Transcript
Unknown Speaker 00:00
good morning good people. Thank you for coming to the workshop. Open glam for critical. We are free knowledge pedagogy for intercultural co curation. We are honored and delighted to share virtual space with you. Thank you for coming. We have an extraordinary lineup, a veritable meeting of the minds. And I invite you to share your information questions leads links in the chat box. That's a living document for us to have collective space together. So I'll dive in I'm also a co design this with my longtime thought partner and very wonderful friend Virginia Poundstone. And we're working on currently on a project with creationist MIT foundation but have a broader set of collaborations that we are that culminate in these exact question. So, our lineup for today I run a show, I'm going to give a brief overview of critical open educational resources and the urgency. Virginia is going to lead us on a mural warm up. Evelyn scan haidle is going to be introducing us briefly to the open glam dimension. And then we have two speakers a Joe Jones Dale maida, who's Director of Education at the Brooklyn Museum, among many other things community leader, then meet a Gupta. wiggers is a critical craft forum founder and also director and co founder of the grad program of critical craft at Warren Wilson among many other things. They both sit at the intersection of, frankly, radical education, and curation and the power of museums and craft an art to liberate. Then we're gonna have a quick poll to get feedback from you all. And then we have lightning cameos from our creationist graduate fellows Jin qui Andre Spinoza. Rios, Francisco, Rudolph, Magali Delgado. Oh, forgive the typo. I'm about Magali. And then we dive into an empathy mapping activity and discussion, and then report back and, and, and begin the process of building community thereafter. So I begin with the museum in so all of these young people are online right now. COVID is hit, and we're even more online than ever. And there's a treasury of gems online through the digital dimension of museums, and you all know that better than anyone in the world. This is your world. And so we here are thinking about these gems that are online. How can young people and adult learners and lifelong learners learn from them not just the objects, but also how those objects came to be in those museums and affiliated with the museums. So we're thinking about things like the Rosetta Stone is a digital object telling the story of analog Empire, as well as broader understandings of translation, and transporting and meaning making. Many of you all might have seen the Ignite talk from last week about the Kiku. Here's our people again. So another set of objects that have long analog ancient histories, and now we're in the digital domain, and how can young people learn from them? An example is this particular jar which has the key pu design on it, you can see it's called an old school and catch swamps and ancient Incan jar. The metadata on the object causes an autobio, which is actually a Greek word. And the meta actually describes it, they say that this autobio, we call it that because of its similarity to the Greek form, which is perfume bottle, not a jar for holding Cheech corn, beer and may seed. So thinking about how is the metadata encompassing not just the knowledge about the object, but a Eurocentric understanding of cultural reference at large, many people already thinking about metadata as a site of thinking about the context of digital art and cultural objects. So we're following the lead of the traditional knowledge, labor folk, as well as others. So we open up the floor today thinking about what knowledge does a digital cultural heritage object hold? And what knowledge does its metadata hold? And who even writes that? And from a pedagogical standpoint, in particular, how do diverse learners seek and find knowledge and compass and digital heritage objects? And how it's so how do they encounter metadata if they even do and who wants to help layer tag thread and weave this metadata and other radical feminist metaphors for layering knowledge? So this, this workshop is an attempt to connect to build communities of practice. So please drop links and leads and ideas in the chat box, and we will save the chat and distribute it later. So as to keep building connections. So here we go. Virginia.
Unknown Speaker 04:33
Garret, I need you to stop screen sharing so I'll be able to Okay, great. Good morning, everyone. I'm going to start us off. We're going to build some collaborative tool muscles. With a quick little word up here. And are you all able to see a screen that says how are you give me a thumbs up? Yes. Okay, great. So, um, we're going to do a quick little warm up on the collaboration Why? Or tool that we'll be using later on in the session, as we break out, there can be a little bit of a learning curve to it. So I wanted to take a minute to let people get loose in it and and try it out. I'm going to drop a link. Let me copy it quickly. And now that I'm presenting, I actually can't see the chat. Sorry, let's see if I can figure out the chat.
Unknown Speaker 05:28
I drop in for you already version. Yeah, no worries.
Unknown Speaker 05:30
Oh, great. Thank you so much, Sam.
Unknown Speaker 05:33
Um, okay.
Unknown Speaker 05:34
So you
Unknown Speaker 05:35
should as a as a viewer, you can go ahead and start to enter in. But I'm just going to do a quick tour of this tool, look down at the bottom right corner is a navigation tool. And this is where you will be able to see where you are on the board, you can zoom in. And you can zoom all the way out if you get all the way lost.
Unknown Speaker 05:58
So this is all the
Unknown Speaker 06:02
zoom settings. The other really handy thing is you can click the hand and you can grab and move around on the board. So you can always find yourself, you need to unclick it in order to return to a normal spot.
