heritage, legacy and leadership:

ideas and interventions

The Cultural Leadership Programme and the Mayors Commission on African and Asian Heritage were delighted to present Heritage, Legacy and Leadership: Ideas and Interventions on 22 February 2008. This international symposium was conceived as a cutting-edge intervention to stimulate analysis and debate that would 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 symposium provided 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 the inspirational 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 Heritage Dr Hilary S Carty Director, Cultural Leadership Programme

A key and energising message from the thought-provoking symposium, Heritage, Legacy and Leadership: Ideas and Interventions, was that change demands action. Successive speakers from the podium and the floor movingly and graphically described the vivid and inspiring opportunities that lie within our 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 of heritage 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 we need 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, CBE Chief Executive, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council

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contents

1 I Prologue
Nima Poovaya-Smith

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2 I Heritage and identity

Doudou Dine keynote address Samuel Jones response

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3 I Leadership, national identity and inclusion

Roshi Naidoo Lonnie G Bunch III

24 29

4 I Leadership and change in the twenty-first century

James Early Patricia Glinton-Meicholas

34 41

5 I Transforming heritage leadership: challenges and goals

Temi Odumosu

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6 I Circles of interaction, dialogue and exchange

Janice Cheddie

60 66 69

7 I Appendix: symposium programme Acknowledgements

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1 prologue
Nima Poovaya-Smith
Nima Poovaya-Smith is founding director of Alchemy, a cultural enterprise company with a particular interest in the confluences of different cultures. Alchemy is undertaking a number of major cultural programmes in partnership with cultural, academic and public sectors. She currently serves on the Council of the University of Leeds and is a Trustee of the Beecroft Bequest. She set up the Transcultural Gallery at Cartwright Hall and previously held senior positions at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford Art Galleries and Museums, and Yorkshire Arts.

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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 both uplifting 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, the United 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 the conference 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. Even though 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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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 many people 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 about Clares 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 linear narrative. 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 identity

Doudou Dine
keynote address
Dr Doudou Dine gave the keynote address at the symposium, taking heritage and identity as his theme. He explored two key dimensions of heritage: the ultimate expression of cultural interactions and the way that it has been instrumental through history in legalising domination and exploitation. Doudou Dine has recently completed his tenure as Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance for the United Nations Commission for Human Rights. He is a Vice-President of the International Council of Social Sciences and Philosophy, a member of the International Council of Auroville and the Niwano Peace Prize Committee, and a professor of Intercultural Tourism in France. In his previous role as a Director of UNESCO he led various projects on intercultural dialogue. He was awarded the Concours General in Philosophy 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 twenty countries. 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 of countries, 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.

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 of integration 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. But the 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, is considered 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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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.

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 incarnated Buddhism 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 heritage monument 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

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 we entered 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 of encounter, 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 and nationalising 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 in Colombia 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, JeanMichel Deveau, called the biggest tragedy of mankind because of its centuries-long duration and 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.

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 socalled 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 and culturally 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

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 all know 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

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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.

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. When the 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.

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 to rely 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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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 called Feijoada. This is now a main dish in Brazil. Here again is a construction.

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. AfroAmerican 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

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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

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 demonstrate the 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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Samuel Jones
response to keynote address

Samuel Jones responded to Doudou Dines speech by reflecting on the role that cultural presentation has to play in providing opportunities for us to think about the past and its legacies in different ways. Samuel Jones is a researcher at Demos, the think tank for everyday democracy. His work covers a range of subjects including culture and the arts, museums and galleries, creativity and the communication of ideas and knowledge through the cultural sector. In particular, he is interested in cross-cultural communications and the role of culture in international relations. He is co-author of Cultural Diplomacy and Knowledge and Inspiration, which looked at the contribution of museums, libraries and archives to the cultural and social life of the UK. He sits on the UK Executive Board of the International Council of Museums (ICOM).

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There are two points in Doudous thoughtprovoking introduction that Id particularly like to explore. The first is the way that Doudou located heritage as both a result and manifestation of cultural interactions. In other words, it is the DNA of our identity. The second point is the idea of culture as a space where we encounter and voice different attitudes, ideas, opinions and outlooks the place where all our identities meet. Online and in the streets we encounter a more diverse range of cultures now than we have ever done in the past. Mass immigration, the permanent settlement of disparate communities and global media have brought lots of different cultures together into greater proximity. It is through culture that we have a vital means of coming to grips with the world around us. I am just as likely now to find out about China from watching films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as I am by reading the leader columns of the Financial Times or The Economist. That is not to say that any of these has greater truth than the other but rather it underlines the importance of culture and how we relate to each other. We need to think about what this means and in particular think about the structures, leadership and policies that are appropriate within this context. Just to illustrate this, a few weeks ago I read an article that really made me think. China has by far the most productive publishing industry in the world: about six billion units are published each

year. Contemporary fiction is hugely popular, with around 200,000 titles published annually. People queue outside bookstores before they open in the morning. The choices made by this huge readership reflect what life in contemporary China is like. Yet how many people in the City of London, who are trying to do business with China, can even name a contemporary Chinese author? Furthermore, what do they know about the cultures that all those authors represent? What does this say about our understanding of the people we are trying to do business with? Culture has always been a crucial part of how we relate to each other but in recent years its importance has been intensified. Socio-economic developments and technology have magnified the importance of cultural encounters. A significant step forward in our thinking would be to consider how we accommodate all the different cultures that we engage with. This is where cultural provision can play a very important role. There are encouraging signs that this is already happening. We recently saw a commitment to culture in international relations here in the UK in 2007, when the Commission for Cohesion and Integration1 flagged up the potential role for culture: It [culture] has moved from being seen as an optional extra to acting as a fundamental reference point for the personal and social lives and the well-being of communities. Policy has begun to respond to the very different stories that culture and heritage can tell.

1 The Commission for Cohesion and Integration was a fixed-term advisory body set up in 2006 to consider how local areas can make the most of the benefits delivered by increasing diversity.

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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 eighteenthcentury 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 weapons and 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 to become 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 the past 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. They can 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 identity and inclusion

Roshi Naidoo
Dr Roshi Naidoo was one of the panel members exploring the challenges and ethical issues concerning the role of heritage institutions as custodians of history and their responsibility as mediators for shifting notions of cultural diversity and national identities. Roshi Naidoo is a research consultant specialising in cultural politics in the heritage sector. She is co-editor of The Politics of Heritage: the Legacies of Race and she researched and wrote Exploring Archives for Museums, Libraries and Archives. In 2007 she was a member of the advisory board for the Victoria & Albert Museums African Diaspora Research Project, and the advisory board to discuss the Governments response to the commemoration of the bicentenary of the abolition of the 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 that the 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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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.

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 book After Empire1 Paul Gilroy talks about British 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 bus boycotts 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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1 Paul Gilroy, After Empire Melancholia or Convivial Culture? Routledge, Abingdon, Oxford, 2004

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, while there 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.

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.

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

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 exhibition and 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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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 community as 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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leadership, national identity and inclusion

Lonnie G Bunch III
Dr Lonnie Bunch was one of the panel members speaking at the session on leadership, national identity and inclusion. He addressed the challenges that affect the way American museums address questions of race and diversity and the implications that they may have for the heritage sector. Lonnie Bunch is a renowned historian, author, curator and educator. In 2005 he became the founding Director of the National Museum of AfricanAmerican History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. He previously worked at the Smithsonian Institute in senior curatorial and management roles and developed for the Smithsonian America, an exhibition which explored the history, culture and diversity of the United States. He also served as the President of the Chicago Historical Society where he launched a major outreach initiative for diverse communities.

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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 your continued success! I love America, I really do.

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.

