University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
April 3 - 5, 2008
Further details of the Performing Heritage conference have now been
announced including keynote presenters and performances. There will also
be a number of opportunities to hear findings from the Performance,
Learning and Heritage project including details of the upcoming project
report. View the conference flyer HERE.
Keynote Speakers:
CATHERINE HUGHES is a museum theatre practitioner and scholar, who worked for many years at the Museum of Science, Boston. She wrote the first book on museum theatre, Museum Theatre: Communicating with Visitors through Drama (Heinemann 1998) and has just completed a major research project on museum theatre at Ohio State University.
BAZ KERSHAW is Professor of Drama at the University of Warwick and was
formerly Director of the five-year research project PaRiP (Practice as Research in Performance). Author of many books including The Radical in Performance (Routledge 1999) he also has extensive experience as a director and writer in experimental, radical and community-based theatre.
LAURAJANE SMITH is Reader in Cultural Heritage Studies and Archaeology at the University of York. She is author of The Uses of Heritage (Routledge 2006) and Archaeological Theory and the Politics of Cultural Heritage (Routledge 2004).
MARK WALLIS is Director and Artistic Director of Past Pleasures Ltd. (which he also founded). He has been involved in professional costumed interpretation since 1977 and is a consultant for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
Keynote performances include:
ANDREW ASHMORE AND ASSOCIATES: "This Accursed Thing"
TRIANGLE THEATRE COMPANY
A detailed timetable will be available in February, but for those who need
to organise travel and accommodation, start and finish times appear below:
THURSDAY April 3rd: Registration begins at 9am. At 10am, the conference willofficially open, to be followed by the first keynote address from Catherine
Hughes and a PLH panel presentation. A full day of activities will include
entertainment in the evening.
FRIDAY April 4th: Full day of papers, panels, and performances, including keynoteaddresses from Laurajane Smith and Mark Wallis. The conference dinner will take place in the evening.
SATURDAY April 5th: Keynote address from Baz Kershaw will be followed by papers,workshops and panels. The day will end with a panel presentation where the key threads of the conference will be drawn together. At this point the
implications of research and development in the field for future policy
will be discussed. The conference will formally close at 3pm.
For details of conference
fees and how to register visit the website at http://www.plh.manchester.ac.uk/conference.htm
We hope to see you in April,
The Performing Heritage Conference Team
The Performance, Learning and Heritage project is an AHRC funded investigation into the uses and impact of performance as a medium for learning in museums and at heritage sites. The scope of the project is international, and since 2005, the team have been researching case study sites and carrying out a detailed mapping of practice. (For further details visit www.plh.manchester.ac.uk/.) 2008 marks the final year of the project, and presents a timely opportunity for debate and knowledge exchange in this fast developing area of performance and interpretive practice.
Areas to be covered by the conference include (but are not limited to):
- Making connections : the intersection of performance/performativity, site specific practice and notions of heritage;
- Gauging impact : audience response and longer-term impact, the place of interactivity, and community outreach;
- Reports from the field : accounts and findings from research and evaluation projects in the UK and abroad. Some sessions at the conference will be devoted to the emerging findings of the PL&H research and the implications for future practice and policy making; but we are keen to hear about, and compare notes with, other research projects across the globe;
- Developing practice : examples of practice – live and recorded – to illustrate the range of performance practice and provide opportuni ties to interrogate that practice; workshops from practitioners and academics are invited as a means of exploring how research and practice interconnect;
- ‘research at the heart of practice’ – the focus will be on research as it informs practice, practice as it informs research and (not least) practice as a means of research in the museum/heritage sector.
Visit the conference webpage at www.manchester.ac.uk/plh/conference.
