Didar: Activating Exhibition Spaces With Diaspora Communities In Melbourne

Abstract

The twenty-first century conservator is more regularly involved in collection-based community engagements. This is in response to and influenced by the revised roles of cultural institutions as social spaces that recognise the importance of inclusivity, community participation and sustainability. Despite this focus on communities, the practical details and the care needed to undertake this work are not adequately documented. The challenge for conservators, needing to stay relevant and connected, is how best to engage participants from diverse backgrounds in structured and meaningful ways. This research sought to develop practices around conservation that is engaged with communities, working with culturally diverse groups in an exhibition setting.

In 2022, the exhibition Didar: Stories of Middle Eastern Manuscripts from the University of Melbourne opened in the Arts West Gallery. Sixty manuscripts were displayed alongside Grimwade Centre research for the first time. The exhibition presented a timely opportunity to reach out to communities.

Our approach was open-ended, inspired by the themes of the manuscripts and materials to increase our chances of engagement. Reflective practice supported the iterative event design process, which aimed to create opportunities for audience meaning making and interpretation. Pen portraits were employed as a method of data presentation to offer vignettes of participant narratives. Such narratives are part of the ethos of care that the research team aimed to put into practice—in this case, care for stories and care for the ways in which individuals connect with the collection. This paper adds to the scholarship needed to professionalise conservation community engagement.

Keywords:

• Conservation skills
• Manuscripts
• Diaspora community
• Community partnership
• Community engagement

Introduction

This research started with a challenge: to reactivate the use of an orphaned Middle Eastern manuscript collection in Melbourne, Australia. The collection represents many communities of origin, including Arabic, Persian and Turkish. The manuscripts have been disconnected from their communities of origin for decades, only used by a few individuals within the University of Melbourne. Researchers had long desired the opportunity to engage with communities of origin; however, this posed many challenges around who these communities are and the best ways to initiate and nurture meaningful engagements.

The importance of community partnerships for the cultural sustainability of heritage is widely accepted. Marcelle Scott (2016, p. 32), in her thesis Tradition and Innovation: Building the conservation discipline in Australia, asserts that a critical risk to cultural collections is ‘a lack of engagement with communities whose knowledge and cultural frames sit outside of Eurocentric enlightenment, disciplinary and museum models’. This approach, together with the work of Edmonds and Wild (2000), Clavir (2002), Sully (2007), Pearlstein and Lohnas (2013), suggests the need for care in the application of professional principles, to ensure that all of the relevant communities are involved, and that the engagement is not restricted arbitrarily with preconceived views about which communities can contribute knowledge. The conservation profession is aware that participation produces value but just because conservators want to engage, do communities? How can conservators stimulate meaningful engagements from collection interactions?

This article considers the AICCM 2020–2025 strategic plan, its values and objectives: firstly, community engagement; broadening our connections and partnerships with cultural heritage keepers and communities as well as secondary professional discourse; facilitating and promoting developments in conservation practice (AICCM 2020, p. 3). We argue that university collections, like museums, can be ‘aspirational space[s] that [are] created and recreated on the context and relevance of multiple stakeholder communities’ (Amareswar Galla, referenced by Stroja 2018, pp. 302–3) and that the Didar exhibition is such a space.

Froggett and Trustram’s (2014) work has shown that viewing and interacting with heritage and art positively impacts the well-being of people of diverse social-cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Recent research also confirms that when heritage is mobilised in the present, participating in such activities can contribute to more social contact, connection and engagement (Moorken, Verreyke & Ortega Saez 2022, p. 39). Interacting with heritage not only benefits communities but also contributes to the sustainability of the intangible heritage embedded in cultural materials. Findings from research on intangible cultural heritage corroborates the need for cultural communities and groups to practise and enact heritage for its survival, contemporary relevance and reinterpretation (Blake 2019, p. 25). The Didar manuscript exhibition and subsequent curated activities surrounding the collection prompted questions of connection, interaction and collaboration; leading the researchers to explore and understand how community events can foster engagement with and re-interpretation of the collection. The pen portrait tool which is a qualitative analytical technique was used to illustrate the reflections of the community members. This tool is used in social research to document the stories, interactions and impressions of participants in narrative form (Sheard & Marsh 2019, p.4). The pen portraits in this paper offer vignettes of the unique stories of individual community members and the meaning-making prompted by the events and the collection. As analytical tools, they aim to demonstrate the kinds of connection that such events can foster and the potential of affective responses to seed community engagement with collections.

