Cultural Responses

Cultural responses include art, music, dance, monuments and memorials; powerful ways to not only honor the past but also to learn about it and to publicly remember it.

The District Six Museum in Cape Town stands as a memorial to the community of District Six that was destroyed by apartheid. It also represents a space where community members can come together to make land claims. Because of this intervention people are moving back to District Six. In addition, the site is one for learning for people from all over the world who visit.
  • Proud to be German
    (Germany)

    The 2006 World Cup provided an opportunity that many people did not consider: it gave Germany a chance to re-present itself, not only as a unified country, but as one that was proudly democratic, tolerant and multicultural. A country that was proud to be.

  • East Germany and “The Lives of Others”
    (Germany)

    "The Lives of Others" is an Academy Award winning film about East Germany in the 1980s. The film shows how the East German secret police force, the Stasi, used spying, imprisonment and interrogation in an attempt to have control over the lives of its citizens. The movie is one of the first to publicly confront this complex and painful history.

  • Poetry and History
    (Northern Ireland)

    Many people in Northern Ireland look to poetry to express the history of the conflict and the tensions of being Northern Irish. Seamus Heaney's poem, The Cure at Troy, translates part of Sophocles's Philoctetes, but the connections to Northern Ireland are there for the reader and listener to find.

  • Connecting through the Music of Van Morrison
    (Northern Ireland)

    In Northern Ireland, finding common ground between Catholics and Protestants can be a difficult task. But singer/songwriter Van Morrison's music is a rare exception, claimed by both groups, giving each the opportunity to imagine peace.

  • Remembering the Past, Together
    (Northern Ireland)

    Why is it important to remember the past? And is it important for societies that have experienced genocide or mass violence to create days specifically devoted to remembering? This reading talks about a newly created Day of Private Reflection in Northern Ireland.

  • Political Cartoons from South Africa
    (South Africa)

    Jonathan Shapiro's "Zapiro" cartoons and Stephen Francis and Rico's "Madame and Eve" cartoons demonstrate how political cartoons in South Africa serve as effective forms of social commentary.