Global Issues, Local Stories: Museums and the Displaced

This application is for the funding of a publication emerging from a seminar on refugee representations. The seminar will be held in two parts - a combined workshop and seminar in Bergen in September 2006 and a two-day seminar in London in November 2006 . Partners for the seminar include the University of East London Refugee Study Programme, The Museum of London, The Bergen National Academy of the ARts, The University of Bergen and the UNESCO Museums and Diversity project. The seminar is one of a series of seminars aimed at building up an understanding of issues of representation of the marginalised - primarily refugees, immigrants and First Nations. The first international seminar in this series was held in London in October 2004. A further seminar is planned in Cape Town in March 2007 and Shanghai with Fu Dan University in June 2007. The seminar series is part of a broader UNESCO project on representation and diversity. The goal of the 2006 seminar is to combine issues of representation with the c ontexts within which these representations take place: 1. Museum exhibitions on refugees - design, narratives, voice and audiences and; 2. Contexts and representation of refugees - in political discourse and the media - historical change, challenge and d issent. The intended audience is a combination of academics, source communities and practitioners. The seminar includes a combination of workshops and open seminars in two sites: Bergen, September 4 - 20, 2006 1) A one-day seminar on refugee representat ions bringing together primarily Norwegian academics, source communities and practitioners. 2) A workshop on museums, design and narrative London, November 2 - 3, 2006 2-day seminar on representation of diversity and migration as they relate to museums.