Negotiating Social Identities in Heritage Spaces (Around the Tok Panjang Chat)​

Date: Saturday, 3 December

Speakers: Dr Kamalini Ramdas (Senior Lecturer, NUS Geography Department), Ms Vivian Lim (CEO and Founder, the Idea Co)

Moderator: Ms Clara Ang (Programmes Manager, NUS Baba House)

•Registration opens at 10.00am, guests to be seated by 10.20am

•Time: 10.30am - 11.45am

•Venue: NUS Baba House (Physical event with limited seating)

•Free with registration

What do museum objects and heritage spaces offer in conversations surrounding social identities?

In this final Tok Panjang Chat of the year to conclude the Women and the Baba House Series, we situate the heritage house as an experimental space to inspire inquiry and speculate possibilities for topics surrounding social identities.

Where do we place institutions of heritage in such discussions? What roles do museums, non-profit organisations, and the university curriculum play in inquiring, encouraging, and complicating matters surrounding social identities? What future possibilities do these partnerships hold?

Held at the NUS Baba House, where the domestic setting serves to prompt visitors to ponder other tangents relating to lived experiences, memories, and the social lives between the public and private, the Tok Panjang Chat brings together different individuals from the community to trace these various inquiries.

Join Dr Kamalini Ramdas, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Geography NUS, Ms Vivian Lim, CEO and Founder of for-impact-organisation The Idea Co, and Ms Clara Ang, Programmes Manager of the NUS Baba House as they look back on their involvements in the Around the Tok Panjang Series in relation to their respective fields, as well as their negotiations across the museum and heritage, education, and community sectors.

This talk is presented as part of the Around the Tok Panjang programme in collaboration with the Idea Co. For more information about the NUS Baba House and the Idea Co., please head to: https://linktr.ee/nusbabahouse

About the series

Around the Tok Panjang is a series of programmes organised by the NUS Baba House in collaboration with GEN, which will run from August to December 2022. The Tok Panjang (long table in Baba Malay) is an important feature in the Straits Chinese home. It has become a symbol of celebrations and more importantly, conversations in the Straits Chinese household where food preparation, family meals, ancestor offerings take place. Indeed, one can say that the everyday life happens and unfolds around the table.

Making use of the provenance, spaces, and artefacts of the heritage house, this partnership seeks to inquire after the gendered norms and practices in the Straits Chinese culture. By looking at the negotiations of Peranakan women, we seek to open up conversations surrounding gendered norms and practices in the Straits Chinese culture. This will hopefully prompt reflections on roles and norms in contemporary times.

This collaboration is brought together by university-based heritage organisation NUS Baba House and for-impact organisation GEN, aiming to bridge artistic practices and academic research to ground communities. The partnership strives to normalise and socialise conversations on gender and social identities through different lenses, driven by NUS based academics, as well as practitioners from the community. The collaboration will also be activated by participatory discussions facilitated by a group of NUS Student designed around the guided tour content, using GEN’s Generally Speaking cards. This programming series includes:

Guided tours on Women and the Baba House (Aug - Dec)

GEN's Generally Speaking in action (Aug - Dec)

Around the Tok Panjang Chats (13 Aug 2PM- 3:30PM & 3 Dec 10AM-11:30AM)