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The Past in the Present : Remnants of Slavery in Groningen.

Invisible pieces of the Groningen Heritagescape In our previous blog, we visited sites related to the invisible heritage related to Moluccans in the Netherlands. We are again going to take a look at invisible cultural heritage. This time, as you might have guessed from the title, in Groningen, the capital of a province of the Netherlands of the same name. We toured the city to explore the history it has with Slavery another form of Dark Cultural Heritage that has been omitted and ignored resulting in its invisibility. This history, which is not only a part of the history of Groningen but of the Netherlands has been slowly forgotten, hidden in plain sight. However, a Modern historian and co-author (with Margaret Fokken ) of the book “Sporen van het Slavernijverleden in Groningen” (Traces of the History of Slavery in Groningen), Barbara Henkes has joined forces with the project, Mapping Slavery NL to acknowledge this heritage in the province of Groningen and is currently
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An invisible heritage scape

A culturally immersive bike ride into a slowly fading and hidden heritage site On a typically chilly spring morning in the northern province of Groningen, an enthusiastic group of students departed from the University of Groningen. They gathered in front of the statue of the famous Aletta Jacobs. Although they knew it, they paid little attention to the fact that their meeting point was also a heritage site, one among others in the Netherlands, which celebrates and remembers Jacobs’ irreplaceable contribution to suffrage and the furthering of women’s rights in the Netherlands. She was the first woman to study openly at a university in the Netherlands. The statue is easily accessible to all passersby and has a plaque below it giving more information about the monument, reinforcing its importance to Dutch cultural heritage. The irony here was that the groups’ destinations were in comparison quite the opposite. For some, it was a refreshing experience to change scenery and take the cla
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Me, myself and my cultural heritage

The influence of digitization on the switch from community based to individually based cultural heritage  Cultural heritage is increasingly being influenced by globalization and the use of digital media as a form of heritage mediation. This has led to a shift in the way in which cultural heritage is being mediated as social and digital media have shifted the (im)balance from a collective memory decided through a top-down process (which tends to be based on the opinions of individual experts) to a process that allows increasing autonomy to engage other opinions and emploring a bottom-up way of understanding cultural heritage. When we think about cultural heritage, we often relate it to old and static monuments or musea. It has a negative image of preserving artefacts which are not useful or meaningful to us in our present lives. Shortly said, they are perceived, at least by the younger generations, as boring. Nowadays, with the inception of the digital age, cultural heritage has tra
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With the “plof” into the Grunneger laboratory

On Saturday the 17th of March, the ‘Huis van de Groninger Cultuur’ the ‘RHC Groninger Archieven’ and the ‘Bureau Groninger Taal en Cultuur’ (RUG) (amongst others), organised ‘de Dag van de Grunneger Toal’ (the day of the Groninger language). The special celebration of this minority language was hosted inside the building(s) of the Groninger archives. When entering the building you were met with an introduction committee with stickers, leaflets and bags of the day on the right, and a stage on the left. During the day a variety of Groninger artists would make their way to that stage to perform their Groninger music, varying from lighthearted melodic songs to more energetic and powerful ones. In addition to that, there were presentations and workshops on a wide range of topics such as the Groninger language, literature and the future of Gronings, given by Goffe Jensma, Jan Glas, Louis Stiller and more. It was also possible to stroll around the fair of books, CDs and films. As second (
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Sigerswâld, that does not sound Dutch?

The use of visual bilingualism through the autochthonous linguistics naming of places in the province of Frisia. It is a well-known sight for everyone who has ever travelled through the province of Frisia: the ravel of place name signs. Some of the villages in the province of Frisia are indicated in Dutch, others in Frisian, others in both Dutch and Frisian and hamlets are almost always indicated in only Frisian, even if the place names in the hamlet are formally indicated in only Dutch. If the town is officially indicated in Dutch but the place names also are indicated in Frisian, the Dutch name will be above the Frisian name on the sign. If the town if officially indicated in Frisian, then the Frisian name will be above the Dutch name. To make it all even more confusing, different villages use different spellings of Frisian, depending on the area they are in, and therefore there is a big variety in Frisian place name signs.¹ Bilingual signs are not only used by the Frisian minori
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The Disconnection between History and Cultural Heritage

While history and cultural heritage seem inherently bound to each other, nothing is less true. History and cultural heritage seem to work together; one might even think history creates cultural heritage. However, the disconnection between history and cultural heritage is becoming increasingly large. One could argue that nowadays history is for all, while cultural heritage is for ourselves alone (Lowenthal, 1998, 128). What one might consider cultural heritage, could be of no interest to others. And this is where cultural heritage is on the verge of becoming a topic for heated discussion. We can all think of present examples in which the notion of cultural heritage is being criticized and where it sometimes is even called racist. Recall the ‘Black Pete’ discussion here in the Netherlands for example. The one side to this discussion sees ‘Black Pete’ as an important part of Dutch cultural heritage and as intrinsically part of Dutch culture, without it, the Dutch would lose a part of thei
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