While community engagement is a key domain of contemporary museum work, Morse argues (2021, p. 3) that little attention is paid to the professional practices of such work. This is pertinent because community engagement often requires a different kind of museology practice—one that is ‘active and outward-facing … with a socially engaged ethos’ (Morse 2021, p. 8). In the absence of such practice, well-meaning projects can end up being ‘empowerment lite’ or ‘engagement lite’ (Lynch 2011).

Influenced by the recent work on emotions and affect in museums and heritage studies (Crang & Tolia Kelly 2010; Smith, Wetherell & Campbell 2018; Waterton 2014) and the desire amongst community engagement workers to have their work understood and valued within the profession (Morse 2021, p. 5; Fekrsanati & Marçal 2022), this paper considers the Didar exhibition as a space of care; care for objects, care for people, care for stories, care for communities, and care for ideas (Morse 2021, p. ix). For Didar, the authors engaged with and adapted the care principles of Nuala Morse’s work to document our intentions to create caring environments, to seek out possible community organisations for engagement and to spend time reflecting on our practice and processes. The terminology of collection care sits comfortably within the conservation discourse, but as we will assert in this paper care for people, care for stories and care for communities is also happening within the profession and is a fundamental part of community engagement practices. While conservators may have similar skills to development workers and social workers, and there is a growing number of projects that involve museum and health professionals (for example, see Chatterjee & Noble 2013, Thomson, Morse & Elsden 2020), conservators are not social workers; our work is a museum-like form of care (Morse 2021, p. 12).

The scope of analysis encompasses three activities presented in the Didar exhibition space—halfway through a year’s worth of exhibition programming; the University of Melbourne Open Day, Free to Feed collaboration and an event called Didar: Arts of the Persian Court. Different activities were trialled in the space such as poetry reading, musical performances, paper-dying and ink-making workshops and a food-inspired collaboration with a local social enterprise. The focus was on activating the exhibition space for present-day diverse audiences and creating spaces of care that promoted feelings of connection and reflection.

Reflective practice used to gather data across exhibition activities, we argue, is both key to conservation professional development and community engagement. Like the work of Byrne, Brayshaw and Ireland (2003, p. 3) on New South Wales heritage landscapes, our research sought to understand how the manuscripts were perceived and experienced by the communities. As conservators, we are familiar with frameworks that shape care for objects, their materials and their vulnerabilities; however, the care of people and their interactions with objects is less defined. Morse (2021, p. 6) argues that opening up the definition of care enables reflection on the intentional and improvised practices we, as community engagement workers, embed in our projects in response to the ‘emotionally charged sessions’ in museums. This is true of the activities described in this paper; events were carefully curated but carried out with a flexible approach, which allowed the team to respond to the needs of the community members in real-time. The Didar space was activated by creating immersive environments with music and poetry. Dressing the space with rugs and floor cushions further aimed to make the exhibition more inviting. These activation efforts were guided by the practice of care, care for the would-be communities, ‘people who maybe had never thought about museums and galleries as places where they belonged in or could contribute to’ (Morse 2021, p. 129).

This paper contributes to professional discourse by focusing on collaboration, the ways in which the principle of care can guide different facets of the community partnerships and co-assessment of activities through peer-to-peer interviews and group discussions. The Didar activities have created avenues of meaningful engagement and collection access which highlighted the potential and value of such activities as valuable tools for nurturing diversity and inclusion in the use of the collection. Supported by the AICCM (2020, p. 2) statement, ‘conservation and preservation activity is outward-looking, participatory, and centred around people and community’, the authors argue that the methods and processes gained through Didar activities have furthered our professional skill set. Engagement skills must be learnt, valued and consciously improved upon through practice. As community engagement is a core tenet of cultural material conservation practice and such activities within our profession will only increase, it is therefore essential to our professional development to track, adapt, reflect, and share this work with our colleagues.

In this paper, we begin by introducing the Didar exhibition project. Subsequently, we outline our community engagement approach and reflective practices. The following sections encompass activities for building relationships with community members and activating the collection space. Audience feedback and reflections are then presented as pen portraits. Emerging themes and conclusions are finally discussed.

Didar—the exhibition project

The University of Melbourne’s Middle Eastern Manuscript (MEM) collection contains 200 bound and unbound manuscripts dating from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries. The manuscripts are written in various languages, including Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Syriac, Ethiopic, Sanskrit, Christian Oriental, Mongol, Prakit, and Pishtu (Pryde 2008, p. 1). Documented through the current University of Melbourne catalogue, they are described under various subjects, including Qur’ans and religious teachings, dictionaries, grammars, law, philosophy, medicine, historical and astrological texts, love stories, and poetry (Sloggett 2008, p. 89). Professor John Bowman was instrumental in acquiring the manuscripts (1959–1973) during his visits to the Middle East and from booksellers in the United Kingdom to form a reference collection for the then Department of Middle Eastern Studies (Sloggett 2008; Lewincamp & Sloggett 2016). Previously housed within the Department to provide its students with access to primary texts, the collection was later moved to the Baillieu Library, where its visibility and, thus, its ongoing use is diminished. Material of this type was rarely available in Melbourne during the department’s time, and this remains the case today.

