Souvenirs
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About our project
Young people from the North East Refugee Service worked with staff from Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums to research world culture collections at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens.
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Young people from the North East Refugee Service work on a film project inspired by museum collections
Amongst other objects our research uncovered a number of clubs. Clubs were collected by sailors to reresent the community and culture they found on their travels. Fijian clubs were brought back to represent the warlike nature of the native people and fed into a stereotype of Fiji as a cannibal island inhabited by savages, compared to the peaceful neighbouring island of Tonga.
Native people started making clubs to trade with sailors. These items became souvenirs perpetuating a stereotype of the culture they came from.
Uncovering this information prompted a number of questions. Do souvenirs represent culture? Do souvenirs perpetuate stereotypes? What souvenir would represent your culture? The young people's responses to, and research into, these issues has fed into a film which puts forward their ideas.
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Discuss
I grew up in an English vicarage, so tea represents my culture! When I went to Russia in 1994, I brought back a mssive teapot from a flea market where all the flotsam and jetsam of the Soviet Empire was for sale. I drank a lot of tea on that holiday - no milk and a spoon of homemade raspberry jam from my host's dacha. The tea pot has a dodgy handle, so it is strictly for display and not for use!Added by isobel