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

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 fill in 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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that museums have changed dramatically, I would put it to you that change is on the surface. Its true to say that African-American history and issues of race are no longer on the fringe of the museum profession in America. But I would suggest to you that the rhetoric of change really does not match what needs to happen to museums. While there have been great changes in who we interpret and what stories we tell, my major concern is simple: most of the museums in America that wrestle with race do it on a superficial level. Their notion is to say, We want to explore the fact that African-Americans were here too. But, as many of the symposium speakers have already said, they are still left on the outside or on the fringes. Rather than exploring the complexities, interactions and the difficulties of race in America, in essence what these museums want to do today is simply shine a light and say: There were black people in America. They are creating exhibitions that in some ways would have been better 50 years ago, because people needed to realise that there were people of colour in America. But rather than creating exhibitions and programmes that reflect the clashes, compromises and the broken alliances, they have failed the expectations of todays audiences. I would suggest to you that there are primarily four challenges that really limit the ability of these museums to do effective work.

The prism of optimism

I would argue that the first challenge that museums face when they wrestle with race is their failure to transcend the rosy glow of the past. To quote a poem by one of my favourite authors, Langston Hughes: Life for me aint been no crystal stair, it is full of tacks and rips and uneven steps. This poem suggests that the path to equality is not linear nor is it without setbacks and defeats. Yet, when one looks at museums that explore race in America, what you see is the past through a prism of optimism. A prism that suggests that progress and equality were somehow inevitable. A prism that says obstacles such as discrimination were simply challenges hurdles to overcome - and people did that with some effort. That people did it because that was going to happen in the great history of America. I feel what is lacking here is a commitment to explore the full range of the African-American experience. Too few museums tackle the harsh realities of black life. They fail to mention the depths of violence in America. Too few mention the arbitrary abuses of power, the horrible effects of lynching, the devastating effects of generations of poverty and discrimination. While there are a few museums that have explored lynching and violence, most are silent. Likewise there are museums that look at the urban unrest of the 1960s but again most remain silent. I am not calling for museums to victimise people of colour. Neither am I saying that we should explore the negative. My point is that museums,

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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.

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 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 this music 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. 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 for audiences 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.

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By rushing to this monolithic depiction of the past, I would argue American museums fail to help visitors understand the conflicts, negotiations and the shifting coalitions that have comprised the African-American community and other communities of colour.

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 Court declared 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-AfricanAmerican visitors, or it is trumpeted as a special attraction that is more exotic than instructive.

failed in our museums to even begin to present interactions among African-Americans and nonAfrican-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 slaves said, 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.

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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4 leadership and change in the twenty-first century

James Early
James Early was one of the panel members speaking at the session on leadership and change in the twentyfirst century. The session took a reflective look at the issues and ideas needed for bold innovative heritage leadership to advance cultural democracy and inclusion. James Early is Director of Cultural Heritage Policy at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC. He has worked at the Smithsonian Institute since 1984 and prior to that was a humanist administrator at the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington DC. He has lectured and written extensively on the politics of culture and cultural policy. He is a board member of a number of national and international organisations.

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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 will come 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 of knowing 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 with artists. 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 are about 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 marketoriented 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 very explicit. 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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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 is centred 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 we too 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

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 we refer 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

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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 democracy

Moving 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!

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 every expression 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 young people 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 decisionmaking about heritage, legacy, innovation and leadership.

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 being brought 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

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

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makes our work as cultural and arts professionals so distinguished and crucial. That is why we highlight the arts in the broader more complex arena of culture, because the artist is so inspiring and provocative in every nation in the history of humankind. I do not think we sufficiently believe in ourselves and in the creative people and imaginative artists with whom we work. That is why we are always looking for what politicians and business people are going to do for us, rather than what are we going to do to advance and transform the national identity of our nations through our special lenses, talents, and productions along with other leadership sectors in society. Let me close on this last point a personal point of complaint because we do not historicise. We have been victims, everyone in this room, though not equally so. Someone complained, We are given February, the shortest month, as Black History Month. That is completely untrue and indicative of a reactive, negative-cultural behaviour that avoids taking leadership. This view avoids taking responsibility for the historical work and legacy of transformation left by the 20 year old Carter G Woodson in the United States, whose parents had been enslaved. He entered high school at age 20 and strategically organised himself despite the complex problems he encountered as a result of the legacy of slavery and the racism that he faced. He finished high school in two years and then went to the prestigious Harvard University where he earned a PhD. In February 1926 he organised Negro History Week, which later became Black History Month. Woodson chose February because it

was the birth month of Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglass. Black History Month is now celebrated all over the world. Every group here has a similar story about how their heritage and legacies have come to be celebrated, often against tremendous historical odds. The particular historical experience from which Black History Month emerged is a universal lesson of the tasks and possibilities still ahead of us to envision and to create new nations and identities. That story, in its wider application, represents the power of us stepping forward on the issue of cultural democracy. It is the right and the obligation for each of us to say who we are in the language and the religion that we come from, to enter the public space and build a fluid national identity that does not see itself in opposition to other identities or to a shared, negotiated, national identity. Too often we leave the public arena to the so-called mainstream, settling for set-aside and particularised institutions on the margin. We, the multicultural minorities, are the crucible. History has put us here as the test cases of what the public sphere can and must be. Slavery, colonialism, rape and pillage have now brought the former colonial people to the home of the former colonisers and we are not going anywhere except towards full citizenship. We are citizens, not just immigrants. We are their descendents in many instances. So, go forth and become instruments of transformative leadership. Do not wait for anyone else to bring leadership to you. We are the ones that we have been waiting for!

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leadership and change in the twenty-first century

Patricia Glinton-Meicholas
Patricia Glinton-Meicholas was one of the panel members speaking at the session on leadership and change in the twenty-first century. She gave a Bahamian perspective on the challenges facing the heritage sector and the need for bold and transformational leadership. Patricia Glinton-Meicholas is an author and broadcaster and President of The Bahamas Association for Cultural Studies. She has written extensively on Bahamian history, art and culture and is the author of volumes of short stories, poetry, and several works of satire. She has written, produced and directed six historical documentaries for Bahamas National Trusts series A Proud and Singular Heritage. She was the first woman to present the Sir Lynden Pindling Memorial Lecture, the first winner of The Bahamas Cacique Award for Writing, and a recipient of a Silver Jubilee of Independence Medal for Literature.

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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 of disparate 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 only snatched 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 and culture 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, strongly influenced 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 nonwhite 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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implications of inequality. They will not entertain the foreignness they view as societal and cultural pollutants. Newcomers are expected to leave heritage and cultural identity at their homeport like unscanned and suspect baggage. They share the complaint of Francis I of France: The sun shines for me as for others. I should very much like to see the clause in Adams will that excludes me from a share of the world. Conflict arises because humanity resists non-entity and the engulfment of those values and customs that define individual or group identity.

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 cannot sequester itself in an ivory tower of exclusivity and esoteric scholarship while the world devolves into atavism. Too much scholarship is a high-wire act that draws gasps of wonder from the audience but sends audiences home emptyhanded. Rather, heritage scholarship and leadership should be dedicated to bringing meaning and solving problems. To do so requires boldly engaging journeys on roads less travelled; journeys of fresh discovery, of learning, of mutuality and of change. It requires eschewing politically expedient solutions that privilege one ethnicity over another and rhetoric that promotes resentment in the name of protecting heritage. It bodes ill to lend wings to those who are but a half days journey from demagoguery, itself just a goosestep away from ethnic cleansing. There are no easy solutions but a certainty upon which we can rest our hopes. Human solidarity does exist at the level of basic needs and the desire for survival. Many believe that the success of our initiatives depends on serving up our souls on silver platters to powerbrokers. It is quite the opposite. In this age the attainment of our goals and the sustainability of our programmes will depend on the buy-in not of the few, but of the

The fringe is more than kilts, reggae, Bollywood, carnival, creoles and fried rice. The fringe demands to be recognised as having equal rights and, what is more, talents, ideas and energy to contribute much needed renewal to our societies.