While cultural materials conservation methodologies established an ethos of scholarship around the Middle Eastern collection of the University of Melbourne, the manuscripts remained largely dissociated (Lewincamp 2022). The collection is housed in an English language setting which makes it hard for most students and scholars to access the content of these manuscripts. Moreover, the provenance of these manuscripts, except for a few examples, is under-documented. This enforces the manuscripts as orphan objects without identities, histories and stories. Inaccuracies in the existing catalogue also add to the problem of accessibility (Alhagh 2021, p. 2).

The invitation in 2021 to create an exhibition around the manuscript collection and publicly share Grimwade Centre conservation research presented a great opportunity to respond to the challenges mentioned above. The exhibition was named Didar: Stories of Middle Eastern Manuscripts and opened in late 2021 after an extensive COVID lockdown period. Authors Sophie Lewincamp and Leila Alhagh led the curatorial process alongside Professor Robyn Sloggett, Dr Sadra Zekgroo and Nasim Koohkesh who contributed their research and language expertise. Previous research on the collection, including the minor theses of master students, further enriched the exhibition's interpretive content.

The term didar is a Farsi name meaning visit, meeting, and seeing. It can be used when meeting a beloved or an important and special person. As the moment of didar gets closer, the feelings of anticipation and excitement increase. For the curatorial team, the moment of visit with the manuscripts had the same feeling. These manuscripts are carriers of art, culture, history, heritage, and stories. Not only that, but they are also valuable resources for conservation specialists and for anyone interested in their materials and techniques of production. The exhibition aimed to enable that moment of didar for attendees. To see, to remember, to learn, to feel excited and satisfied, as stated by Dr. Alhagh, ‘these manuscripts have travelled a long journey to be present in Melbourne today, to be here for us to have that moment with them’ (Alhagh 2022, pers. comm., 11 September).

The choice to write the exhibition's name both in English and Farsi was intentional. Writing the exhibition's name in Farsi attracted many Farsi speakers to the venue. This choice was informed by the way language is frequently used as a method to overcome common barriers to delivering successful engagement programs for culturally and linguistically diverse communities especially in the health and environment sectors (Victorian State Government 2023). The first Melbourne community connection was activated through calligraphy. A migrant Iranian engineer, Hossein, calligraphed the word didar in Thuluth script with reed pen and ink (Figure 1). Hossein has been doing calligraphy as an artistic passion for years, and this opportunity linked him and his art to the manuscripts and Iranian heritage.

Figure 1. Hossein Rabiei and his calligraphy panel in exhibition space, 2022.

Researchers shared stories of the manuscripts’ materials and production journey, the handmade papers, the decorations and illuminations, and the calligraphic inks in the Didar space. The exhibition showcased the practice of artisans creating the materials and how this research assisted conservators to better connect and understand the manuscripts. Didar became a new vehicle to share and promote the collection by creating opportunities for communication and collaboration between researchers and source communities.

Didar—the approach to community engagement

Cultural materials conservation is a ‘social act’, ‘on behalf of society’ (Richmond & Bracker 2009, p. 179), that values the contribution of communities and acknowledges the significant amount of knowledge that sits within communities. James Clifford (1997) and Ann Fienup-Riordan (1998) note that exposure to artefacts held within institutions triggers the retelling of stories, memories, biographies, and histories by source communities. Studies indicate that community outreach programs are most effective when the engagement is contextual and takes into account the specific needs and profile of the source community (Doubt, Sun & Yeh 2019).

Like other international bodies, the Australian Institute for Conservation of Cultural Material Code of Ethics and Practice (AICCM 2002) posits a professional collaborative approach for conservators but does not address everyday practical scenarios. Codes are guides stating best working practices for conservators and allied professions and do not, nor are they intended to, detail structures or pathways for collaborative community work (Lewincamp 2022, p. 8). Despite the intention to capture social and community inclusion within museum and conservation practice, the precise approaches and methods have yet to be fully developed and agreed upon, let alone consistently applied. Conservators must embed specific methodologies and tools in routine conservation workflows and cultural institutional practices to increase engagement and inclusion.