Unknown Speaker 06:13
So then you go up here to this little square box
Unknown Speaker 06:16
with a tab on it, and you can open it up and you can grab a sticky note. You click on it, and then you can enter some text. And you can let us know how you're doing today. You move them around by group by clicking on them and dragging and dropping, you can make them bigger, you can make them smaller. And now that you've done one, you can double click somewhere else on the board and a new box will open up.
Unknown Speaker 06:50
It's so exciting to see everybody in there working simultaneously. It's like a whole little Flurry.
Unknown Speaker 06:59
so
Unknown Speaker 07:00
busy and caffeinated. I love that. A bit tired from sitting all day. Oh, I feel that so much. If you can stand up and work do that if you can, as you listen to our wonderful presentations, you can maybe take a standing break instead of sitting if that's an option. Let me zoom in so I can actually see everybody tired. I see a
Unknown Speaker 07:34
lot of tired a little nervous.
Unknown Speaker 07:36
Oh, don't worry. We will all be friends. We are all friends. This is a friendly encouraging environment. Excited cold Oh no, you need a blank get tired, but happy to be in this session. Great. Nice smiley face. All right. Welcome to this session. And you can keep playing around in this tool if you want to get more comfortable. And we will see you again in mural a little later on in this session.
Unknown Speaker 08:19
Good Garrett.
Unknown Speaker 08:20
Great Scann I think if you want to point us to a few of your your projects, particularly the declaration.
Unknown Speaker 08:28
Yeah, I'm so sorry, my, my connection for some reason, broke. But I'm guessing that you were talking to me, right?
Unknown Speaker 08:39
If you wanted to point us to the declaration that'll help us orient the oars with the open glam as we dive into adjoa.
Unknown Speaker 08:45
Yeah, so I'm gonna share there, the link is open yum.path.org. And that's basically research paper that is boring, and informing what we expect it's gonna be a decoration on open access to cultural heritage. And what we're doing there is sort of exploring some important questions on digital reproductions of our works on our type of media, and how that also relates to some other considerations that need to be taking into account when doing open access. So that's basically that guy, good resource. If you're familiar to some of these things, you're going to see a lot of evidence collected there. If you're new to this things, then it's going to be like a great resource for you to dive into and learn more about this finger we call open glam or open access to cultural heritage.
Unknown Speaker 09:44
That's great. And if anyone has questions Scann is the expert on this interface. So we're honored to have her with us. And now we pass the mic to a Joe Jones Dale maida. Hello, everyone.
Unknown Speaker 09:58
Can Can everybody hear me Okay. Okay, so I'm going to share my screen. Let's see if this all goes smoothly.
Unknown Speaker 10:13
And,
Unknown Speaker 10:16
and now of course, I can't see you, I can see some of you. Oh, okay, I can see some folks up here. Let me know. Can you see my screen? Okay? Okay, so I'm going to start off just with a land and ancestral acknowledgement. We're all this embodied right now in the virtual round, but we actually are physically standing on land wherever we might be. So I am here. I live in Brooklyn and work at the Brooklyn Museum and Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Museum stands on land that is part of the unseated ancestral homeland of the lanap Bay, Delaware people. as a sign of respect, we recognize and honor the love that paid Delaware nations, their elders past and present, and future generations, we're committed to addressing exclusions and the ratios of indigenous peoples, and confronting the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism in our work, I invite us to take a minute to silently acknowledge this and other communities, people's ancestors whose shoulders we stand on. And I'll just also share that if you are not sure about the land that you stand on, and the peoples whose legacies that land is founded on, I just dropped into a chat, a link that you can use to look up to see who the various indigenous First Peoples were and are in relationship to your physical location. Thank you. So, over the past few years, the Education team at the Brooklyn Museum has been building a collective vision for how we understand our work. These are some of the goals and strategies that we feel define our pedagogical approach to arts education. So we activate the museum as a participatory space where visitors create meaning through creative expression, critical dialogue, wonder and joy. we nurture dialogue across multiple perspectives in order to shift dominant narratives and to center historically marginalized voices. And here, there's some further bullets that kind of map out a little bit how we approach our work. We employ a social justice oriented, anti racist and culturally responsive approach, we uplift multiple perspectives and ways of knowing we engage visitors multiple intelligences. And we strengthen creativity through visitor centered approaches, including what some of you might be familiar with Visual Thinking strategies known as VTS guided questioning, close looking, etc. So I actually want to zoom in, into on one of the principles one of the kind of framing principles for our approach, A, C, which is the one highlighted in red above which, which says we employ a social justice oriented, anti racist, culturally responsive pedagogy that centers the strength, wisdom and resilience of diverse communities. Over the past couple of years, and especially this year, the education division has been engaged in really trying to understand what we mean by this. And I'd like to share with you all today some of the reflections that we've been grappling with as we delve into these ideas. So it's useful to break down some of these terms to their key underlying components. And when we're delving into these ideas of, of social justice, anti racist, anti oppressive, the idea of oppression itself, really what we're talking about is power. And so I'd like to take a minute to really
Unknown Speaker 14:24
