The conference kicked off with a truly outstanding workshop on pottery and activism on Tuesday October 22nd, by artist, scholar and activist Michael Strand (Chair of the Art & design department of North Dakota State University), who also gave the conference’s keynote on the following day. Global Artefact students were joined by Art & Design students of the True Replicas course in this workshop, and Michael Strand was hugely impressed by the energy and creativity of this group. UCR cooperated with the Culture House Kuiperspoort for the workshop and the RIAS for the keynote and the reception that followed it, for which many thanks to both institutes.
The main event of the conference was a series of thirteen talks by international speakers in the fields of heritage and publishing, each followed by a response of a UCR student. The highest accolade regarding the quality of the students’ responses was given by one of the participants: if a stranger had wandered into the conference, they would not have been able to distinguish scholars from students, and would rather have thought to see a meeting of senior and junior faculty.
The proceedings of the conference, including all papers and responses, are to be published in a peer-reviewed book next year.