Engagement work contributes to the cultural record of the objects, and the benefits are well documented in the literature (Sully & Pombo Cardoso 2014; Henderson & Nakamoto 2016; O’Donnell & Tse 2018). Sully and Pombo Cardoso (2014) demonstrate through their work that spaces where conservation and community knowledge holders come together are catalysts for questions of authenticity and provenance, meaning-making, and ownership/authorship. Further to this point, Brooks (2013, p. 5) advocates for conservators to ‘demonstrate our role in preserving culturally significant artefacts and bringing the knowledge obtained through that process into the public domain’.O’Donnell and Tse (2018) achieved this through their presentation of an Entang Wiharso painting in an ‘active state of conservation’ in an exhibition where members of the public saw first-hand the interdisciplinary approach and active engagement between conservator, artist, collector, curator, and students contributed to building an authentic artist record and robust body of material knowledge (2018, p. 24).

Previous work by Alhagh (2021) and Lewincamp’s tiered contact zones (2022) corroborates the findings of this research that individuals from some of the manuscripts’ origin communities enjoyed connecting with their cultural heritage in Melbourne. When conservator contributions are overly technical, they create distance between would-be collaborators rather than common ground or a sense of community. Drawing upon engagement theories and previous experiences, the authors designed pathways to reach the community and expand upon collection-focused engagements.

As discussed previously, there is no standard template for community engagement. It is a relational and responsive practice. This paper demonstrates the benefits of activities tailored to the communities’ needs and interests. Morse and Munro (2015, p. 9) articulate some common features of community engagement practice, relevant to this research: the regular meeting of small groups in the alternating museum and community spaces; sessions facilitated by museum professionals around collections or exhibitions, including exhibition visits; behind-the-scenes tours; object handling and object research; oral histories and creative activities. Also noted were programmes like Didar, trying to build relationships between institutions and communities that currently do not or cannot visit collecting institutions (Morse 2021, p. 8).

The ability to physically access a collection and feel that the organisation is inviting (‘a place for you’) is relevant to diaspora communities, English second language communities and those who find formal cultural institutions intimidating (Doubt, Sun & Yeh 2019). Addressing these barriers and needs is a core element of the Didar exhibition activities, as discussed in the paper. For instance, the team was cognisant of how daunting it may be for recent immigrants and refugees to Australia, like the Free to Feed participants, to visit the university. Morse (2021, p. 135) posits that creating welcoming spaces is the first way that care can manifest in museum engagement work. The hosts are friendly and attentive, often using humour or starting sessions with informal chats and cups of tea to put participants at ease. However, beyond this, they recognise the dynamics of museum privilege and museum rules (‘do not touch, do not run’) that continue to make these spaces intimidating.

This paper adapts the vocabulary and principles of the care approach for use in Didar activities. The Didar exhibition’s newly formed spaces are best described as Morse’s ‘emergent spaces of care’ (2021, p. 140) as this term highlights the continuous effort needed to maintain the feelings of connectedness into subsequent sessions. This care practice is intentionally repeated, re-created and informed by participant reflections.

Establishing community-based collaboration is, appropriately, time-consuming and labour-intensive. An essential part of the work is questioning and resolving the following: what is the purpose of the engagement, who are the potential communities, how can conservators engage, and when and where should engagements happen? Understanding in detail what is required to begin, support, and maintain such work stimulates dialogue, fostering the reflective process needed both to tailor cultural materials conservation knowledge-sharing methodology to the circumstances and to achieve the maximum benefit from it.

Methodology—listening and learning

The research project ran concurrently with community activities and had ethical approval from an internal University of Melbourne ethics panel. Standard protocols for ensuring participants’ informed consent, confidentiality and well-being were implemented throughout the project, and in the reporting of data participants’ names have been replaced by pseudonyms.

The authors used various methods of creating knowledge exchange between the communities and researchers. Participants at the end of each event completed a short survey with open-ended questions which encouraged reflection. The survey aimed to capture whether the event delivered against the participants’ expectations; any feelings, memories and thoughts that came up during the event and whether the event activations impacted participants’ attitudes and connection to the cultural materials. After the initial stages of building relationships, the team felt confident that deeper conversations might be acceptable to community members. At the end of the Arts of Persian Court event, participants were approached for one-on-one in-depth interviews. These interviews explored the emotional responses to the event and towards the cultural materials on display. The one-on-one interview format, compared to the more social context of the focus group discussion, allowed the participants to share the deep and personal experiences encountered during the event. The data from these interviews were presented in the narrative-based pen portrait format to facilitate an understanding of the participants’ subjective standpoints and how these subjectivities framed their reflections. The survey and in-depth interview data were supplemented by the creative outputs of the community members as they participated in ink-making and calligraphy workshops.

