Correcting Our Collecting Seminar (Midlands)

Welcome to our Correcting Our Collecting Seminar in the Midlands! Join us in this one day seminar on independent African heritage practice for community practitioners engaged in preserving, sharing and activating community histories and producing community knowledge.

Through in person sessions with guest speakers from the African Diaspora Mtichell Esajas (co founder, Black Archives Amsterdam), Sylvia Arthur ( founder, Library of Africa and African Diaspora/ Ghana) Dr. Etienne Joseph ( Co - founder Decolonising the Archive/ U.K.) Professor Stanley Griffin (Co - Author of Decolonising the Caribbean Record) The participants will explore independent, African-centred approaches to thinking about and practicing archiving and librarianship.The day will provide a taste to the Correcting Our Collecting archive training course led by Decolonising the Archive‘s Directors Dr. Etienne Joseph and Connie Bell. The combined aim of the day's sessions are to increase awareness of culturally appropriate approaches to heritage practice for underserved communities and to present an access point for people keen on building and sustaining capacity for these skills within African heritage communities.

The day's programme is built upon DTA's pedagogical practice surrounding 'The Pan African Archive' - developed from knowledges emerging out of their London-based but internationally networked approach to archives. Collaboration and co-production being central to their methodology, the day enables connections with experts who are doing the work in the Caribbean, Europe and on the African continent.We are honoured to collaborate with the Stuart Hall Archive Project Conjunctures team of Professor Patricia Noxolo and Dr. Rita Gayle for this seminar. Whilst we are not always aligned with his theories, Hall’s understanding of a conjecture as a moment of danger and opportunity; a call to intervention through practical action is something that resonates with our work in the precarious and uncertain context in which we all live today.

Program time 18th June, 2024 11am - 6pm

11am: Registration (teas and refreshments)

11: 30am: Welcome and Introduction

11:45 am Ritual Rites and Performance (Presentation)

12pm Guest presenter Connie Bell ( Decolonising the Archive DTA) Memory, Ethical Structures and Exchange a guide into a cultural practices

Workshop

12:45pm Guest presenter Sylvia Arthur ( L.O.A.T.A.D. Library of Africa and The African Diaspora) Building a cultural repositiory that supports cultural preservation and legitimises the African literary cannon on a national and global platform.

1:30pm LUNCH (Vegetarian and Vegan friendly)

2:15pm Guest presenter Mitchell Esajas ( Black Archives Amsterdam) Mapping Points of Departure and documenting the histories of Surinamese and African people in the Dutch context.

3:00 guest presenter Dr. Stanley Griffin ( Decolonsing the Caribbean Record)

Workshop

3:45 AFTERNOON TEA

4:15pm Q & A with graduates of the Correcting Our Collecting Community Archive Course with members of the audience. Title: How does this course allow them to support their community and address the urgent need to preserve the African experience in Britain

5:00pm Round table conversation led by Dr. Etienne Joseph (Decolonising the Archive DTA)

( Panel Conversation with Professor Pat Noxolo, Dr. Rita Gayle etc ( Conjunctures Strand Team, part of The Stuart Hall Archive Project) Title: Drawing from Stuart Hall's Conjecture theory, how may we apply this as a guide for communities at threat of erasure and how / or does it speak to how to assert accountability and self repair

6:00pm CLOSE

Sylvia Arthur is the Founder of the Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD), a library, archive, writing residency, and research institute in Accra, Ghana, dedicated to the work of African and Diaspora writers from the late 19th century to the present day. Sylvia started LOATAD using 1,300 of her own books in 2017 and she has since curated six libraries in Ghana, including school, community, and corporate libraries. She is an advocate for the restitution of African literary archives to the continent and has delivered various talks and presentations on the subject. She is a 2024 Ford Global Fellow, 2023 Brittle Paper Literary Person of the Year, and a 2022 National Geographic Explorer, working to document the stories of West African women aged 60+ through the creation of an expansive oral archive. Sylvia is a two-time TEDx speaker, an Africa No Filter Narrative Champion, and a Creative Activism Award recipient.

Mitchell Esajas is based in the Netherlands and co-founded The Black Archives in Amsterdam ,consisting of more than 3000 unique books, documents and artefacts about the black presence and resistance in the Netherlands. He is a co-founder of New Urban Collective, a network for students and young professionals from diverse backgrounds with a focus on the Surinamese, Caribbean and African diaspora. Esajas studied Business Studies and Anthropology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Dr. Etienne Joseph is a London-based Archivist, Researcher and Producer. One of a handful of Archivists of African heritage operating in the UK, his work strives to understand the purpose and function of heritage within African/Diasporic cultural contexts. Specifically, Etienne’s interventions engage with the idea of the ‘living archive’ and the active role of history in African/Diasporic (re)evolution. Dr. Joseph is the lead and co designer of the Correcting Our Collecting Community Archiving Course. His work to date evidences his interest in the exploration of contemporary heritage practices within the broader context of African/Diasporic ways of knowing and being.

Professor Patricia Noxolo is an award-winning researcher and teacher, whose work brings together the study of international development, culture and in/security, and uses postcolonial, discursive and literary approaches to explore the spatialities of a range of Caribbean and British cultural practices. She has been lead researcher on the Caribbean In/securities and Creativity (CARISCC) research network. Her research considers postcolonial theories and cultural geography. In particular, she has focussed on British and Caribbean cultural practises. She was promoted to Professor in 2022, becoming one of very few Black professors in the United Kingdom. She is currently the Co-lead of the Stuart Hall Archive Project, PGR lead for Human Geography. (Alternative contact Dr Rosie DayCo-organiser of the annual Fi Wi Road Internships.

Professor Stanley H. Griffin is Deputy Dean, Undergraduate Matters (Humanities) and Senior Lecturer in Archival and Information Studies at The University of the West Indies, He holds a BA (Hons.) in History, a PhD in Cultural Studies (with High Commendation), from the Cave Hill Barbados Campus of The University of the West Indies, and an MSc in Archives and Records Management (Int’l), University of Dundee, Scotland. His research interests include multiculturalism in Antigua and the Eastern Caribbean, the cultural dynamics of intra-Caribbean migrations, archives in the constructs of Caribbean culture, and community archives in the Caribbean. His most recent publications include Decolonizing the Caribbean Record: An Archives Reader (Litwin 2018), and Archiving Caribbean Identity: Records, Community, and Memory (Routledge, 2022)

Dr. Rita Gayle is a founding member of the Global Black Geographies network. Rita’s thesis investigated the millennial generation of Black Feminist Creative Collectives in Britain. Currently Dr. Gayle is Research Fellow for the ‘Stuart Hall Archive Project – Conjunctures Strand Department of Geography, University of Birmingham. She is also the producer for the New Nationwide Project Radio show which is an online podcast that broadcasts live once a month every Thursday night at 7pm.