Dr. Samantha Cutrara:        Okay, let’s get started. So today, we have a real treat. We are going to talk with John Heckman. John, thank you so much, “The Tattooed Historian”, for coming to talk on the “Imagining a New ‘We’” video series. It’s so exciting to make this connection that we did on Twitter. So thank you so much.

John Heckman:        Yes, thank you for having me, Samantha. It’s awesome to see when two Twitter historians come together. And I think it helps.

SC:        Mm-hmm, yes. I was especially drawn to a lot of the ideas that you’re having because of this digital history conference that you started and that’s going to take place in June, correct?

JH:        Yes. 20th of June, it’s a Saturday.

SC:        Okay. And hopefully, we can talk about that a lot more in the questions, but let’s — do you want to actually just introduce yourself before we dive into the questions?

JH:        Sure. Well, as you said, Samantha, my name is John Heckman, and I have a graduate degree in history. And I used to work for the US Army Corps of Engineer alongside them as a historian archivist. And I realize the cubicle life wasn’t for me, so I broke out of that and started a brand.

I actually started the brand as I was working for the Corps of Engineers called The Tattoed Historian and it was a way for me to try to get my next job. And because LinkedIn wasn’t the sexiest of things going on at the time, so I figured out let’s make it a Facebook page. And I was showcasing my work and then it kind of got legs of its own. It took off. And I left my job to pursue this passion of mine full-time. And the brand has worked out pretty well for me. And basically, I built it up as a brand to help other historians basically get on the map and to bring history to the masses in a friction freeway. No pay for play or anything like that. So I wanted to be very open and welcoming.

SC:        And I think that because of the COVID pandemic, a lot of people are thinking about a lot of stuff differently. I mean, that’s a redundant statement, but thinking about historical narratives differently and even thinking about their interactions with them differently in their potential career or hobby kind of interactions with them, so it’s specially great to connect now because I think that the work that you’re doing is so much more relevant and salient for us to talk about today.

So let’s just go to my first question. You know, I have the same questions for everyone. Have your ideas about history changed at all during this time? And if so, in what ways? And if not, because some people have been like, no because I’m already doing really critical work. If not, why not?

JH:        My personal belief is my ideas of history and doing history haven’t really changed that much. It’s just been put on an accelerated pace.

For example, I was conducting live stream interviews two, three years ago and maybe doing two a month, now I’m doing four or five per week. I’m reaching out on new platforms, but I’m seeing a lot of new faces coming online and doing a lot of new things. So I would say, for me personally, the crisis that we’re going through now, the pandemic that we’re going through now hasn’t really changed my outlook on what I believe the history field can become or should become no matter what you do in the history field.

I think that I’ve actually been in training for this moment because I’ve been just so accustomed to being like this for the last couple years. It’s like, “All right, finally, I get to showcase much up here.” But it’s just been an accelerated process now for me where I’ve built up something and now I’m just building it higher and higher as we go. But it’s been very [inaudible 0:03:59.2] people who have never done this before and you get to watch them create right before your eyes in front of a lot of people.

So yeah, for me, it hasn’t really changed a lot, but I know for others, it’s been a drastic change.

SC:        Well, could you comment on that about others? Like, how are others reacting to this moment that now that you’re like, yes, please, I’ve been doing this. Like, come, let’s talk about it? Have found others have their ideas shifting about history that you’ve interacted with?

JH:        The interesting part, Samantha, is that in the early March this year, I was at a conference in Waterloo, Ontario, and I was a speaker at the conference. And I spoke about social media outreach for historical entities. And we talked about nonprofit reach, outrage museums, reenactors, how they can do outreach and everything else. And people were taking notes and jotting things down, and they were actually involved in the conversation. Little did they know that two or three weeks later, they might had to put some of that into work and make it something else.

But when I first started the brand, I would try to mentor or assist other organizations with their social media outreach and there’s a brick wall pulled up many times, where like our people weren’t on that platform, or our future isn’t with Facebook, or future isn’t with Instagram or whatever it may be. But now, I’m starting see some of the same entities coming around and having their own live stream presentations, and making an Instagram page, and putting things up on Twitter for the first time. And I think that this is going to make the process move along even faster because people are going to get comfortable with it.

And I’ve seen a lot of entities coming up online who I never would have thought of [inaudible 0:05:46.5] in five years, but because of what we’re going through now, it’s really changed the pattern for how they’re doing history. And I think that’s a fascinating look at it, and I hope that the people I talked to in Waterloo put some of it — even more of it into pattern because they would ask me, “How can you do so many posts per week?” And I would tell them, “Well, I’m always working on this stuff and I’m always trying to create and think of new things. And it’s been more about documenting a journey than creating content for me. So that makes a little bit easier.”