Diverse cultures are hardly fungible but can co-exist in peace and mutual benefit. It requires, however, that a sense of validity be promoted for all cultures but not posited as a gift from a selfordained superior culture or derived from the declension of another. It starts with mutual intelligibility.

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many ordinary men, women and youth. The challenge is that many of them now view heritage and culture professionals as purveyors of dust, precocity and irrelevance. We need to connect what we do more closely to our peoples sense of self, self-worth and survival. We must convince them of ownership, from which lack of high social or economic status cannot separate them. The passion with which Bahamians espouse Junkanoo, our masquerade tradition, is instructive.

Inclusion is the vital element in Junkanoos persistence and pervasiveness. The soul of Junkanoo lies in jerrybuilt design and construction centres called shacks located at the heart of working-class communities. Collective preparation and performance promote extraordinary bonds across lines of gender, age and social status. Junkanoo craft is now practised in our schools. Our musicians have developed unique Junkanoo rhythms and our artists a Junkanoo palette. This amalgam of art forms presents a vehicle for a society-uniting language. Junkanoo offers a lesson for twenty-first century heritage and culture leaders. Our work must always be transformative, with the development and inclusion of people as a first concern.

The lessons of Junkanoo

Junkanoo began as an amalgam of African rituals that the enslaved practised in secret. It was prohibited by law, for fear that gatherings of blacks might threaten white rule. With the rise of tourism the ruling oligarchy began to encourage the masquerade, recognising its potential as tourist-attracting exotica. A tradition-affirming change came when black Bahamians began to go abroad in numbers for university studies. They returned with a new vision of heritage and culture, seeking out uniqueness as key elements in defining Bahamian identity. Junkanoo fitted the bill. They resisted positioning the masquerade as a Caribbean carnival, promoting it instead as part of Bahamian spirituality and a precious, unbroken link with the African past. Most important, it was offered as impeccable evidence of the intelligence, creativity and validity of an often-discounted element of society.

Even the cold stones of our museums and galleries must take on a consciousness that speaks of life and progress. We must convert the artefacts of heritage and culture into education, positive outlets for energy and strategies for understanding.

There is much to be gained in turning away from the penury of factional thought and prejudice that fears and springs to oppose difference and change. Symposia such as this can encourage us to cooperate and draw from the cornucopia of diversity new products and methods of approach for the classroom, entrepreneurship and improved human relations.

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Heritage and culture leaders need to become forensic anthropologists, taking responsibility not only for raising long-buried bones of heritage, but also for recovering and privileging the links that connect us, as the DNA for unity. But knowledge is not enough. If the salvation of our world and the realisation of its potential lie in the promotion of humankinds common heritage and shared future, we must first believe. If we cannot achieve a semblance of unity among us, how can we promote it to others? We must embrace all elucidation of heritage and culture as discoveries of new facets of ourselves as members of the human family. We need a rallying cry for the twenty-first century. When Junkanoos go to the shacks to collect their costumes, they declare, I come to get me, a visceral utterance, pregnant with heritage identification. The renewed heritage leader must similarly cry out I come to get me; I come to get us! Anything less makes us unfit for this great work of reconciliation in which we are now called to engage.

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5 transforming heritage leadership: challenges and goals

Temi Odumosu
Temi Odumosu has provided a commentary on the symposiums value and legacy for the sector. She is an arts and heritage consultant and educator, who has worked with mainstream heritage organisations including English Heritage, the National Maritime Museum, the Science Museum, National Gallery and Tate Modern. Since 2003 she has been a project consultant and writer for the Mayors Commission on African and Asian Heritage. In 2007 Temi curated A Visible Difference: Skin, Race and Identity 1720-1820 for the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. She is researching her PhD at the University of Cambridge on the representation of African people in eighteenth and early nineteenth century English satirical prints.

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...And who will join this standing up and the ones who stood without sweet company will sing and sing back into the mountains and if necessary even under the sea: we are the ones we have been waiting for.
June Jordan (19362002)

At the core of the Heritage, Legacy and Leadership symposium was the understanding that effective, dynamic and innovative cultural leadership must be informed by principles of equality, cultural inclusion, creative diversity and respect for difference. Consequently the presentations and dialogue that took place sought to address how cultural democracy and cultural enfranchisement would be embedded as central values for a twenty-first century heritage sector. This was not a formulaic discussion on policies or models of leadership but rather an exploration of the ideas, issues, thinking and values needed to support and inform the future of heritage and cultural leadership. Throughout the symposium discussions national and international heritage leaders and practitioners talked about the similarities between the delicate and complex issues and ideas that they were grappling with. The dialogue raised a number of organisational management issues but what also emerged was a more complex awareness of the wider social, political and cultural landscape within which heritage is being conceived and transformed. Ultimately the presentations and discussions approached the critical notion that heritage is intrinsic to the individual and collective human experience. In this context, many thoughts and ideas were shared with an overarching sense of urgency, reflecting an understanding of the grave responsibilities and the cultural privilege with which heritage leaders have been endowed.

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However, rather than presenting a daunting challenge, the inspirational exchange that took place seemed to transmute the staid leadership criticisms of the past into an encouraging appeal for self-belief and transformation of heritage concepts for the benefit of society at large. The key message that emerged from the proceedings was a call for committed, sustained and principled efforts to move cultural leadership forward. This was best articulated by several speakers who quoted the memorable line from the African-American poet June Jordan,1 We are the ones we have been waiting for. The following narrative outlines a number of recurring themes and conclusions emerging from the symposium proceedings.2 It is not an exhaustive analysis but rather an attempt to resignal key priorities noted by speakers and respondents in keynote presentations, themed panel papers and discussions. In synthesising this rich body of evidence four areas stood out as fundamental leadership priorities for the journeys ahead: London and the 2012 Olympics; heritage and cultural democracy; collaboration and cultural ownership; and governance and creative engagement.

London and the 2012 Olympics

London is a labyrinth, half of stone and half of flesh. It cannot be conceived in its entirety but can be experienced only as a wilderness of alleys and passages, courts and thoroughfares, in which even the most experienced citizen may lose the way; it is curious, too, that this labyrinth is in a continual state of change and expansion.3
Peter Ackroyd

It is only fitting that the story starts with London, its global role, its cultural responsibilities and its aspirations to deliver the Olympic and Paralympic Games rich with the diversity and inclusiveness on which the city won its 2012 bid. Although London was not the focus of the symposium discussions it was certainly the cultural and political backdrop. Its role, particularly in relation to the Olympics, was a critical context for a dialogue around change options for the leadership of the heritage sector. It is often said that London has been shaped by its diversity. The citys energy and excitement, its smells, sights and sounds, are natural products of its intercultural exchange. The sheer range of communities resident in London is visibly evident. Diversity policy documents continue to remind us that 40% of Londoners are from an ethnic minority group and over 300 languages are spoken. Commonplace slogans such as the world in one city centre on the idea that every race, colour, nation and religion on earth4 live here.

