ABOUT US
We are a UK-based Pan-African project whose work centres the ‘living archive’. We facilitate heritage-based therapeutic interventions for people of African heritage rooted in our cultural principles and technologies.
OUR BEGINNINGS
Decolonising the Archive (DTA) was founded in 2011, beginning as a project leveraging theatre, community development and African heritage memory practices. Working with elders in the community, we drew heavily on our African and African Caribbean cultural inheritance to devise and deliver work which by its very nature was decolonial and anti-imperialist.
Since then, narrowing our focus on the definition, safeguarding and activation of our collective archives, we have worked with, supported and trained hundreds of people across the UK and internationally. Our artistic practice and lived experience of grounded work within our communities has been the foundation of our success, underpinning our methods and ways of working.
LEGACY BUILDING PROGRAMMES
For more than a decade, we have successfully built legacy through training programmes supporting community cohesion, narrative ownership, archival literacy and heritage-based therapy. Whilst our core focus remains grassroots communities, our work also involves collaboration with archives, museums and other types of heritage spaces where this can be achieved equitably.
Community Impact Team with Professor Patricia Rodney and Connie Bell at the UK launch of Walter Rodney’s Kofi Badu: Out of Africa & Lakshmi: Out of India (September 2023)
Our training programme Correcting Our Collecting has thus far trained 60 persons from the African heritage community in the UK. Currently some of our alumni are now part of our Community Impact Team. An extended network, who we can confidently refer to work within the community and support institutional collaborations.
Summer 2022 - Correcting Our Collecting cohort at the Black Cultural Archives
Under our University of Repair training programme we have facilitated over 700 community members in building resilience and best practice in the area of self repair, reparations and restitution.
Summer 2022 - Public Exhibition at BCA curated by Correcting Our Collecting graduates.
Summer 2022 - Correcting Our Collecting cohort of trainee Archivists at the Black Cultural Archives
Our Emotional Emancipation Community Healing programmes have trained 20 community members to be able to host Emotional Emancipation circles within their communities.
General terms and conditions governing access to our courses and programmes can be found here.
ARCHIVE AND THEATRE PEDAGOGY
Decolonising the Archive has also worked at the intersection between theatre and archival practice as a means of safeguarding, activating and sharing our collective heritage whilst widening the conversations around ‘Black’ Theatre in Britain that includes its artists and community.
Most notably we have revived and staged Writer/ Feminist/Activist Una Marson's acclaimed and almost forgotten play, Pocomania, for the first time on British shores. This restaging is now featured the The National Theatre's Black Play Archives.
MUSEUM RESTITUTION
The Museum Restitution Course offers specialised training and accreditation for individuals seeking to become Ancestral Remains Ethical Rights Enablers, Restitution Advocates, and Community Stewards.
The programme is closely aligned with the ongoing human rights parliamentary campaign Laying Our Ancestors to Rest. As such, the course functions not only as a learning programme but as a purposeful activation platform, equipping participants to advocate for ethical reform and support policy changes that challenge the continued inhumane treatment, display, and circulation of ancestral human remains.
BLACK MEN RISING
Black Men Rising is a transformative programme aimed at facilitating healing, resilience, and communal self-repair.
This initiative is not institutional or referral-based; instead, it is designed to provide a safe, culturally sensitive space for men of African heritage. Participants can embark on a journey of self-reflection, somatic recovery, and empowerment
The programme seeks to raise awareness and begin to address the ongoing harm caused by white-bodied cultural supremacy. This harm is historical, pervasive, and systemic, often manifesting in insidious ways that are unnoticed until it becomes too late to repair.
We believe that we heal best when we heal together, creating ripples of change that will inspire others to model this approach for future generations.
REPARATIVE ARCHIVE IMPACT TEAM
Since its inception two and a half years ago, our Correcting Our Collecting training programme has connected with and trained 60 practitioners of African heritage in the UK. As well as blazing trails with their own important work, many of these are also part of our Reparative Archive Impact Team - people with relevant lived-experience who we can confidently connect you with to support a range of projects involving our collective heritage and related themes.