It’s been a really neat thing though to see more people coming online and doing some great things. And I watched a lot of them do it because I want to support them and help them through the whole thing because I know it can be an uncountable process for a few people.

SC:        What conference was it?

JH:        I was at a reenactor style conference. It was put on by 1812 reactors, and it was at the Waterloo Region Museum and it’s called The History Mix 2020 Conference. And it was a CD thing on the sign that had history mix on it. So like, yeah, we’re ‘90s people here.

SC:        [inaudible 0:06:55.9]

JH:        But we’re back in the day here. But it was fascinating because I believe there are four speakers total. I was one of them and I was obviously — like, I usually am a wild card speaker. You don’t know what he’s going to come up with or what he’s going to say or how he’s going to present it. And the other speakers are pretty much traditional style speakers, but I was the one talking about how do we reach a new audience? And how do we provide accessibility to a new audience? And we went over everything from starting a podcast to getting on TikTok, which was fun. So [inaudible 0:07:32.6]

SC:        I don’t really understand TikTok. You don’t need to explain it to me. I feel like I’m just going to stick with my CDs and like, answer my [inaudible 0:07:41.0].

JH:        Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t dance on air. Don’t worry, [inaudible  0:07:45.5].

SC:        Well, okay — no, I am not going to ask you to explain TikTok to me. I’ll just ask an eight-year-old instead.

JH:        Yeah. Maybe [inaudible 0:07:56.6]

SC:        Yeah, maybe. It’s interesting because, you know, I have been seeing a lot of things about like the future of museums and historical sites, and heritage preservation centers, and worried about fans, and worried about audience.

And then I talk with Joe McGill from The Slave Dwelling Project too. He’s an American. And he was like, “This is an opportunity for us to shift the narratives.” To shift the narratives of what we are talking about at historical sites in particular. Because if you want to keep reaching those audiences, you need to tell the stories that they already know. Like they’re coming to a historical site because they already kind of know the stories. But if you want to keep these new audiences, you are going to need to challenge those stories to tell more complex stories. And it’s been really exciting. That really shifted my ideas about what this moment could do.

And so it’s kind of cool about what you’re saying that you’re already talking about this like that first week of March because I am sure that a lot of those people are thinking about or trying those things because you probably made it very accessible for them.

JH:        Right. I’ve seen a couple of them pop up. They’ll send me invites and I’ll be like, I made a page or I put a YouTube channel up or something. And I know one of the reenactors who was there started a — I believe he started a Facebook page or YouTube page for all he’s doing. He’s playing the fife. So he’s showing people what the music sounded like and how to play it and stuff like that and I just applaud him.

He is one of the people who was taking notes very intently during the conversation and would talk to me afterwards. Though it’s really awesome to see people who are experimenting with social media, and with blogging, and with creating videos and you slowly start to see the insecurity start to go away. You’re nervous originally. How is this going to be judged? How is it going to look? Is the lighting right? Things like that. But when you start to realize that all you need to do is just put the stuff out there to an audience who’s possibly already into it, into the subject you’re talking about, you can grow a new audience out of that and create something really different.

And with my audience, it’s been really awesome because a lot of them were under the age of 40, which is different for the history field in many ways because when you go to public talks, they’re usually older. And also, I’ve drawn in people who are tattoo artists or who ride Harleys on the weekend and stuff like that because of the brand name. The name kind of became a welcoming thing of its own because I have been admittedly turned down for a job in the history field because I have tattoos below my elbows. So I was turned down for the position.

So I wanted to make a brand that was also welcoming from the name and it’s been cool to see other people making either brands or just doing new things in the museum they work with or the archives they work for due to the fact of we’re going through this time where we’re all separated and we have to do outreach in some way to get our mission across.

SC:        And I think a lot of big part of that is to — and I think about this other, the video I posted early in May about to understand your purpose in teaching history. Now, like, I do obviously recommend that people go and watch those videos, but it seems like it’s just for K-12 teachers and to be open to learning from it even though if it doesn’t seem like it fits you because what is your purpose of doing that engagement? Because those things like the analytics of social media, the numbers, the numbers, the views can seem really intimidating and it might seem like too much. But if you’re like, my purpose for teaching history is — my purpose of playing the fife as a reenactor is to keep this particular practice alive. Then the numbers can come, but you’re still fulfilling your purpose, and I think that that is a good way to think about how are you going to engage in some of these new practices.