Didar—building relationships

The state of Victoria is culturally, religiously and linguistically diverse with a large population of immigrants and their descendants. Victorian Multicultural Commission Annual Report 2021–22 reported that 52.2% of the state's residents were born outside of Australia or had foreign-born parents, that is 3.4 million people. This number is increasing despite border restrictions from the pandemic (2022, p. 7). Additionally, over a quarter (27.6%) of Victorians use a language other than English in their homes (Victorian Multicultural Commission 2022). These figures demonstrate the potential profiles of the communities surrounding the collection, many of which represent manuscript communities of origin.

The initial approach was to link with diaspora communities or individuals representing manuscript-origin communities who speak Iranian, Arabic and Turkish. The authors also sought to engage with organisations that supported newly arrived refugees and looked to break down barriers to inclusion and connection. At the time of writing, two community organisations responded to the invitation: Free to Feed and the Pomegranate Cultural Group. As mentioned previously, the aim was to increase the visibility of the collection to people who may not know of its existence and who we believed might benefit from access. Early conversations introduced the collection and tried to articulate the engagement possibilities without being too prescriptive. We were open to exploring the themes of the manuscripts (love stories and poetry), manuscript materials (henna, turmeric, saffron), as well as artistic and social practices. The themes were kept deliberately open-ended to increase our chances of engagement and collaboration. Early communication guided the development of activities with potential communities, as opposed to delivering something and simply inviting them. Members of Free to Feed, a food enterprise, were drawn to manuscript materials, many used in cooking, their stories and social practices. Leaders of the Pomegranate Cultural Group connected to love stories and poetry in the manuscripts which are retold across generations and often put to music. From both the theory and the authors’ own practices, it was understood that there was a need to create inviting spaces, so each member felt comfortable sharing ideas.

Free to Feed

Free to Feed is a (not-for-profit) social enterprise that empowers people seeking asylum and refugees to overcome barriers to social and economic inclusion in Australia through training, employment and psycho-social support and the delivery of shared food experiences. Free to Feed was founded in 2015 and has a long history of service and support for Melbourne diaspora communities. They provide a nurturing and empowering work environment and build a strong and supportive community around each of their participants (Free to Feed, n.d). As a well-embedded, social-minded organisation Free to Feed offers an existing support structure of community and staff keen to invest in a collaboration centred around manuscripts.

It was agreed that the Iranian participants would enjoy seeing the manuscripts and the team discussed how to create the most supportive environment for this visit. It was decided the Didar tour would be delivered in Farsi. The group was intentionally kept small, and the gallery was closed to the public during their visit. A room provided for food, tea and sweets unsurprisingly facilitated the most vibrant conservations. The visit wrapped up with a workshop about the reconstruction of historical Persian inks, their materials and recipes, and the Free to Feed participants trying their hand at calligraphy.

The Pomegranate Cultural Group

The Pomegranate Cultural Group is a self-funded group that has been active since 2017. Their aim is to connect and support Iranian people living in Melbourne through arts and cultural experiences. The group organises art events, music performances, poetry reading sessions, puppet shows and architecture classes for kids.

Nasibeh, the founder of the organisation and a University of Melbourne student, was actively involved from the start in the co-creation of the event, project management and communication with community and other stakeholders. Nasibeh described her connection to the exhibition; ‘as soon as I walked into (the) Didar exhibition, I fell in love. When I saw books from my homeland, I knew I owe something to that place. As a sociologist, I believe art is the most powerful tool to achieve social change. So, what I could do was an art performance’ (personal communication with the authors).

Collaboration with the Pomegranate Cultural Group culminated with the Arts of the Persian Court event, which included an unguided exhibition visit, music performances in Farsi, a poetry reading in Farsi, Q&A forum with the curator and community liaison. The event was attended by nearly 160 participants and received highly positive feedback from both Farsi and non-Farsi speakers.

Open Day

The University of Melbourne Open Day event tested short storytelling conversations with curators, an ink-making workshop and communicating manuscript research work. The event prominently engaged prospective students and their families, and their feedback encouraged further use of storytelling elements to help participants engage with the manuscripts. In the Arts of the Persian Court event, storytelling elements about paper burnishing and the intention of the master calligrapher to create a fine product for the script were brought to the participants’ attention. The sensory parallels drawn between the reed pen dancing across the smooth burnished surface, like the gliding notes of the string instrument were well-received, prompting the research team to keep articulating links between the events and the cultural materials on display.

Reflections

Reflecting on individual stories | pen portraits

Reflection is a critical component of community engagement as it supports meaning-making. Regular reflective activities assisted the research team in connecting the engagement experiences to project objectives. The in-depth interview, which is a qualitative method, was used to develop a deeper understanding of the communities’ interpretation of the exhibition and situate these interpretations with the socio-historical contexts of the participants’ positionality (Sapu n.d., p. 6). Both the in-depth interview design and the presentation of the data obtained through the interviews relied heavily on the storytelling approach. The interviews sought to bring forth the ‘hidden or dormant’ socio-historical assets via storytelling which were then presented as pen portraits (Sapu n.d., p. 6).

