I know posts have been a little thin on this blog over the past few months. One of the reasons is that I've been working on two other projects that I'm now ready to share with my CityStories readers.
The first is an exhibition that came out of a fellowship I had in fall 2011 at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage (JNBC) at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. I was at JNBC to continue my research on city museums, but while I was there I also worked with five JNBC graduate students to develop an exhibition about what it means to live in Providence, drawing from the field of psychogeography for our methodology.Pyschogeography isn't exactly a household word. Loosely defined, it involves mapping abstract concepts like emotion, sensory experiences, and personal meaning, in contrast to our traditional concept of mapping physical elements—roads, landmarks, topography. I had been grappling a lot with the disconnect between what city museums think is worth knowing and preserving about their cities, on one hand, and what city residents know and preserve as living, breathing "archives," walking around their cities each day, on the other. The exhibition was an experiment to see what it would be like to create a city collection where the emotional, sensory, and personal experiences of residents command center stage. After this project I am further convinced that city museums should be incorporating psychogeography into their ongoing work. The exhibition, You Are Here: Archiving Providence in the Present, is documented here.
The second project is a little more personal, but still strongly tied to my professional practice. I've been developing a blog for my five-year-old cousin Thomas, who wants to be an explorer when he grows up. I post photos from cities I have visited as part of my research, and I challenge Thomas to figure out the location of each photo. When he solves one, he and his mom report on how he did it, which gets posted on the blog. It's called Thomas Sees the World.The blog happened organically. Thomas was working on one of Andrew Sullivan's "View from Your Window" challenges, but it was really hard. I offered to send him a few of my own photos that I had screened to make sure they contained enough visual clues. Thomas attacked these photos with an overwhelming eagerness to learn, and I was fascinated by his thought process, which almost never conformed to my expectations. After four or five of these challenges yielded such rich responses from Thomas, his mom and I decided to try a blog. We are developing a small but devoted following, and this game is bringing us all a lot of joy. I think about cities—and the differences between them—all the time, but I have never thought about them quite this way before. I am learning all sorts of new things as I look at cities through Thomas's eyes. Take a look at the blog and you'll see what I mean.
Urban History Exhibited in Aarhus, Denmark
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h2d3gNBCf0]In October I flew to Aarhus, Denmark, to give a paper at an urban history conference hosted by the open air museum Den Gamle By. The Aarhus City Museum just merged with Den Gamle By, and the conference was organized in part to guide strategic planning efforts under the new management structure. This is a video of my talk; it's a half-hour in length. Hardcore city museum folks will also want to check out the other conference presentations, not only from Aarhus but also Copenhagen, Rotterdam, and Ghent—each one has a different take on urban history.
My Approach
When I describe my project here in Helsinki, I’ve had a few people make the assumption that I spend my days doing research in various archives around the city. It’s happened enough times that I feel I should clarify my approach. I want to start by emphasizing that I am not an academic historian; I am a public historian. That means my job is to take the research academic historians produce and translate it into something that is not only easy for the general public to understand, but that also is meaningful, unexpected, captivating, or even entertaining. I’m not saying that academic history can’t be those things, but a lot of the time the techniques academics are required to adopt in order to be deemed successful by their peers run counter to the learning needs of the general public. My process typically goes something like this: 1) I study the academic history; 2) I use it to develop interesting content for the public; and 3) I have one or more academic historians check my work before launching, to make sure I haven’t inadvertently misinterpreted an important detail or nuance. Therefore, while I have spent my fair share of days in libraries and archives, I have spent just as much time studying the needs and interests of museum visitors, or searching for new creative methods of display and interpretation. What I care most about accomplishing while in Helsinki is further developing my skills to help the public understand cities and city history. So my primary sources are not archival collections, but rather the city of Helsinki itself—its buildings, streets, and squares; its residents and tourists; its museums and historic sites. And I spend my time:
Talking to residents, academic historians, and public historians about Helsinki, history, and city history in general
Exploring the city—sometimes on my own, in the shoes of a tourist; and sometimes accompanied by a local who can give me the resident’s perspective
Reading secondary sources spanning a variety of topics, from Helsinki history, to urban studies, to city museums, to audience research
Writing this blog, and eventually an article or two to submit for publication in museum journals
There is a vast supply of rich information in this city. Indeed, to borrow from Alice in Wonderland, which I just saw at my local Finnkino, I have six city history ideas before breakfast. At this point it may be a little difficult for you to figure out exactly where I’m going with all of this. But be patient, dear reader, and all will be illuminated.