Migration, Adaptation, Innovation 1500-1800
Lead Research Organisation:
Northumbria University
Department Name: Fac of Arts, Design and Social Sciences
Abstract
Today, when mass migration coincides with a high skill economy's ever-growing need for constant technological innovation, the project's central question is burning: what makes for successful immigration, technological innovation, and knowledge transfer? The effective management of these three permitted Europe to first industrialise. Global knowledge transfers and the migration of skilled practitioners have been crucial for innovation and technological improvement in general and in particular for the 'Great Divergence', the process by which Europe overtook Asia as the world's manufacturing centre. This project focusses on this vital period of shifting balances.
Case studies have shown both that skilled migration can strengthen or even birth new industries (think of the Huguenots bringing silk weaving to England and Prussia, or immigrant and first-generation Jews founding and running Hollywood) and that, to establish new technologies and manufactures, entrepreneurs and governments need to involve experts, often from abroad. This could be voluntary: in the eighteenth century Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan of Mysore attracted French and Ottoman experts in weapons technology and instrument making, while, as Gottmann's research has shown, French officials invited groups of Indian and Levantine cotton weavers to develop the French cotton industry. But it wasn't always a matter of choice. Many artisans came as refugees and some were expressly kidnapped: Japan's porcelain industry in and around Arita only took off after the enslaving of skilled ceramics craftsmen during the invasions of Korea in the 1590s, sometimes referred to as 'the Pottery Wars'.
Such case studies however remain local and situation specific. To come to broad conclusions about which factors influenced the success or failure both of the integration of expert migrants and of the diffusion of their skills and products, we need systematic globally-comparative and interdisciplinary studies.
This is what this project offers. Building on Gottmann's interdisciplinary work in global history, notably her internationally-recognised monograph that features the project's pilot study, it combines economic history, migration studies, science and technology studies, and material culture. It sets out to investigate the conditions for, and obstacles to, the successful application and diffusion of the knowledge and skills brought by immigrant experts in the early modern world, specifically including non-elite, non-European, and female migrants. In order to evaluate the relative importance of technical, material, institutional, economic, socio-cultural, and personal or locational factors, it will concentrate on the most inventive manufacturing industries of the time which had close ties both to formal scientific enquiry and to state-support schemes in an age when nascent industrialisation coincided with interstate rivalries: textiles, ceramics, instrument making, and weapons technology. Comparative across time and space it will contrast case-studies from Europe and its colonies (PI), the Middle East, South and East Asia (two postdocs) in the period before Western hegemony: 1500 to 1800.
Next producing co-authored papers, articles, a monograph, and an edited volume of essays based on the international project conference ('Migration and Expertise: 1500 to the present day'), the team will work with its museum and community organisation partners to foster a broader debate about the value of immigrant skills. We will run a series of outreach, policy, and knowledge exchange events with current migrants and we will work with our partner museums to run teacher training events, develop resources for visitors, families and educators, and both contribute to their galleries and curate our own virtual exhibition on the project website.
Case studies have shown both that skilled migration can strengthen or even birth new industries (think of the Huguenots bringing silk weaving to England and Prussia, or immigrant and first-generation Jews founding and running Hollywood) and that, to establish new technologies and manufactures, entrepreneurs and governments need to involve experts, often from abroad. This could be voluntary: in the eighteenth century Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan of Mysore attracted French and Ottoman experts in weapons technology and instrument making, while, as Gottmann's research has shown, French officials invited groups of Indian and Levantine cotton weavers to develop the French cotton industry. But it wasn't always a matter of choice. Many artisans came as refugees and some were expressly kidnapped: Japan's porcelain industry in and around Arita only took off after the enslaving of skilled ceramics craftsmen during the invasions of Korea in the 1590s, sometimes referred to as 'the Pottery Wars'.
Such case studies however remain local and situation specific. To come to broad conclusions about which factors influenced the success or failure both of the integration of expert migrants and of the diffusion of their skills and products, we need systematic globally-comparative and interdisciplinary studies.
This is what this project offers. Building on Gottmann's interdisciplinary work in global history, notably her internationally-recognised monograph that features the project's pilot study, it combines economic history, migration studies, science and technology studies, and material culture. It sets out to investigate the conditions for, and obstacles to, the successful application and diffusion of the knowledge and skills brought by immigrant experts in the early modern world, specifically including non-elite, non-European, and female migrants. In order to evaluate the relative importance of technical, material, institutional, economic, socio-cultural, and personal or locational factors, it will concentrate on the most inventive manufacturing industries of the time which had close ties both to formal scientific enquiry and to state-support schemes in an age when nascent industrialisation coincided with interstate rivalries: textiles, ceramics, instrument making, and weapons technology. Comparative across time and space it will contrast case-studies from Europe and its colonies (PI), the Middle East, South and East Asia (two postdocs) in the period before Western hegemony: 1500 to 1800.
Next producing co-authored papers, articles, a monograph, and an edited volume of essays based on the international project conference ('Migration and Expertise: 1500 to the present day'), the team will work with its museum and community organisation partners to foster a broader debate about the value of immigrant skills. We will run a series of outreach, policy, and knowledge exchange events with current migrants and we will work with our partner museums to run teacher training events, develop resources for visitors, families and educators, and both contribute to their galleries and curate our own virtual exhibition on the project website.
