From August 22-26 the Nias Lorentz Workshop 'Migrant (R)e Collections was held in Leiden. The main goal was to find a template how to improve access to migration heritage. There is a great need with small communities (like migrant communities) to find ways to preserve their heritage and to tell their stories, stories that demonstrate the high impact of the relocation and settlement on the lives of individuals. At the same time it is hard to find institutions who can help them and offer sustainable solutions for (digitally) preserving and sharing their heritage. This is not only problematic for the migrants and their relatives, but also for historians focusing on migration and anyone interested in the topic. These private collections can potentially add valuable information to the known official data on migrants offered by national institutions (for example migrant registration cards at national archives worldwide).
In this workshop academics and professionals from different backgrounds and from different countries were invited. Migration historians, heritage professionals and scholars from digital humanities colaborated. Also members of the Dutch National Committee to UNESCO participated.
In this short video Koosje Spitz from the National Committee to UNESCO poses her views of the need to focus on migration heritage:
The Migrant (R)e Collection workshop was initiated by the Centre for Global Heritage and Development, Huygens Institute for Dutch History and Curtin University with the support of the Nias Lorentz Centre.