds in

these settings, which is why the notion of family

is so strong, so important in the societies and

communities descended from slavery.

Another key dimension that remains

undocumented is the role of women as central

figures in resistance, physical and cultural, to

18

Another example concerns one of the key rules of

that period. The enslaved were forbidden to use

any modes of physical resistance. In Brazil, they

invented Capoeira, which is both dance and

aesthetic movement and also a form of martial

art. But the master saw only the dance

dimension. The enslaved used it and kept

inventing, every day, every minute, a means to

survive.

Food provides another example. Cultural

resistance nourished every dimension of daily life.

Forty per cent of the enslaved Africans landed in

Brazil. When their masters ordered the slaves to

kill a pig on feast days the masters kept the flesh

and gave the enslaved the bones, thinking that

was all they deserved. We now know that the

slaves used those bones, mixed them with

seafood, fruit and herbs to invent a dish calledFeijoada. This is now a main dish in Brazil. Here

again is a construction.

The enslaved subverted, transformed,

changed and recuperated in an incredible and

creative process of reconstruction; inventing

from different elements, putting together,

assembling, and giving new sense, meaning

and purpose to their daily obligations and

impositions.

The ethical dimension of this cultural resistance

has also been overlooked. I have said that the

enslaved used their intelligence, emotions, beliefs


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slavery. Women not only worked in the cotton

fields and in the mines like the men; but in some

places, such as the island of Reunion, women

used herbs to end their pregnancies so their

babies would not be born into slavery. Herbs

were also used by maroons to kill the dogs the

masters sent to track them down when they were

hiding in the mountains.

Another example of creative cultural resistance is

the way the enslaved Africans and their

descendants invented festivals and carnivals not

simply as opportunities to break their isolation

and get together; but also as opportunities to

exchange information, preserve cultural traditions

and expressions and organise revolts and

resistance.

Cultural resistance was the lifeblood of the

enslaved. It permeated all dimensions of life

through the centuries of darkness and total

oppression. Slowly and painfully cultural

resistance enabled them to recapture the

humanity denied to them by the slave systems

ideology of racism. The powerful dynamics of

cultural resistance, exemplified by maroon

cultures, are still alive in the communities of

African descendants in the Americas and in

Europe. These cultures represent a profound link

between ethics and aesthetics and demonstratethe multicultural dynamics of preserving cultural

identities while promoting universal values.

Heritage in this light is a central challenge to

multiculturalism. Heritage has been

instrumentalised historically as a tool to render

silent and invisible those communities that are

dominated and discriminated against. But

heritage was, and still is, a powerful force for

resistance and building equal, democratic and

interactive multicultural societies.

Heritage is both physical and intangible;material and spiritual. The most profound

aspect of heritage is the inner heritage of

beliefs, values and emotions that define our

humanity by linking the ethical and aesthetic

dimensions of culture.


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22

Picking up on Doudous comments about slavery, I

was reminded of an exhibition about the life of

Olaudah Equiano that I saw at the Birmingham

Museum and Art Gallery. The curators had used

Equianos story to present a very different context

of the citys sense of its own heritage and

identity. The exhibition chronicled Equianos life

and journey as he was first taken from his home

in Africa, forced into slavery in the Caribbean and

finally his struggle for freedom and his

emergence as a prominent figure in eighteenth-

century London. Visitors to the exhibition were

presented with a very different way of thinking

about their own attitudes to the past.

Much of the industrial success of modern-day

Birmingham is built upon trades that depended

upon slavery and exploitation. For example, many

of the slave ships were equipped with weaponsand objects that were made in Birminghams own

foundries. So, the industrial artefacts displayed in

the same museum and celebrated as a source of

pride and regional identity were at the same

time presented as being intertwined in the

terrible networks associated with slavery.

The Equiano exhibition provided a public space

within which Birminghams black community

could represent their own thoughts on heritage

and history. Furthermore, it allowed visitors tobecome aware of new and varied perspectives of

British heritage, which is of course essential to

good relations within our communities.

I think cultural presentation has a crucial role to

play as it provides opportunities for us to think

about the past and its legacies in these different

ways. It is an area where policy makers and

cultural providers must continue to collaborate.