Planned Impact
Anxieties about rapid technological change and fears about the negative impact of migration have damaged social cohesion, democratic governance and the economy not only in the UK but globally. They have also significantly worsened the psychological and social situation of immigrants exposed to a newly 'hostile environment'. This project sets out to change perceptions of immigration. Longer-term perspectives that demonstrate the historic prevalence of migration and its positive impacts can help ease anxieties and concrete case studies can bring this overall abstract narrative to life and demonstrate its relevance to individual lives. From its inception the project will thus engage with the wider public not only through media interventions and its own website, but through more concrete targeted dissemination and engagement via its ongoing collaborations with third sector organisations, all the while contributing to an active knowledge exchange with, and capacity building of, these organisations themselves.
MUSEUM AND HERITAGE SECTOR. The project relies on its close partnership with TWAM, the German Museum of Technology (DTM), the Durham Oriental Museum and the Bowes Museum which are central to our research. In regular meetings with our collaborating curators we will develop a series of 'object stories' that will feature in targeted guides for visitors, in the virtual exhibition we will develop out of our conference, and in the Oriental Museum's 'Silk Road' and TWAM's Discovery Museum 'Destination Tyneside' galleries which we will help redesign in collaboration with our community partners. Our collaboration with the DTM will engage an international public with our research and offer them new insights into our partners' collections.
COMMUNITY ORGANISATIONS. We are partnering with TOP, The Other Perspective, a community interest organisation working to foster the economic inclusion of migrants. Together we will develop case studies that highlight current migrants' economic and social contributions. These stories will then feature on our website and in our partner museums' guides and exhibitions. Knowledge exchange will culminate in a workshop at the Discovery Museum, highlighting migrants' (historic) contribution to British and global society. In collaboration with TOP we will devise a policy paper and media interventions to highlight our findings about which factors have historically contributed success and failure both of the integration of the migrant and the adaptation and diffusion of his or her skills and outputs.
EDUCATORS: Young people are key to changing narratives and perceptions. Targeting families, primary and secondary teachers we aim to engage pupils with the positive role of migrants in the past through interacting with the objects they created. In collaboration with our partner museums we will run a one-day teacher training workshop at the Oriental Museum and develop guided tours and trails, family and educator packs with teaching materials and holiday activities that can be downloaded from our website or used to run activities and onsite. Our Discovery Museum workshop will bring teachers in conversation with migrant.
WIDER PUBLIC: The public interest in establishing what makes for successful immigration, technological innovation, and knowledge transfer is beyond doubt. Through our engagement with teachers, museum visitors, and workshop and conference participants we will address a broad cross-section of the population. We intend to widen this by disseminating our findings, again in collaboration with our partner organisations, through the publication of a policy paper, our website, and media interventions, notably on world refugee day.
MUSEUM AND HERITAGE SECTOR. The project relies on its close partnership with TWAM, the German Museum of Technology (DTM), the Durham Oriental Museum and the Bowes Museum which are central to our research. In regular meetings with our collaborating curators we will develop a series of 'object stories' that will feature in targeted guides for visitors, in the virtual exhibition we will develop out of our conference, and in the Oriental Museum's 'Silk Road' and TWAM's Discovery Museum 'Destination Tyneside' galleries which we will help redesign in collaboration with our community partners. Our collaboration with the DTM will engage an international public with our research and offer them new insights into our partners' collections.
COMMUNITY ORGANISATIONS. We are partnering with TOP, The Other Perspective, a community interest organisation working to foster the economic inclusion of migrants. Together we will develop case studies that highlight current migrants' economic and social contributions. These stories will then feature on our website and in our partner museums' guides and exhibitions. Knowledge exchange will culminate in a workshop at the Discovery Museum, highlighting migrants' (historic) contribution to British and global society. In collaboration with TOP we will devise a policy paper and media interventions to highlight our findings about which factors have historically contributed success and failure both of the integration of the migrant and the adaptation and diffusion of his or her skills and outputs.
EDUCATORS: Young people are key to changing narratives and perceptions. Targeting families, primary and secondary teachers we aim to engage pupils with the positive role of migrants in the past through interacting with the objects they created. In collaboration with our partner museums we will run a one-day teacher training workshop at the Oriental Museum and develop guided tours and trails, family and educator packs with teaching materials and holiday activities that can be downloaded from our website or used to run activities and onsite. Our Discovery Museum workshop will bring teachers in conversation with migrant.
WIDER PUBLIC: The public interest in establishing what makes for successful immigration, technological innovation, and knowledge transfer is beyond doubt. Through our engagement with teachers, museum visitors, and workshop and conference participants we will address a broad cross-section of the population. We intend to widen this by disseminating our findings, again in collaboration with our partner organisations, through the publication of a policy paper, our website, and media interventions, notably on world refugee day.
