Photo: Rose Mary Allen interviews a woman in Curaçao in the 1980s
This project concerns the extensive oral history material Rose Mary Allen recorded in the 1980s and 1990s with elders, (grand)children of enslaved and migrant communities. This important source material is on outdated cassettes and is in danger of being lost if it is not digitised soon.
In 2024, in close cooperation with Rose Mary Allen, DANS, The National Archive Curaçao and Sound and Vision, the Hub will work to digitise, make accessible and present the stories that offer valuable insights into traditions, culture and language in the Dutch Caribbean.
Photo: Launching project My freedom – your freedom? at the Sound and Vision in The Hague.
The three main goals in the treaty are participation and co-determination in heritage practice, using heritage for societal purposes and being open to other heritage views. At the National Cultural Heritage Agency (RCE), the Faro implementation programme is being implemented to put the principles of the convention into practice, together with people and organisations involved in heritage. €6 million is available for this purpose for the period 2023-2025.
For oral history, the Faro Convention is specifically significant because it recognises oral history as a valuable source of cultural heritage and supports efforts to record and preserve it. This includes the value of personal memories, stories and traditions passed on orally. The Convention encourages the adoption of measures to promote and protect this form of intangible heritage.
Speaking History intends to actively engage in the coming period, together with various partners, to ensure that the Faro Convention is translated into sustainable policy on these issues.
Tanja Gonggrijp (Permanent Representative of the Netherlands to the Council of Europe) and Bjørn Berge
(deputy secretary general of the Council of Europe) sign the treaty. Photo Cultural Heritage Department.
Now that the treaty has been signed, the ratification process begins. If parliament approves the treaty, it will enter into force. The treaty applies at least to the European Netherlands and the Caribbean Netherlands (Bonaire, Saba and St Eustatius).
More info on the Faro Convention at: faro.cultureerfgoed.nl.
One conclusion we can already draw: Oral history lives. You can read the detailed report of this fascinating day including the workshops here.
Chairman of the day and initiator of Sprekende geschiedenis Saskia Moerbeek kicked off the day and welcomed attendees. A short video was then shown on the importance of Oral History.
Video credit: Cinemore. Voice-over: Armando Ello
During the plenary session, Professor James Kennedy (Utrecht University) spoke about the impact of oral history on individuals and communities. Rose Mary Allen, professor of Culture, Community and History at the University of Curaçao, shared her experiences with oral history in the Caribbean. Frank von Meijenfeldt of the ‘Sprekende geschiedenis’ Hub discussed recent technological developments within oral history.
James Kennedy highlighted the added value of Oral History in his presentation. He discussed six specific points, including access to valuable undiscovered histories, giving a voice to marginalised groups, the importance of listening to how stories are told, and empowering communities to be stewards of their own history. Kennedy stressed that Oral History not only provides historical information, but can also be used for ‘community organising’. He advocated preserving stories for future generations as a valuable memory.
Prof Rose Mary Allen shared key insights on oral history in the Dutch Caribbean in her lecture, focusing on her own experiences as an oral historian since the 1980s. Allen named a number of concerns in her experiences as an interviewer and emphasised the importance of language and context both during and when analysing the interview. Documenting oral traditions in the Dutch Caribbean was ultimately seen as an act of empowerment, whereby the community itself can tell and shape its history.
Frank von Meijenfeldt reflected on the impact of automatic speech recognition on oral history projects and talked about the Unprecedented Special project for refugees. He discussed the emergence of the Whisper programme for speech recognition, highlighted challenges for less spoken languages, and advocated training the programme for regional languages. Sustainable storage and accessibility, respecting FAIR principles, were highlighted. Von Meijenfeldt mentioned the need for improved digital infrastructure, challenges in collection registration systems for oral history and the desire for wider accessibility to oral history.
