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tv   The Travel Show  BBC News  February 3, 2023 8:30pm-8:46pm GMT

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this is bbc news, the headlines... the us secretary of state postpones a trip to beijing after a chinese surveillance balloon was detected in the sky above the united states. china says the balloon is a "civilian airship" which had deviated from its planned route. senior officials from the european union have said ukraine's future is inside the eu. the comments were made at a summit in the capital, kyiv, hosted by president volodymyr zelensky. police in the uk say they believe mother of two, nicola bulley, who's been missing for a week, fell into the river while walking her dog. she was last seen next to the river wyre in lancashire. the spanish fashion designer, paco rabanne, best—known
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for his metal clothing designs and fragrances has died at the age of 88. he made his name with space—age designs in the 1960s. you're watching bbc news. now it's time for the travel show. hello and welcome to the travel show, coming to you this week from the historic university city of cambridge in the uk. now, it's the beginning of term and students are coming back and like many generations before them, they'll be benefiting from some of the best educational
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resources in the world. and that includes valuable treasures looted from afar on colonial expeditions. but we're here because the university has recently announced it's actually returning some of those, specifically benin bronzes, to nigeria. and it's there in what was once known as the kingdom of benin that i want to start this story. for centuries, this street igun eronwan, has been famous for one particular craft — bronze casting. its name literally translates to "the place "where bronze works are made." just five minutes from the palace, traditionally, it was the royal family and dignitaries who'd commissioned pieces to mark historical events.
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this man spent 15 years mastering his craft. i've been into bronze casting from childhood. i was taught by my father, which my father was taught by the forefathers. and it has been a family business, family work. so we've grown into it, as a living. he's part of an exclusive guild of bronze casters which has 120 members that mostly work on this street... ..all practising a centuries old technique where wax models are used to create a detailed mould for the bronze to be cast in. it takes up to two weeks to make a piece, and it did take up to a month, depending on the size of the job or the artwork. whenever tourists come to nigeria,
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they want to visit this place, through the buyer and the commission works. whilst the technique has remained the same, most are working off printed images with little access to their ancestors�* original works. we have few ones that is still left, which is in ourfamily house this year, and we still have them in catalogues. yes, there are a few, not much. we don't have much access to it because much of them is stolen. ifeel bad and i'm not too happy because this is our treasure. it's what our forefathers laboured to do. it's reckoned around 10,000 pieces were looted by the british when they sacked benin in 1897, burning down
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the city's palace in the process. the bronzes were then sold to institutions around the world. now there's no law in the uk which forces museums or other places to return stolen artefacts, but some institutions are doing it independently, likejesus college, cambridge. they were the first institution in the world to return a benin bronze in 2021. more recently, germany handed back 22 bronzes and agreed to release over 1,000 items from their collections. the horniman in london has also sent pieces back to nigeria, and soon cambridge university's museum of archaeology and anthropology will follow suit.
