FUN HISTORY

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Between 19-25 April I accompanied 6 colleagues from Yogyakarta and Jakarta on their visit to the Netherlands related to the heritage education pilot project sponsored by the the Dutch Government. We visited a lot of institutions and one impressed me : ANNO.

ANNO is located in the Hague and this organization has task to promote history of Netherlands to public and education institutions. To give a quick picture : ANNO has organised an exhibition about history of beauty in shopping malls. How perception about beauty changes from time to time. This relativism of beauty is the message of the exhibition. The fact that ANNO exhibited its works in malls has intrigued me since I have tried to do the same in Medan several years ago. Many Indonesians love malls and they visit malls regularly. So in Medan we have cooperated with some malls to exhibit "Medan in the Past" showing black & white pictures from the good old days when Medan still looked clean, green and romantic. Many viewers fell in love with these pictures and they started to ask more about the past. So I learned that "malls manuvre" actually being used also to promote history in the Netherlands.


Another example. The current exhibition called "the Bunker" is about dillema in the Second World War. If you are a Dutch and has a Jewish neighbour, what should and would you do? Report the presence of your neighbour to the Germans? Or protect your neighbour? For three years until 2010 the Bunker will travel to various cities in the Netherlands and let children wandering back to the facts and history of the Second World War.



Besides exhibitions, ANNO also works with the press by publishing articles related to what actuals in the current days and their relations with history. Topics could be about education, integration, sport, health, housing, labours, etc. In this way, people are aware that current affairs are attached to history.

Looking at the materials that were produced by ANNO made me envious also. They could think as creative as they would without worrying about how to get funding to produce something because they receives subsidies from the Government.

I have never seen an organization working with history as bright and cheerful as ANNO.

(Photo courtesy : Anno)

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