The workshop ‘Museums and Oral History, current developments‘ was opened by Saskia Moerbeek and focused on exchange on museum challenges in oral history. Margaret Leidelmeijer presented ‘Ons Land’, where decolonisation is central, highlighting how education and engagement of different generations overcome obstacles. Sanneke Stigter discussed the OH-SMArt project, which focused on artist interviews with Mark Manders and Nicholas Pope. The value of image use and multiple interviews was highlighted. The RCE presented the Handbook for Collection Interviews i.c.w. Sprekende Geschiedenis, for small and large museums. Workshop participants also shared their own oral history projects. |
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During the workshop ‘Preserving and making Oral History interviews accessible’ speakers highlighted important aspects of archiving and accessibility. Norah Karrouche listed a number of digital challenges: storage, data accessibility and ethics. Luc de Vries emphasised the FAIR principle and the importance of ownership and consent. Marc Holtman presented a new archive concept: the archive as utility. DANS demonstrated their data station for long-term storage. Key conclusions included attention to long-term preservation, metadata and identification, user-centricity, and the deployment of technology. Future challenges include changing user needs, AI implementation and connecting Oral History collections. |
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In the third workshop ‘Short pitches on Oral History projects’, eight oral history projects were presented. Marjan Beijering spoke about the University Campus in Twente, focusing on interview processing and speech recognition software. Maurice Paulissen examined ‘Children of the peat colony’, highlighting cultural-ecological aspects. Marloes Hülsken presented educational projects, dwelling on source criticism and analysis. Speakers such as Wim de Jong, Jozef Kok, Mieke Krijger and Eline Pollaert shared their experiences with projects ranging from miner’s stories to the experiences in ‘Het Dorp’. Discussions included questions on presentation, trust building and the role of the interviewer. Involving communities and young people in sharing oral history was seen as important. |
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The fourth workshop, ‘Contested History’ and Oral History, led by Nikita Krouwel, addressed the role of Oral History in situations where historical narratives are contested or supplemented. Presentations by Myrthe Kroes and Stef Scagliola emphasised giving voice to underrepresented groups and presenting different perspectives. Discussions focused on multi-perspectivity, dialogue stimulation, trust, ethical responsibility and the challenges of projects on sensitive topics, such as with Warlove Children. The social and emotional impact was highlighted, the distinction between Oral History as source and resource, and important future issues around neutrality, ethics and stakeholder engagement. |
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During the workshop ‘Transcribing you can (almost) ignore’ led by Arjan van Hessen and Frank von Meijenfeldt, the necessity of transcribing for archiving was discussed. Participants shared questions on new developments, translation options and simple transcription solutions. Automatic speech recognition programme Whisper was demonstrated and discussed, focusing on the necessary differentiation of speakers. There is a plethora of options and this calls for more simple unambiguous solutions. For oral history, it is important that In the future, small languages and regional languages should also be recognised. Relevant parties were identified, such as Sprekende Geschiedenis Hub and organisations like DANS and SurfNet. |
Vfrom left to right: Christianne Mattijssen, director of Heritage and Arts at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science | Marielle Hendriks, chair of the OPEN network of provincial heritage organisations | Annette Gaalman, Network coordinator Implementation of the DIGITAL Heritage Network | Caroline Breunesse director/director of Rijksmuseum Twenthe/De MuseumFabriek.
During the closing plenary session, workshop leaders presented their conclusions to a panel of directors of institutions involved. When asked how to train volunteers properly, Marielle Hendriks highlighted the training offer on heritagevrijwilliger.nl for oral history projects and the role of OPEN as a partner for museum training. Annette Gaalman called for harnessing the potential of digital infrastructure, focusing on national heritage connections and putting user needs at the centre. Christianne Mattijssen saw opportunities for oral history, especially with the National History Museum. When a question came from the audience as to why museums do not have research status, Christianne Mattijssen promised to take this issue to the appropriate colleagues at the ministry. Caroline Breunesse saw oral history as essential for diversity and inclusion, where it is important for museums to step beyond the boundaries of their own context. Finally, Mattijssen hoped for a future where museums become places where history is told on the spot.
Photographs by Marlise Steenman
The comprehensive report of the symposium can be read here.
Symposium was made possible in part by:
By ‘Contested Histories’ we mean all those situations where the existing known historical narrative or heritage is refuted or supplemented by alternative narratives and/or new perspectives. Think of slavery history, colonialism, but also new perspectives on events in a war or stories of new or different population groups such as immigrants or refugees.
Oral History as a method is known and appreciated as an important source of historical information from society. Oral history defines oral history as: ‘The recording of people’s life stories and testimonies about historical events and the significance of these events for the lives of people and those around them’. These stories provide valuable information about events in recent history, information we cannot get from official papers and historical objects. They can also open up new and underrepresented perspectives on historical events and people’s lives. It is especially this aspect of oral history that makes it interesting in relation to ‘Contested Histories’. Four different situations of ‘Contested Histories’ where oral history can contribute, for example, are:
1. Giving a voice to underrepresented subcultures;
2. Presenting different perspectives on the same historical event;
3. Opening new perspectives on a hegemonic discourse;
4. Creating a safe space to deal with post-conflict situations.
The role of the lecture is not just to provide information, but to provide a shared social space and a performance, wherein knowledge and its performances becomes memorable (T. Green)
Oral history interviews have value in themselves. Interviews can be seen primarily as historical source material. But in addition, they also have social value; people who are interviewed feel heard and feel they can finally tell their side of the story. But the value is further enhanced if the stories told are heard by the widest possible audience. For that to happen, the information from the interviews must be responsibly converted into an attractive presentation format. In this context, a theory and idea by Toby Green[1] is interesting. Toby Green argues that, as a Western society, we have lost something very essential the moment we started transmitting our history in writing instead of orally. Here, he points out an essential difference between a ‘presentation’ and an ‘oration’. The former, he argues, concentrates on information transfer pure and simple. In the second, the form in which oral history used to be conveyed, two things are very important that are often forgotten in a presentation: the social context and, what Toby Green calls the ‘memorable performance’. The social context ensures interaction between listeners, which makes the story stick better and gives it more depth. The ‘memorable performance’ ensures that the story makes an impression so that the audience does not forget the story easily.
Photo credit: Amazon Conservation Team
On our website, we collect ‘Telling Examples’, which are examples of oral history projects where oral history interviews have been converted into a special form of presentation. During the guest lecture for SSOCH 2023, we discussed one ‘Speaking Example’ in more detail for each of the four situations mentioned above in which oral history can contribute to ‘Contested Histories’. In doing so, we chose examples where we felt special attention had been paid to the social context and ‘memorable performance’:
The examples led to interesting discussions where valuable questions arose that arise in practice such as: who decides what is shown and what is not, how to distribute different perspectives across a space, how to deal with opposing views or uncomfortable reactions, how to deal with ‘incorrect historical facts’, how to deal with trauma, etc.
At the symposium ‘Oral History, een stap verder’ on 8 December at the RCE in Amersfoort, we will also present these examples. Curious? Then take a look at our website under ‘Telling examples’.
[1] Toby Green, ‘The historical lecture: past, present and future, Transactions of the RHS (2022), 1–23.
Backstage, we are busy preparing the programme and are pleased to share that one of the speakers is Rose Mary Allen. She is Extraordinary Professor Culture, Community and History at the University of Curaçao. She will talk more about her oral history experiences in Curaçao and Cuba.
Also, Frank von Meijenfeldt of the ‘Sprekende geschiedenis’ hub will give a presentation on new technical developments not to be missed.
1. Museums and oral history: Current developments.
2. Preserving and making accessible oral history interviews for small and large projects.
3. ‘Oh, is that how you do it? Sharing experiences of oral history projects.
4. The role of oral history in controversial histories.
5. First aid for transcribing.
For the workshops, several interesting speakers have registered. The final programme with all names will follow shortly.
From Monday 18 September it will be possible to register for the symposium and sign up for the workshops.
Looking forward to the oral history symposium we organised in 2022 at Beeld en Geluid in The Hague? Check out here the highlights, video and photos for inspiration.
In the 1970s and 1980s, more and more migrant workers became involved in associations and strikes that stood up for their rights and interests. In the 1970s, family reunification was made difficult. Those women who did manage to come to the Netherlands were made dependent on their husbands. Her residence permit expired if her husband returned to his home country or divorced his wife within 3 years of the certificate being issued.
In 1975, a group of Turkish women decided to secede from the general association and stand up for their rights as Turkish women: the Hollanda Türkiye Kadinlar Birligi (HTKB) was formed. The Moroccan Women’s Association (MVVN) followed in the 1982s.
Speaking History aims to capture the stories of the first generations of women who fought for their rights. We are also curious about the women of today: what social initiatives are there today and how do the women of today compare to the women of the past?
Together with volunteers, we will interview 40 women in the coming period about their involvement in women’s initiatives for Turkish and/or Moroccan women in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, The Hague and Eindhoven.
READ MORE ABOUT THE PROJECT ‘THE TURKISH AND MOROCCOAN WOMEN’S MOVEMENT IN 40 STORIES’
This project is carried out in memory of Özden Yalim (1946 – 2023), advocate of Turkish women’s rights and one of the initiators of the project.
Oral History collections at the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision
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Although when most people think of the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, they will probably think first of the Media Museum and the Top 2000, this institute also manages the Netherlands’ premier audiovisual archive. One of the hidden treasures within this archive is the collection of Oral History and Oral History-based radio broadcasts, documentaries and films. A treasure, because these are very valuable collections, including some of the oldest Oral History collections in the Netherlands. But also hidden, because a significant part of these collections has not yet been digitised and those that have been digitised and Oral History-based items are difficult to find without prior knowledge.