I would like to take this one step further in

reference to Doudous thoughts on heritage as an

expression of human interaction. It strikes me

that during my schooldays we understood thepast by looking at cultural forms, everything from

pots to shoes; from documents to paintings.

However, we are not taught to do this now.

Culture impacts on every aspect of our lives

through attitudes, lifestyles, clothes, food and so

on and it is bound up in society as a whole, and

through all the cultural forms that we encounter.

We need to approach these cultural encounters as

a form of conversation. Cultural institutions are

important in providing the skills by which we can

interpret the different cultures around us. Theycan provide the context for these conversations.

Reading, as Doudou puts it, the intangible in the

tangible.

This is far from saying that everybody has to

know everything. However, it is important that

cultural institutions enable and participate in

conversations that respond to the different

cultural forms we encounter. This is where new

opportunities for collaboration between cultural

providers and people who present our heritage,including policymakers and those in education,

can come in. Cultural institutions have a role, not

just as guardians and presenters of our heritage,

but also as places where we can learn to think

anew about our past and therefore the present.


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3 leadership, national identityand inclusion

Roshi Naidoo

24

Dr Roshi Naidoo was one of the panelmembers exploring the challengesand ethical issues concerning the roleof heritage institutions as custodiansof history and their responsibility asmediators for shifting notions of

cultural diversity and nationalidentities.

Roshi Naidoo is a research consultantspecialising in cultural politics in theheritage sector. She is co-editor ofThe Politics of Heritage: the Legaciesof Race and she researched andwrote Exploring Archives forMuseums, Libraries and Archives. In

2007 she was a member of theadvisory board for the Victoria &Albert Museums African DiasporaResearch Project, and the advisoryboard to discuss the Governmentsresponse to the commemoration ofthe bicentenary of the abolition ofthe slave trade.


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The main question I want to address is whether

there is a connection between the failings in

creating a more diverse cultural leadership in

this country and the ways in which we

conceive so-called minority histories within the

cultural and political life of the nation as a

whole. I think there still is a desire to

accommodate and incorporate difference into

largely unchallenged heritage narratives. This

add-on approach to such histories mitigates the

development of an inclusive leadership within

the cultural sector.

The best way of explaining what I mean is by

citing a few examples from my own experience.

I recently worked on a cultural diversity project in

the heritage sector in a home county. I declined

the invitation to work with children of African

descent and talk to them about African animals

at a local natural history museum - I kid you not,

you cant make some of this stuff up. I also

showed minimal enthusiasm for various

multicultural festivals that were suggested.

The parts of the project that recorded migration

stories, particularly those of Travellers and

Gypsies, were more interesting to me. But only, I

said, if they were placed in the bigger context of

the countys everyday history rather than treated

as an exotic add-on.

I made the point that I think many of us in this

room have made over and over again. Namely,

we should stop tinkering around the edges and

think about the ways in which, for example, the

histories of people of Caribbean, African and

Asian descent are at the centre of the countys

heritage in the histories of its stately homes, the

economies of its industries and in every aspect of

its culture.

I made what I thought at the time to be the

wholly non-contentious claim that Britain is made

up of waves of migration and diaspora and thatthe legacies of colonialism domestically and

internationally require closer scrutiny and

representation in the heritage sector. However, the

implication that we are all in some sense migrants

and, to borrow a phrase, a mongrel nation was a

troubling idea for most people.

The objections that I met from many corners -

although not all - were based on some complex

issues.

Proving our comfort with difference

The fear of addressing Britains diverse history in

this way seemed to be based on the worry that it

would be too diffuse to rewrite heritage narratives

to locate this nation as always having been shaped

by migration. This approach would not be as easy

as organising a multicultural event that would

visibly illustrate ones commitment to diversity.

How would people know that it was a diversity

project and that the museum sector was now

being more inclusive if this approach were taken?

It became clear in this case, and in other

experiences Ive had in the heritage sector, that

there was a preference for projects where visible

differences could be marked for example, by


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26

brown faces on websites, different dress

providing the kind of evidence that allows you to

tick the ethnic boxes. Without these visual

signposts how would heritage institutions

indicate that they are comfortable with

difference? Everyone is familiar with the policy

document that always has a small black child

engaged in some kind of learning activity on the

front!