explore as we've been exploring in the education division at bkm. The relationship between our education and concepts of power, as part of our reflection has been around understanding this relationship. And this is actually a conversation which has long roots at the Brooklyn Museum. Booker T. Washington in 80, in 1896, actually made an address at the Brooklyn Museum then known as the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. And in that address, he said many things, one of which were the study of art that does not result in making the strong less willing to oppress the weak means little, and Washington's ideas, which are around basically what today we might term art as a vehicle for social justice. We're no doubt informed and inspired by Frederick Douglass and his, his framework for understanding power. And Washington actually wrote Frederick Douglass biography, which he published in 1899. And Douglas, of course, famously said around this notion of power that power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did. And it never will. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. So Washington, in his statement is inferring that in order for the study of art to make the strong less willing to oppress the weak, it must involve struggle. For arts educators, the context for the struggle is often in the realm of uncomfortable conversations that can arise when we facilitate open ended conversations with a piece of art, either in person in galleries, or currently virtually in the virtual realm. And rather than shying away from these difficult or tense encounters, we really are asked to push ourselves and the audiences with whom we engage to investigate the contours of our discomfort, always remembering to do so with empathy. This is the challenge and the call. But we also can't ignore the history of the institutions who have collected all of these objects over hundreds of years. The Brooklyn Museum evolved as a typical Museum of its time with it with encyclopedic ambitions, fueled and funded by the wealth amassed during this country's Gilded Age of robber barons. It is one of the oldest and largest museums in the United States with roots dating back to 1823. And with collections from across the globe, and convincing around 1.5 million
Unknown Speaker 17:07
works.
Unknown Speaker 17:12
So after closing our doors in March 2020, and buckling down to an intensive period of internal reckoning around issues of social justice, racial injustice, systemic inequities, and the ongoing legacy of white supremacy in the Berkeley museum and across other museums, we began an internal internal dialogue within the education division around this idea of death to museums. This term death to museums was the title of a 2019 edition of Ford museums, a journal produced by students and faculties at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And from there, it's become now the title of a monthly dialogue series that promotes solidarity and exchange among museum workers, through wide ranging workshops, presentations, etc. And we as a division were actually had the opportunity to listen together and to dialogue around a presentation from Dr. Porsche a more more fool some of you may be familiar with. And her presentation focused on this idea of today is a good day for museums to die. So during our October retreat at the education division, we actually then after dialoguing and reflecting on her on her on her presentation, we spent some time doing what we do best looking at images together. And we actually opened up our retreat looking at these three images from the Tarot from different lineages of the Tarot. And we've ETS that together. So starting off with, you know, what's going on in this image or in these images. What else can we find? What do you see that makes you say that, and part of what emerged, I wish if we had time, I would love to actually delve into this together with you all, but I only have 15 minutes, and I have a lot more to say to you all. So please, but but do while I'm talking, take a look and see what comes up for you, across these three images. Part of what emerged for us in collectively was this reflection on the critical importance of death in this moment for the field, and in particular, the idea that ashes are necessary and required as a catalyst for rebirth. So we began to use this as an inspiration as inspiration to begin the work of taking stock of the museum teaching practices and approaches that we are committed to letting die. I'm not sure To die for the sake of dying, but we're committed to letting them die. Because we understand that this is critical in order to riff to make space for the practices, histories and epistemologies, or ways of knowing that inspire us and that nurture our yearning, and our commitment to to liberation. So for me, that has meant looking back to the social movements that have informed my own specific crossroads of identities, as an African American with Southern roots, and Brazilian as a Brazilian with rural roots, and to reflect and learn from the strategies developed by popular education movements across both of these contexts. In my 20s, I became involved with a collective of women of color in Brooklyn, who were deeply inspired by the freedom schools developed during the civil rights movement in this country. And by the writings of women of color. Reflecting on these histories. We developed what we call what we were known as sister to sister and we develop what we call the freedom school for young women of color, which encompass pup political education, youth organizing, creative and artistic expression as strategies for personal and collective transformation. Working with this collective for 10 years has been instrumental for my work at the Brooklyn Museum in terms of understanding how critical it is to lift up the voices, histories and ways of knowing from diverse bipoc communities and especially women, LGBTQ plus and youth voices in those communities. In order to give us the tools that we need to imagine a more liberatory path forward.
Unknown Speaker 21:59
One of the books that most impacted my thinking around these ideas is follow fraidy, the Brazilian adult educator pedagogy of the oppressed, the first time that I read it, I was both inspired but also deeply irritated by his approach, inspired because for him the educator or what he calls the facilitator is the ultimate revolutionary, but irritated because his language continuously betrays a monolithic and often patriarchal understanding of the oppressed.
