LEV is a documentation project about

civil rights and anti-racism in Norway.

Collect & Serve

 Civil Rights & Antiracism

Civil rights ensure equal protection under the law against discrimination on the basis of “race” or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identification, and physical ability.

The legal protection of these characteristics is essential to democratic values, protecting individuals from unfair treatment in education, employment, housing, public accommodations, and others matters.

The power to define narratives about civil rights belongs to the community.

Projects

Documentation
Collecting protest posters

Summer/fall 2020

The day after the “We can’t breathe. Justice for George Floyd” protest 5 june, 2020, social anthropologist Michelle A. Tisdel decided: We must take care of the posters!

Posters are the defining objects and language of expression for protests worldwide. This important source material and ethnographic objects are anchors to specific people, places, and events in time.

Each object has a story, represents perspective, and represents a contribution to social facts and history.

LEV has collected more than 70 posters.

collaboration-
the Oslo Desk & KUNSTHALL TRONDHEIM

exhibition-
”LIFT EVERY VOICE”
26 NOV, 2020-23 JAN, 2021

The Exhibition LIFT EVERY VOICE presented posters and social documentation from the demonstration "We Can't Breathe. Justice for George Floyd", which gathered over 15,000 protesters in Oslo on June 5, 2020.

The exhibition showcased protest posters from LEV’s collection as well as photographs and video documentation from The Oslo Desk (TOD).

Collaboration-Memoar

collecting oral history for the exhibition “Your breath, your voice”

The exhibition "Your breath, your voice" (“Din pust, din stemme”) invites critical reflection on free speech and collective action in our time. The presentation of protest posters, photographs, oral history, and video documentation will highlight stories, appeals, and messages from the anti-racism demonstration on 5 June. 2020 in Oslo. What motivated the African Student Association, UiO and ARISE (Africans Arising in Solidarity and Empowerment) to initiate this collective mobilization, which attracted more than 15 000 protesters? Did they achieve their goals?

Donate Posters

“We can’t breathe. Justice for George Floyd” 5.6.2020

“

June 2020

The public support for the demonstration and passionate engagement convinced me that civil rights is the right issue, and that this is the right moment to initiate a documentation project. I have been thinking about a project since 2015. Michelle A. Tisdel

About Lift Every Voice

Lift Every Voice (LEV) was born on June 6, 2020. When social anthropologist Michelle A. Tisdel woke up the day after the “We can’t breathe. Justice for George Floyd” demonstration in Oslo, her first thought was: We must take care of the posters!

Protest posters are important source material, ethnographic objects that represent individual contributions to a broader social movement and democratic practice. The material must be collected and preserved as examples of free speech, community perspectives, and narratives about racism, social justice, and Norwegian society.

Michelle A. Tisdel, PhD

Social anthropologist Michelle A. Tisdel holds a doctorate from Harvard University and has worked nearly 15 years in the heritage sector in Norway. Tisdel's research interests include heritage production and institutions, as well as belonging, participatory processes, and autobiographical and community narratives.

Collecting source material and promoting the history and narratives of “Multicultural” and minority communities requires adequate competence, resources, and priorities. Sector-wide challenges and priorities can result in community perspectives and stories becoming objects of diversity initiatives and strategies.

Institutions sometimes lack the ability to access and assess the source community's emic perspectives. Short-term projects, funding, and notions of relevance can also characterize the approach to collecting and much of this material.

"Multicultural" and community source material can also have a peripheral status in relation to broader institutional priorities, strategic goals, and recruitment practices.

Lift Every Voice and Sing
By James Weldon Johnson

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us,
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land.