So think about what is the purpose that you want to achieve here, not just to drive numbers. Although I’m not saying that that isn’t — it isn’t something people are interested in, but to share parts of history.

JH:        Right. I’ve never been worried about numbers as far as this is how many followers I have. As long as I was doing what I felt was my story or my way of telling a story and doing it authentically, that’s all I was worried about. And I was more worried about bringing value to an audience. Whether it was 200 people or 2,000 people, it didn’t matter to me. And I think because my brand has always been authentically me, that that helped propel it. Because people knew when they met me on the street or when they saw me in an event, they knew it was the same person. They could always come up and I would say hello and all that stuff.

So I think if you’re doing it authentically, you’re being yourself, you’re not trying to fake it till you make it and you’re not worried about, ”Oh, I need to get this May followers by Saturday or I’m going to lose sleep.” That’s when you’re secure with what’s going on. But yeah, having that purpose and finding out why do I want to do this or what’s my goal in doing this is a very important thing to be thinking about. And I just remember what it was like not — and I still many times can’t, I can’t afford to go to many conferences when we have them because they priced me out. So I wanted to bring people into the history field or at least have that curious group of people be able to get that fulfillment.

So that’s why I wanted to also make it friction-free. I didn’t want to have it where you have to pay money to see people. We’re going to do live events for free and you just show up. So we did events in pubs and other places like that and it would be free. We would have bartenders and food service and we would do a history night. And there are times where we cram people in there and it was just crazy because people wanted it. And that’s when I knew that we were onto something really and now it’s all gone digital because of our current situation.

SC:        Yeah, I really appreciate that thinking about the value, right? Like, as long as your content is valuable and you’re being authentic to the type of histories that you want to do and aligned with your purpose of engaging in these histories, you’re going to have quality content even if you’re new to the media itself.

This makes me think of the second question. So I ask everyone, do you think the way we teach history will change after this? And we’ve already kind of talked about this in the last question. Like, I think the answer that you would probably say is yes. And of course, when I say teach history, I mean mobilize the past. I don’t mean necessarily in traditional settings. Can you maybe talk about what you think that might look like from your perspective in particular thinking about the conference on June the 20th and why that is such an important thing for thinking of the ways that we’re going to mobilize the past to teach history, to share history during and after those moment?

JH:        I really think history is going to be mobilized more than it has been in generations because of the fact that we have so much ability to do free outreach now. I’m on 10 platforms and I don’t pay for any of them. It’s free outreach. So when you can do it within your budget, within your means, the sky is the limit. And I really think that a lot of historians, historical entities, nonprofits as we would have down here or wherever they may be are going to embrace more of this. And what I’m hoping is that they keep it up.

When we go back to work, so to speak, and everyone goes back to normalcy, whenever that may be, I don’t want this to stop and I don’t want it to people lose interest in it because there’s going to be so many opportunities for outreach on here and it’s going to level the playing field. And I’ve talked about that a lot, where I have my master’s degree in history, but I’ve brought on people who have written 20, 30 books. And 10 years ago, that wouldn’t have been possible because we wouldn’t have had these kind of things.

So if we look at it as a source where we can really get our mission out there and cause a creativity boom, I think we can really, really embrace this more than ever in the history field. Whatever way you do history or conduct teaching, whatever fashion you do, there’s always room for that on here. And it doesn’t matter what platform it is, and it doesn’t matter where you are, it’s a universal thing luckily.

As far as the digital history conference is concerned, I was up at 12:30 in the morning. And as I usually am, I’m still up thinking about projects and ideas and my brain doesn’t stop seemingly until about 1 o’clock in the morning. And I was thinking, I have a lot of friends who had some conferences that were cancelled and these people have done wonderful work with papers for their panels, and they’re sitting on the sidelines now.

So I decided that I’d take an old idea I had, which was I wanted to have The Tattooed Historian brand have a conference. A one-time a year conference where it was kind of like a knockoff of a TED Talk basically where we’d have 20 minutes of someone giving a presentation. You’d allow 10 minutes of Q&A then we take a break and we do it again.

So I was going to have people come out from all walks of life who had done historical research on something. They get to pick their theme music when they walk out on stage, and we have fun time doing that. But obviously, we can’t do that now, but I don’t have to worry about logistics and cost because now we can do it digitally. So I came up with the idea, well, let’s do all day Facebook live through Zoom and we would have six presenters. And these people would be people who have prepared for conferences no matter where they are and no matter what the subject matter as well, as long as it’s history, and we would present history to the mass.