Unknown Speaker 22:35
Um, that
Unknown Speaker 22:38
being the case. In any case, though, I continue to find deeply inspiring the fact that for him, the true educator or facilitator must be driven by faith. He's also coming from liberation theology. So this idea of an absolute faith in each human beings ability to critically see and interpret the world around them, which will necessarily lead them to liberation, whatever that may look like for them, as long as they're given the opportunity to critically examine their lived experiences. So equally inspiring for, for me and for us. In others in this work, were the voices of scholars, artists and poets like Audrey Lorde, who in the 1970s, and 80s, begin to bring to light the need for an intersectional approach to knowledge to for dismantling oppression. Through their contributions, we can no longer define the oppressed in overly simplistic terms, as if the life experiences of all marginalized and oppressed people were interchangeable. So the very notion of social justice becomes an active endeavor that requires constant vigilance, critical reflection of the world around us balance with self reflection, and humility. So this is an example based on these reflections. This is an example of the work that we've been engaged in, in education. So literally, this was just a little snippet of the document. It's a long document where we've been taking stock of the the modes of interactions with content with audiences and with the institution that for us are examples of, of ongoing oppression. And then the next piece of it is replacing and reimagining these kinds of interactions, but driven by a more liberatory approach, as the pandemic now has confined our interactions with audiences and communities to the virtual realm. We have also begun to critically examine how different program formats platforms and digital content can either reinforce or interrupt oppression part of the critical work Ahead is to understand how systemic racial inequities are being reproduced and reinforced in formal K through 12. Online Learning currently, and in informal virtual programming in order to develop strategies for infusing a popular education or liberatory approach instead. So I'm just going to close with this wonderful quote that I love from Robin Kelly freedom dreams. He says we must tap the well of our own collective imaginations do what earlier generations have done dream. Trying to envision somewhere in advance of nowhere as poet Jang Cortez puts it is an extremely difficult task yet it is a matter of great urgency. Without new visions, we don't know what to build only what what to knock down as art institution, educators, artists, it feels appropriate that we be asked to activate our imaginations to reimagine the role of museums in people's lives. It is about letting go of ways of being that no longer service, and also about activating our ability to birth new possibilities. Thank you. Thank you, john.
Unknown Speaker 26:15
That
Unknown Speaker 26:16
was brilliant.
Unknown Speaker 26:17
We need hours on this.
Unknown Speaker 26:18
I'm
Unknown Speaker 26:19
so pass the mic quickly to nimita as we ponder all of those, those wisdoms.
Unknown Speaker 26:25
Excellent.
Unknown Speaker 26:26
Thank you so much. Thank you, Joe. I mean, we didn't coordinate this ahead of time. But it's absolutely wonderful the way it's going to work together. So I'm super, super excited. I want to pick up on first of all, recognizing where I'm coming from, I am standing on what is now known as Portland, which is the home to many, many, many Native communities. It's the ninth largest population of indigenous communities in an urban center in the United States. And if, if you all have a moment, I strongly encourage you to take a look at what's going on with the native Arts and Culture Center. Foundation, excuse me, and the why you contemporary here in Portland, why you has given over their space and their land, to the native art and culture foundation. It's a it's a small act of reparation, a big act and dollars. But and, and a huge act in terms of making sure that Nick, that contemporary native communities have a space and that we have a location to celebrate the people who have tended to the land that we are guests on or or I should say settlers on guests isn't the word we like to use these days. But I'm speaking fast to try to get everything through. So I apologize for for saying guests, but we are all settlers here. I am an immigrant. I was born in the United States. So I come to you, as an immigrant and a settler from here in Portland, Oregon, what I'm going to do is actually pick up where adjoa has has taken us in terms of understanding some of the kinds of change that needs to happen and to talk to you a lot about some of the workarounds that have been happening in other ways in the craft scape, what I call the graph scape. And this is a way to help you also think about the ways that museums and the structures and museums don't allow for, for people to be represented or self representation. And so people have turned to other kinds of platforms, specifically social media, and other types of things, to find ways to, to circumvent gatekeeping, and be able to, to represent themselves and speak for themselves, not to be spoken for. And as I load up the screen, I will share that I am going to be I'm going to be giving you a whole lot of resources at the end. And I'm going to just put them all in the chat. So it will be a way.
Unknown Speaker 29:07
Oops,
Unknown Speaker 29:08
it will be a way for you to get the information at that point. So sorry. Oh, hold on one second. I'm just going to share my screen real quick. And of course, it's going to give me trouble right now. Sorry about this.
Unknown Speaker 29:33
Am I still online?
Unknown Speaker 29:36
Hello.
Unknown Speaker 29:37
Yes, you're weak. Yeah, you're here. We didn't.
Unknown Speaker 29:40
I'm so sorry. gone all dodgy on the screen. Yeah, I'm just it's not sharing. It's uh, sorry, hold on one second.
Unknown Speaker 29:51
I apologize.
Unknown Speaker 29:53
Oh, there it is.
Unknown Speaker 29:54
Yay. All right.
Unknown Speaker 29:57
So let me go back to the presentation. We tested this and of course, when you test it, it never does it exactly right. When you get online are you will see my Presenter View or the presentation
Unknown Speaker 30:10
Presenter View?
Unknown Speaker 30:13
How about no? presentation?
Unknown Speaker 30:15
Okay, great. All right.