To be critical of this can be seen as churlish and it

is difficult to air some of these grievances.

Audience figures for museums and archives show

that there is still an under-representation of

certain groups. Therefore it is only right that

special attention is made to bring them in. There

needs to be a specific appeal to difference.

But we also have to ask in whose interests is it to

mark certain differences, and how does this work

to secure a view of the institution as somehow

ethnically neutral, magnanimous, inclusive and

therefore universal? Is the primary focus of these

initiatives the welfare and inclusion of so-called

minority communities, as they so often have us

believe? Or is it just as much for heritage sector

institutions themselves?

I would be less cynical if this strategy of the

pursuit of visible differences went hand in hand

with changing the narratives around the colonial

objects in museums. Such an approach would

show a more profound commitment to ethnic

minority audiences and demonstrate a clear shift

towards new ways of framing how we all

understand our collective national heritage.

1 Paul Gilroy,After Empire Melancholia or Convivial Culture?Routledge, Abingdon, Oxford, 2004

A genuinely inclusive approach to heritage

would mean accepting the fact that we are all

caught up in the same historical and

geographical momentum, rather than

desperately trying to shoehorn different

histories into the same old historical

frameworks.

These shifts may not lead to immediate visible

changes. They may not necessarily result in a lot

of minorities instantly turning up at your

museum. They may not help in your institutions

funding application for a community project.

However, by taking this approach you make a

long-term commitment to shifting views of what

our national heritage really is.

In his bookAfter Empire1 Paul Gilroy talks aboutBritish culture being characterised as one of

national melancholia, punctuated by moments of

manic celebration, such as when there is a

sporting victory. When I was reading this I

thought immediately of a woman working on the

project I mentioned earlier, who seemed to

occupy that place between a melancholia for a

past England and a pragmatic awareness of the

need for a new voice of multiculturalism.

For example, she talked of the first anti-racist busboycotts in England. But this was coupled with

an acute sense of loss for simpler times,

something acted out in her participation in World

War II and medieval re-enactments. For people

who understand British history within the binary


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of a white past/multicultural present, it is not

difference in its present guise that poses a threat

but the fact that it was always so.

In many parts of the local heritage sector World

War II is by far the most visited of all historical

moments. And here there is space for some

acceptance of difference. For example, whilethere is much talk of the contribution of military

personnel of Caribbean, African and Asian

descent in the war, the notion of contribution

keeps these figures at a distance from all those

other heroic war figures. What if such soldiers

and sailors didnt simply contribute to the war

but won it? Does this interfere too much with our

national myths? How do you bring these people

back into the main narrative?

So, our shared mongrel identity must make us

shift how we think of heritage.

Add-on histories; add-on staff

Noting and accommodating difference might not

currently be the most radical move. It might be

that heritage narratives which embrace a radical

sameness are more enlightening or challenging

than those which only foreground difference. For

example, a recent series of the BBC family history

programme Who Do You Think You Are? located

a migrant background not just for British Asian

film director Gurinder Chadha, but also for

comedian Julian Clary, actor and impressionist

Alistair McGowan, and Stephen Fry, a figure who

is widely seen as representing quintessential

Englishness. To make a migrant connection with

figures such as these is in fact a very important

step in shifting our understanding of Britishness.

What does this mean for leadership in the

heritage sector and for those of us who work as

consultants within it?

The effect of the add-on approach in terms of

peoples professional lives is this: if so-called

minority histories are the extra bits, the

people who do this work are perennially the

extra add-on staff.

We mostly do the short-term work; come in for

the one-off projects; the special events; the talk

for Black History Month; the temporary exhibitionand the online exhibition. We do the work

loaded at the service-delivery end, such as

projects to do with perennially new audiences,

communities and learning. We are seldom asked

about acquisitions, for example.

We are phoned up at short notice and asked to

throw something together for a project with very

little acknowledgement given to the fact that we

have a field of expertise. This is most clearly

captured in meetings when it is mooted that we

should ask communities what they would like to

see within our heritage institutions. This is

different from consultation and dialogue with a

community. This is implying that while an

exhibition on, for example, the Surrealists is a

specialised field that requires expertise, anything


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28

to do with, say, Caribbean histories and cultures

comes from essentialised community knowledge.