Organisations
- Northumbria University (Lead Research Organisation)
- DURHAM UNIVERSITY (Collaboration)
- Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums (Collaboration)
- German Museum of Technology (Collaboration, Project Partner)
- The Bowes Museum (Collaboration, Project Partner)
- Oriental Museum (Project Partner)
- The Other Perspective (TOP) (Project Partner)
Publications
Dewière R
(2023)
Migration and innovation in early modern Islamic societies. The case for firearms
in History Compass
Van Swet F
(2024)
Migration and Technological Dialogue in Early Modern East Asia: A Historiographical Review
in History Compass
| Description | 1) ACADEMICALLY 1.1) A new interdisciplinary research area Our project has led to the nucleation of a new and exciting interdisciplinary area of research investigating the crucial role that migrants played in the technological and economic development of early modernity. There was no established methodology for this, so we have drawn together research on transculturation, contact zones, and métissage in cultural and imperial history; on global material cultures in art history; on the concepts of embodied knowledge, artisanal epistemologies, and actor-network theory from science and technology studies (STS); on innovation theory and global networks in sociology and anthropology; and brought these into conversation with quantitative and qualitative approaches from economics. Since we know that knowledge was embodied and moved with people even more so than with objects, our project's hypothesis was that migration of people must always have led to new and hybrid techniques and products, that is to product and process innovations as given goods and technologies had to adapt to new social, material, political, and economic contexts. We set out to investigate if and how this really happened in practice and what factors then contributed to the success or failure of both the migrant's career and his or her skills and outputs. Developing and launching an ambitious research agenda on migration-led innovation can only be a genuinely collaborative and interdisciplinary endeavour, both inside and outside of academia. Our international project conference brought together researchers from across history, STS, anthropology, art history, and economics and we are currently revising the proceedings into an edited volume. Together with the various articles we have published or submitted, this volume will establish and shape migration-led innovation as a new field of investigation. We have already had uptake from other disciplines and beyond academia: our research will feature in an economics handbook on migration and innovation and has already led to a number of initiatives in and with our partner organisations. 1.2) Research findings As a project we had a clear mission. We set out to answer a series of fundamental questions - and have indeed done so, most notably in our major co-authored piece that has received a revise-and-resubmit and is currently again under review in our discipline's leading journal, Past and Present. These questions were: Which factors contributed to the integration of the migrant? Which factors contributed to the success of their outputs? Which factors contributed to the adaptation and diffusion of their skills? (How) Were migration and innovation linked? And finally, for the PI in particular: what was the contribution of migrants to 'The Great Divergence', the process in which Europe for the first time in history replaced Asia and the Middle East as the economic centre of the world? In our work we found that while the link between migration and innovation had indeed been investigated thoroughly when it comes to the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, we know next to nothing about earlier historical periods. And yet in the early modern period, in a time before standardization and precision tools, the embodied component of technology - and hence the importance of physical movement of skilled practitioners - would have been even more significant. To study this connection, we proposed a non-Eurocentric and non-presentist definition of "innovation" which includes adaptation, restoration, and locale-specific innovation. By applying this definition to a survey and typology of early modern migration, we were able to demonstrate that this migration-innovation nexus operated on a global scale and across cultural boundaries. Taken together, our case studies from across Europe, the Islamic World, and Asia show how this link worked in practice, focussing on migrant agency and experience. This enabled us to identify which factors influenced the success of both migrant experience and product or process innovation in the early modern world. The first factor, we found, was the existence of a supportive political framework on the macro and the micro level. Political power structures provided a mixture of coercive frameworks, incentives and support, for skilled migrants. However, even with strong political support, success was not guaranteed. Locational factors were equally important for a successful technological dialogue to take place. Environment remained key: migrant experts required access to the right kind of materials, not necessarily the same as they would have used in the past, but ones that could potentially be substituted. For this they also required at least some level of pre-existing expertise and human capital in the host population, otherwise collaboration or even apprenticeships would be impossible. To explain this, we coined the concept of a "shared craft culture" or "technological language". This concept bridges technological and socio-cultural factors. Because a basic level of shared technological language was not the only socio-cultural precondition necessary for success. The host culture had to have at least a certain degree of openness and acceptance of foreigners: a willingness to form partnerships, be those social or economic. For innovation and skills - as opposed to mere objects and trade goods - to transcend cultural boundaries, actual inter-personal exchange and collaboration were indispensable - and indeed continue to be so today. However, we also found that it was not only host societies which had to meet technological and socio-cultural preconditions: so did the migrants themselves. When it came to craft technologies, migrants had to have the right skill set for the new situation they found themselves in. Mastering a weaving technique that made for products not in demand in their host society for instance, was unhelpful. But migrants have more than one skillset of course. Adaptability clearly was key, and here, socio-cultural factors counted for as much as straightforwardly technological ones. Amongst the skillset a migrant required, soft skills - that is flexibility diplomacy and political nous - were perhaps the most important. Numerically, early modern migration was undoubtedly less important than in later centuries, both in absolute and in relative terms. However, in the period before industrialisation and widespread deskilling, craft and artisanal ingenuity were an even more important driver of innovation. The migration-innovation nexus was a vital part of early modern technological advancement and migrant agency needs to be written back into this story. That is what our project set out to achieve and is continuing to do. One of the key questions the PI set out to address was to evaluate what role migrants played in what became known as 'The Great Divergence.' It is in this respect especially that our globally-comparative and non-Eurocentric approach paid off. We found that rather than being a particularly 'modern' or 'Western' phenomenon, skilled migration and even the deliberate encouragement of skilled immigration for technological development, could be found across the entire period in all kinds of polities across all regions we studied. The European difference, the PI found, was not migration-management as such but a radically different political economy, in which migration did indeed play an important part, but only one amongst several. This finding led the PI to focus her monograph on this aspect, arguing that it was interplay and intermingling of three groups or factors, namely state policy, transnational capital flows, and skilled migration, which lay at the root of European expansion, technological, but also colonial, and economic. This is the subject of her book manuscript which traces this with the example of the European East India Companies. 