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1 June Jordan, Poem for South African Women in Passion: New Poems, 197780, Beacon Press, 1980, pp. 42-43 2 Quotations in this text are taken from the original symposium transcript. 3 Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography, Vintage, 2001, p2

Hence the relatively peaceful co-existence and cooperation between Londons continually burgeoning multi-faith and multi-ethnic communities, is often cited as an example of British tolerance, acceptance and inclusiveness. Some commentators have argued that the encouragement of multicultural values - that is the propagation of Britain as an eclectic melting pot of multiple communities - comes at the expense of a cohesive set of national values based on Britishness rather than difference. This view has been used to bolster the claims that multiculturalism has fuelled separatism and extremism between migrant and British-born minority communities. Similarly, it is deemed to have prompted white British people to call for a return to the Old England. Yet others perceive Britains multiculturalism as a positive mechanism for social change and as the vital element needed for the development of shared national values that are informed by diversity rather than inhibited by it. Such complex intercultural dynamics are deeply embedded in the long and tumultuous history of British imperialism. Centuries of British exploration, trade, war and conquest around the world, in addition to waves of forced and voluntary migration to metropolitan centres in particular, have consolidated Britains intrinsic connections to the rest of the world. Londons role within these histories and debates as the political, economic and cultural heart of Britain is therefore significant.

Within Londons intricately woven history and heritage are the stories, contributions, births, marriages and deaths of a whole range of citizens. It cannot be overstressed that this city can be seen to harbour the secrets of the human world.5 As London prepares to welcome the world in 2012, heritage organisations are forced to rethink approaches to cultural diversity as a necessity for delivering the Olympic aims of inclusion, participation and empowerment, as well as creating a sustainable cultural legacy. Symposium discussions surrounding the Olympics reflected key questions that present challenges to heritage leaders. These include: How can Londons heritage and cultural institutions begin to meaningfully engage with the complexity and diversity of the city and its many communities? How can they reinterpret their collections within wider, more nuanced social and cultural frameworks? How can the sector explore and/or construct national heritage narratives that are informed by the nations intercultural dynamics and histories? At what point does the sector take a more proactive stance to change its internal monocultures so that heritage professionals (from the ground up to leadership) reflect the culturally diverse and eclectic face of the nations cities?

4 See: Leo Benedictus, Every race, colour, nation on earth published on www.theguardian.co.uk, Friday 21 January 2005 5 Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography, Vintage, 2001, p3

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Roy Clare, Chief Executive of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, reminded us that: we cannot underestimate the real opportunity this represents. The Cultural Olympiad is the key aspect of the games linked specifically to the work of the heritage sector. Keith Khan, then Head of Culture for London 2012, outlined its ambition to inspire and involve the widest range of communities in London, particularly young people. In addition he reinforced 2012s aim to encourage Londoners to participate in sports and cultural activities within their local communities as well as on a national platform. Within this strategic framework Khan argued for broader concepts of culture that enable London communities to engage with their heritage through commercial as well as traditional means. He illustrated his point saying: If you look at Nigerian women in Dalston who make spectacular outfits for their daughters or how digital companies operate in very small studios in Shoreditch, there are a whole heap of different connections to culture that can be made. Within this Olympic context the word culture has become synonymous with all creative and cultural activities - embracing carnival, theatre, fashion, science, food, architecture etc. Giving culture such a broad application enables the public and voluntary sector, as well as private enterprise, to be included and engaged. These creative economies can therefore be seen as vital mechanisms for social and economic regeneration. In this context culture is everywhere.

Ultimately the development of these new paths and approaches further highlights the necessity for Londons heritage sector to make its collections and buildings welcoming places for the citys communities. Engaging with young people and their unique experiences and modes of cultural expression, will be a vital part of this initiative. This dynamic and youth-focused Cultural Olympiad may provide the leadership of the heritage sector with the much-needed impetus to push the boundaries.

Heritage and cultural democracy

All notions that are the basis of identity construction have to be revisited, and heritage is one of them.
Doudou Dine

Central to the discussions around change for the cultural sector was a call to revisit established notions of heritage in an effort to encourage new frameworks that situate cultural diversity and cultural pluralism at its foundations. The adoption of more inclusive and humanist frameworks would ultimately enable people to value themselves and each other. Furthermore, it would contribute to a better understanding of our individual and collective histories and heritage, encouraging broader participation with the sector. This process of cultural empowerment,

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conceived within the wider-ranging cultural democracy agenda, was offered as a critical aim for twenty-first century heritage leadership. Yet the holistic vision of heritage as a rich and multi-layered/multi-ethnic/multi-faith cultural interaction seems to be at odds with recent political priorities in Britain. Immigration control has been high on the UKs political agenda for several years now. The expansion of the European Union, the swelling of UK towns and cities as locations for asylum seekers, as well as the heightened focus on national security as a result of anti-terrorism measures, are all issues that have sparked new debates on the age-old question: What does it mean to be British? It has been continually acknowledged that in Britain notions of heritage have always been limited and that heritage has been predominantly used as a mechanism for maintaining a model identity of Britishness - for the acceptance of society at large. Rosy cheeks, country farms, green pastures and stately homes are heritage stereotypes that dominate the traditional view of Britains history and culture. This static view of Britains identity fails to reflect its interconnectedness to the rest of the world and hence unwittingly supports a populist discourse that seeks to bolster the false notion of a homogenous Britain. Symposium presenter Patricia GlintonMeicholas noted: Newcomers are expected to leave heritage at the home port like un-scanned and suspect baggage. The conflation of heritage and national identity as being one and the same, has naturally had an

impact on the general perception of heritage and culture as the preserve of the white, educated middle-classes. In the face of changing demographics concerted efforts to redress imbalanced perspectives within the traditional discourse have revealed hidden histories. These secrets include the presence, contributions and agency of African, Asian and Caribbean descent communities buried within over 500 years of British history. The question of how this knowledge can be integrated into mainstream heritage narratives has only seriously begun to be addressed within the sector during the last ten years. In spite of their critical roles as custodians of British and world cultures, the UKs museums, archives, historic libraries and the historic environment were significantly challenged by their responsibilities to engage with histories and heritage concepts outside of the traditional framework. Consequently the heritage sectors reaction to its new responsibilities has been to present these hidden histories as add-ons to the main narrative. This type of response is also evident in the sectors sporadic and frequently inequitable engagement with culturally diverse communities and grass-roots organisations. The sectoral shift needed to embrace and reflect the cultural dynamism that a broader perspective on history and heritage would engender never really happened. In its place were side steps in the form of one-off projects, initiatives and cultural celebrations that were advocated as a make-do alternative. This had minimal impact on heritage

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day-to-day practice or organisational ethos. Symposium presenter Roshi Naidoo noted that the recent drive to diversify heritage has been subtly punctuated by an acute sense of loss for those simpler times where you did not have to be politically correct or talk about diversity. As a result, the whole project of revisiting British history is permeated by the idea that there was somehow a white past and a multicultural present. Symposium presenter Lonnie Bunch reinforced this view by referring to a similar kind of marginalisation that takes place in American museums. He said Far too frequently AfricanAmerican culture is segregated still 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 became clear over the course of the symposium was that the UKs heritage sector would be not be able to make a radical shift towards meaningful inclusion without strong vision and clear direction from its leadership, who should be informed by more nuanced concepts of heritage and identity. In his keynote speech Doudou Dine conceptualised heritage as the ultimate expression of a multicultural, dynamic interaction, in which memory, identity and enfranchisement are the focus of a collective reclaiming of history and its various social, cultural and ethical values. Within this vision Dine called for a re-engagement with

forms of intangible heritage that encompass spirituality, belief systems and methods of cultural empowerment and appropriation that are often immeasurable and undocumented. Such notions of heritage cannot be perceived exclusively through a closed institutional lens that fails to engage with respective communities or honour their expertise. Thus, the negotiation of intangible heritage necessitates a community-focused dialogue, driven by inclusive cultural leadership. Several respondents were moved by this concept since it offered an alternative cultural approach to the long-standing negative mythologies surrounding African history and culture in particular. Many felt that these myths had been influenced by the ethnographic distortions of Africa and African history that still abound in museum and archive collections, and in the media at large. This colonisation of African culture is one of the thorny issues that sits uncomfortably on the agenda of heritage leaders who advocate for change in the sector. Dr Atul Shahis, a respondent from the organisation Diverse Ethics, offered an example of how heritage concepts from his own faith community could be used in a mainstream context. He noted that the Jain religion and culture had the ethos of sustainability at its root, yet no connections had been made between that heritage and contemporary debates around global warming and the environment in which sustainability is a key issue. He argued that the Jain culture might offer important environmental solutions that have been overlooked due to narrow and Christianised conceptions of heritage and culture.