Unknown Speaker 30:17
So we're gonna start by talking about a couple of these ways in which the the communities have been building as models. And I think some of you may be familiar with things like Ravelry, which is an online space for knitters, hundreds of 1000s of people are engaged here. It's a great example of what Abigail de casa Nick talks about his rogue archives as these spaces in which the internet and social media allow other kinds of archives to be built. The tricky thing about these kinds of archives, as we know is that they are precarious. They are run by volunteers, they are not necessarily following the quote unquote, standards that we have set up in museums, which is problematic in so many ways, partly because of what it really describes, but also partly problematic because it means that when volunteer labor disappears, many of these kinds of archives may disappear as well. I'm also interested in the way in which a certain generation of particularly women have come into view through social media and through through the internet. And I'm thinking specifically about people who were involved in handmade nation, which some of you may know is faith Levine's project. And Lisa Congdon is a great example of someone who was working in one kind of field and through the internet was able to build a following and now is working full time as an artist and illustrator. And Kate Megaman Berg, who is a faculty member at Portland State University is another great example of someone who started using Flickr as a place to start posting images of her work, her work skyrocketed. And now she speaks at dozens and dozens of conferences. Some of you may know her work, and she teaches at Portland State. These are two examples of women who basically use social media and use these different platforms that are workarounds in order to build an audience and create a space for craft. And they are now I would say this has been going on given their ages almost about 15 to 20 years ago, that this all has been taking place. It also was happening through Instagram. And this is a project by umihara. A. It's called pots in action. And basically what this did is it was a five year project. And every week there would be a different theme. And then you me would put a hashtag for the theme. So it might be pa education, or pa woodfired. And anybody who put that hashtag on their image would get tagged. And so Instagram working the way that it's supposed to, would allow for hundreds and 1000s of people to tag their images, and all come together. And what happened is the though the way in which it functioned is that, that it just basically built an opportunity for the clay community around the globe, mostly in northern hemisphere spaces, I would say, but allowed for anyone who had internet access and could upload the images to be able to join in and include their images in this project. The problem is that right now, the image the the the result is an image like this. It's basically the Instagram feed, and the project has ended. But the dynamism of the way that the internet works and the way Instagram works doesn't show itself in this Instagram feed or on the website. And now I Yumi is raising money to build a website to track and document the work that she had done. But I highly recommend you take a look at the work that she was doing here. I also want to bring your attention to Tiffany moments black craftspeople.org Tiffany found that there was a museum she was doing research on Southern decorative arts, specifically on African American representation. And in southern decorative arts. There was a museum that has 90,000 objects out of those 90,000 objects. 6000 are specified as being made by free or formerly enslaved African Americans out of that only 60 or 70 identified as being made by females. So there's a whole lot of layers of problems going on in the database in how it's being tagged, and who is being represented in that. What she has done is a really interesting way of tracking through looking at announcements in newspapers advertisements that talk about Purchasing bodies or advertisements that are about people who have run away and are trying to seek freedom, she has found a way to use those advertisements to identify places where there were crafts people, blacksmiths Weaver's, etc, carpenters, and is using a map to track where that location is. So it's a way to, again, circumvent these archives that are object centric, and are built in a certain way for museums, because that's the work that we do. And I should say, I've worked most of my professional life in museums, so I understand the the structures and systems. But I'm really excited about the way that something like this takes material culture takes ways of working, and flips it into another way.
Unknown Speaker 35:57
I've experimented when I was the curator and director at Museum of Contemporary craft in Portland. And I think I wanted to bring this in, because I really think it's important to have examples of small museums. Outside of the major, major, major cities in the United States, we were a small museum, we had about an average attendance was about 30 to 40,000 a year, it was about 3000 square feet, this particular project was allowed people to borrow bowls and send pictures in and then there's a Tumblr blog where everybody's stories and pictures were placed on there. And it gave a chance for the communities, specifically children, that was the exciting thing for me whoops, for our children to be able to share their stories about how they tend to cared for and interacted with the bowls. And it gave a sense of ownership of the space of the objects and of this the museum as a cultural center in Portland. We also did another projects where we went through and systematically took weaving drafts from one artist, and turn them into digital drafts, which are then available that they were available in the exhibition and on the website, where artists who were resident artists could come in and use the same drafts to create work, as well as when we put them online, other people could access them, and put up their Flickr images of the kinds of things that they did with the exact same weaving drafts that were on view at the museum. So again, trying to use these workarounds to bring in community. We also did an exhibition called touching warms the art, which was an interactive contemporary art jewelry exhibition. And there is an archive of some 1600 images of people trying jewelry on. So it allowed for the artists who are in from 67 countries to see how people engage their work, but then also to allow people to use these sort of as a quick snapshot of the their experience from a particular day. So the last thing I wanted to touch on are a couple of things. You know, when we look at things like a tombstone label, I I'm really struck by how a tombstone label reads like the entry in an encyclopedia. And basically, when you start looking at something like cotton, cotton listed in the encyclopedia is listed as a material it's it's something that's extracted or