This leads us to the idea that consultation and

specialist input should be provided free of charge

because either the consultants are just

expounding some essentialist folk knowledge, or

they should wish to do things for the communityas a piece of voluntary social work rather than as

career development.

There is also very little interest in the other things

we know. I have been lucky in the last few years

to work with some culturally diverse people who

have broad knowledge. Some of us actually also

know about European art, Hollywood films and

the history of punk rock etc. But we become

fragmented within the sector, our racial identities

either over-determined or dangerously ignored.

Stonewall is running a great anti-bullying

campaign at the moment which says, Some

people are gay get over it. I think it is a

sentiment we can borrow. We really need to get

over the fact that some Brits are not white or of

English descent. It really is time to move on.


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Let me begin by quoting a letter that I received

recently. It began, Dear Left-Wing Historian. In

the States that means you are in trouble! What

the letter writer asked me was, What

happened to the Smithsonian I love? What

happened to that museum that used to

celebrate America, that reminded us of how

good we were? He wanted to know why we

needed a museum that explores questions of

race and African-American culture. Then he said

something that I think is so important: After

all, Americas greatest strength is its ability to

forget. He then went on to say things like:

God I hope you do not get this building

built. I hope you go away. I want the museum

to disappear. I want historians like you to

disappear. He threw me off because he then

signed the letter, Best wishes for yourcontinued success! I love America, I really do.

The importance of remembering

The crucial point is what do we remember and

what do we forget? Often we know that what is

forgotten in America are the questions of

diversity - African-American culture as well as

issues around race. I would argue that despite

what the author of that letter wanted America,

or indeed any country, is better off when it

remembers. By that I mean when it remembers

the great challenges that the country has

experienced.

The importance of remembering is simple. While

remembering can cause great pain, it also brings

30

great power. While remembering really does

reveal great hurt, it also opens the possibility of

healing. It seems to me we are only made better

when we remember. Even more importantly, I am

struck by the words of one of my favourite

authors, the wonderful James Baldwin, writing in

the 1960s in his great novel The Fire Next Time.

He says something that I really think captures

what it is we need to remember. He says:

History does not refer merely or even

principally to the past. On the contrary, the

great force of history comes from the fact

that we carry it within us. That we are

unconsciously controlled by it and that

history is literally present in all that we do.

I want to take a moment and share with you

some of the challenges that I think affect the way

American museums wrestle with questions of race

and diversity, and the implications that they may

have for the work that you are doing here in the

UK.

I would argue that no one can deny that during

the last 15 or 20 years in museums all over

America, the question that they have tried to

answer is What do you do about (and you can fillin the gap) African-Americans or Asian-Americans

what do you do about them?

What you see in these museums are literally

hundreds of exhibitions that have been crafted

during the last 15 years. While no one can deny


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32

In some ways, the challenge for American

museums is to realise that the complexity that they

explore in other communities is the same

complexity that needs to be brought to the

African-American experience.

Embracing ambiguity

I would argue that the third challenge is really

that of ambiguity. American museums fulfil a need

in America. Americans love simple answers to

complex questions. Museums in America do that

all the time with great aplomb. Too few American

museums go beyond simple celebration.

Frequently these museums have created

exhibitions to satisfy this American need, this

human desire for celebration, comfort and closure.

Our goal should be to provide opportunities foraudiences to embrace ambiguity. By helping our

audiences find nuance and agency we help them

understand that ambiguity is a better lens through

which to understand life rather than as simple

victors. I would suggest that one of the signs of a

successful museum, exhibition or programme is if

the audience over time becomes more

comfortable with ambiguity and complexity. I

think that American museums fail miserably when

it comes to that.

in their desire to placate criticism, have created

exhibitions that obscure as much as they

illuminate. In doing so the exhibitions fail to

provide audiences with a richly nuanced history

that is replete with joy and success but is also ripe

with difficulty, challenge and struggle.

From monolith to mosaic

The second challenge that I believe shaped

American museums is the inability of resisting

monolithic depictions of the past. One is struck by

a richness in the mosaic of African-American life

when one reads African-American literature,

whether its by an urban poet like Langston

Hughes or in the work of playwright August

Wilson or when one taps ones toes to Aretha

Franklin, Sam Cook or even LL Cool J. In thismusic and literature one is introduced to a black

world that abounds with differences based on

class, gender, colour and region. Yet very few

exhibitions in America explore this complexity.