2) IMPACT Two of our findings have particularly spurred our impact agenda, namely that, 1) migration is neither exclusively western nor exclusively modern phenomenon, and 2) that inclusion and recognition were crucial to a migrants' success. As a consequence, we want to change the narrative about historical migration in order to empower migrants and their descendants today. By demonstrating the constant presence and many positive contributions of migrants in the past, we can foster their inclusion and empowerment in contemporary society. This has vast social and economic consequences. The Northeast of England is one of the country's poorest regions and also one with the highest proportion of resettled refugees. Fostering their economic, cultural, and social participation will mean a quantum leap not only for their own lives but for our region at large. To achieve this we identified three particular sectors and groups with whom we wanted to engage: firstly, with migrant groups directly to help provide the confidence and skills they require; secondly with young people, trainee teachers, and teachers to change their understanding of history to a more inclusive one that reflect the diversity of modern classrooms; and finally with the GLAM sector to increase the visibility and positive contribution of historical migration and cultural exchange in their spaces to counter the common misunderstanding of the past as ethnically and culturally homogeneous. With our teacher training programme, primary school visits, migrant workshops, public talks, and continued collaboration with partner museums, we have made an excellent start at achieving this and are excited to build on this in our final phase of the project. (for more details on these, please see below, as well as narrative impact, partnerships, and engagement sections of this report) HOW WERE THE AWARD'S OBJECTIVES MET I) ACADEMIC OBJECTIVES Our work was divided into three work packages that would build on each other. All of these have either been delivered or are at an advanced stage and I am very proud to say that as a team we have delivered even more outputs that we had initially promised. 1) The first stage of the project was to establish regional expertise and examine the state of the field when it came to migration and technological innovation across our respective regions, Europe, East Asia, and the Islamic World. This resulted in the publication of two survey articles, and the PhD student's introductory chapters. Additionally, we have produced a co-authored chapter for a handbook on migration and innovation which is forthcoming. 2) We then conducted archival and material research to develop case studies on our respective regions and focus areas (textiles, ceramics, and weapons technology), investigating four factors in particular: technological & material; institutional & economic; sociocultural & spatial; and actor-networks. In the course of our research, we slightly changed focus areas but with same rationale, that is looking at the most 'modern' manufacturing sectors which, across our regions all had links to scientific enquiry, state-sponsorship, international trade, (proto-) industrialisation, and the Industrial Revolution. We found it less rewarding to study scientific instruments and instead also considered gunpowder technologies, mining, and sugar refining. As intended, this resulted in three high-profile journal articles and a special issue which are now either under review or in production, and a PhD thesis that is nearing its completion. I am proud to say that in addition to that, all team members are working on or have published one or even two additional case studies, two of which will be included in our edited volume. 3) In the final stage we then set out to identify cross-regional and cross-temporal commonalities. This has led to a co-authored journal article for Past and Present, an interdisciplinary edited volume based on our international conference, and the PI's monograph, which are both in advanced draft form already. II) IMPACT OBJECTIVES Our impact objectives are also well on their way to being met, but as is in the nature of impact, are of course slower to occur. Nevertheless, and despite numerous challenges, including changes in leadership in all of our partner museums, which entailed radical changes in personnel, organisation, and outlook in some, we have already met and even exceeded most of our objectives. We've had to be agile and flexible to adapt to the needs of our partners. Thus, when the participants in our migrant-workshop did not actually want the virtual and physical exhibition as we had originally planned, we instead organised a celebration event. And where museums have not actually developed gallery spaces or been able to focus on collaborations, we were able to change direction and activities. When one of our original partner organisations, TOP, decided that our original plan, to co-author a policy paper, was no longer a priority for them once the Ukraine war and subsequent influx of refugees led to a significant increase in their client base, we instead pivoted to work on what they identified as a more urgent need: to make our own institution more accessible to refugees by applying to become a university of sanctuary. All in all, we are proud that we have already delivered a substantial part of our original impact objectives. We've held not one but several workshops with our museum partners, not only for mutual KE and training, but also to establish best practice networks regionally and internationally of which we are particularly proud. We've held workshops with trainee teachers and recent migrants to the UK, and in addition to what we had originally hoped for, have been able to set up a good working relationship with a local primary school, too. We are actively engaged in redeveloping the Bowes Museum's gallery spaces, working with their outreach and education teams to develop resources, for their broader public and young curators' programme. |
| Exploitation Route | Our project can make an impact both in terms of its research methodology, its research findings, and in its collaborative best practice. METHODOLOGY We have launched a new research area with its own interdisciplinary methodology, which we have pioneered in our own single and jointly-authored pieces. Thanks to our edited volume where it has been adopted by our various contributors from different disciplines and to our contribution to an economics handbook, we believe that it will be taken forward and used not only in history and humanities department but also beyond. As a next step we want to build on this to make sure that this becomes not only an established field in research but also in teaching. In the next part of our project, we want to co-author an undergraduate reader with additional free online materials, that could form the basis for core and optional undergraduate modules across the country and internationally. This would then also feed into our ambition to change teaching in schools, part of our impact agenda. FINDINGS We hope that two of our core findings will be taken up in particular. If the public, notably through education, media, and the GLAM sector, came to realise that migration is neither an exclusively western nor exclusively modern phenomenon, and that inclusion and recognition were crucial to a migrants' success, this would have a direct impact on migration migrants and their descendants today. By demonstrating the positive contribution made by migration, cultural and technological exchanges in the past, we can create a more equitable and inclusive society in the present. PRACTICE To