Cultural heritage through the lens of community psychology and narrative therapy: a community project on Chinese and Vietnamese diaspora in London

‘Memory Talk’ in a Museum in a Contested Land

“…Sites like the maternity hospital, remembered as a collective birthplace, are examples of objects that created a point reflection and consciousness, where the weaving together of personal narratives offered a collective account of the community (Yim 2022). Yet, in-line with the already then topical issue of decolonising heritage discourses, we asked ourselves, as organisers and moderators, had we really made a significant change, when accounting for the complexity of our history, or had we only 'opened a ludic perspective on a very complex matter, /and thus/ lapsed into apologism and sanitised celebration' (Edwards & Mead 2013, 20) of the 'multiculturality' of the region or of the socialist past?…”

“…Current scholarship and practice in museology is quite aware of the psychological dimensions of museum work, especially in relation to difficult heritage and traumatic pasts (Cowan et al 2019;Pabst 2019), since the process of dealing with affect and emotions to better understand how people develop attachments to the past can reveal fractures and tensions within a community (Wetherell et al 2018, 2). Recent research points to the manifold intersections between narrative therapy, when studied within the framework of community psychology, and museum studies: work with a group or community, storytelling as central activity, the use of objects to facilitate storytelling, collective witnessing and, most of all, meaning-making for individuals and communities (Yim 2022). Still in 2012, but also later, this level of openness and self-reflection in the expert field was not yet present.…”