Whats presented is a striving middle class as an

example of what the black community was, is and

will always be.

By rushing to this monolithic depiction of the

past, I would argue American museums fail tohelp visitors understand the conflicts,

negotiations and the shifting coalitions that

have comprised the African-American

community and other communities of colour.


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failed in our museums to even begin to present

interactions among African-Americans and non-

African-Americans.

One of my favourite museums is a large state

museum in the south of America. It has a huge

exhibition on slavery and there is no mention of

any non-African-American. It is almost as if slavessaid, Oh, I think I like being on this plantation in

the middle of Alabama by myself. It seems to me

that, while change has occurred, race is vitally

important when you are wrestling with these

questions of how to re-centre African-American

culture. I would suggest to you that while there

has been great change in America, we are

nowhere near the promised land.

Let me close with a quotation from an enslaved

African who was asked in an interview in 1937:

Now that slavery is over and most people who

were slaves are gone, what should we

remember? This man, Cornelius Holme, said:

Though the slavery question is settled, its impact

is not. The question is with us always. It is in our

politics, it is in our courts, it is on our highways, it

is in our manners, it is in our thoughts, all the

day, every day.

Think about what a gift museums could give if

they could only help their visitors understand that

they are shaped, touched and informed by

diversity, by race and by complexity, all the day,

every day.

A new integration

Lastly, and perhaps the biggest challenge, is the

need for American museums to find a new

integration that re-centres the African-American

experience and the experience of people of

colour. One of the things that is so interesting in

America is that in 1954 the Supreme Courtdeclared that segregation should be outlawed.

However, I would argue that segregation is alive

and well in American museums. Far too frequently

African-American culture is segregated and

remains in the dark corners of the museum. Either

African-American culture is interpreted as an

interesting and occasionally educational episode

that has limited meaning for non-African-

American visitors, or it is trumpeted as a special

attraction that is more exotic than instructive.

What is missing is the new integration that

encourages visitors to recognise that the key

to understanding American identity is to

understand the questions of race.

That museums have failed to centralise this story

so far is the essence of what people have missed

when going to American museums. They have

missed the opportunity to use the richest of

African-American culture as a wonderful lens to

help us understand what it means to be an

American. We have missed that and I think that is

one of the great challenges. In essence, we have


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If you look around the room today what you

are looking at is history on the one hand and

twenty-first century leadership on the other.

Earlier today, someone quoted a line from the

late African-American poet June Jordan: We

are the ones that we have been waiting for.

The point is that there is no one else who willcome to lead. We are the ones we have been

waiting for! Our discussions are often about how

we are going to follow the leadership that

controls heritage institutions. We are clearly

dissatisfied with this leadership. Whether it is

here in Britain, Brazil or in Nigeria the same

questions pertain. But in some cases the problem

is not about white male or Euro-centric

dominance of leadership. In countries such as

Nigeria the issue is often about ethnic-specific

dominance, because different indigenous ways ofknowing and doing - the anthropological sense

of culture - are not being presented as points of

view and skill sets to fashion the public space in

which we all have to live and to be governed in.

Different aesthetic, imaginative, creative and

performance traditions in the arts are often

conflated in discussions about culture and cultural

policy. When speaking about the rubric of culture

many of us are often really talking about the arts

because we work directly in the arts or withartists. We are more immediately attracted

visually and emotionally to the arts and thus

artists. We have not thought deeply enough

about articulation of the more complex nature of

culture and the special, distinctive role of artists

and the arts within culture. We embody culture in

all its complex manifestations. We are the only

culture-producing species on this planet that we

are aware of. In that light, the artists and the arts

occupy a unique dimension of culture so as to be

subjects of special attention, which includes cultural

identity, democratic participation, cultural policy,

and more recently economic development.