work towards achieving this, we have modelled a practice that we hope both to spread ourselves and to see taken up by others. That is the multi-part collaboration of academics, community groups, educators, and the GLAM sector in order to provide a more accurate and inclusive understanding of history. We intend to spread this best practice in the next phase of project by establishing region-wide museum-education partnership via our envisaged Connected History Centre. We eventually want to encourage wider uptake of this model, notably by linking in with national initiatives such as the Refugee Week and the Migration Network. We have already developed packages for primary-school teaching and a methodology that pairs hands-on material culture evidence from the GLAM sector with creative and artistic responses to foster more accurate understandings of cross-cultural connectedness in the past and thereby create more inclusive classrooms in the present. We have used these in our teacher training workshops and school visits, and in the project's second phase we hope to expand this to make it available to a broader range of users, by setting up teacher-training initiatives, regional school partnerships, and working with the Times Education Supplement and teacher unions. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy Education Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
| URL | http://www.migration-innovation.org |
| Description | MIGRANTION-LED INNOVATION: A NEW INTERDISCIPLINARY AND COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH AREA Our project has led to the nucleation of a new and exciting interdisciplinary area of research investigating the crucial role that migrants played in the technological and economic development of early modernity. There was no established methodology for this, so we combined approaches from cultural and imperial history, material culture studies and art history, science and technology studies, sociology, anthropology and economics. Since we know that knowledge was embodied and moved with people even more so than with objects, our project's hypothesis was that migration of people must always have led to new and hybrid techniques and products, when such goods and technologies had to adapt to new contexts, especially so in an era before modern standardization of tools and ingredients. Developing and launching an ambitious research agenda on migration-led innovation can only be a genuinely collaborative and interdisciplinary endeavour. Consequently, our research and its impact are all co-developed with partners inside and outside of academia. This was epitomised at our international, interdisciplinary and trans-sector project conference. We are currently revising the proceedings into an edited volume and have already had uptake from other disciplines and beyond academia: our research will feature in an economics handbook on migration and innovation, and has already led to a number of initiatives in and with our partner organisations. IMPACT THROUGH GENUINE PARTNERSHIPS Crucially, our above-mentioned project conference took place in, and in collaboration with, the German Museum of Technology in Berlin. It brought together academics, museum curators, and community outreach workers. Our other partner museums were all present and involved. The conference not only comprised practitioner-led, hands-on sessions in the galleries about industrial and craft techniques and their preservation, but also a round table discussion between museum and heritage practitioners facilitated by the PI to discuss experiences and best practice in co-production and community engagement. This epitomises the collaborative approach that is at the heart of our impact journey. We have shown that migration of groups or individuals who each brought their particular technical skills, has occurred across all periods and socio-cultural contexts and is by no means solely a modern or western phenomenon. In our comparative work we found that crucial to the success of the migrant and their technical skills in their new societies were access to political and institutional support, and, to put it in contemporary terminology, visibility and representation. Consequently, this is what we have striven to implement and have started to put into practice thanks to our partnerships. The northeast of England is one of the poorest and most economically-deprived regions of the country and yet also the one with by far with the highest proportion of resettled refugees and asylum seekers. By allowing them to make a genuine contribution, economically, culturally, and socially, we can make a real difference to "levelling up" our region. Consequently, our ambition is to change the narrative about migration: making visible the historical presence and contributions of migrants in turn fosters their inclusion and empowerment in the contemporary society. To achieve this, we have worked with three wider groups: heritage institutions, educators, and migrant groups themselves. Crucial here is that this involves knowledge exchange and genuine collaboration between all parties: the project, museum and heritage professionals, as well as educators, community groups, and the wider public. This has been exemplified in our work with the Shipley Gallery, the Oriental Museum, the Bowes, and the German Museum of Technology, as well as TOP, The Other Perspective, more details of which can be found in the collaboration and partnerships section of this report. The series of workshops that we have held at the Shipley Gallery in Gateshead are a perfect example of this triple collaboration between academics, heritage practitioners, and community groups. These workshops with recent immigrants to the UK were participant-led and facilitated by the PI. Over several weekly sessions we then encouraged participants to reflect on, share, and showcase the individual skills and abilities they brought to their new home, all the while helping, in collaboration with Multaka North East, to improve their English speaking skills, a crucial step to their social and economic inclusion. EDUCATION, INCLUSIVITY AND MULTIPLIER EFFECTS Education of the wider public is key to our work, and hence we are working with the Bowes Museum to make visible the presence and contribution of migration and global exchange in their galleries and outreach. We have held a series of public talks at the museum, are currently working with their young curators' programme, and are actively engaged with their ongoing work to radically redesign several of the museum and gallery spaces, making them more inclusive and using them to showcase the positive aspects of ethnic, national, gender, and social diversity in the past. The best way towards a more inclusive understanding of history is to start with children and we have focussed on this, notably by working to increase access to museums and material culture as evidence for historic diversity. Inspired by our successes with our co-developed teacher training programme at the Oriental Museum and the PI's own workshops with primary-school children, we are hoping to extend this further over time. So far, thanks to our work with the Oriental Museum, we have reached nearly three hundred trainee teachers, that is four cohorts of PGCE students and first-year BA students at the Durham University School for Education, who took part in our training on how to engage primary-school-aged children with questions around migration, cultural diversity, and inclusion via material culture and object-centred learning. We are proud that participants clearly felt that these sessions had given them the tools and confidence to create inclusive classrooms and to explore issues of migration and cross-cultural exchange by engaging their pupils with museums and material heritage. In the second phase of our project, we are hoping to collaborate with more schools and museums across our region and eventually also nationally. We have already hosted two round table discussions with our museum partners to establish best practice and exchange experiences and are hoping