Authenticity and Voice
Togbes Rule: Storytelling about Traditional Leadership, Togbes, Queen Mothers, and Their Subjects
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nathan Crook, D. Rose Elder
Generations-old narratives about traditional leaders among the Ewe of Ghana continue to inform contemporary culture and shape the decision-making process. This performance art form serves to remind leaders and community members of their shared humanity and needs. The stories provide a moral education much like a passion play. They are an artistic rendering of values and norms, which guide leaders to use the collective wisdom to perform and transform small town life into vibrant satisfactory modern communities. Annually in 2016-2018, the Ghana Research and Education Abroad groups collected stories from Ewe storytellers. During this research, the participating undergraduates and faculty members heard many stories about togbes: stories about commoners winning the hand of a princess through brave feats or cunning; stories of togbes arbitrating between quarreling neighbors; stories of animals vying against each other to be king; and stories of Ayiyi the spider tricking togbes. These led us to seek to understand how the role of togbe has changed through the years and how the perception of Ewe subjects has evolved using storytelling as a way into the culture.
Reparation: Biloela 1871-1887
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kathryn Jeanes
Unfortunately, to date, no visual records of the girls are apparent, no photographs are archived from this period as witness to their lives and events. As a result of these findings and the government ambivalence to this shameful period in child welfare, a site specific exhibition of 16 handmade artist books was installed in an atmospheric convict built space on the island. The contemporary archive exhibition created an empathetic framework responding to this colonial period of child welfare which had been previously neglected. It gave a voice to the girls and allowed a transition of information from passive to public by tactile engagement with books.
Storytheatre for Seniors: Loneliness, Memory and Community
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Margot Marie Wood
The elderly often experience social isolation and depression - the highest percentage of any age group. This can lead to an excessive preoccupation with self. According to Mienczakowski (1997) storytelling can remedy this. The storyteller becomes more outward looking, and, as a result, less lonely, as a sense of community is fostered. The telling of a personal story invests the personal life with significance, according to Bauman (1986) and Bruner (1986) which in turn influences behaviour positively. Storytheatre can draw the elderly into a shared social event as they share and enact stories. It celebrates differences whilst making connections (Salas 1993). According to Razack(1993), this liberates the self and releases underlying backstories which can break the silence on underlying socio-political issues. In a society steeped in a violent and troubled past, this especially becomes significant. Rappaport (2000) believed that `community cannot be community without shared narrative.` In addition, Storytelling stimulates the brain as it provides multi-sensory stimuli. This study documents a Storytheatre project conducted in a senior service centre. It draws on many of the elements of Playback theatre as described by Fox (1999) but without the use of outside performers.
Mediating Difference at the Post-Industrial Periphery
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Stephanie King
In Britain, the immediate legacies of the abandonment of the post-war settlement were registered in the cultural field through the emergence of a body of radical documentary that sought to reveal the structural nature of social inequality. Perhaps the most complex, yet hitherto neglected of those projects, was Exit Photography Group’s 1982 photobook 'Survival Programmes in Britain’s Inner Cities'. This paper will propose to recover the important legacy of Exit's project, while also situating the project within a discourse on the politics of representation and political activism forged in resistance to the ‘Rightward’ turn that took place in Britain during the 1970s. My work is performed through a close engagement with work of Stuart Hall and the literature that emerged from Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham during the seventies and eighties. It also deals with postcolonial theory and socialism.