The use and misuse of culture

Yet we talk about culture as the soft side of life or

as a soft power, as it is referred to in the foreign

policy departments of Britain and the United

States. This is to imply that economics and military

might are the more serious issues of life, after

which the less serious or soft dimensions of life are

dealt with. One of the previous symposium

speakers reminded us that our deliberations areabout governance. Governance is one reflection of

culture. Governance does not descend from some

place on high beyond the imaginative, creative

expressions of culture makers. There are rituals of

governance. There are imaginative creative ways

integral to arts making in which governance is

conceptualised, organised and implemented. The

topic of this symposium, Heritage, Legacy and

Leadership: Ideas and Interventions, is about the

power of definition in the first instance. But it is

also about how we, cultural professionals, will

organise ourselves. If we do not organise ourselves

there are bureaucrats, often not trained or

experienced professionally in culture foreign

policy specialists, political appointees, or market-

oriented lawyers, for example who are already


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seeking to define what constitutes heritage, legacy

and national identity. To use Doudou Dines

terminology: They are instrumentalists. They talk

about our disciplinary fields and professional skill

sets within culture and the arts in the narrow or

functionalist terms of cultural diplomacy. For

example, sending the great African-American jazz

musician Dizzy Gillespie around the world to foster

US national interests, while Dizzy played his music

to sincerely engage the aesthetic interests and

humanity of people from other nations and

cultures. This kind of functionalist diplomacy or

policy gives practical and utilitarian concerns

priority over aesthetic, artistic or intellectual

concerns.

The use of culture to further economic or military

dominance is born anew in the United States

Government. US Army General David Petraeus,who is organising the so-called war against

terrorism in Iraq, has a plan, not just for me as an

American cultural professional, but for all of you. It

is called embedding anthropologists into our

domain the cultural arena. Anthropology is one

of the humanistic disciplines that underpins the

more encompassing context or meanings of

culture. Will poets and dancers and artists be far

behind? I think they will not be far behind in my

country or your countries, in being recruited and

directed towards narrow instrumentalist goals,

which have little to do with the intrinsic

dimensions of the arts and culture. So we must

take ourselves seriously, not as a sector separate

from the serious dimensions of life, but as

professionals whose disciplines of work provide

deeper entre and context for the pivotal issues of

the twenty-first century, including immigration,

national identity, foreign policy, economic

prosperity, war and a just peace.

Culture and identity

Doudou Dine alluded to the fact that all of the

major conflicts in the world today are centred in

culture: ways of knowing and doing, ways of

worshiping, praying, and languages for example.

He also noted that in this global moment in which,

yes, we do have national identities, we also have

trans-national identities. And all of our countries

are facing a major crisis of national identity,

particularly the major imperial powers of the West.

What is this crisis? The substance of the

immigration crisis, for example, in all of our

countries has to do with national identity: who is a

Brit today? What are the implications of the

answers to what accrues to whom as heritage,

legacy, and socio-cultural, economic and political

validation? A UK government minister, talking

about immigration in the United Kingdom, says it

is not just a question of the quantity of the

immigrants admitted into the country; it is the

quality of the person who is admitted. People in

governance or policy makers are being veryexplicit. If you are black or you are brown, then

you are going to be targeted in addition to race

and ethnicity for a cultural evaluation of fitness to

be accepted within the countrys national identity

and its past and future heritage. If you are Eastern

European with natural blond hair and green or

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we come from or represent. These perspectives

stop short of addressing the issue of national

identity, which is a rubric under which we,and all

others in our diversity are characterised. For

example, I am an African-American, the

descendant of enslaved Africans in the United

States. That is all I can tell you. Even if I do the

DNA test it would not be a qualitative cultural

marker or answer because I still would not have

the historically evolved emotional connections,

that inner spirit that Doudou Dine was talking

about. I may know the geographical location of

historical origin of my family but race and cultural

identity are more than mere geographical

designations of family origins. They are elements

of a larger complex of interior feelings and

meaning, of an intangible quality evolved through

history making, coalescing over time, in what werefer to as heritage, legacy and cultural identity.

Culture is about that imaginative and creative

perspective informed by, if not directly rooted in,

prior developments that we are direct inheritors

of. It allows us to understand the possibility of new

worlds because we our cultures have created

old worlds.