to develop this into a cross-reginal initiative. We also intend to develop teaching packs and guidance for teachers in our partner museums and their own classrooms. In this we are hoping to create multiplier and wider networks effects that will grow and eventually self-sustain beyond our project. We have already seen the first signs of this, for instance in the collaboration between academics and heritage professionals on the topic of the economic and technological impacts of migration, notably between one of our keynote speakers, Prof. Liliane Hilaire-Pérez, and the Jewish Museum in Berlin that sprang from our interdisciplinary and trans-sector project conference, and the linking up of Kansai Gaidai University, Japan with our project partner, the Bowes Museum, that stemmed from van Swet's work with both. MANAGING RISKS AND CHANGE Collaborative impact work, especially when it involves multiple partners, always has an inherent amount of risk and unpredictability. We have had more than our fair share of this in our project, but have found that when approached with empathy, flexibility and creativity, it was mostly possible to turn this into opportunity instead. Working in participant and community-led project may result in unexpected outcomes, such as a celebration event rather than a public exhibition, as was the case in our work with migrant groups at the Shipley Gallery. Community organisations may change focus, such as our partner TOP, who have wanted to focus more on tangible outputs rather than policy change and their work with us. Moreover, quite unexpectedly all of our partner institutions have undergone significant changes in structure and leadership: the German Museum of Technology, the Discovery Museum, and the Bowes have had new directors with significant changes in vision and outlook and, in the case of the Bowes also a complete restructure of the personnel. What was formerly TWAM (Tyne and Weir Archives and Museums) have rebranded and reorganised and are now North East Museums. Our initial partner amongst these, the Discovery Museum, has had their director leave and not be replaced, so that our collaboration shifted to a new partner of the association, the Shipley gallery. The Durham Oriental Museum's director had to take long-term sick leave and our partner in the learning and engagement team has been promoted to a different post in the university hierarchy. Additionally, our ongoing collaboration with the Durham education department was eventually hampered by the fact that they recently lost their accreditation for teacher training, leading to a take-over by a different university (Newcastle) and reorganisation of their degree, which, after two very successful years, put a temporary hold to our teacher training days at the Oriental Museum. We are proud that we have managed to use these challenges as opportunities rather than obstacles and our collaborations continue regardless. Changes in leadership and vision mean that we now have an even closer alignment with the Bowes and hope to make a real contribution to the redevelopment of their spaces and galleries. Changes in Durham might eventually allow us to upscale our engagement and we hope, in the second phase of our project, to establish regional network of Project and Museum-led CPD for teachers and teacher-trainers. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2023 |
| Sector | Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |
| Impact Types | Cultural Societal Economic |
| Description | Durham Oriental Museum |
| Organisation | Durham University |
| Department | Oriental Museum |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Academic/University |
| PI Contribution | The Oriental Museum forms part of the University of Durham's Libraries and Collections. It has a holds more than 23,500 Chinese, Egyptian, Korean, Indian, Japanese and other Middle Eastern and Asian objects including art, textiles, ceramics, weaponry, and manuscripts. Our partnership with the Oriental Museum has been exciting and very fruitful. In collaboration with the Museum and their Learning and Engagement team we have been able to redesign their teacher training offer. Together we devised and delivered bespoke training days for all PGCE students and first-year BA students at the Durham University School for Education exploring how to engage primary-school-aged children with questions around migration, cultural diversity, and inclusion via material culture and object-centred learning. This became an ongoing project and central part of the trainee-teachers experience, while also offering continuing professional development opportunities for the Learning and Engagement team themselves. Over two years we delivered four such training days with a total of nearly 300 participants. We received fantastic feedback from both the Museum's Learning and Engagement Team, the School of Education, and of course the students themselves, 99 of whom returned survey responses, the majority of whom also left their email addresses and permission to follow up later, which we intend to do in the next phase of our project. All participants who responded to our survey questions strongly agreed or agreed that the day had made them feel more confident about taking their students to museums in the future and most stated that they now planned to incorporate museum-based learning in their teaching. All those who responded also found that museum collections could help them address issues of migration, globalisation, and cross-cultural connections with their students. Nearly all respondents stated that the session made them feel more confident about addressing issues of migration, globalisation, and cross-cultural connections through and in history in their teaching. We are particularly excited that the feedback included clear indications that students felt that the day had given them concrete and helpful examples on how to create an inclusive classroom and to explore issues of migration and cross-cultural exchange by engaging their pupils with museums and material heritage. This was confirmed by David Wallace, of the Durham University School of Education, who stated that the training would enable these future teachers "to be more capable and confident in planning meaningful learning episodes ensuring access for all ethnicities, faiths and cultures allowing today's trainees to deliver positive messages in tomorrow's classrooms." o The collaboration is still active but has suffered a few setbacks since these very successful events The Museum's director had to take long-term sick leave and our partner in the learning and engagement team has been promoted away from the Libraries and Collections department to become head of outreach and engagement for the entire University. Additionally, our ongoing collaboration with Durham's education department was eventually hampered by the fact that they recently lost their accreditation for teacher training, leading to a take-over by a different university (Newcastle) and reorganisation of their degree, which, after two very successful years, put a hold to our teacher training days. However, we are still in active exchange with our partners in Durham. We hope to plan for further collaborative work on the director's return and are optimistic that our collaborator's promotion might eventually allow us to upscale our engagement in the second phase of our project. |
| Collaborator Contribution | o This was a genuinely collaborative event, so it is hard to disentangle contributions. The Oriental gave us access to their collections and much time with their curator and learning and engagement team, which both helped us in our own research and allowed us to prepare for the training days. During these days all sessions were co-delivered, but we led on sessions based on collections research, while the education leads led those based on practical considerations, such as risk assessments. |
| Impact | o Teacher-training days with a total of nearly 300 participants over two years. o CPD for libraries and collection staff. See above and the narrative impact section for full details. |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | German Museum of Technology, Berlin |
