National Trust AGM

[PRAMtran]

I’ve received an email from the National Trust inviting me and all other members to vote in their AGM. Does anyone know if there are any things a woman’s rights advocate should vote for or against. Eg TWAW by stealth.

Because PP would not have needed to feed back there was no mention of their exploitation if there was.

Here we are:

www.thesocialhistorian.com/child-labour/

So, next to every painting of rich people in beautiful clothes, you're proposing that pictures of the poor buggers who made them (like in the link) be placed?

That would actually make for a very interesting Exhibition

It's not an either or, we can acknowledge the Caribbean slave trade AND the exploitation of the British working classes.

Hell, it was usually the same bloody people doing it!

OMG, really?! Thank goodness we have an archeologist here to explain things like this to us. Honestly, had no idea

As opposed to signs in a garden stating slaves held on a tropical plantation the temperate plants were supposed to have come from?

I think it's a great idea. Didn't the costume museum actually do something like this once?

<whispers> Alnwick garden

<runs>

I would genuinely go out of my way to visit the exhibition you lot have just come up with

Not NT. But I remember losing a toddler there once. Turned round and they were gone. Found them five minutes later happy as Larry but not before running past all the pools and waterfalls in a panic.

Don’t remember reading signs there, only that it was a cold spring and going round the poison garden they had to point at patches of bare earth.

On the same trip up north I visited Bamburgh Castle (not NT obvs)

they had a fascinating little exhibit about Nora Balls, a suffragette who was invited to live at the Castle by Lady Armstrong

it stuck out for me as so well done. Brief, interesting and a welcome break from all the stuff about fighty men. There were some original period costumes that would have been worn by the ladies of the house too. The whole thing was great

context is interesting and good

critical race theory bollocks is boring and alienating

https://bamburghbones.org/norah-balls-1883-1980/

It would be interesting to cover how things were made and cared for, how much time it all took, where the materials came from, what we know about the people who did all this...

Apropos Lord Fluffington, I recently went to Compton Verney (not NT) which includes the collection of artist Enid Marx and historian Margaret Lambert. I thought the personal details did a nice job of stating the facts, without euphemism or omissions, while still being respectful of even dead people's dignity. That is, I'd have been happy to read it all out in front of them (were they still alive).

You mean me

Ha ha ha

Yes but you cannot make people appreciate and acknowledge what you personally think is important and experience what you want them to experience. Some will. Others will be there to let a toddler rampage, have a cup of tea and a scone, and experience a bit of peace and beauty. And that's it. All of them will spend the money that goes on preserving the site properly.

Once you start trying to make all people experience and think what you want them to get out of something, you've started down the road of classism that you and your views are the right ones and you have a duty to make the unenlightened do what's better for them. And that's the kind of attitude that colonialism was built on.

And there isn't an ice cube chance in hell that RT would support that Exhibition.

To them, the British Empire was a golden age and all us peasants were just happily toiling away.

My joke is a little local and requires context.

Alnwick garden and house is now basically a theme park.

It's fun, but it's a theme park.

The duchess even has her own docu series on at the moment.

Bamburgh is great, also privately owned though I feel they're emulating an NT stylee approach.

Haven't been to chillingham castle for a while but that was always absolutely bonkers. Truly.

A friend got married there; I think the cobwebs, while genuine, and massive, are also given as part of the package in-house decor.

Oh dear

sharp elbows required in your profession lovey?

Ha! That genuinely made me laugh.

Was it the depopulation which followed the Black Death that led to improved conditions for the rural workforce, because they were in short supply therefore the aristocrats had to start paying better wages? Or am I thinking of something else?

Were these great houses and gardens ever anything more than theme parks? Just rather exclusive theme parks?

They have to make money to survive.

Waddesdon was a theme park from day 1. That’s what it was built for

Not immediately, parliament initially passed laws to prevent any lose of control and stop any serfs trying to leave their land/Lord. But it ultimately contributed to the peasants revolt which lead to the freeing of most serfs about 30 years later.

Yet you seemed to be dumping the blame for Britain's imperial past on the rich white men.

Maybe I misunderstood you.

"There is such a thing as simply enjoying beauty and aesthetics too - not every situation has to be one is which we forcefully seek to 're-educate' everybody."

Unfortunately when you see things through the activist lense of CSJ then everything is about activism - the question is not "is there oppression" the question is "where is the oppression" because it is there even if not immediately apparent - so beauty, aesthetics and anything else like that is of secondary importance to activism, indeed they are probably part of the systems of oppression themselves and must be fought against.

That's why the so called "work" is never done, and why the "work" becomes the entire point, subsuming everything else including the original purposes of the institution/museum/art gallery/organisation/etc.

There can be no "art for art's sake".

Thanks, interesting, I must read up on the peasants’ revolt.