So that, as an African-American, I must be

concerned that in this room there are Europeans or

Americans from various cultural backgrounds. I see

the colour of your skin but I want to know

whether you are a Catholic or Protestant, a

practitioner of traditional African or Asian

religions, what your rituals are and what your

cultural background is. I see my black brothers and

sisters from the African Diaspora but it does not

mean that I feel like you. I was not born in Jamaica

blue eyes but you are not wearing a certain kind of

dress, they will seek to find out about you

culturally. The decisive cultural question in that

example is based on your clothing: are you

Muslim?

The policy crisis around national identity iscentred on the attempt by those who are in

power to hold on to static, essentialist

historical perspectives of what culture and

legacy are about.

On the opposite side of this power equation and

I want to be really frank with you about my

feelings we, of immigrant communities, are very

prosaic and eloquent in our ability to complain

about the problems and failures with respect to

diversity being implemented in our professional

cultural arenas. I generally agree with the

complaints but I have not heard many of them

accompanied by transformative perspectives about

what we want national identity to become

tomorrow and in the future. I have heard almost

nothing about the progress we have made over

the generations despite continued obstacles, or

about the progress still to be made. Without an

appreciation of what has been accomplished wetoo have distorted views and understanding about

what capacities we have to build upon to advance

beyond todays problems and to take full

advantage of todays opportunities.

I have heard many cultural-centric and ahistorical

perspectives about the particular cultural groups


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or reared in Trinidad. Essentialist notions about

racial identity that suggest that somehow we as

individual groups in our multicultural nations can

alone deal with the question of national power

in this instance cultural power and policies must

be reconsidered. If national identity is to be truly

representative of the parts that comprise the

official whole we, the multicultural sectors of the

nation, must take full ownership of the whole

national enterprise. We must inform and fashion a

vibrant national identity and not accept or be

comfortable with individualised attention, policies,

pots of money, special initiatives and the like,

albeit that they are important circumscribed

instruments to prime progress.

Culture and democracyMoving onto transformative perspectives, we the

multicultural and multiracial professionals in the

symposium (including gender and sexual

orientation) have to take very seriously the

resources of values, histories, heritages, legacies,

and plural identities we possess. We must seriously

value the work areas we have studied very hard to

prepare ourselves in and not accept or relegate

ourselves as some sidebar ethnic, cultural, or

artistic sector in relationship to the mainstream.

We, all of us who are progressive, who are

committed to culture as living and not static; those

of us committed to identity as vibrant not simply

inherited and certainly not inherited from one

historically dominant group we must become the

mainstream!

38

In addressing our local and national cultural policy

issues we must not lose sight of the global

movement that influences those distinct but

connected realities. In this regard, consider the

UNESCO construct of culture as a transversal factor.

It connects and runs across everything. That is why

the General perpetrating this vicious war in Iraq is

embedding anthropologists, because he

understands the transversal and the contextual

nature of the arenas in which we work. That is

why the issue of cultural diplomacy is being talked

about in the United States today, because many in

the world including Western Europeans and

people of colour - hate the policies of the United

States.

We have to take ourselves a lot more

seriously and be more proactive about taking

leading roles in culture, the arts and society

and not be inserted under the narrow scope

of functional objectives plotted by policy

makers.

So, this last forum is focusing on cultural

democracy and what it means. As a black

American who is a cultural leader, if I occupy a

position I must be concerned with everyexpression of culture, obviously first with my own,

but simultaneously with every persons and

groups culture. That is not the discourse I have

heard today. Our discussion has been far too much

about our individual group and not about how

we, the marginalised and often discriminated


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against, can provide leadership for ourselves and

for all. We have been aggrieved and we must be

concerned about ourselves. However, the young

man who spoke from the Department for Culture

has to work laterally with everyones interests in

mind as well as work to move up, to engage

everyone. He cannot just focus on his individual or

group issues and goals if he is going to provide

transformative leadership. In his leadership

position he must represent the different European

strands at this conference, the Southeast Asian

strands, the gay and lesbian cultural issues, and all

people who are here. This is about the power or

authority to decide. This is about politics giving

value and organisation to the state of cultural and

culturally related affairs of national, not just local

or group-specific, interests. This is not about a

single social or cultural sector or training youngpeople in the techniques of leadership. Yes, those

issues are important. But only if they lead us to

understanding that we are on the verge of a new

long march for the transformation of our nations

and our national identities. If not, then we are

going to be sophisticated but marginalised people,

on the outside of real governance and decision-

making about heritage, legacy, innovation and

leadership.