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The recognition and integration of multicultural perspectives and expertise into a mainstream societal context was noted by presenter Patricia Glinton-Meicholas. She urged: The fringe that is us is more than kilts, reggae, Bollywood, carnival, Creoles and fried rice. The fringe demands to be recognised as having equal rights, and what is more, talents, ideas and energy to contribute much-needed renewal to your societies. Presenter Roshi Naidoo spoke of the continuing frustrations of African, Asian and Caribbean heritage professionals who are only ever consulted with regard to initiatives related to their respective communities. She noted, our racial identity is either over determined or dangerously ignored. Naidoo added: Some of us actually also know about European art, Hollywood films and the history of punk rock. But we have become fragmented within the sector. Fundamentally the symposium dialogues around heritage and cultural democracy sought to illustrate the fact that heritage cannot be fixed or uniform but rather it is the product of multilayered processes of human interaction. Several speakers referred to these processes as circles of identification that celebrate our differences and highlight our radical sameness. Such an approach to heritage in the twenty-first century must also engage with newer forms of identity construction that take on board the recent role of technology and the environment on our individual and collective value systems. In so doing, heritage and culture become positively embedded in our sense of place, identity, value and collective agency.

Collaboration and cultural ownership

We have a history of struggling against one another. We certainly have histories where others have struggled against us. We have to develop, as part of the culture of leadership, a culture of struggling for one another.
James Early

The Heritage, Legacy and Leadership symposium, itself a critical means of principled knowledge transfer between cultural practitioners, represented a prime example of collaboration and cultural ownership in practice. The need to develop ways in which local, national and international dialogues and interactions could take place, in order to support and empower diverse practitioners and wider cultural communities, was therefore proposed as a necessary aspect of leadership and legacy development. The symposium consensus was that drawing on international experience and expertise could be a support mechanism for globalising cultural efforts. Knowledge transfer and the unification of cultural expertise were perceived as vital components in the enrichment of heritage practice and the development of new professional networks. Patricia Glinton-Meicholas said: symposia such as this can encourage us to cooperate and draw from the cornucopia of new diversity products and methods of approach for the classroom, for entrepreneurship and for improved human relations.

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Connections, interaction, dialogue and exchange were pervasive ideas that recurred throughout the symposium, highlighting the ways that diversity enriches and connects all of us in unique ways. A respondent from the question-and-answer session spoke about this in the context of her own experiences. She said: As someone who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, and speaking to the complexity of identity, I grew up next door to Indians, where we used to watch Bollywood films after dinner. As a person of African decent I would hear Hindi songs and when I hear these songs now, straight away I am drawn back to fond memories of my heritage. Her perspective confirmed how identity construction and cultural ownership are often informed by continual dialogue and exchange with other cultures. Moving towards a practical application of cultural collaboration as a means of achieving cultural ownership and empowerment, Glinton-Meicholas spoke further about the need to engage with creative economies outside of institutional structures. She advocated leadership approaches that bind entrepreneurship to culture, stating that: We need to connect what we do more nearly to our peoples sense of self, self-worth and survival We must tie what we do to peoples lives and, at the most basic, their survival, their mental health. We must convince them all of ownership, from which lack of social or economic status cannot separate them. Samuel Jones from Demos, responding to Doudou Dines keynote speech, reiterated the idea that

popular cultural forms can engender a more dynamic engagement with heritage. He said: culture impacts on every aspect of our lives through attitudes, lifestyles, clothes, food and so on....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. They can provide the context for these conversations. Reading the intangible in the tangible. Ralph Adams, a symposium respondent, pointed out that Libraries are repositories of culture, and that their role is central to heritage and cultural debate. The important work and approaches of public libraries in community cohesion and partnership were identified as a model for future change efforts. Roy Clare concurred: [Libraries] are fundamentally the closest to local democracy of any of our organisations or institutions. They are funded locally, decisions about how to grow them are made locally, they respond to local community needs. A broad spectrum of symposium practitioners were eager to encourage collaboration between policy makers and cultural providers in order to fashion a more relevant and reflective framework for heritage and cultural provision. This, it was felt, was the area in which a fluid relationship was still difficult to achieve. Symposium presenter Sandy Nairne called for a dialogue between the leadership of the heritage sector and mainstream government, particularly in relation to the newly established Equality and Human Rights Commission. He said we have got to engage across government in a much more powerful way.

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The concept of broadening engagement and advocacy for culture was also linked to pertinent issues concerning young people. One of the participants, photographer Jennie Baptiste, reminded practitioners of the need to engage more closely with the young people they hope to reach out to. She said: Young people have a voice, and when we are talking about issues that concern them at these conferences sometimes I think you need to actually go around to the London boroughs and get a youth representative to come along and get feedback from them. An important conclusion that emerged from the symposium was the need for consultative dialogue that develops into principled collaboration. There was a sense of urgency to move beyond the obligatory talking shop, to sharing power, responsibility and pride of place. Clearly, the dynamics required for this significant shift call for a focused and equitable strategy of engagement to achieve positive and sustainable outcomes. This can only be achieved through proactive and determined leadership.

The rich dialogue that emerged from the symposium proceedings offered a number of dynamic approaches to heritage, legacy and leadership development for a twenty-first century heritage sector. But as Roy Clare urged: None of this architecture that we are talking about will change until we shift governance. Governance, and its relationship to cultural diversity and cultural democracy, remains one of the most difficult challenges for the heritage sector. Symposium speaker Jude Woodward said: The boards of our major cultural institutions across London do not in the slightest degree reflect the real character of the population of this city. The predominance of white, male and privileged board members on almost all of Londons mainstream heritage organisations has only served to strengthen the view that any change reported by the sector is still on the surface. Beyond the cultural diversity imperative, practitioners within heritage organisations have observed that, even with goodwill, the lack of leadership support and direction often mitigates innovation and risk-taking beyond tried and tested boundaries. This institutional inertia has been foregrounded as a reason for the limited and slow rate of change within heritage organisational culture. Such concerns were punctuated by pertinent questions from symposium speakers and participants, for which there still appear to be to be no answers:

Governance and Creative Engagement

Our work must always be transformative, with the development and inclusion of people as a first concern. Even the cold stones of our museums and galleries must take on a consciousness that speaks of life and progress.
Patricia Glinton-Meicholas

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 Exactly who is leading what, and to where? asked Colin Prescod, symposium chair. When will the sector move from handwringing to action? asked Clara Arokiasamy, symposium workshop presenter. What is heritage? From where are we inheriting what we proclaim to be heritage? Who is to define heritage? Who is to shape it, preserve it, conserve it and for what reason, for what purpose? asked Doudou Dine, symposium keynote speaker. How would people know that the museum sector was being more inclusive if we didnt have multicultural festivals or projects? asked Roshi Naidoo, symposium presenter. This notion of Africa as an uncivilised space, as a dark continent, still exists. So what are our custodians and gatekeepers going to do about it? And what are we all going to do to help them out of the morass into which we seem to have fallen on that particular issue and a number of other issues over the years? asked Baroness Lola Young, symposium panel chair.