In recent months, our intern Myrthe Kroes has been researching Oral History material in the archive of Sound and Vision as part of her internship from the Open University. She recorded her findings in the article ‘The hidden treasure of Sound and Vision’.
Curious about what’s on offer at Sound & Vision? Take a look at our collections and search on Archives: Image & Sound. Based on the inventory of Oral History collections made, the Image and Sound collection on our collection page will be further expanded soon. Besides the mentioned collections, we are also working diligently to add and update the collections-related items in DAAN and where to find them. So it is worth checking our collections page regularly!
In the section ‘Five questions for Bas Agterberg, Curator of Media History at the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision, tells more about collection policy, media history and plans for the future.
This is the first time that the expert meeting ‘Museums and Oral History’ has been held.
During the expert meeting ‘Museums and Oral History’ the first steps were taken to identify the issues within the museum world. Curious about the conclusions, project examples, reading tips or would you like to come and talk to others?”
Please join us.
On the new page ‘Museums and Oral History’ you will find both theoretical reading tips and practical examples concerning oral history and museums.
Soon, this page will also feature the Museums and Oral History Handbook (in collaboration with the National Cultural Heritage Agency).
Photo: Zeeuws Museum
Fotocredit: NRC
In the Netherlands, the abolition of slavery is remembered and freedom celebrated every year on 1 July. About 150 years ago, slavery ended in Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles, which were then colonies of the Netherlands. Celebrating Keti Koti is important for society because it reminds us of the past, inspires us for the future and spurs us to action in the fight against inequality and racism.
All kinds of activities are organised throughout the Netherlands, we have listed some of them:
Keti Koti, Amsterdam
The National Institute Dutch Slavery History and Legacy (NiNsee) is organising the annual National Commemoration Dutch Slavery History for the 21st time on Saturday 1 July from 14:00 to 15:15 at Oosterpark in Amsterdam. The National Commemoration is also the official start of the Remembrance Year of the Slavery Past and will be attended by a delegation of the Cabinet. This year, the Keti Koti Festival, which celebrates the abolition of slavery in Suriname and the Caribbean part of the Kingdom, will take place on the Museumplein in Amsterdam. More information via link.
Keti Koti Festival Utrecht
An afternoon of connection, performances and food at the Keti Koti Festival in Utrecht. The festival welcomes everyone on Saturday 1 July from 14:00 in the Griftpark, located in the heart of Utrecht.
Keti Koti Haarlem
The Keti Koti Haarlem Foundation and the Frans Hals Museum are joining forces to organise Keti Koti Haarlem, a dynamic event in the context of Colonial Haarlem on 1 July on location Hof in the museum, complete with music, workshops, snacks and cultural exchange. The event will take place from 15:00 to around 20:00 and is free to visit.
Filmhuis Den Haag, The Hague
In collaboration with Pepr, the Dutch streaming platform for films by black filmmakers and stories from the African diaspora, and the House of Poems, Filmhuis Den Haag presents a diverse day and evening programme full of poignant films and inspiring spoken word, from 10:45 to 22:40. Information on tickets and prices can be found here.
Keti Koti Festival, Rotterdam
The commemoration is on 30 June and the liberation festival will be celebrated on 1 July with a Keti Koti Festival. In Rotterdam, the monument commemorating slavery stands on the Lloydkade, on the spot where ships of the Rotterdam slave trading company Coopstad and Rochussen left for Africa. You can find the programme here.
Spot, Groningen
On Saturday 1 July, Groningen celebrates the abolition of slavery with Keti Koti. On that day, Groningen’s city centre turns into a large festival area. At various locations, special activities will be organised in the context of Groningen’s slavery past and its influence on the present. More information via the Spot Groningen website.
Featured: Oral History
On Friday 30 June, a Keti-Koti lecture and Commemoration with oral histories about oppression, mutilation and cultural uprooting, among other things, will take place at Nijmegen City Hall, with a lecture by Rose Mary Allen (University of Curaçao): ‘Towards a multi-voiced perspective on the Dutch slavery past, its working through and healing’.
The Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed will set up an implementation programme Faro to translate the principles of the convention into practice together with the heritage field. Earlier, various partners and stakeholders have explored the meaning of the convention for the Netherlands and how to embed it in heritage care. One of the initiatives mentioned is ‘Oral history voor iedereen’.
From the Oral History Hub, we want to take the initiative to elaborate the motto ‘Oral history voor iedereen’. We are thinking of makers, users, custodians and the public. There is a great need for courses in interviewing, more and easier storage options, support in digitisation and transcription and in reaching the public.
Take a look at this initiative and have your say!