Doing it for ourselves

I want to share an instructive quote from a trade

unionist who, in his lifetime, was considered the

most dangerous Negro in the United States of

America this was the term used during that

period. His name was A Philip Randolph and he

said: At the banquet table of nature, there are no

reserved seats. You get what you can take, and you

keep what you can hold. If you cant take

anything, you wont get anything, and if you cant

hold anything, you wont keep anything. And you

cant take anything without organisation.

In the cultural arena if we want to change

things, be transformative not just critically

reactive, we have to organise ourselves. We

have to be strategic.

We have to deliberately plan and calculate the

ways forward, articulating who we are and what

our roles are transversally, and intersect all aspects

of cultural and public policy. I am trying to urge

you to think of yourselves as more than a sector.

Other people understand how to isolate and use

us as a sector, but we do not understand who we

are and what our relationship is to the whole of

society.

We have to be engaged in the major cultural

policy determinations throughout society. The

police are talking about culture; the healthcare

system is talking about culture. Dances are being

organised to help resolve conflicts. Poets are beingbrought in for peace sessions. They are not simply

instrumentalists. They understand that they are

part of the imaginative and creative communities

whose visions and expressions are critical to

spiritual and material well-being. That is what


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42

The challenges of the twenty-first century are

drawing heritage and culture leaders centre

stage. Issues of identity and disaffection, race

and ethnic discrimination, and attempts to

impose political and cultural hegemony are

fragmenting the world. Many countries have

actually reached the point of combustion, with

ethnic conflict supplying kindling and

demagogues happily providing accelerants.

Interventions begin with understanding. We

are the ones who know enough of the

underlying causes to promote understanding.

We are the ones who know that many of todays

challenges were conceived in rampant

imperialism, which has fractioned and factioned

the world. The arbitrary division of the globe in

pursuit of economic and political pre-eminence

has forced into unstable polities aggregations ofdisparate ethnicities with frequently adversarial

beliefs and ambitions. Colonisation and cultural

domination have given birth to notions of

intrinsic inferiority of subjugated lands, peoples

and cultures. Is not the impact of forced national

constructs exemplified in the destruction wrought

in Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq and Kenya?

Heritage and culture leaders understand that the

transatlantic slave trade bequeathed its own

pernicious legacies. The slave system not onlysnatched a potpourri of ethnic groups from their

native milieus, but also attempted to curtail the

self-determination of the enslaved in the New

World. African heritage came to be equated with

invalidity or, at best, limited potential. As a

consequence Atlantic slavery has devised a

convoluted mess of prejudices and identity issues

that pose a constant threat to self-imaging and

self-esteem within the African Diaspora.

In The Bahamas self-imaging has further been

distorted by an all-pervasive tourism industry. For

the sake of the industry history, heritage andculture have been reinterpreted for more

palatable consumption by tourists and, until

recently, distanced in meaning from the people.

My country also suffers the effects of US

dominance and increasing cultural hegemony.

Beaming directly to a majority black nation by

cable and satellite transmissions, US media do not

favour positive images of non-whites. In fact, we

are overdosed on the powerful imagery of the

thug lifestyle. More and more young men are

offering violence to their peers, stronglyinfluenced by the harmful construct of manhood

that this antisocial way of life has engendered.

We understand the challenge of ethnic issues

emanating from what Michael Hechter, Professor

of Sociology at the University of Washington,

terms internal colonialism, focusing on the

relationship between a core English culture and

peripheral ethnicities he calls the Celtic fringe . A

variant can be observed in the relationship

between the British of European origin and non-white immigrants from former British colonies.

The same drama attaches to intra-Caribbean

migration. While acculturation is expected,

members of the core culture tend to place

restrictive terms on access with automatic


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A new and responsible leadership

Heritage and culture leaders are being offered

the unique privilege not only to play a part in

defusing the explosive potential of this age but

also to reveal the spectacular good it is

incubating. Are we equal to the task or is it time

for reinvention? Effective leadership cannotsequester itself in an ivory tower of exclusivity

and esoteric scholarship while the world devolves

into atavism. Too much scholarship is a

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Heritage Legacy and Leadership

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