culture. He went on to discuss how narrow notions of heritage and culture had implicitly restricted the means though which the sector perceived itself suggesting that not only are we more than just a sector but also that culture itself is the fundamental basis from which all elements of public and private life are expressed and conceived. Early reasoned: The police are talking about culture. The healthcare system is talking about culture. Dances are being organised to help resolve questions of conflicts. Poets are being brought 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 material and spiritual well being. That is what makes our work so distinguished and crucial. This call for renewed self-belief, and the location of culture within a wider societal context, seemed to offer an antidote to the inertia, challenges and acute sense of loss expressed in critiques of the UK heritage sector. However, the sector continues to impede its own development through an antagonistic relationship with its cultural responsibilities. Patricia Glinton-Meicholas warned: Effective leadership cannot sequester itself in an ivory tower of exclusivity and esoteric scholarship while the world devolves to atavism. Too much scholarship is a high-wire act that draws gasps of wonder from the audience but sends them away empty-handed. Looking ahead, the symposium explored how future leadership strategies can negotiate the

James Early, speaking frankly about the cultural shifts needed to effect change within heritage and cultural leadership, advocated a renewed selfbelief within culture, for a reassessment of leadership, and for an exploration into its transformative potential in the governance of

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ways that a society engages with culture and heritage. In a sense, to venture beyond the museum in order to enrich and support the institutions critical role in developing research, context, security, preservation and cohesion for collections and their histories. Sandy Nairne concluded that accountability and creativity stood out as the two key aspects of the leadership change process. The point is about taking responsibility yourselves, he urged. Nairne supported this with a quote by an Australian indigenous artist, saying: We make a mistake if we think that we, any of us, own our own culture. What we do know is that we can exchange our culture better if we learn how to share the authority and the power. The concept of sharing authority and power resonated throughout the discussions on diversifying the heritage workforce and its governing bodies and in the repeated calls for new voices and interpretations of heritage. During the symposium proceedings the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) the recruiter of board members for the UKs national heritage institutions was presented with a key challenge: to re-evaluate the exclusive criteria for board appointments within the heritage sector. Baroness Lola Young urged: The DCMS have to think about the kind of criteria they use to appoint people. If you want somebody who is tenacious and clever and all the rest of it, those kinds of qualities do not come from having sat in one particular kind of position. I think there really does need to be a shift, in the

sense of looking much more broadly. One speaker from the sector reminded participants how important it is to simply apply when board appointments are advertised. However, this sentiment without internal change evades the pressing concerns surrounding the core institutional barriers inhibiting the development of a more culturally and intellectually diverse sector workforce and its governing bodies. The sector was called upon to break the inbred circles of influence and career progression that perpetuate its workforce demographics not only in terms of ethnic background but also in terms of initial and graduate education. It was agreed that in order to enable experienced practitioners from more diverse cultural and professional backgrounds to move from small time to big time, the sector had to redress and expand upon its notions of inclusion. David Kershaw highlighted that: We are missing out on a huge pool of creative leadership talent and what is more, as our audiences become ever more global in reach, we are in danger of failing to connect with them because of the narrowness of our own leadership supply side. It has been clearly outlined that the heritage sector, thus far, has been challenged to rise up to its cultural and ethical responsibilities by building a more inclusive, vibrant and multicultural ethos and working environment. Ultimately some of the first changes that need to take place have to be from within a change in attitude, perception and intention towards the global heritage and culture effort. Roy Clare succinctly addressed the critical

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shift needed in a leadership approach: Unless governance engages with the issues that we have discussed today - and I mean engages, not oversees, not manages - engages with the issues, we will not move forward.

Work in collaboration with policy makers and cultural practitioners to implement cohesive change within the heritage sector. Challenge institutional inertia in order to welcome new and culturally diverse talent and ideas into heritage and cultural organisations. Reposition heritage and culture as core aspects of identity construction, social empowerment and twenty-first century education.

Conclusions: a leadership mantra

Through an exploration of the themes discussed in this paper, a number of conclusions emerge as potential actions and/or recommendations for future leadership development - to strengthen and re-vision organisational culture and approaches to heritage practice. They echo Roy Clares advice for leaders to engage with the issues that continue to challenge and shape the heritage sector. Leaders were therefore urged to: Ensure that museums engage with the ebb and flow of life, adopting a humanist approach to heritage practice putting people and their communities at the centre of their priorities. Resist monolithic depictions of the past and engage with the complexity and ambiguity of the human experience. Build on and wholly represent the UKs commitment to protect the diversity of cultural expressions. Challenge the homogenising impact of narrow nationalist narratives by engaging with dynamic and complex forms of heritage and identification.

Afterthoughts
In his advice to an aspiring writer who sought guidance on his new poetry and on the large questions and human challenges that affected his work, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: Have patience with everything that remains unresolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not look now for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer....6 Through ten letters, Rilke mentored the young Franz Krappus at the start of his creative journey. His advice on the value and necessity of experience, now philosophical inspiration for all creative practitioners, shows how mentoring can provide a necessary roadmap and springboard for the blossoming of young talent.

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6 RM Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Foreword by K Nerburn, translated by JM Burnham, New World Library, 2000, p35

Young people are the legacies of our social and cultural frameworks and interactions. Leadership and legacy are inextricably linked. Across UK cultural policy, aspirations to inspire young people, build for the future and create a meaningful legacy are commonplace. But it seems that these ideals now need to be more than a rallying call and become the fundamental basis that informs an intercultural and intergenerational conversation, from which change within the sector should be conceived. Rilkes advice to the young writer was not only to seek answers but to also love the questions and this advice is central to discussions about how creative and dynamic cultural leadership can be developed. As repositories of knowledge and as educational institutions, museums, archives and libraries have been traditionally perceived as places to get answers. It is true that heritage collections provide some of the proof of history. It is also true that history (visual, material or literary) is never objective, particularly when documented by the human hand. The historian Marc Bloch wrote that history is in its essentials, the science of change. Heritage institutions, however, have done little to shift the perception that they offer all the answers or at least the definitive answer. The national commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in 2007 illustrates how the sector was profoundly challenged by the unanswered questions, complexities and ambiguities of the slave trade and its legacies.

This clearly demonstrated how heritage collections were unable to curate or exhibit a tidy picture of the past. Collections were sometimes limited and documentary evidence fragmented and often biased. There were gaps in knowledge and narratives that could have explored interesting critical problems (or simply questions) for visitors to engage with; instead perpetuating the conventional constructions of villains, victims and heroes. Much of the reason for this traditional approach lay in the predominantly Eurocentric curation of 2007 exhibitions in mainstream institutions. The need to re-address the intellectual discourse shaping heritage narratives, particularly in a curatorial context, was an issue raised by session respondent and emerging leader Machel Bogues. His concerns and the views of other symposium speakers and participants offer another critical question: When will young academics and curators from culturally diverse backgrounds be recognised as a critical component to the survival and development of the sectors discourses? Heritage leaders are urged therefore to acknowledge that, in addition to power, knowledge production and the development of mainstream heritage discourses are processes that must also be shared.

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6 circles of interaction, dialogue and exchange

Janice Cheddie
Dr Janice Cheddie has provided a commentary which reflects on the symposium and the issues it raised about the relationship between culture and heritage and between diversity, leadership and creativity. Janice Cheddie is a researcher and writer on visual culture, cultural democracy and ethics. She has worked as a development consultant for the Mayors Commission on African and Asian Heritage and the Heritage Diversity Task Force since 2005. She was an Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London from 2000 to 2005. She has recently taken up a position as senior lecturer in art history and art education at the University of the West Indies, Cavehill Campus, Cavehill, Barbados.

