‘Correcting our Collecting’: Seminar with Decolonising the Archive

The Correcting Our Collecting project, organised by Dr Hannah Ishmael in partnership with Decolonising the Archive (DTA), aimed to bring DTA’s established African heritage archiving course to a wider audience. DTA has been running this course for over three years, providing participants with the tools and skills necessary to create, preserve, and activate archives from an African heritage perspective. The project built on these efforts by expanding the course to a broader regional audience, offering a seminar in Birmingham to enable connections between interested participants, heritage professionals, community leaders, and academics from across the UK, Caribbean, and Africa.

The project aimed to bridge the gap between community-led archiving efforts and the mainstream heritage sector. By fostering engagement with both the academic sector and more traditional heritage institutions, Correcting Our Collecting sought to create connections between grassroots practitioners and established professionals in the field. The discussions offered a space for participants to reflect on their own practices and develop new approaches to community-based archiving.

Looking ahead, Correcting Our Collecting has laid the groundwork for future workshops and events, with plans to continue expanding access to African heritage archiving skills across different regions of the UK.

For full details of the project, please see the PDF case study below.

‘Correcting our Collecting’: Seminar with Decolonising the Archive – PDF Case Study