| Organisation | German Museum of Technology |
| Country | Germany |
| Sector | Public |
| PI Contribution | o Our main joined output was the major project conference that we jointly organised. o The project team invited the academic speakers and our partner museums, and covered travel, accommodation and sustenance for all participants. |
| Collaborator Contribution | o The German Museum of Technology is one of Europe's leading and largest museums of technology. Its 28,500 square meter exhibition space covers most aspects of historical and contemporary science and techniques, including all those studied in our project, from navigation and transportation to manufacturing, such as textile technologies, mining, paper making, sugar refining and many more. o The Museum team invited the heritage professionals and organised the hands-on workshops on papermaking and jewellery production. o They provided the venue and workshops for free and also covered all costs for technical support and security personnel. |
| Impact | o Multi-disciplinary, trans-sector KE conference. Bringing together a leading group of international scholars from different disciplines (history, economics, anthropology, science and technology studies, and art history) with practitioners, heritage professionals, and community outreach workers from different countries and sectors, this was a fantastic knowledge-exchange and CPD opportunity for all involved. It both celebrated and exemplified best practice in trans-sector collaboration. The conference comprised not only academic sessions, but also hands-on workshops in the galleries about industrial and craft techniques and their preservation, and, perhaps most importantly, also a round table discussion between museum and heritage practitioners facilitated by the PI to discuss experiences and best practice in co-production and community engagement. This session included speakers from our partner museums in the Northeast of England, the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and the director of Heritage Concepting and Imagine IC, Amsterdam, an organization that documents and celebrates the culture and identity of migrants, organising collecting events, exhibitions, workshops, and seminars. The roundtable itself was an opportunity for museum curators and practitioners to exchange their experience of working with migrants, minorities, and community groups more broadly, and to explore how their voices and perspectives are represented in their collections. However, equally exciting was the subsequent exchange with the "academic" participants, many of whom also have close working relationships with different museums. As a result, we have already seen further collaborations between academics and heritage professionals on the topic of the economic and technological impacts of migration, notably between one of our keynote speakers and the Jewish Museum in Berlin. o Edited volume based on the academic part of the conference is in preparation. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | North East Museums (formerly TWAM, i.e. Tyne and Weir Archives and Museums |
| Organisation | Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | o Our original plan was to collaborate with the Discovery Museum in Newcastle, then part of TWAM, Tyne and Weir Archives and Museums. However, after a promising start with numerous meetings, the Museum lost its director and the umbrella organisation changed itself from TWAM into North East Museums. That upheaval made our collaboration very difficult and we pivoted to work with another member of the organisation, the Shipley Gallery in Gateshead with its project coordinator Ben Jones who in turn connected us with Multaka North East England. Multaka North East England is a volunteering project for people with experience of forced migration delivered by (the then) Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums across their 9 venues, which include both the Shipley Gallery and the Discovery Museum. The Shipley is Gateshead's premier gallery. It has a Designated Collection of national importance, featuring fine art, craft and design, decorative art and contemporary exhibitions. o We held a series of workshops at the Shipley Gallery that perfectly illustrate our collaborative approach which brings together academics, heritage practitioners, and community groups. These workshops with recent immigrants to the UK were organised and facilitated by the PI, but participant-led. We wanted to empower contemporary migrants and aid their inclusion, psychologically (both by making visible the historical presence and contributions of migrants and by encouraging them to reflect on and celebrate their own particular skills) and practically by improving their spoken English. We opened by using material culture evidence from the Shipley's own collection to illustrate our research findings, that is the contribution which migrants and their skills have made, globally and locally in the past. Over several weekly sessions we then encouraged participants to reflect on, share, and showcase their own skills and achievements. The sessions were all co-led with Multaka to help participants improve their spoken English and particularly the ability to articulate their own skills and abilities. In turn this facilitates their confidence and ability to participate in the social, cultural, and economic life of their new home in Britain. Participant-led collaborative initiatives always require flexibility and the ability to adapt. Hence when participants decided they did not want the originally-intended public exhibition, we instead organised a celebration event that highlighted the individual skills and abilities they brought to their new home. It is the fairly small impacts that I am especially proud of: participants shared recipes and cooked for the community. And a photographer who had had to leave all his equipment and art behind in the warzone he had fled, now has own community-sourced mirror-reflex camera with which to explore his now home in the northeast of England and access to a dark room in which to develop his new art. We planned and co-delivered the sessions, covered participants' transport costs and provided refreshments as well as workshop materials. |
| Collaborator Contribution | The Shipley Gallery and Multaka provided the space and access to their handling collections. Ben Jones and the Multaka volunteers co-facilitated the sessions and particularly focussed on English-language skills. The workshops and celebration events themselves took place over several months from November 2023 to February 2024. These have now been completed. However, Ben Jones and North East Museums continue to be our project partners. He took part in our project conference in Berlin and we are in regular discussions to see how to take our collaboration forward during the next phase of our project. |
| Impact | Workshops and celebration event - for details, see above |
| Start Year | 2021 |
| Description | The Bowes Museum |
| Organisation | The Bowes Museum |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
| PI Contribution | o As the Bowes Museum is beginning to implement its transformation into a more inclusive, diverse, and community-led space, we are actively engaged with their ongoing work to collaboratively redesign and reinterpret several of the museum and gallery spaces. We hope that we can fruitfully work together as part of these initiatives. We have already made a start in using Bowe's world-class collections of Global ceramics and Western Art and Fashion to showcase our research into the crucial role that migration played in the development of these. We used these for a series of public talks at the museum, which focussed on our research findings around the importance of migration in the technological development of the French textile and Japanese ceramics industries, anchoring this in objects from their collections. (For more details on these, please see the "Engagement" section on this report.) These form the basis for our ongoing work and will also be at the heart of our work with their young curators' programme. We hope to build on this to make visible the presence and contribution of migrants, migration and global exchange in the Museum's newly redeveloped galleries and outreach offer. |