cultivated, or, or harvested from the earth. And then cotton is listed potentially in the tombstone label in the museum as well. And they are cotton has a very, very different meaning it's about a woven textile, it's in a different form. We don't make these distinctions. But then when you look at these, and these are things that many of you know, but it just struck me recently, how much this speaks to our lack of understanding of where materials come from, and the lack of understanding about the structures that are in place in our online databases that are invisible to students, and my students are older men, the average age of my students is 39. But when I try to talk to them about the different ways in which the internet is re inscribing or restructuring, some of the the the the enlightened been based categories of how we understand material and matter as being something separate from humans and humans also being hierarchy just as well, of course, they don't see it. And it's because there are things like this that are so deeply ingrained in how we structure our information. That still we don't the disallow for us to do the work around, which ties back in and I'll just conclude with this, but it ties back in with what a Joe was pointing out that we have got to stop and rethink how we are conveying information, what information we need to share and figure out how to have different voices in the process. If we are to actually make changes to, to not just re inscribing and transferring over certain structures right into the Internet, and the way that we continue to put forth museums and collections in this in this space. Thank you. I'm going to put my chat and all the references in the chat for you. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 40:26
That was incredible. And then Mita. And I do have that I feel really full and really, really inspired and challenged in really, in all of the right ways. Thank you so much for both of your presentations. I just dropped and it might be hard to find. So I'm at scans also going to drop a link to mentee Comm. It's not a link, actually, we're going to do a quick little poll to start to get our minds thinking about how we are going to work with the information, the incredible information we just received, and how we're going to position ourselves within it, we're going to start to get a little bit embodied. So meant if you go to menti.com on your browser, and there's a passcode there, you will be presented with a question. And thank you, Evelyn put in the direct link as well.
Unknown Speaker 41:23
The question is, who do you serve as
Unknown Speaker 41:26
an educator, and please check all that apply, I'm going to share my screen and you will start to see the results coming in from what everyone says. So as people enter their, their results, we can in real time see who people are working with directly. And if you yourself, don't if you do not consider yourself to be an educator, what kind of learner are you? That's the other way you can approach this question. So it looks like we have a really nice even mix here. Actually, which sort of signals to me that every that most people work with most of these people, most of these types of learners.
Unknown Speaker 42:27
So this is a great segue to our learners that Garrett has been working with here at creationists as we are testing out our fellows developing our fellows program. So I will let you can continue to answer this question through mente. As our as Garrett introduces our fellows and you'll see me again in a little bit.
Unknown Speaker 42:50
Yeah, I think we'll go now to Jing and she's just doing in three minutes segment she'll pass the mic to undress. pass the mic to Francisca, and Francisco pass the mic to Magali.
Unknown Speaker 43:03
Hello, everyone. I'm Jean. I'm a museum publisher. I graduated from UT museum study program last year. I'm also a researcher of Asia Pacific War. Today I'm going to share my knowledge about the virtual offerings of Chinese museums. I'm going to share my screen now. hope it works. Okay. Can you see that?
Unknown Speaker 43:33
Yeah. Okay, perfect. Okay,
Unknown Speaker 43:36
I'm trying to do it in three minutes, which is quite impossible. But let me try. Okay, first, a glance of Chinese museums. There are more than 5000 museums registered museums in China by 2019. And you can see there's a boom during the past 10 years. In 2019, Chinese museums received over 1 billion visitors that can be explained by their free admission policy, about 90% of those museums offer free admission and about 70% of the museums are state owned. So they they have their funding from the state which enables them to to offer free admission. Okay, now, about the virtue offering of Chinese museums. This is a this is a this is happening now. Because China started the pandemic started in China late 2019. So they there's a Chinese museum reacted really quickly. By July 2020. They launched more than 2000 online exhibitions and received the 5 billion pageviews during the panel. Make. And the administration launched a one stop platform where the audience can get access to all those online exhibitions they could choose, they could filter on exhibition by by provinces by theme by category and date, I'm going to share with you a few typical virtual offerings. My taps are for butcher offerings later. When I was a puppet, one of the most popular exhibition online exhibitions to offer the same exhibition, what you're looking here is offered by the Forbidden City, the What did they did is to select objects from their huge collection. Mind you, this is a Royal Collection of China, those those objects are one way or another related to the celebration of a spring festival. So here, what you really learn is not only about those objects, but also how people celebrated Spring Festival, the Chinese New Year, in ancient times, especially in the palaces by the royal families. And next, they also have virtual tours. This is a this is especially appealing one, it is a site Museum, like this one, you could, you could choose where to go. And you could actually go into the caves to see the murals to see the sculptures. And the third type is is very straightforward. A lot of museums share their archives, on digital archives with basically tombstone information about objects. And the final type of the final category is this is a physical, this is a physical exhibition turn into an online exhibition. It's quite similar to what Google arts all have been offering, you could actually go into their gallery, you can walk around, and if you click on the objects, it pops up with the information of background about the project. Because I've been working with Chinese museums for over 15 years. We published their catalogs their souvenir guys, I worked with about 15 major museums in China. So I can see this how this this is what shoe offering can offer like a breakdown the Wars of those museums and bring the their collection their space to a much wider audience. So that's my presentation. I hope I didn't go over time. And thank you.