Pen portraits were one of the tools used to illustrate reflections of the community members. The narrative form of pen portraits offers a more meaningful and accessible avenue to present data compared to other forms such as tables and transcripts. The insights, stories and reminiscences evoked by the activities were captured by the pen portraits. The vignettes presented below demonstrate the connection forged between community members and the manuscript-inspired experiences created in Didar. The unique stories of the four participants illuminate how meaning-making is framed by the participants’ prior knowledge and subjectivities (Morse 2021, p. 11).

Table

Rachel* Pen Portrait

‘The music took me back to a time in my childhood when the old men sang in Urdu and Dari in Broken Hill where our mosque was built’ Rachel is of Afghan/Aboriginal heritage, and they are currently based in Melbourne completing a degree in health science. The musical performance and the manuscripts surrounding the space took Rachel back to their childhood. They recalled how the Qur’ans belonging to the Afghan community were left out in the elements to rot in Broken Hill to be rescued by a small group which included their grandfather. Later, the mosque was restored and became a repository for the rescued Qur’ans. Rachel laments that the chain of knowledge and religious practice that made the Qur’anic texts meaningful is lost to the community. The pages of the Qur’ans that were thrown outside the mosque are now kept and cared for in the mosque, but the community is having to tap into outside expertise to identify provenance and interpret the texts. The manuscripts in the exhibition instil a sense of being in the presence of something profound in Rachel even though they do not understand the text or practise the religion.

Rachel’s pen portrait illustrates Schank and Abelson’s observation that ‘human knowledge is based on stories’, and that new experiences are absorbed through the understanding of old stories (1995, pp. 562–7). Rachel’s experience of the Didar event was framed by the stories of her grandparents and how they cared for the orphaned Qur’ans of their community. Interacting with objects can elicit memories and knowledge not thought of for many years. Rachel’s story of her Broken Hill community was redeployed during the event which expanded the story with new knowledge. Music activated the exhibition space and supported Rachels’ connection to the manuscripts.

Table

Fari* Pen Portrait

Fari is in her early 30s and has been in Australia for only two weeks. Whilst they did not disclose the conditions of their departure from Iran, there was a hint that it wasn’t entirely voluntary. The name Didar stood out for them in the invitation, and they came with the expectation to ‘see people of my country’. They talk about their love of Iran and their family. The performances made them ‘feel better in Australia’ and evoked a lot of strong emotions. Fari sat in both sessions of the event, tears streaming from their eyes throughout the musical performance.

The process of reflecting on past experiences, either in reminiscing sessions, educational or creative programs, have been framed as having therapeutic potential (Wallen & Docherty-Hughes 2022, p. 94). The Didar event offered Fari a taste of their beloved Iran in the adopted homeland and elicited a statement of improved well-being ‘feeling better in Australia’. This pen portrait demonstrates how museum community engagement projects can be spaces of care for refugees and recent immigrant groups.

Table

Gail* Pen Portrait

Gail is a conservator, artist, book-maker of Anglo-Celtic background. They were prompted to come to the event after discussing Rumi in their Zen/Sufi group. What stood out for Gail was being introduced to a different notion of time and rhythm through the music. The architecture of Persian music felt distinctively different and didn’t flow as expected. Being jolted out of their habitual listening experience and exposure to a language they couldn’t understand (Farsi) forced Gail to be present at the moment. They reflected on the experience which offered a perspective about how non-English speakers feel most of the time in Australia. For Gail, the event fostered a sense of empathy and connection to the experience of the immigrant communities.

Gail’s pen portrait presents a different emotional landscape stemming from their exposure to the cultural heritage borne out of a different geography. This demonstrates the caveat by Wetherell et al. (2018, p. 3) that a heritage event will not ‘trigger a matching, singular, unequivocal emotion in its audience’. The research team was cognisant of this caveat and the analysis considered the wider palette of cross-cultural emotions and the prior knowledge that each participant uses to decode and narrate the events.

Table

Arad* Pen Portrait

Arad works in Information Technology and comes from a French/Turkish background. They are not on social media, so heard about the event from friends who had seen it online. Arad felt that each aspect of the event helped to deliver the same thing/message. The music, singing, poetry, and manuscripts each evoked the same feelings/connection to cultural heritage but from different perspectives. The pieces felt immersive and in harmony with each other. It was ‘a whole experience’. Everything was connected and reflected in each component. All the masters coming together—one whole integrated.

