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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As you can see from our Questions page, we’re asking a range of questions about the museum, about Bradford, about communities and about the science and technology of media. In asking the questions, as is suggested by the project title and the repeated use of the word, we’re seeking connections. As we launch the project,…
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In May we’re launching an Open Conversation. We want to start a conversation with people in Bradford. We’d love to talk about what’s going on in Bradford and about how National Science and Media Museum in Bradford can make a positive contribution. The first part of the conversation is to really learn about all the things…
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