Everyday Heritage Activities: November 2024 Western Australia

Everyday Heritage Activities: November 2024 Western Australia

Sharpay Wu and Steve Brown, 11 February 2025

The Everyday Heritage team organised and led six days of events (25-30 November 2024) in Western Australia, including a symposium, masterclass, and workshop in Perth, as well as field trips to Kings Park, Pinjarra, Fremantle Prison, and New Norcia. The events centred on the theme of EVERYDAY HERITAGE AND DIFFICULT LEGACIES. The 16 Everyday Heritage team participants included international Distinguished Visiting Scholars and keynote speakers, Prof Laura McAtackney (University College Cork, Ireland) and Dr Timo Ylimaunu (University of Oulu, Finland), research partners from the universities of Western Australia, Tasmania, New South Wales, and Sydney, as well as staff from industry linkage partner GML Heritage. Over 90 people attended the one-day Symposium at the University of Western Australia, nine PhDs/ECRs participated in the Masterclass, and 46 people attended the Heritage Workshop at Fremantle Prison. The audiences for the Symposium and Workshop included colleagues from the heritage consulting industry, academia, government, and museum and gallery sectors. This event marked the third annual gathering of the Everyday Heritage Project team, and built on the Symposia and associated activities held in Canberra (2022) and Sydney (2023).

The Perth Symposium was a partnership event with the Australian Historical Association (AHA) and the Congress for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS). We thank the Australian Research Council and GML Heritage for supporting the Everyday Heritage Project over three years. We also thank project Team members Tracy Ireland, Steve Brown, Sharpay Wu, Jane Lydon and Naomi Preston for co-organising the Perth events.

Everyday Heritage Team at Fremantle Prison. Photo supplied by Ursula Frederick

Symposium – EVERYDAY HERITAGE AND DIFFICULT LEGACIES

The Symposium comprised four sessions. It commenced with a Welcome to Country by Nick Abraham, a Noongar Elder with connection to the Whadjuk, Yued, Ballardong, Wilmen, Wardandi and Binjerup people and Country,

Session 1 featured the keynote address by Prof Laura McAtackney titled: Working with the Everyday Heritage of Conveniently Forgotten Pasts: Material culture of Ireland’s institutions. This keynote address focussed on the everyday heritage, both material and immaterial, of two forms of institutionalisation of which Ireland has a recent and extensive past record: Magdalene Laundries (last closed 1996) and political prisoners (last closed 2001). The keynote was followed by responses from Prof Jane Lydon and Dr Ursula Frederick.

Session 2 was addressed by the Everyday Heritage Project Lead Chief Investigator, Prof Tracy Ireland, and GML Heritage CEO Sharon Veale. Together, they outlined the conceptual and practice-driven foundations of the project and drew on the case example of Hyde Park Barracks, a prominent heritage place in Sydney, showing how its listing and certain values and absences have come in and out of view in the everyday life of the place.

Session 3 provided case examples illustrating everyday heritage and difficult legacies in different contexts. The session concluded with a panel with the presenters—Sharpay Wu, Dr. Constance Wyndham, Dr. Christina Dyson, and Prof. Denis Byrne—discussing the ways in which everyday heritage is integral to the research and practice-based work they undertake.

Session 4 featured the keynote address by Dr. Timo Ylimaunu titled: Perspective to the World War II and the post-World War II Heritage: Finnish wartime photographs and post-war memorials and the eastern borderlands. Dr. Glen Stasiuk, a Senior Indigenous Researcher at Murdoch University, responded to the keynote address and included the screening of Glen’s film, SURVIVORS of Wadjemup (2022).

Abstracts and bios of the Symposium participants can be accessed here.

SESSION 1 – Keynote Address 1, Responses and Panel Discussion

Working with the Everyday Heritage of Conveniently Forgotten Pasts: Material culture of Ireland’s institutions

Keynote Address and Responses

Panel Discussion

SESSION 2 – Everyday Heritage: What is it and what have been the findings of the project?

Presentations

Response and Panel Discussion

SESSION 3 – Case Studies: Difficult legacies

Presentations

Panel Discussion

SESSION 4 – Keynote Address 2, Response, and Panel Discussion

Perspective to the World War II and the post-World War II Heritage: Finnish wartime photographs and post-war memorials and the eastern borderlands

Keynote Address and Response

Panel Discussion

Symposium Wrap Up

Workshop – EVERYDAY HERITAGE AND DIFFICULT LEGACIES

Supported by the ARC Everyday Heritage Linkage Project and Fremantle Prison, the workshop brought together 46 heritage practitioners seeking to explore the role and relevance of everyday heritage and difficult legacies in their work. Following presentations by Luke Donegan, Flavia Kiperman, Dr Charlotte Feakins and Dr Imogen Wegman, participants divided into four groups – each led by a presenter – to explore the question: What constitutes effective and ethical practice for industry professionals dealing with Everyday Heritage and difficult legacies? The ideas and findings of the presentations and group discussions will be incorporated into an industry practice document: Everyday Heritage: Hints, Hacks, and Helpful Ideas.