Project timeline

Mural touch up

July 2021

With permission from the new principal, Solomon Enos has touched up the mural at Honolulu Central Middle School. Thanks to a bright colour wash, it has a new leash of life, and the student signatures can still be seen!

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Teaching Matters podcast

May 2021

Dr Shari Sabeti talks to Dr Omolabake (Labake) Fakunle about the Marshallese Arts Project. This episode of the Teaching Matters podcast accompanies their March-April 2021 series on internationalisation, curated by Dr Omolabake (Labake) Fakunle.

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Education in the Marshall Islands presentation

April 2021

Dr Shari Sabeti shares her experiences conducting arts-based research in the Marshall Islands and highlights barriers to secondary access in the country. This work is part of the Universal Access to Secondary Education in the Asia-Pacific Region project, funded by the GCRF.

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BBC Radio 4 – The Day of Two Suns

February 2021

Prof Michelle Keown’s BBC radio 4 interview with James Nokise, a comedian and stage performer from New Zealand, explores the role of Pacific wordsmiths, from song writers to poets, who have used their craft to protest against nuclear testing. This includes excerpts from Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s antinuclear poetry. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fpnh

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2019 – 2020

January 2020

A planned visit to Honolulu and Majuro (2019-2020) was suspended due to travel restrictions related to COVID-19. However, schemes of work and teaching packs for ‘History Project’ were developed by Shari Sabeti. These are aliened with the Hawai’i Board of Education curriculum and the Marshall Islands Curriculum and were shared…

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Marshallese Teachers visit Edinburgh

March 2019

Four teachers and an education official from the Marshall Islands attended an education conference at the University of Edinburgh. Alongside workshops relating to MAP and digital education, they attended events at Dynamic Earth and Bruntsfield Primary School. They joined Scottish pupils at a climate change protest at the Scottish parliament.

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Photography exhibitions

April 2018

Photography exhibitions

Christine Germano returned to the Marshall Islands to stage two exhibitions (at USP Majuro and in Ebeye) of the photographs taken during her photography workshops with the Ejit, Majuro Cooperative and Ebeye schoolchildren.

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Filming

March 2018

Filming

Sara Penrhyn Jones returned to the Marshall Islands to undertake further filming and research for her documentary film focusing on the nuclear legacy and current environmental challenges in the Marshall Islands.

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Fieldwork: Enewetak, Bikini, Runit

February 2018

Fieldwork: Enewetak, Bikini, Runit

Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, Michelle Keown and Aileen Sefeti travelled with the Okeanos-RMI canoe and its crew to Enewetak and Bikini atolls (sites of the Cold-War US nuclear tests), and also visited Runit Dome (a concrete structure within a bomb crater covering a mass of nuclear waste), where Kathy was recorded reading…

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Fieldwork: Majuro, Ebeye, Hilo

November 2017

Fieldwork: Majuro, Ebeye, Hilo

The project team ran a symposium (for practising/trainee teachers and project participants) at USP Long Island that outlined findings by project social scientists (Alex Plows, Polly Atatoa-Carr and Shari Sabeti) on cultural identity, wellbeing, and the value of arts education. Ejit and Coop schoolchildren also attended the symposium, reading poetry…

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Photography workshops

September 2017

Photography workshops

Christine Germano travelled to Ebeye to run photography workshops and photowalks at Kwajalein Island High School and Ebeye Middle School.

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AHRC International Development Summit

June 2017

Michelle Keown and Solomon Enos were invited to the AHRC International Development Summit in London (themed around ‘mobilising global voices’) to introduce the MAP project to funders, other delegates, and international aid/development NGOs.

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Fieldwork: Ejit, Majuro, Honolulu

April 2017

Fieldwork: Ejit, Majuro, Honolulu

In April and May 2017, the team carried out the first phase of fieldwork, undertaking creative writing, photography and mural-making workshops with Marshallese schoolchildren at Ejit Elementary School, Majuro Co-operative School (in the Marshall Islands) and Central Middle School in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. The team also undertook focus-group discussions and card-sorting…

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International Nuclear Legacy Conference

March 2017

Michelle Keown was invited to give a plenary presentation at the first International Nuclear Legacy Conference in Majuro, focusing on the project and on the nuclear legacy as explored in indigenous Pacific literature and the visual arts.

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Planning the project

November 2016

The MAP project began, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), under the Global Challenges Research Fund initiative (GCRF). Michelle Keown, Principal Investigator on the project, travelled to the Marshall Islands to interview for a project Research Assistant and Interpreter,…

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‘History Project’ comic

July 2016

‘History Project’ comic

After Michelle Keown (Project Lead) received a University of Edinburgh Innovative Initiative Grant, a collaboration between Michelle, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner and Maori-Niuean artist Munro Te Whata began in order to adapt Kathy’s antinuclear poem ‘History Project’ into a comic. Michelle did the storyboarding and textual adaptation, and Munro produced the comic…

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