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Sometimes at an event, a phrase or an idea seems to capture the synergy and excitement of the moment in an elegant and exhilarating way. It was thus with June Jordans Poem for South African Women, originally delivered by the African-American poet to the UN assembly on 9 August 1978, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of a demonstration by black South African women against the injustice of the apartheid regime in Johannesburg. The spirit of Jordans poetic line We are the ones we have been waiting for waiting for resonated throughout the Heritage, Legacy and Leadership symposium, capturing the ethos of this groundbreaking initiative. This poems last line managed to encapsulate the aims and ambitions of the Cultural Leadership Programme and The Mayors Commission on African and Asian Heritage to widen the talent pool of Britains cultural leadership. How was it that, some 30 years after its original delivery, Jordans poem struck a chord echoing the aspirations and challenges facing many of the of the heritage practitioners, policy makers, senior managers and heritage stakeholders attending the symposium? The simplicity of Jordans poetic utterance reminded the participants that the role of leadership lies not outside the gathered individuals waiting for a mythical leader who will bring change but within each individual. Jordans sparse poetry urges cultural workers to stop waiting for change to emerge, calling for those involved in cultural processes to seek out

and create the circumstances, conditions and leadership necessary for cultural change. In this sense, We are the ones we have been waiting for can be taken as a clarion call to those of us tasked with the role of making, shaping and participating in culture. Furthermore, Jordans poem speaks to one of the central themes of the symposium, namely the question of cultural democracy. By invoking the concept of we, the poem locates leadership as part of a collective democratic process that needs to be embedded within the leadership of Londons cultural institutions.

Cultural memory and memoralisation

It is significant that, in addressing politicians, policy makers and government officials at the UN, Jordans work further highlights the relationship between mainstream culture, heritage and memory. Her poem bears witness to an event that was not highlighted within world history but through the mobilisation of her cultural memory and her poetic voice, Jordan utilises the power of memory to place unrecorded histories into the public sphere as an act of memoralisation. Doudou Dine, in his keynote speech, recognised the role of cultural memory and memoralisation within the development of heritage. He also signalled the central role of women in preserving and transmitting cultural memory and tradition through intangible heritage. He asserts that, whilst heritage professionals and institutions play

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an important role in preserving and protecting the past as custodians for the future, there must also be a recognition of the role intangible heritage plays as an intrinsic aspect of human culture. Both Doudou Dine and Lonnie Bunch cited the power of cultural memory as an act of memoralisation, locating its use as a significant aspect of a cultures democratic and ethical impulse. Furthermore, both speakers asserted that these values are intricately linked to our understanding and development of heritage and culture. The seminal role intangible heritage plays within our understanding of the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade was further explored in the symposium workshops. The year 2007 saw an unprecedented number of commemorative events staged within Britains heritage institutions to mark the parliamentary abolition of the British slave trade in 1807. Britains heritage institutions have predominately held the histories and records of the slave owners and the traders, while the memory of enslaved Africans, the ghost of other stories, is often missing. In order to address this gap many cultural institutions turned to intangible heritage in order to revive and honour the humanity of the enslaved and their descendents through music, dance, poetry and oral traditions.

The use of intangible heritage humanises and brings into living history, artefacts and documents, re-enacting the presence and memory of the enslaved.

This process of humanising history helps to embed the contributions of enslaved Africans into institutional and national consciousness. These cultural interventions remind us of the importance of intangible heritage in preserving the cultural traditions and humanity of the enslaved, maintaining the link between cultural memory, heritage and acts of memoralisation.

The power of definition

Exploring the process of intercultural dialogue and reciprocity as a key part of heritage, Dine drew upon his own experience as Project Manager for UNESCOs Integral Study of the Silk Roads: Roads of Dialogue. As part of the development of this project he and a group of colleagues were taken on a site visit to Buddhist sculptures in China. These ancient sculptures are located by Chinese officials as premiere examples of Chinese heritage and tradition. However, as one of Dines colleagues pointed out, these sculptures bore significant hallmarks of cultural reciprocity and exchange between China and the rest of Asia. Though not immediately recognisable, the signs could be seen in the sculptures dress and physical features.

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Through the use of this example Doudou Dine reminded us that the power to define through naming a sense of place, space, belonging and the authorising of who has the power to speak is a socio-economic and political process. Thus the power of definition can have multiple faces: it can be used by heritage institutions and national governments to empower and enhance intercultural dialogue and exchange, but also as a mechanism to close down meaning and to lay claim to monocultural exclusivity. Dines remarks remind us of the importance of an inclusive power of definition in opening up the multiple narratives within Londons collections.

Culture, heritage and the public sphere

The central point of the exchange and debate that took place throughout the symposium was the relationship between culture and heritage. Speakers from mainstream institutions had tended to position heritage collections, artefacts and documents etc within institutions. This led to a discussion in the morning session about the opening up of mainstream institutions to new models of governance, ownership and accountability, and how these models could be embedded within institutional structures and practices. The afternoon session included a series of themed workshops that focused on the themes of: 2007 Commemoration, Global Interventions and Exchanges, Change Agents, Campaigns and Advocacy, and Developing Heritage Leaders. These workshops allowed participants to look at specific case studies to explore how a new culture of leadership could be fostered amongst mainstream and diverse heritage stakeholders. The workshops also sought to examine how more equitable partnerships between mainstream and diverse communities could be developed in order to widen the pool of heritage expertise and intelligence and to explore the links between Britains heritage and the rest of the world. Another workshop sought to explore how to utilise Londons position as a world city to facilitate international exchange and cultural cooperation.

These multiple intercultural histories and dialogues can only be accessed and made known through collaborative research and investigation between heritage professionals, academics and community-based individuals and organisations.

This serves as a timely reminder as Londons heritage institutions, academics and stakeholders seek to re-examine the multiple points of origin and the deep cultural, aesthetic, material and social entanglements present in the artefacts, documents and stories of Londons heritage.

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As the delegates returned from the workshops the symposium took a new direction, exploring the ethical dimension of heritage, legacy and leadership. Many of the afternoon speeches extended and highlighted some of the themes in the morning discussions, taking forward the notion of intercultural dialogue and exchange to circles of interaction and inter-relationship between human cultures. Two of the symposium presenters, James Early and Patricia Glinton-Meicholas, sought to place culture outside the institutional frame into a wider anthropological and social context. Mobilising this concept of culture they both placed culture at the centre of individuals and communities lives and interactions.

have at their centre a shared notion of humanity that values and respects difference across race, class, gender, ethnicity, faith and sexuality, and a democratic impulse to make sure that all cultures are valued, shared and preserved equally. Early asserted that this inter-relationship between individuals and communities can be achieved only through the creation of a radical sameness. This call for radical sameness is not a return to concepts that privilege the view of the western male subjects denial of difference, but rather an appeal for radical sameness as an ethical relationship that holds, within its non-hierarchical structure, cultural exchanges and openness to explore what we have in common - a shared culture and heritage. Reiterating Dine, Early and Glinton-Meicholas asserted the importance of globalisation in the production of trans-national identities which create the need for greater intercultural dialogues and exchanges. Thus Early and GlintonMeicholas critiqued the holding on to essentialist notions of identity. Extending this concept further Dine, Early, Naidoo and Glinton-Meicholas later argued for recognition of our fluid identities that reflect our intercultural pasts and our globalised futures. Presenter Sandy Nairne supported these views by producing an analysis that synthesised the relationship between diversity, leadership and creativity. Nairnes analysis sought to present diversity as a key factor in the drive for creativity, excellence and innovation.

Broadening the notion of culture as transformative, democratic and ethical, Early and Glinton-Meicholas returned to Jordans sentiment cultural leadership is not about institutions but about understanding each individuals role in creating, modernising and democratising culture.

