Pakeezah Zahoor has held roles in a number of cultural organizations and now works at the National Science and Media Museum. She has a background in postcolonial theory and is concerned with ideas surrounding race, culture and identity. This letter is written in response to the politics and practices of ‘the diversity agenda’. Replies welcome.…
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The City Leader: Margaret Eaton Margaret Eaton was the Leader of Bradford Council between 2000 and 2006. As the city’s political head at the time of the 2001 disturbances, Baroness Eaton found herself thrust into the international spotlight when the world’s media turned its attention to Bradford How do you think the media, in general,…
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What is the best way for people to recall their favourite memories? Perhaps opening up an old photo album, looking through all those snapshots of funny and heartrending moments? With the development of photojournalism, the newspaper in the twentieth century came to function like a photo album of the nation’s common memory. Every part of…
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This is part of a series of blogs exploring participation and community engagement. You can read about the Science Museum Group’s approach and future blogs will draw out the specific research agenda relating to participation and community engagement for the Bradford’s National Museum research project. The literature on participation and community engagement in museums can…
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The term ‘participation’ is widely used in museums across the world but has significantly different meanings in different contexts: ‘participation’ can sometimes be used simply to refer to attendance, the act of visiting a museum or leaving responses to questions posed by the institution. Meanwhile, terms like ‘co-production’, ‘co-creation’ and ‘co-curation’ describe two-way collaboration between…
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I challenge you to look up next time you visit Bradford. It is a city with listed heritage buildings, ‘To Let’ signs, redundant 1960’s brutalism and vacant development plots. Call me crazy but this mixed palate and unique canvas rather excites me. The citizens of Bradford currently await major Central Government led Urban Regeneration in…
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Like any city or district Bradford comprises the sum of the lives of its individual citizens and the households, streets, neighbourhoods and institutions in which they dwell. However, given its longstanding associations with imperial trade and international migration, Bradford also provides a world-class example of the ongoing significance of local to local – or “translocal”…
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A huge thank you to everyone who came down to join in our open conversations at the National Science and Media Museum’s first Open Day. This was the first of many sessions we will run to meet with anyone and everyone who has ideas about the role the museum might play in the district or who…
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Earlier this year I was fortunate to visit part of a nation-wide touring exhibition entitled Changing Places, presented by Film and Video Umbrella UK and curated by Mariam Zulfiqar. The exhibition excited me as it enabled me to connect with sites of English national heritage in new ways, by drawing out multicultural narratives that resonate…
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Bradford is renowned as being a cosmopolitan District that’s home to many communities with origins in different parts of the world. Less well known is that its closest links with places overseas are with very specific, often rural, localities rather than capital cities or entire countries. This phenomenon can be described as “translocalism”, and these…
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