Call for applications: The Endangered Material Knowledge Programme

The Endangered Material Knowledge Programme (EMKP) is a major new programme that will help preserve the knowledge of traditional material practices and knowledge systems that are in danger of disappearing by providing grants for documentation work. It focuses on the ‘made world’ and how people create, build, repair and use the natural resources and objects to shape their societies, spaces, and bodies. The scope of this work will be potentially huge – material practices can range from special events to the production and use of everyday household items like cooking implements, agricultural tools or clothes, as well the houses and buildings that people occupy.

The programme’s objective is to preserve the knowledge in perpetuity through an open access, digital repository. Scholars from across the world are invited to apply for funding to spend time with communities and recording practices using a range of digital formats. Scholars can apply for a small grant, which is awarded for up to one year and with a maximum of £15,000, or a large grant, awarded for up to two years with a maximum budget of £70,000.

Call for applications opens on the 15^th October 2019.

Call closes on the 15^th January 2020.

More information can be found on the British museum website.

Applications can be submitted here (not active until the 15^th October 2019):

https://britishmuseum.submittable.com/

EMKP is supported by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin and hosted by the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the British Museum will deliver this three-year programme of grants (2018-2021).

For inquiries please get in touch at emkp@britishmuseum.org

Collections in Circulation: Conference, 9-10 May 2019

The Mobile Museum Project Conference will take place at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, on Thursday 9th and Friday 10th May 2019.

The conference brings together scholars from the UK and overseas with a shared interest in the mobility of museum collections, past and present. Their papers will address various aspects of the history of the circulation of objects and their re-mobilisation in the context of object exchange, educational projects and community engagement.

Confirmed speakers include Claudia Augustat, Paul Basu, Joshua Bell, Martha Fleming, Tony Kanellos, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Luciana Martins, Wayne Modest, Catherine Nichols, Jude Philp, Daniel Simpson, Alice Stevenson and members of the Mobile Museum project team.

The full conference programme is now availlable and is designed to allow opportunity for extended discussion of the papers and their implications. A reception will be held in Kew’s Shirley Sherwood Gallery, and there will be optional tours of the Economic Botany Collection, the Herbarium and Kew’s library & archives.

Endangered Material Knowledge Programme.

The British Museum Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas recently launched a new grant programme to fund documentation of critically endangered material knowledge systems across the globe, with a focus on non-western contexts. The Endangered Material Knowledge Programme (EMKP) is a major programme to help preserve the knowledge of endangered material practices for future generations. Societies around the globe are changing at an unprecedented rate, and specialist, locally-informed knowledge is in danger of being lost - knowledge that has helped communities thrive in unique environmental, social and cultural contexts. The programme will document what we might term the ‘made world’ and how people use, build, make and repair the natural resources around them to create their distinctive societies, homes and spaces. The scope of this work will be potentially huge – material practices can range from special events, to the production and use of everyday household items like cooking implements, agricultural tools or clothes, as well the houses and buildings that people occupy.

 Funded by Arcadia – a charitable trust of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, grants will be available for digital recording of material practices, which will then be made publically available through an open access repository hosted by the Museum.

Small grants (c£15,000) and large grants (c £70,000) are available, and details of the programme and links to the application forms can be found on the British Museum website.