Arad’s pen portrait demonstrates all the activating elements (music, poetry, cultural food, rugs and cushions, and manuscript story telling) were complementary and enhanced the audience experience. Arad’s comments reinforced the authors’ reflections about the effectiveness of the iterative design approach, leading to the adoption of these complementing elements for the next series of events.

In summary, the exhibition activities were underscored by the understanding of heritage as a ‘verb’, i.e. heritage as a social act. As Wetherell et al. (2018, p. 9) note ‘heritage is indeed what is done with such places rather than the places themselves’. The pen portraits offer glimpses into the act of meaning-making that was undertaken by the participants as they responded to the activated space from their unique and subjective standpoints.

Discussion

At the time of writing, the authors had gathered reflections from three events, halfway through the exhibition program. Reflective feedback was continuous and connected. While the participants differed across the activities, the feedback was brought together to provide an overview of the exhibition’s engagement and to build upon the work done in the previous activity.

Four key themes could be distilled from the analysis of the data collected during the events: building integrated experiences around a central theme; connection to cultural heritage; offering a positive narrative of Iranian culture; broadening knowledge and skills. The themes offer guidance on the aspects of public programming which resonated with our partner communities.

Theme 1| integrated experiences—the whole is greater than the sum of parts

The feedback from the initial events indicated the appeal of a central theme and multiple facets of the event building up to create an evocative experience around this theme. This feedback informed the design of the subsequent events to offer multi-sensory, integrated, manuscript-inspired experiences. For instance, the Arts of the Persian Court event incorporated an Iranian singer and a musician, a poetry reading session that brought manuscript texts to life, and a catering menu that complemented the storytelling of the performances. The exhibition space was activated with rugs and cushions to provide an appropriate spatial backdrop to the historical Persian court context and to create a welcoming space in line with the care ethos. The different facets of this event were designed to integrate different elements of the courtly context of engaging with the manuscripts. The quotes from participants indicate how the integrated design of the event in which elements were thematically related elevated the audience experience:

The women performers and the manuscript decorations came together to create a beautiful ‘feminine aesthetic’.

I didn’t anticipate the food but it’s drawing the lines between the dots. The experience is multi-faceted, like double mirrors reflecting each other to infinity.

In summary, participant feedback data confirm the appeal of events organised around a central theme to create integrated multisensory manuscript experiences.

Theme 2| connecting or recalibrating connection to culture, homeland, memories

A connection to culture, religion and homeland was a salient theme among visitors who were of Muslim and/or Middle Eastern backgrounds. The events and the exhibition acted as a vector of ‘connection’ to these participants’ cultural, religious and geographic roots. The meaning of this connection varied depending on the participant’s own personal history. For a recent immigrant/refugee, the connection was layered with the grief of what had to be left behind whereas for more settled community members the connection had a sense of being pulled back to a time that was buried deep in their memories as captured by the quotes below:

The poetry reminds me of my home town Shiraz because this is where Hafiz is from. I met my wife in Shiraz. The poetry reminded me of being in love.

Meeting with my past. Didar really happened today.

Connection was a salient theme in the ink-making workshop output of Free to Feed participants. Participants wrote phrases in Farsi using traditional Persian reed pens and the inks they made, phrases like ‘Proud Iran'’, ‘My best Iran’, ‘My Afghanistan'’, ‘My son (the name of the son), the moment of visit is soon’ (writings of a mother who has not seen her son since she left Iran), ‘O friend! do not plant anything but love in the garden of your heart’ (a quote by Baha'ullah, the Baha’i prophet-founder), and inscription of the names of beloved members of the family. The calligraphic writings of the participants demonstrated in a tangible way how the event evoked a connection to their past, their country and loved ones.

Theme 3| showcasing Iranian culture and changing the narrative on Iran

The events showcased Iranian music, poetry, food and manuscripts. Members of the Iranian community expressed pride in their cultural heritage and embraced the opportunity to share their heritage with non-Iranians. The research was conducted prior to the widespread protests in Iran but even then, Iranian community members saw the events as instrumental in offering an alternative view of Iran that is based on culture, heritage and beauty instead of the mainstream portrayal of Iran as threatening.

If the manuscripts could talk they would tell the world that people of Iran are happier than you think, that they are good people. We as the people of Iran are different from the government and politics. Manuscripts show the culture of Iran.

It’s a beautiful world of hidden beauty. Why not share with others?

Iranian community members were careful not to speak from a position of cultural superiority but stated that the understanding and appreciation of Iranian cultural heritage would facilitate connection with the wider community around shared values. Thus, the event facilitated not only a connection back to homeland but a connection with the wider community in the ‘adopted’ homeland.