Furthermore, Early and Glinton-Meicholas argued that individuals and communities the we of Jordans poem have an ethical responsibility in sharing, transforming and being accountable for what is produced, consumed and circulated within cultural processes. It is in this sense, most forcibly argued by Early, that human cultures

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If We are the ones we have been waiting for is to be taken seriously as a call to action, culture and cultural leadership cannot be simply about institutions but more precisely about the power of individuals, communities and institutions to shape, manage, inform and deliver a shared heritage.

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7 appendix

symposium programme
City Hall, London 22 February 2008
Welcome remarks
Colin Prescod, Symposium Chair; Chair, Institute of Race Relations; Commissioner, Mayors Commission on African and Asian Heritage; and Heritage Task Force Member Dr Hilary S Carty, Director, Cultural Leadership Programme Jude Woodward, Senior Policy Advisor Cultural Strategy, Mayors Office David Kershaw, Chair, Cultural Leadership Programme Dame Jocelyn Barrow, Chair, Mayors Commission on African and Asian Heritage

Custodians or gatekeepers: leadership, national identity and inclusion

Panel Chair: Baroness Lola Young OBE, arts and heritage consultant Panel members: Roy Clare CBE, Chief Executive, Museums, Libraries and Archives Dr Roshi Naidoo, co-editor of The Politics of Heritage: the Legacies of Race Sandy Nairne, Director, National Portrait Gallery Dr Lonnie G Bunch III, Director, National Museum of African-American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institute The panel explored the challenges and ethical issues concerning the role of heritage institutions as custodians of history beyond a monocultural framework and their responsibility as mediators for shifting notions of cultural diversity and national identities.

Keynote address
Dr Doudou Dine, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance for the United Nations Commission for Human Rights Samuel Jones, Researcher, Demos, respondent to the keynote address

Workshops The abolition 2007 commemoration, representation and ownership case study
Workshop Chair: Caroline Bressey, Lecturer in Geography, University College London; Director, Equiano Centre

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Panel members: Richard Benjamin, Head of International Museum of Slavery, Liverpool Helen Weinstein, Director, Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past Hakim Adi, Chair, Black and Asian Studies Association; Reader in History, Middlesex University Martine Miel, Joint Co-ordinator, Rendezvous of Victory John W Franklin, Director of Partnerships and International Programs, National Museum of African-American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institute The UK 2007 Commemoration of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807 brought into sharp focus ongoing issues related to representation and ownership linked to programming, consultation and equitable partnerships. Panellists explored the lessons learned from 2007, while engaging in a dynamic exchange around the way forward for the commemoration of legacies.

Keith Tinker, Director, National Museums, The Bahamas Chantal Girondin, Former Cultural Attache for France, South Pacific; film programmer and promoter Clara Arokiasamy, Chair, Heritage Diversity Task Force; independent consultant and advisor David Spence, Director, Museum in Docklands This workshop explored how international partnerships and exchange can enhance cultural pluralism in the heritage sector.

Change agents, campaigns and advocacy

Workshop Chair: Esther Stanford, Jurisconsult, Grassroots Rising Panel members: Lassell Hylton, Chair, Black History Foundation; international business strategist Izzy Mohammed, Community Outreach and Education Officer, Birmingham City Archives

Global interventions and exchange

Workshop Chair: Prakash Daswani, London Committee, Heritage Lottery Fund Panel members: Nima Poovaya-Smith, Director, Alchemy Cultural Enterprise

Oku Ekpenyon, Chair, Memorial 2007; educational consultant and historian Marika Sherwood, Vice-Chair, Black and Asian Studies Association; research fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies SuAndi, Cultural Director, Black Arts Alliance; performance artist

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The role of the change agent is critical in highlighting and lobbying for solutions to combat cultural exclusivity, professional inequalities and disenfranchisement. The workshop explored experiences and approaches to Black, Asian and minority ethnic advocacy reflecting on how lessons learned can inform the principles and professional practice of heritage leadership.

their perspectives on ways forward to ensure that Black, Asian and minority ethnic leaders are being identified, nurtured and integrated into the heritage sector.

Leadership and change in the twentyfirst century

Panel Chair: Tao Wang, Chair, Centre of Chinese Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies Panel members: James Early, Director, Cultural Heritage Policy, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institute Patricia Glinton-Meicholas, author and President, Bahamas Association for Cultural Studies Keith Khan, Head of Culture, London 2012 The panel reflected on the issues and ideas needed for bold and innovative twenty-first century leadership to advance cultural democracy and inclusion.

Developing heritage leaders

Workshop Chair: Naseem Khan OBE, writer, researcher and policy advisor Panel members: Margot Rodway-Brown, Training and Development Officer, Victoria & Albert Museum; Director, Adornment Errol Francis, Inspire Programme Manager, Arts Council England Sue Hoyle, Deputy Director, The Clore Leadership Programme Joanna Tong, Director, Bright-i Training Consultancy Caitlin Griffith, Head of Professional Issues, Museums Associations Exploring key professional and leadership development schemes, this workshop shared approaches, challenges and outcomes and reflected on the implications for embedding the legacies of these programmes. Panellists shared

Closing remarks
Makeda Coaston, Greater London Authority Senior Cultural Strategy Officer and Project Manager, Mayors Commission on African and Asian Heritage

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acknowledgements

Heritage, Legacy and Leadership: Ideas and Intervention was conceived and developed by Makeda Coaston, Senior Strategy Officer at the Greater London Authority and Project Manager for the Mayors Commission on African and Asian Heritage (MCAAH). The initiative forms an important strand of the work of the MCAAH, which was established to build on the commitment to promote the heritage and histories of African and Asian Communities in the capital and to more broadly facilitate increased access to Londons shared heritage for all Londoners. The Heritage, Legacy and Leadership symposium represents the Cultural Leadership Programmes and the MCAAHs continuing commitment to working in partnership with the heritage sector to foster effective and inclusive leadership. The symposium was made possible by the support of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, Renaissance London, The Museums Association, The British Council, and English Heritage. We would like to thank these organisations for their generosity. We would also like to extend warm thanks to the many individuals who helped shape the concept, content and thoughts represented in the symposium and this report. The symposiums Chair, Colin Prescod, expertly steered the dialogue, finding links and sparks of divergence among perspectives from the UK, the USA, Europe and the Caribbean. We also owe a strong vote of thanks to all the plenary and workshop presenters, who set the framework for our discussions. Heritage, Legacy and Leadership was made possible through the skilful event management of Beverley Mason and the Medar Psyden team, whose meticulous planning and delivery underpinned the smoothrunning of this international event. Thanks also to Johanna Thompson and Linda Kiff from the Greater London Authority for their production support. We are grateful to a number of individuals who have supported the editing and production of the Heritage, Legacy and Leadership report, particularly Mariam Agbaje, Diane Pengelly and Janice Cheddie for the Greater London Authority and Kim Evans and Becky Allen for the Cultural Leadership Programme. Special thanks must go to the symposium curator and animateur Makeda Coaston whose vision, creativity and energy inspired this event.

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Heritage, Legacy and Leadership: Ideas and Interventions was an international symposium presented by the Cultural Leadership Programme and the Mayors Commission on African and Asian Heritage. It took place on 22 February 2008 at City Hall, London.

To download this publication or to find out more about the Cultural Leadership Programme see www.culturalleadership.org.uk You can get this publication in Braille, in large print, and on audio CD. Please contact us if you need any of these formats. The Cultural Leadership Programme 2009 ISBN 978-0-7287-1445-8 Printed in England by HPM, County Durham Designed by tangerine, London

www@culturalleadership.org.uk