| Collaborator Contribution | o The Bowes Museum hosts one of Britain's premier collections of art, fashion, and design, and was our project partner from the outset. As our project began, the Bowes Museum underwent a complete change in leadership and direction which came with drastic changes in, and reorganisation of, structure and personnel under their new executive director. This put our collaboration on hold until these were established. Now our main partners in the organisation are the head curator, their learning manager, and their curator of co-production. o Bowes have given us access to their collections and specialist curators, which has both allowed us to enhance our own research with the requisite material culture evidence and permitted us to use this evidence in our work with and for the museum. o They have provided venues and catering for our public talks and invited us to the workshops they organised in order to network museum curators, community groups, and other stakeholders in the region. |
| Impact | o In our public talks we presented our interdisciplinary project work (which brings together history of science, material culture, migration studies and economics) in collaboration with curators who gave us access to their collections. Apart from providing footfall for the museum, this also offered CPD for the Museum's staff. It both provided insights into the latest research as it concerned their collections, and opened several avenues allowing the Bowes to better understand how they might use their collections in a more inclusive way that highlights diversity and connectivity in the past. |
| Start Year | 2022 |
| Description | Public talks at the Bowes Museum |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | o We gave two public lectures at the Bowes Museum, which made accessible to the general public our research findings around the importance of migration in the technological development of two sectors central to modern industrialisation, whose outputs also prominently feature in the museums' galleries: the French textile and Japanese ceramics industries. Thanks to our collaboration with the Bowes we were able to anchor this in specific objects from their collections, which the curators provided for the audience to view up close during and after the talks. o Felicia Gottmann's lecture was entitled 'Crimes of Fashion: A Story of French Printed and Painted Textiles.' This talk was based on her research into French textile technologies and linked closely to the beautiful and expansive collection of French textiles held at the museum. For nearly eighty years, from the late seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century, all printed and painted textiles were banned in France. And yet everybody wore them: from princes of the blood to shopkeepers and peasants. Thousands of people were arrested, while mounted gangs of smugglers fought pitched battles with customs officers and army. But when the French state finally gave in and legalised their import and production, they faced a steep hurdle of technological catch up. After such a long prohibition, the French state became actively involved in trying to set up industrial enterprises that could rival production in Britain, Germany, and above all India. It could only do so by encouraging migration and mobility: smuggling, industrial espionage, and migration - which ultimately led to the beautiful toiles we still copy and admire today. o Floris van Swet's lecture spoke to another class of objects that is present throughout the collection at the Bowes - porcelain. This talk, entitled 'Korean Potters in Japan after the East Asian War of 1592-98,' looked at the global history behind Japanese porcelain and the various actors involved in its production and trade. Though little known in the West, the effects of the East Asian War of 1592-1598 can still be traced in East Asia today. At the time it redrew the political map of East Asia and had long term consequences on trade, economies, and national identity. One such effect was the importation of Korean potters and pottery knowledge to Japan; something that would shape the future of ceramics in Japan. From beautiful white plates from Arita, to rustic and delicately-glazed tea vessels from Hagi, none would have existed without migrant knowledge and skill. The beautiful examples in the Bowes Museum provided the perfect starting point for this talk by highlighting how the highly valued Japanese ceramics we know today are in fact an amalgam of the conflict in Korea, Korean knowledge, Chinese trade, Japanese domestic circumstances, and Western taste. o After each talk there was an opportunity for the audience to interact with some of the pieces from the Bowes collection that had been highlighted, such as an eighteenth-century French dress and a seventeenth century Japanese statue of a tiger. Alongside these specific pieces, the curators had carefully selected further objects from the collection that allowed people to get hands-on with the pieces and compare their visual and material qualities. o These talks form the basis and starting point for our ongoing work with the Bowes as they work to transform themselves into a more inclusive, diverse, and community-led space. We hope to build on this to make visible the presence and contribution of migrants, migration and global exchange in the Museum's newly redeveloped galleries and outreach offer. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| URL | https://thebowesmuseum.org.uk/whats-on/felicia-gottmann-crimes-of-fashion/ |
| Description | School visit (Hotspur Primary School) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | The PI visited Hotspur School in Newcastle to run two sessions with all year four children (a total of 60 pupils and their teachers). Based on the project's focus on and research into East Asian porcelain, the workshops used hand-on material culture evidence to show children that art and history were always characterised by transcultural exchange. This is part of our project's ambition to make contemporary classrooms more inclusive, by demonstrating that ethnic and cultural diversity which characterise contemporary society already existed in the past. This not only improves children's engagement with history, art, and material culture, but ultimately fosters a greater sense of belonging and community in today's ethnically and culturally diverse school environments. The sessions combined history, art and geography, linking East Asia, Africa, Europe and South America to outline a more connected understanding of historical - and contemporary - exchanges. Children handled historical objects themselves and learned how even the "original" Chinese blue and white porcelain had been an intercultural Sino-Islamic co-production before it was further transformed, adapted, and appropriated in various locales ranging from modern-day Iran and Turkey to the Swahili Coast, Mexico, Britain, or the Netherlands. Children were then encouraged to reflect on their own sense of identity. Concluding that nothing ever comes from just from one place or culture alone but that you could nevertheless always make it your own, they then crafted their own "porcelain" plates, to express their own sense of identity and artistic creativity. This was an overwhelmingly positive experience. The children were absolutely brilliant: enthusiastic, engaged, and with a great sense of fun and adventure, they combined material-culture detective work about notions of "origin" and "belonging" with creative expression in a genuinely joyous response which celebrated that all identities and artistic expressions incorporate multicultural influences and inspirations. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |