Bryony conducts research in the areas of community engagement, indigenizing and decolonizing museology and heritage, difficult histories, truth and reconciliation, identity and performance, understanding place and environment,
and the power and politics of representation
and the power and politics of representation
Projects
Gifting Together and Giving Back - Spring 2020
Collaborators: Bryony Onciul, Konstantinos Thomaidis, Ann Grand, Karver Everson, Jesse Recalma, Rory Weaver, Malavika Mahesh Murthy.
This project explored the practice of international reciprocal exchange around art and wellbeing. We were interested in exploring the relationships between land, environment, artmaking, history, and collaboration. The project was built on a partnership with the Kumugwe Cultural Society, BC Canada, and the MED Theatre Wild Nights Youth Company, Devon UK. ‘Through sharing the songs and dances of the K’omoks and Kwakwaka’wakw peoples, the Kumugwe Dancers are able to help facilitate respect and understanding within the local community and communities abroad.’ MED is ‘a rural community theatre inspired by local ecology, history and the folklore of Dartmoor’ (MED 2020).
The project combined two half-day workshops in Devon (one with MED and one with the University of Exeter’s Post-Graduates in the Drama department), with visits to ancestors’ art held in four UK museums:
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Figure 1. MED Workshop Feb 2020
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The purpose of the workshops was for the invited Kumugwe Cultural Society members and artists to co-devise and lead an arts-based workshop alongside host academics Konstantinos Thomaidis (with Bryan Brown), Bryony Onciul and Ann Grand. The visiting artists, Karver Everson (K’ómox First Nations) and Jesse Recalma (Qualicum First Nation) shared their practice and in turn encouraged local participants to reflect on and creatively re-imagine their own ways of understanding and practising belonging, through processes of mutual and ethical collaboration.
Figure 2. RAMM Visit Feb 2020. Left to Right: Malavika Mahesh Murthy, Rory Weaver, Curator Tony Eccles, Karver Everson, Jessie Recalma, Bryony Onciul
Two MA students were recruited as Research Assistants for the project, Malavika Mahesh Murthy and Rory Weaver. They worked alongside academic Bryony Onciul to support the visits to the museums and the workshops. This enabling further cultural and knowledge exchange between young people in the UK and Canada, whilst building new relationships with the museums.
Karver and Jesse worked with Bryony to identify key pieces in museum collections in the UK they wanted to visit. At the British Museum is was important to visit with the K’ómox house-posts (Am1944,02.393) collected by Royal Navy officer Lieutenant Edmund Hope Verney, commander of the gunboat HMS Grappler and shipped to the UK in 1863 with the description "Two large carvings from the mouth of the Courtenay River in the Comux [sic] district".
Visiting UK museum collections of ancestors’ art selected by Jessie and Karver was a small step towards the repatriation of knowledge and designs to support ongoing cultural revitalisation. This supports the aims of Kumugwe Cultural Society to ‘promote, preserve and advocate for cultural practices of the K’ómoks and Kwakwaka’wakw Peoples.’
Initial Workshop Outcomes
Karver and Jesse worked with Bryony to identify key pieces in museum collections in the UK they wanted to visit. At the British Museum is was important to visit with the K’ómox house-posts (Am1944,02.393) collected by Royal Navy officer Lieutenant Edmund Hope Verney, commander of the gunboat HMS Grappler and shipped to the UK in 1863 with the description "Two large carvings from the mouth of the Courtenay River in the Comux [sic] district".
Visiting UK museum collections of ancestors’ art selected by Jessie and Karver was a small step towards the repatriation of knowledge and designs to support ongoing cultural revitalisation. This supports the aims of Kumugwe Cultural Society to ‘promote, preserve and advocate for cultural practices of the K’ómoks and Kwakwaka’wakw Peoples.’
Initial Workshop Outcomes
- Evidence of potential for a transformative experience for participants as a result of the cultural exchange based on arts-based performance and well-being.
- Youth network developing between K’ómox and Devon
- Network building between UK museums and K’ómox
- Repatriation of knowledge from UK held museum collections of ancestors’ art to K’ómox community to support ongoing cultural revitalization
- Potential to develop the pilot workshops and museum visits into a more sustained and larger programme
- Evidence of the importance of reciprocity
- Evidence of the importance of cross-cultural collaboration and Indigenous Youth Leadership
- Indications that this work has the potential to explore and support wellbeing