So we’re doing it on the 28th of June between the hours of 10:00 and 5:00 Eastern. And it’s going to be a great time because we have so many people from all walks of life who are coming on and talking about all kinds of stuff. We have people from England to the United States. I’m trying to get a Canadian, so I need to get my Canadian [inaudible 0:19:08.3] with this one. But I’m working on that.

SC:        Well, now that I know that you aren’t Canadian, because we were saying that before we started recording, I thought you were a Canadian. Now that I know you’re not Canadian, I will make sure my Canadian colleagues know about this.

JH:        Awesome, awesome. Yeah, I’ll be hopefully Canadian in a few years with my dual citizenship, but I’m looking forward to it because it’s going to be a great time and it’s going to be an awesome networking opportunity as well. Who knows? People could get a call to do a program somewhere else on some other platform. I’m really just the person who likes to open doors for people and connect people with people in the field because I know how hard it can be.

So it’s going to be an interesting ride andI’m already getting people who are asking, “Are you going to do another one? Because I’m not available on the 20th of June. Can we do another one?” And I actually received in our message asking if I was going to do a multi-day one? So it’s something that I think is going to resonate with a lot of people. And we’re going to try it out.  We’re going to see how it goes. And for the six positions, are already filled up. And I thank all four of those people, and we’re going to have a good time with it.

So, who knows? Sky is the limit with it. But I’m hoping that that also creates new opportunities for more people to do history in new ways. So we’ll see. We’ll see on the 20th of June.

SC:        Well, I can’t wait. I think it’s going to be really exciting. And I always am thinking about how to mobilize the amazing work that historians do to a K-12 audience. And so I’ll be thinking about that. That’s where all my notes will be as part of my learning. And yeah, I can’t wait to hear how it goes and develops. Because when you said, like, this is a moment that we could have a creative boom, my hope is that people will really see the opportunity to use these platforms to do something different. Not to do the same thing, but just this way.

And because I am focused on teaching and learning, and also in higher ed, I’m thinking about this a lot with history professors. Like, “Oh, you’re just planning on, like, lecturing to your screen for three hours because that’s what you did in class. Like, how can we really use this to mobilize history in these creative ways? So I can’t wait to watch the conference and to hear more from your perspective about how this works.

My last question is about imagining a new ‘we’. So I have a book coming out in the summer called “Transforming the Canadian History Classroom: Imagining a New ‘We’.” And I was saying with another person, like, it says Canadian classroom, but I think Americans should read it too. It’s really just about teaching national history in high schools and elementary schools.

Because I argue — the Imagining a New ‘We’” is that I argue that there are so many silos. Like, how can we increase circles of inclusion in how we understand the nation, how we understand our past, and how we understand our teaching practices? Do you have any thoughts? The final question is thinking about this idea, do you have any thoughts about whether or not we are going to imagine a new ‘we’ with history differently after this moment or during this moment? Sometimes people talk about the creativity that can come from imagining. Do you think that is going to be a thing that happens after this moment?

JH:        I think we’re going to have, as I said earlier, like we’re going to have a boom of creativity, I hope that causes us to have a different talk about the historical narrative. I hope that allows those new voices that I talked about to resonate louder than ever. I’m hoping that it creates more diversity, more inclusion, and more understanding of historical narrative. I don’t know so much from an American perspective what it’s going to be like after this is all over. I’m hoping that it’s a boom and not a bubble. That’s my main thing. I don’t want the bubble to burst here, I want a boom where it lasts and it keeps going and we start to see more and more creativity, which may help us develop a new sense of ‘we’.

I just think that this is a crossroads in my opinion of the arts and humanities, in this case, the history field, more so than I’ve ever seen. And I’m really interested to see where this leads us because this defining moment in our lives is going to be that crossroads I think we need to go through as far as historians or history curious people, history lovers, history nerds, whatever you want to call us, I really think that the new ‘we’ may be we who work in the field are going to see it totally differently. See our potential totally differently because now we’ve shaken off the rust and this, the chains of insecurity and said, “Well, I was standing in front of the camera for five minutes and talk about whatever and then handed it off to this person and do it.”

I really hope that it is a boom of that. Because if we keep creating and we keep documenting the journey, we’re going to create a new narrative and it’s going to be a more inclusive and a more enjoyable narrative than just doing things as we’ve done it for the last 20 years. I think if we go through this and we don’t change or we revert back to the way we were doing things, we’ve lost the unique opportunity.

I know, for me personally, I’m going to keep pushing very hard to keep going and to allow this to be a boom and not a bubble. And I keep asking people to please, just document your journey. I understand a lot of people are making journals, which one day could be their autobiography of their time going through this era.