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we've identified 116 objects that were taken during the punitive expedition of 1897, and those are the objects that we will be transferring ownership of. i think it's impossible to overstate just how severe an act of vandalism and cultural violence this was. the heads that we see before us here were several of the objects that graced ancestral altars throughout the palace and the purpose of those altars was very much to maintain the lineage, to maintain the kingdom. the plaques that were being removed from the walls throughout the city were visualisations of the benin kingdom's history and heritage, and those were all taken away in a wholesale export of this material, leaving very, very little behind. tell me, why are you now and only now returning some of the pieces? i think it's the right time for these collections to go back. one might say it's long overdue. i think the main reason,
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the most recent reason is that there has been a request from the nigerian government, and i think fundamentally for us it's the right thing to do. these were stolen and these were looted. there are many, many different ways in which objects came to museums like this. there's such an awareness both within the uk and internationally of museums, colonial legacies, but also of the cultural heritage that is represented in museum collections. and we want the future retelling and care of these collections to be something that's really, really collaborative. now, this is not a sentiment shared by all. currently, the british museum in london has more than 900 items from the historic kingdom of benin, the largest collection of bronzes in the world, with no current plans to return any. the british museum sent the travel show a statement where they say that the collections offer an important opportunity
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for audiences to understand the history of the british conquest of benin city and to reflect on the impact of that period of colonialism. they're in dialogue with the nigerian government about this, but also cite the british museum act of 1963 that it's their founding responsibility to care for the collection on behalf of the world. notjust the bronzes, but all the objects kept here. now, undoubtedly, that's not something that sits too well back in nigeria. the national museum in benin has the most accessible collection of bronzes for tourists to see, though a fraction of what it perhaps should be. the time is coming for the british, for london in particular, when they see neighbouring countries around them bringing the objects, they will not have any other choice
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than to release what belongs to us. because the whole world knows they are stolen properties. there is no place like home. by the time this object comes home, it's going to do a lot of things. it will heal the wounds. it will create more jobs for our people. tourists to visit our museums. and on that note, plans are under way to build a brand new museum to house their returning heritage. the edo museum of west african arts is scheduled to open in 2026 and they're optimistic it'll be filled with their missing bronzes. fingers crossed the museum project goes smoothly. but if you can't wait that long, here are some alternatives from around the world that you could consider. starting in asia, the national museum of cambodia
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in phnom penh is filled with reclaimed stolen statues. a lot of the items here were looted from temples across the country, including from the famous angkor wat. the team is constantly working on tracing and bringing back their antiquities from museums and private collectors around the world. over in canada, the winnipeg art gallery has recently opened a centre showcasing the world's largest collection of inuit art. it's called qaumajuq, which means, "it is bright, "it is lit," with the building very much inspired by being in the arctic landscape. more than 27,000 artworks are on display, including a large portion which is on loan from the northern communities. travelling south into the us, why not check out the first american national museum designed and run by indigenous peoples?
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it's part of the smithsonian institution group, this one based in washington. the building is made out of materials closely connected to the native communities across the continent. inside, you'll find more than 800,000 objects, along with regular workshops and talks. over to morocco next, where you may remember we sent adi to the newly opened modern african art museum in marrakesh. there, you'll find lots of artworks from around the country. its whole thing is about making art accessible, and the first sunday of every month, you pay whatever you want or can afford to enter. finally, to papua new guinea, where its national museum in port moresby, has the task of protecting and preserving the country's cultural, military, and natural heritage. some locals see it as a spiritual home due to its heritage inside. alongside its archaeological objects, it also has natural
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history specimens and contemporary local artworks. well, that's it for this time. but don't forget, you can watch loads more content and the longer version of this show on the bbc iplayer. but until next week from me, rajan datar, and the rest of the travel show team here in cambridge, it's goodbye.
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hello and welcome to newswatch with me, samira ahmed. coming up, the bbc gets it from both sides as it reports on the third anniversary of the uk leaving the european union. and an expert review says bbc news needs to brush up its coverage of economics. i'll be talking to the author of a new report.
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a lot of numbers have been thrown around this week, including a welter of economic statistics, which is a subject we'll come back to later. this week also saw the 100th day of rishi sunak�*s premiership on thursday. and the day before that, it was the third anniversary of the uk leaving the eu. love it or loathe it, brexit is three years old. it's still in its infancy, but the economy does appear to have taken a hit, though maybe not in the way some had feared. brexit has, of course, been a highly divisive issue since before the eu referendum, and it's clear from the responses to that broadcast on monday's news at six that it remains the case. brian gordon considered it a wonderfully one—sided view by the anti—brexiteer reporter and editor, while dr smith thought he detected the opposite.
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that same day, a man strongly associated with brexit and equally divisive was in the news again talking about an encounter that he had had with president putin of russia. he sort of, he threatened me at one point and said, you know, boris, i don't want to hurt you, but with a missile, it would only take a minute or something like that, you know. you know, jolly. a spokesman for the kremlin denied mrjohnson�*s account, saying there had been no threats to use missiles. translation: what mr| johnson said is not true. more specifically, it's a lie. the clip had emerged in a bbc documentary series about president putin, and despite that denial from the kremlin, joseph mackenzie felt the bbc hadn't treated boris johnson's allegation with sufficient scepticism. "the word alleged was notable by its absence in this report,

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