From Dig Where You Stand to Dancing Where We Dig
From Dig Where You Stand to Dancing Where We Dig: a critical approach to participatory history practices
The first public history group session of the 2015 -16 academic year is on Saturday 24 October with Astrid von Rosen (Gothenburg) & Andrew Flinn (London).
In 1978 the Swedish author and activist Sven Lindqvist published Gräv där du står (Dig Where You Stand (DWYS)). Inspired by the understanding that ‘History is dangerous. History is important because the results of history are still with us’, Lindqvist’s book was a detailed and practical manual to Do-It-Yourself historical research aimed at workers because ‘Factory History could and should be written from a fresh point of view – by workers investigating their own workplaces’. Lindqvist’s writing and talks chimed with many history and cultural production movements of the time such as History Workshop and the oral history movement and resulted in many DWYS groups and initiatives being set up in Sweden, Germany and the UK. Taking Lindqvist’s work and other similar initiatives of that time as an inspiration and a model our talk will briefly outline the history and principles of the DWYS movement, the significance of participatory history-making and archiving; and most importantly will describe our ongoing collaborative work towards producing a critical re-imagined Dig Where You/We Stand approach, Dancing Where We Dig grounded in the interstices and contact zones between creative, artistic, activist and academic approaches to archiving, public history and knowledge-production.
6th floor, Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PY.
We meet for coffee around 11 and the session starts promptly at 11.30 and finishes by lunchtime.
All welcome – just turn up!
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