Fiji's artistic heritage: impact and engagement in Fiji

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This project will convert the results of the AHRC-funded Fijian Art research project (2011-14) into significant impacts in Fiji, securing a long-term legacy for the activities of the original project in the country of origin and reaching new audiences. Existing relationships with Fiji Museum and the Fiji High Commission to the UK will be activated alongside new relationships with the iTaukei Trust Fund Board in Suva (which is developing a museum/cultural centre), the UK High Commission in Fiji and other Fiji-based organisations to ensure there is substantial benefit to the cultural and economic sectors in Fiji.The work of impact generation will take place in two phases. The first (Oct 2016 - Feb 2017) will take advantage of the summative project exhibition, 'Fiji: Art and Life in the Pacific', which will be shown at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia during that period. This will be the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to Fiji, displaying important historic material from major collections, including those in Cambridge, Oxford, Aberdeen and the British Museum, as well as Fiji Museum. A major theme of the exhibition is the creative adaptability of Fijians over the last two centuries in the context of major political, religious and economic influences and disturbances. The exhibition will accordingly show major contemporary works, including a 26ft-long newly built double-hulled canoe (drua), which recently featured in the Queen's 90th birthday pageant at Windsor, and a large (15ft x 6ft) painted barkcloth, showing continuity of cultural practice.Four curators and four artists from Fiji, identified as a result of the original project, will be invited for residencies in Norwich, to participate in workshops and knowledge exchange sessions around the exhibition, its content and themes. This will work both ways. Fijians will see the finest material in the UK and receive training in international-standard museum practice. They will reciprocate by engaging with the Sainsbury Centre Education team, providing Fijian perspectives on collections and exhibitions. The canoe, an unexpected outcome of the original project, will be a vehicle, practical and metaphorical, for illuminating issues connected to the use of sustainable resources (it is made entirely of wood and coir cordage), climate and sea-level changes and heritage management. The Fijian guests will also visit Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford to see the Fijian collections there, to establish mutual collaborative relations and to derive inspiration for new artworks in a range of media.The second phase of the Highlight Notice project mostly takes place in Fiji (Mar-Sep 2017). Here the four curators and four artists will convert their experiences in the UK into practical outcomes - training and inspiring colleagues and the broader Fijian community in the process. Fiji Museum colleagues will feed their experiences into their current strategic development planning, leading to enhanced displays, storage facilities and educational programmes. In addition, Fiji Museum will mount an exhibition in August 2017 of new work by the artists who visited the UK, coinciding with the week-long Hibiscus Festival that brings tens of thousands of people to central Suva. Fiji Museum staff will also conduct workshops focusing on craft skills and schools' engagement with heritage issues. The iTaukei Trust Fund Board will host workshops and develop a network of local fieldworkers to document cultural knowledge, especially in the area of women's arts, achieving impacts in remote areas of the country. They will also transfer their UK experiences into the development of their new museum building and facilities. Foundations will be laid for a commercial canoe-building initiative, to be discussed with the Fiji Government as part of rural development policy, discouraging urban drift.