Finding What Is Ours Symposium is a one-day, in-person symposium widening access to ongoing work reclaiming African heritage knowledge systems, African diaspora heritage practice and highlighting actions towards African reparations. The event is hosted by Decolonising the Archive (DTA)
With contributions from international and renowned experts including Professor Jessica Marie Johnson & Dr Nadejda Webb (Black Beyond Data & John Hopkins University), Dr Damian Cohall (Dean of Medical Sciences UWI Barbados), Esther Xosei (Reparations expert/ ISMAR), Dr Stanley Griffin (UWI Jamaica) and Dr Kirt Henry (Director Jamaica Memory Bank & Institute of Jamaica) Dr. Etienne Joseph (Archivist/ Co founder DTA).
COME AND ENJOY A DAY OF ACTION NOT A BAG A MOUTH WORKSHOPS, THEATRE PERFORMANCE AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING WITH AMAZING COMPANY AND FANTASTIC FOOD!
THE DAY WILL:
- Support wider knowledge of reparative historical and ethnopharmacological work led by people of African heritage
- Connect community access to the information held by UK heritage institutions to the movement towards African reparations.
- Encourage radical, collective visioning of African-led reparative practice.
Context:
We have lost a world. Through enslavement, colonisation and their legacies our lands, our knowledge systems, our cultures, our languages, our communities, our families and so much more are scarred in ways that impact not only ourselves, but the planet we all live on.
Heritage institutions in the UK are implicated in this. The British Museum, the Natural History Museum and the British Library, for example, were all established as a result of the 18th century Physician Hans Sloane’s attempt to ‘collect the world’ – financed through means including the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans and profits from plantations in Jamaica.
The Sloane Lab Knowledge Base aims to support digital access to information describing this collection held across these three institutions. The project seeks to learn more about how to frame this collection. DTA feels there is an urgent need for this information to be clearly framed in the context of African enslavement. It is important that the extraction of African and indigenous knowledges (and labour) upon which Sloane’s collecting depended is properly recognised.
With the Finding What Is Ours symposium, DTA have chosen to respond to the ‘Sloane Lab’ project focusing on three key areas and framed by our interest in Sloane’s activities in Jamaica and Barbados:
- Access to historical records in the context of African reparations.
- Emphasis of current African-led work towards the repair of African and diaspora heritage and pharmacological practices.
- Widening awareness and participation to Black Digital Humanities practices.
States, institutions and organisations who benefit(ted) from the enslavement of our ancestors should be held accountable. Equally, we must collectively invent, recover and develop systems, techniques and approaches which are rooted in our own cultural frameworks and understandings. The Finding What Is Ours symposium is an opportunity to both reflect on and stimulate this important work.
Run Di Sessions:
The symposium will be a space for knowledge sharing and the development of practice. Come prepared to get involved! We aim for all sessions to be interactive with dialogue, jokes and conversation central to each sharing.
11:30 AM
Setting the Stage – Connie Bell (Memory Worker DTA / Producer)
Bell Hooks wrote on the importance of community in our everyday lives. This session will engage with this idea, encouraging participants to centre collectivity and community throughout the symposium and beyond. The session will also set the context for the day’s activity.
12:00 PM
Afrikan Reparations, Restitution and Access to Information – Esther Xosei (ISMAR)
Exploring the role and importance of access to historical material connected to Afrikan enslavement and colonisation in the context of reparations activism as well as the liberatory potentials of collective education.
1:00 PM
An “Accelerated Decolonisation”: Heritage Institutions and community development in Jamaica – Dr Kirt Henry (Jamaica Memory Bank)
Leveraging the cultural expressions of local communities as a grassroots methodology to shape heritage education and outreach in Jamaica.
Interactive talk and workshop
1:45 PM
LUNCH ( CARIBBEAN CUISINE AND VEGAN FRIENDLY)
2:30 PM
Theatre Performance: Unno See Mi Trials
The first staging of a reparative theatre piece inspired by community responses to the Hans Sloane’s collections and the ‘Sloane Lab’ project community workshop. Performed by Re-Purposing Museums Theatre. The piece has been developed by Applied Theatre Practitioner and Memory Worker Connie Bell.
2:50 PM
A Voyage in Search of Our Self: Using Sloane’s Documentation to Reveal Our Un/Documented. Dr Stanley Griffin (UWI Jamaica)
A reflection on the need for the continuous documentation of our contemporary selves. The voyage to one’s self is not limited to the past but is always under construction for the future.
Interactive talk and workshop
3:50 PM
Black Beyond Data: Community, Solidarity & Black Humanity – Professor Jessica Marie Johnson & Dr Nadedja Webb (John Hopkins University)
As A.I. and the digital take centre stage in memory working, what does this mean for us and how can these technologies be used in ways that best serve us? Join scholars from the award winning US-based ‘Black Beyond Data’ project in an exploration of ‘Black digital practice’.
4:50 PM
Unlocking Traditional knowledge and Science Linked to West African Herbal Practices in a Decolonised Space – Dr Damian Cohall (UWI Jamaica)
This session highlights the relevance of West African indigenous knowledges and the science that underpins ancestral herbal practices. It also tackles factors which impacted the retention of these knowledges and practices within the colonised space.
Workshop: Ancestral Legacy to Common day Herbal Practices
The workshop focuses on ancestral wisdom and practices embedded in folklore. It will provide practical exercises that allow participants to utilise traditional technology at hand i.e. observations, household remedies, folklore tales and insightful knowledge about herbs and their uses as treatments that affect people of African heritage.
5:50 PM
Dr. Etienne Joseph (Archivist / Co founder DTA)
Closing Remarks and Giving Thanks
6:00 PM
EVENT CLOSE
Need to know: The Finding What Is Ours Symposium takes place on Saturday 8th June 2024 at 10:30 – 6:00PM, Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Rd, London E1 6L
This event will be filmed. Please let us know on arrival if you do not wish to be featured in the symposium recording. For general information, email info@decolonisingthearchive.