So I think that it’s going to create a new way and different ways for different subsets of people, but I think if we bring that all together in a historical narrative in 10 or 20 years, we’re going to see that this was a defying time for us in more ways than one.

SC:        Yeah, thank you for that. I think there’s a lot of really interesting elements. And one of the things I want to pull out is that when we’re saying we, there’s a lot of different wes. And so we can think of the ‘we’ of people teaching and learning history, historians, history educators, public historians and to think of how we can imagine ourselves differently. And I just really appreciate you pulling that out as particular ‘we’ we can imagine. So thank you.

JH:        Oh. I think we need to focus on how we are as historians or teachers or educators so we can get the narrative out in an even better way. Or it’s almost like, you can’t love someone unless you love yourself. It’s like that with the history feel to me. You can’t do it well if you don’t feel well doing it. So I think that we have to look inward and create, and document and that will help create our own new ‘we’ in my opinion.

SC:        Well, and also, to also bring in another like therapy thing that you have to work through who came before. Like the parents and grandparents before and those legacies, because I think in the field, we can really — this is the way we’ve always done it. And even when you’re young and fresh in the field, you can be like, “Okay, well, I want to change it,” but then it’s very easy to get to those roots.

So to be able to think about no, like, what does it look like if we don’t have these traditions that we are building on? That we don’t have the, you know.  A 75-year-old volunteer that like, “No, we literally have always done it this way. We’ve done it this way for 55 years, so let’s just keep doing it this way.” Like, there are more spaces to interact in that creativity separate from those relationships. And I was talking to a teacher about that. That sometimes stockrooms can be a little toxic. And so if you can do some creative work without the naysayers, then there’s a lot of potential to transform what happens whenever we get back whatever that looks like. Yeah.

JH:        Mm-hmm. Yes always appears better than no.

SC:        Great.

JH:        So I’ve received emails from people who I never knew. And they asked, “Would you like to collaborate on this?” And I say, “Yes, let’s see what happens. Let’s try it.” What’s the worst that could happen? We get back to the same place we were.

JH:        You know, there’s no laws. There’s just an experimentation process. So a lot of people have come on to my brand who I didn’t know ahead of time, and I’ve said, “Hey, let’s try it. Let’s give it a shot and see what happens.” And if it works, it works. That’s fine.

And I think we need to have like exactly like you say. We got to get rid of that boardroom mentality of, you know, where it’s little intimidating or little stuffy. For me personally, I always like to have discussions where like we’re sitting in a coffee shop or a pub and we’re just hanging out and we’re just talking about history. Because usually when we’re in a coffee shop or pub, we’re talking history anyway if we’re around these people, so why not film it and just have a good time with it.

So I think that we’re going to see that in the future. I really hope we do. And I’m looking forward to starting in a full-term at western in London, Ontario and bringing this all to Ontario with me and seeing how it goes. There’s a lot of places I want to go to in Ontario.

SC:        Well, I’ll tell you, Ontario won’t know what hit them with these ideas, but I think it will be a really exciting thing for Ontario to have you, speaking from an Ontarian, but I’m also excited to hear about the potentials that you see and the possibilities in these sites that I know a lot more than a lot of the sites that you talk about in the United States. And thank you for saying yes to me. Thanks for participating in this. This was really great and it provides so many different dimensions than the other conversations that we’ve had.

And one of the things I love about all of these conversations, and I’ve done about 20 now since the end of March, is how they build and develop on each other and I think that this fits so well. So thank you so much. Can you say the time and date of the digital conference again?

JH:        Yes. It’ll be on the 20th of June, which is a Saturday. It will be on my Facebook page. Facebook.com/thetattooedhistorian. It will be right on the main page. We’re going to live stream all day long. We’re going to start at 10 a.m. Eastern. Our final presentation is at 4:00, so we should be done around 4:35 o’clock that Saturday.

And we’ll, hopefully, have six presenters. And as I said, you can go to my Facebook page and check it out and watch along.

SC:        And all of the links that you talked about will be below this video so people can check it out right from there. So thank you so much, John. This was really great.

JH:        Thank you so much. It’s been awesome. Really appreciate it.

SC:        And, yeah, I can’t wait to see you in Ontario.

JH:        I need some Tim Hortons right now.

SC:        Well, I mean, I think we all need a little bit of that, yeah.

JH:        Yeah, I think everyone deserves it whole year round . Yes, yes. Thank you so much.

SC:        Okay, thank you so much. Bye.

JH:        Bye now.