When I first stepped into a small conservation studio in Accra, I was struck by two things: the sound of conversations as much as the smell of starch and wax, and the quiet authority of a space run by a cooperative of textile artisans, conservators and community elders. They were repairing kente...
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Heritage
I first encountered a migrant-run radio documentary tucked away on a community...
Heritage
I remember the first time I ran my hands—carefully, with cotton gloves—over...
Heritage
I first encountered a project like MemoryMap while researching community...
Heritage
I remember the first time I saw a ritual object displayed beneath pristine...
When museums claim to “save” objects from neglect, they too often inherit stories of dispossession. I’ve listened to elders in Caribbean parishes, artists in Lagos and curators in provincial British towns who asked me the same question: how do...
I’ve been thinking about sound a lot lately — the small, stubborn noises that stick to you: a vendor’s call at dawn, the rattle of a tram, a lullaby hummed in a kitchen you no longer own. For diasporic filmmakers, these vernacular sounds are...
I inherited my first West African textile the way many people inherit objects: a box that had been in the attic, a faded wrapper folded around a family story. For years it was simply beautiful linen in my life — a Kente-like striping that belonged...
I first stumbled upon the cooperative by accident, on a rain-washed afternoon in Lisbon when the city's usual postcard charms felt suddenly thin. I was looking for something rawer than the Alfama tourist loop — a place where the past didn't just...
There’s a peculiar dissonance I keep returning to whenever I encounter so-called "outsider art" in auction catalogues, glossy market reports or gallery press releases: the work that once sat beyond institutional gaze is now being used to define...
I remember the first time I saw a polished prototype from a cultural-tech startup — an elegant interface that promised to “democratise access” to remote collections. It was irresistible: high-resolution images, immersive narratives, instant...