New voices in the narratives of the city

• A collection of city walks showing the history of Malmö has been translated into Arabic, and 19 Arabic speaking guides have been trained to show the city to an audience of visitors and residents. The Institute of the History of Malmö is planning a research project regarding what happens to the city’s narratives when new narrators and a new audience receive them, in a language that is new to the context. In the first part of the project we have interviewed guides about their role in narrating the history of the city, why they chose to be part of the project and what they what to achieve by guiding. Malmö is not today, and has never been, a homogenous city. The last few decades this has become a central part of the city’s identity. Although housing segregation is just as important as in other cities, people seem to feel that the segregation of public space is less obvious here. This contributes to a sense of “us” that includes differences on many levels, a complex and heterogeneous identity that this project seeks to contribute to. The research project accompanying the translated guided walks will take particular interest in three points: 1) How do the narratives change when new narrators and a new audience take them on? The guides’ and the audience’s relation to Malmö, their social and cultural references and relations to various collectives in the city will affect the narratives, we want to know how. 2) How do the narratives change by being linguistically translated from the language involved in the creation of the place to a language with other frames of reference? 3) How are the new narratives brbrought back and allowed to affect the hegemonic narratives of the city?

Nyckelord

Urban history

cultural heritage

historical walking tours

memory

spatiality

master narrative

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