Theme 4| new knowledge and skills: broadening one’s perspective and knowledge base

One of the most common words participants used to describe their experience was ‘informative’ in reference to the sharing of cultural, artistic and historical knowledge that took place during the events. The word ‘informative’ was accompanied by similar words such as ‘educational, enlightening, insightful, illuminating and eye-opening’, all of which ladder to the broadening of one’s knowledge and skills.

Those who rated their satisfaction highly cited the learning experience as one of the main drivers of their positive experience. Learning occurred in different ways depending on the event and activities. For those who were motivated to attend the event because they were interested in history and manuscripts, the intellectual content was instrumental in meeting such expectations. The curatorial talks, wall texts and displays were the means through which visitors acquired new knowledge in a manner that was engaging and intriguing. For those who were interested in gaining new skills and knowledge in a tactile/practical manner, the ink-making and calligraphy workshops were instrumental. The visitors appreciated witnessing traditional methods of ink making and using the ink to try their hands at calligraphy. The feedback thus highlights the need to diversify the forms of knowledge exchange to engage visitors with different interests and backgrounds. Intellectually stimulating content combined with the hands-on experience of interacting with traditional materials and crafts ensured Didar events could appeal to a wide range of participant interests.

Conclusions

This article has addressed the questions posed for AICCM 50th Anniversary volume, Self, Systems and Society under the theme Society and Connections: ‘How must we adapt to stay relevant and to best support the needs of the societies to which we belong?’, and ‘How have our objectives as an organisation and as individual practitioners changed over 50 years?’. The discussion considers how ‘items of cultural heritage act as agents of memory, inspiration, information, evidence and discovery, through which personal and collective stories are told through time’ (AICCM 2020).

A key source of expertise is the communities in which the objects are housed or associated. The museum sector and conservation efforts are abundant with community involvement initiatives, and the requirement for such initiatives will only continue. The overwhelmingly positive feedback from Didar community engagement activities strengthens our goal to promote the collection and create further engagement opportunities for those unfamiliar or uncomfortable with university spaces.

The pen portraits presented in this paper offer an exemplar to understand how the activities engaged community members, who the potential communities are, as well as their needs and aspirations. In each event, a foundation of shared experience was created upon which future collaborations can be based. Data gathered from events demonstrates the provoked sense of belonging, identity and hope, which according to Smith and Campbell (2016, p. 455) maximises the impact of emotional engagements with collections and creates trusting relationships between communities and researchers.

Reflective practice is a critically and equally important component for both community engagement and conservation professional development. The authors’ ongoing reflective practice has invigorated the following provocations.

Will communities try to use/access the collection after Didar is de-installed? Do they feel an attachment to the collection moving forward? Is this our desire or theirs? Being mindful that these exhibition activities and the impact of the seeding community attachment to these manuscripts may not be visible for years. Alternatively, do the authors need to play an ongoing facilitator role, at least in the immediate future?

The research reported here has informed a new way of thinking, by adapting care principles in conservation. At the time of writing, the authors found the care perspective a useful approach to Didar community engagements. As highlighted by Morse (2021, p. 152) mobilising community care in conservation offers ‘⁣⁣professional expertise that [is] constructed in both established skills—creative engagement through objects—and new ones, developed through partnerships with health and social care workers and recipients’. Implementing the principles of care rests on the view supported by Chitty (2017, p. 4) that the conservator’s role is ‘as commodity rather than authority, as facilitator rather than fixer’.

This research aligns with the contemporary shift in community engagement, which is locally led, participatory and socially relevant. The authors hope that the skills and methods we have shared through these experiences act as a motivator and guide to those interested in further professionalising their community engagement strategies.

Acknowledgements

We firstly acknowledge Professor Robyn Sloggett, PhD supervisor of Sophie Lewincamp (2022) and Leila Alhagh (2020). Further acknowledgements extend to our colleagues, collaborators, friends, and community members for their support and encouragement; Penny Tripp, Dr Sadra Zekrgoo, Nasim Koohkesh, Nasibeh Irani, Dr Reyhane Mirabootalebi, Tarek Makhlouf, Tala Abdullhadi, Kathy Share and the Free to Feed participants, Hossein Rabiei, Maryam Parsi, Saterah Namatollahi, Amir Faraji, Sareh Abooali, Peter Mitchelson, Camielle Fitzmaurice, Jordi Casasayas, Libby Melzer, Kimberley Chung, Julia Silvester, Lauren Christmas, Fleur McArthur and Weier Li. Thanks also to the team at the University of Melbourne Scholarly Services - Susan Millard, Jon Buckingham, Leanne McCredden and Lucy Willett.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University of Melbourne Faculty of Arts: [Grant Number Diversity and Inclusion small grant].