Unknown Speaker 48:14
All right, well, thank you Yang, first and foremost, for that very insightful presentation. Very difficult to follow up to. But um, I will do definitely try my best. Hi, everyone. My name is Rios as seeing I'm also a recent graduate student from the University of Toronto's Faculty of information. I graduated though, with a dual Master's both in Information Systems assignment as well as museum studies, because I'm fascinated by the potential of democratically created systems, regardless of the field, but particularly in our glam sector. That's where I met creationists. So with them, I coordinate a series of fascinating interviews that will soon be published as features on creationist websites with thought leaders that have are currently working on bringing out their projects for decolonize Digital cultural heritage. So we spoke with thought leaders like Stacy, Allison Kazan from the University of New York, who are thinking about using tools like wiki data, or Wikimedia to bring the control over digital assets of indigenous communities to the actual source communities, make them part of the creation of this new systems. At the same time I worked well we interviewed members of the policy control or Regional Museum in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, where I come from, to also get a better idea of well what are the socio economic challenges and realities that are holding that are locking the presentation of their regional again, acids and cultural heritage to a broader base through online means For my own professional track, I also focus and I'm fascinated by the concept of ethical AI, like open digital connections, I think it's a field that requires or now is finally asking the question of who gets to be in the discussion table, to create solutions that actually cater everyone's needs to bring in the users to a conversation, as opposed to just having technology for technology's sake. So from focusing on this path, I was able to work with the digital creation Institute, also at the University of Toronto, where we're coming up with new methodologies or new ways to design systems, such that we have everyone's voice on the table. So we're using things such as subsystem methodology, user centered design methodologies, like empathy mapping, like we're going to use later today, to actually ask, Well, what is this? Who is the system meant to service and how we can ensure that from the beginning, this system is ethically based. And it's not something that is just a matter of check listing at the end, or once it is in use? And finally, another project I'm very excited about, but I, it still will, it's in the process of being authored me and some colleagues from the University of Toronto working on literature review of AI strategies and guidelines from around the world in order to in order to sorry, that's my cue for three minutes. I'm about to wrap up. But we're basically conducting your literature review, to understand well, what are the trends, most common trends in terms of fair, sustainable, transparent AI principles, but not so much for the systems, but for the socio economic impact that they have? So let's think about AI ethically, but not just, you know, so the system itself is ethically, but the system in sense of the users and how it affects them. So that's me. And yeah, looking forward to this session. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 51:57
Thanks, Francisco.
Unknown Speaker 52:03
Thanks. Somebody else that was really interesting. We should talk sometime.
Unknown Speaker 52:07
Okay, three minutes on the clock. There we go. My name is Francisco. Hi, everyone. I am a graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where I am working on a dual master's program in art history and art administration policy. My work focuses on the dissemination of our historical information online, I do a lot of research on the digital methods used by cultural institutions to kind of date their repositories to reflect accessible content with like various perspectives and decentralized art historical cannons, that ultimately elevate decolonial narratives. I think a lot about the ethical challenges that come with sharing openly. I think, mass digitization is a fascinating phenomenon of our time. In college, I majored in art history and mathematics. And I'm always trying to put that math degree to good use. So I believe in the ability of pure mathematical logic to help us explore the invisible systems, the ways in which we communicate in this digital age and make visible the big picture behind the algorithms that construct our everyday networks, and the ways we share information with each other. The book algorithms of oppression by Sophia noble is a great example of how the systems we've created propagate things like racism. So my research revolves around this idea of digital colonialism. The idea that data is colonized, the digital cultural record is colonized, that the use of digital technologies like 3d printing, and scanning can be ways of colonizing cultural sites and artifacts. So I really do praise projects like curation is for working towards fixing these problems, that things that let you know, things that Google arts and culture, for example, are creating for cultural heritage. And I'm definitely on board with trying to collectively write history, multiple histories, as opposed to just reproducing what we see on textbooks. And you're mostly thinking about young art history students, I see so many at my school struggling to write in this art speak. And I think about some of the papers that I wrote in undergrad and I cringe because I learned all these messed up ideals about what the profession should look like. I also think a lot about ownership and what that means. So in terms of thinking about things like cleaning patrimony when we talk about repatriation, who gets to decide what's shown, what gets digitized, what gets given to someone else, what metadata is attached to it. The various forms of acknowledgement for looted colonial objects for example, is is on a special Drum. And I'm also wondering if anyone here knows the difference between repatriation and restitution of cultural heritage and their different implications when it comes to like this conversation of acknowledging the past. I've been trying to figure that out. And okay, I'm almost done. I think about ownership also specifically in its impact to new media art, because new media art is a network based art. Because the, because of its the mass production that comes along with the decision, a lot of new media art embraces the changing state of artistic originality, things like appropriation remix, open sharing things that blur the boundaries of ownership. And I think these are these are truly visionaries. I mean, what will they do with open access to something like the Art Institute of Chicago's public API, so I love working with them directly, I created a show last year called fix equals death, I'll drop a link in the chat. Yeah, if you want to talk about new media art, that's what my thesis is all about. So I'd be happy to chat about it.
