Those roadside memorials that send shivers down your spine energized our program today as opened a dialog with Professor Gordon Coonfield of Villanova University in Philadelphia, PA. The talk centered on how these memorials capture and communicate feelings in deeply personal and very public ways. The conversation fluidly moved from Art and Anthropology to Communications and History.
The video captures the photographs he shared, many from the Kensington Remembers Gallery site. His presentation sparked a lively chat discussion, which continued into a Q&A period at the conclusion.
The following are just a fraction of the references that came up during today’s session. Please feel free to share more in the comments along with your own observations:
Formal Memorials and makeshift shrines to the lives lost on 9/11 from Wikipedia.org: List of memorials, and September 11 Photo Project, for example.
Discussion of the impact of respect and how a community responds to vernacular memorials
Frannie Girl in Philadephia (Google Image Search)
How graffiti tributes are sometimes accepted into formal mural traditions (from Google Image Searches)
George Floyd, nationally across the US.
Oscar Grant in Oakland, CA.
How ghost bikes can remain in important locations for decades
Murals — how they can be used to transition from “castle in the air,” temporary memorials to permanent installations.
Philadelphia: MuralArts.org
How public memorials and commemorations demonstrate the impact of money on culture. Discussed revisiting Civil War Memorials in the US, for example.
Professor Gordon Coonfield is writing a book, “Ghosts of Kensington.” We look forward to learning more when it is released.
You are welcome to share this post with friends and family. This recording and resources are shared free of charge after each program in our Projectkin community.
About This Series
“Forget-Me-Not: How We Memorialise” is a six-part series for storytellers and family historians that explores how we memorialize and preserve the stories of people who have died. The series is a collaboration between Jane Hutcheon of The Juvenile Geriatric Newsletter and Projectkin.org, a community of family historians hooked on stories.
Jane Hutcheon is a Sydney-based journalist and the creator and former host of the ABCTV interview show One Plus One from 2010 until 2019. She is also a writer and performer in theater productions. In 2022 she wrote a show about my mother’s upbringing called Lost in Shanghai, and her latest show is Difficult Conversations with Jane Hutcheon. We’re thrilled to have this Forget-Me-Not series as part of Projectkin.
More about Jane’s concept for the series, and join us at an upcoming event!
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