Reflections on the workshop series. By Jessica Moody (Senior Lecturer in Public History, University of Bristol)
Alas, we have come to the end of our workshop series for the Decolonising Memory: Digital Bodies in Movement project! As this marks the end of the first phase of our project, I thought I’d share some personal reflections on the workshops we held over the last 7 months. We first advertised for participants in October 2021 through this website, social media, press releases, local publications, local radio and word of mouth and held an online information event. Our first workshop was November 6th 2021 and these ran every first Saturday of the month thereafter until May 7th. We held these workshops hybrid (both online and offline) – at the Malcolm X Centre in St Paul’s, and online via zoom for those who couldn’t join in person (with all participants being able to hear and see each other). We also held monthly online ‘mid-point’ meetings on zoom where we carried on the conversations from the workshops and undertook other exercises and activities to develop ideas.
Our first workshop introduced the project’s aims and objectives and explained the process thereafter. We built in movement and memory from the beginning, using a call-and-response ice-breaker exercise memorizing movements people had created for themselves. We discussed the importance of dance as history, memory and identity with Cleo Lake sharing videos of different kinds of dance we might want to engage with – though no one seemed up for doing the limbo! We started exploring the ways dance can convey story and meaning and developed movements together in small groups which communicated a particular emotion. It was fantastic to see how much everyone threw themselves into these activities and developed unique movements able to convey quite abstract ideas so clearly.
I presented some ideas in this session about memory; how we might conceive of sites of memory, the significance of elements to memory such as water (Toni Morrison), how memory can counter and challenge established narratives. There was an interesting comment from one participant around monuments (in response to a quote shared by John Akomfrah); that the lack of monumental memorialization around the African Diaspora had led to the body itself becoming a site of memory and that perhaps dance could be a way of creating body-monuments as memorialization.
In the absence of the monument, in the absence of tangible fragments, diasporic artists face a monumental task: they are forced to connect with the question of memory, with the question of the ghost, with the question of the intangible – it is through these that the artist discovers the monumental, discovers the ways in which they are located in their culture and in their present
John Akomfrah from ‘Memory and the Morphologies of Difference’
Thereafter our workshops and online meetings worked through a series of activities and exercises which sought ways to find deeper meaning in relation to the past, and to specific places around the city of Bristol connected in various ways to the history, legacy and memory of enslavement. Key to this was a walking tour with Dr Edson Burton on a chilly December afternoon around Queens Square, Corn Street and the city centre.
One of the interesting points for me was that our participants, in identifying places they connected with this history around Bristol, focused far more on places that were largely the administrative or more bureaucratic centres of this trade, rather than those connected more closely with ships and the harbourside. There was much more discussion therefore about Corn Street – with its sites of administrative organization and power, than there was about the waterfront. Individual project members brought knowledge, creative responses such as poetry and further historical research into the project through these workshops.
Activities after this sought ways to respond to these sites through movement, reflecting meanings connected to them such as oppression and power, and even feelings of being overwhelmed by these connections. Our workshops blended different forms of expertise including Black history education (including a session with Paul Obina) and a real highlight of the entire series for me was the dance masterclass with Rubba Stephenson and Latisha Cesar, experts in West African and Haitian dance.
Together we developed exercises that sought different ways to create movement from our research, and used movement as research, to respond and react, to counter and challenge, to memorialise and engage. One of the exercises Kwesi Johnson introduced focused on the development of ‘power symbols’, drawing on and inspired by Adinkra symbols but which focused firstly on creating new, personal, symbols, and then creating symbols which could represent particular sites.
We then developed movements that spoke to these symbols and brought them together in sequences. We also thought carefully about narrative – about what a memorial dance narrative might look like, what elements and intentions we felt should be foregrounded at the beginning, middle and end of a memorial dance. These included key terms such as ‘empowerment’ and ‘healing’, but also elements (earth, air, fire, water) and emotions. In our final workshop we worked with these intentions to develop movements which centred this meaning in the middle and end sequences of the dance.
The workshops were often exhausting, certainly physically, but they were always inspiring, and full of hope and healing potential. It was an honour to be able to be a part of these sessions and it felt like often it was the act of coming together, moving together, sharing and listening that was the most important and joyous part of the process. It was such a wonderful experience to be amongst people who brought such integrity and open-mindedness to the process as well as an amazing array of experience and expertise. The next phase of the project is currently underway and will see the development of an augmented reality app based on the materials and research from these workshops. Watch this space and follow us on social media for further updates and news about the release!