Unknown Speaker 56:07
My golly,
Unknown Speaker 56:10
thanks, got my timer. Hi, everyone. My name is Mike Gatto, I'm a master's student at U of T of the program of museum studies. And while I haven't had a lot of experience working in organizations, but I'm trying to figure out my path as a museum professional for the future, and while exploring all my my, my options, during the the master's program, I became very inspired by a volunteer position that I took for the SOS association of the Windsor university students, it's students offering support, and they have this amazing project of scientific workshops that are delivered to indigenous communities in Guatemala. So my participation there is only as a translator of the worships, right, so I, I am the link between the Canadian students and the white Marlin students that that are sharing scientific knowledge. So that brought me to think that maybe we I wanna focus on working on develop systems that allow Canadian, or North American cultural institutions to connect with the institutions in other in these communities in these countries that they do have their own knowledge that all our all of us at work are looking for know, like, sometimes these decolonization process in my head is so hard to implement, because we don't really get the roots of where all these pieces are all these aren't all of the love the museum collections are coming from. So I've been thinking about what if we link together communities with communities, right, like people of color, not only from North America, but what about all the people of color communities in South America and Central America, they have a lot to say, and we have a lot to learn from them. But the bridge is broken just now. Right? It's everything that we can learn from them, but what about the what they can learn from us? And if we bring this content directly to them, what can we get from them? From my experiences in these workshops, I have noticed that Canadian students are amazed by everything that they have learned from the students in Guatemala, right, so this position of power, where they share knowledge about science, it's violence, when they are amazed by the culture of this of these people and their and their hearts, and they willingness to share what they're proud of their culture, and therefore they make to participate in this worship. I'm thinking if we move that perspective, not only for these students that want to make change, but also for big institutions, when they see our culture and how art can make an impact and, and the meaning that it has for for communities directly. So my idea is to try to work on developing a model that could that could improve inter institutional collaboration with between North American and South and Central American institutions to enhance this to improve this communication. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker 59:39
See the future collaboration, everyone, we're witnessing it here. Thank you. Magali. I pass the mic to Virginia to start us on the empathy mapping activity.
Unknown Speaker 59:47
Remind me we have we're done at one right. Okay. So we're going to do this pretty quickly. I'm going to actually before we start mapping, I'm going to send you back to minty calm. And I have one more question for you. There. To get us going. So menti.com if somebody can drop that in the chat for me minty calm and the code is 6584757. And I will share my screen so you can all see that. So if you can go in and I want you to start to
Unknown Speaker 1:00:22
think about,
Unknown Speaker 1:00:24
this is all fast, we're getting lots of information. And now we're going to workshop and we only have 30 minutes. So we're going quickly. So I want to just take a minute to think. And I want us to focus on what does it means to empathize. And how do we empathize. So we can get in the right mindset for the workshop. Care and justice, to feel what someone else is feeling, listening, listening humility, to remember, it's interesting to remember listening, to honor to put yourself in someone else's shoes. you empathize by listening and trying to understand compassion.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:08
Connect with and understand another's perspective. To fully and openly listen and hear and relate. decentralize our egos decentralizing our egos. That's a very good one. Get out of our own way. Consciousness. Listen, listen, actively listen deep. Listen, constantly Listen, and remember, listening and working to understand one another's feeling patients. Understand that dialogue is an exchange, not a conversation. Interesting. Yeah, it's definitely an exchange. And there is a lot of conversation required in order to properly be able to walk in someone else's shoes. Stop the diversity and equity written on google doc and act and fund and support the diversity and equity putting the money where the mouth is. humility, the center self being critical of your own perspectives, recognizing our privilege, and counter encounter, I think that's probably from Garrett. Is that true the encounter to devote our full attention and Quire CRO cullison care accept others lived experiences might be completely different to your own, but are just as valid, to see, to be with to think and act from your heart and mind about how others think and act with the intent to connect. And to understand or at least to try to. That's great. So, um, I'm not going to switch gears, and we're going to start our empathy mapping project. So if scan if you can drop the empathy map link. It's a separate neural board in the chat. So again, remember, if you get lost in here, you can always come down to the navigation window and find your way. But this is when we should be break, sent in to break out rooms. But before we do that, I'm just going to say there are three things that we're going to be doing. We're going to use sticky notes to brainstorm what our learner thinks says and feels and does. And then we're going to organize those notes into pains and gains. Each group is going to have either Garrett myself or one of the fellows. And the scenario that we're thinking about is the learner seeks information about a digital object from a museum collection.