We hear about Decolonising the medical record but what does it look like to practice it?
We are excited to share that From Yard to Archive will be holding an in-person lecture on October 14th with special guest, First Man, all the way from Rastafari Indigenous Village Jamaica. This will kick off the registration for our Reparative Archiving Course.
We have teamed up with the Black Italian Student Co. and will be Joined by Mutabaruka (culture specialist/broadcaster and Dub Poet) as part of the list of tutors.
You’re Invited to the 6th Annual Olive Morris Awards & Luncheon.
Join us for the 6th Annual Olive Morris Awards & Luncheon, an afternoon dedicated to recognising the extraordinary achievements of Black women who have strengthened our communities through activism, leadership, education, creativity, and social justice. ALL ALLIES ARE WELCOME
VISION STATEMENT
Our vision is to create a transformative, community-centred approach to engaging with colonial medical photography that places the knowledge, experiences, cultures, perspectives, and humanity of the people represented in these archives at the heart of archival interpretation, access, and stewardship. We value the contributions of descendant communities, communities represented within the collections, and those who share similar historical experiences, recognising them not as subjects of the archive but as essential knowledge holders, partners, and contributors to its future understanding.
Our vision is not simply to improve access to archives, but to foster a model of archival and heritage practice that acknowledges historical injustices, respects cultural knowledge systems, and supports healing where possible. By having a community archive practice organisation leading the project (Decolonising the Archive) we envision a more balanced approach and lens to the findings. We seek to re-establish an ethical lens through which colonial medical photography can be understood, challenging historical approaches that often prioritised documentation over dignity, observation over consent, and data collection over human experience.
Through this work, we aim to bring humanity back into the conversation surrounding medical photography by encouraging critical reflection on both how such images were created and why they were created. We believe that ethical engagement requires consideration not only of the photographic record itself, but also of the power structures, intentions, and consequences that shaped its production and continued preservation.
By creating opportunities for communities to contribute their knowledge, challenge historical narratives, and inform decisions about interpretation and access, we seek to establish a framework in which communities can become active partners in correcting, contextualising, and reclaiming histories too often recorded about them rather than with them. In doing so, we hope to contribute to a more equitable, accountable, and culturally responsive approach to archival practice—one that places dignity, care, consent, and human connection at its centre
LSHTM was established in 1899 with funding from the Colonial Office with the object to facilitate British colonialism and white settlement through research and the treatment of tropical disease. The LSTHM Archives reflects this problematic past, with holdings including photographs of people from colonised nations taken by School staff and other donors. For many of these images there is little provenance, but it is assumed that these photos were taken without consent or an understanding of why they were being taken and how they might be used.
Owing to their sensitive nature, these photos have remained hidden as we are uncomfortable with researchers accessing them but through our decolonising work, we understand the importance of making these accessible in an appropriate way.
This project has been designed to reframe access to LSTHM’s colonial medical photo collections, ensuring that we preserve and promote the collections in a respectful and equitable manner.
Working with Decolonising the Archive (DTA) we hope these conversations will help us to reconcile institutional archival practices with community archiving initiatives.
Decolonising the Archive (DTA) was founded in 2011 and focusses on the definition, safeguarding and activation of our collective archives, they have worked with, supported and trained hundreds of people across the UK and internationally.
We are pleased to welcome back psychotherapist Brian Adderley, who will guide a powerful exploration of wholeness, wellbeing and community healing - embracing both the masculine and feminine dimensions of what makes us human.
Join us on 12 September 2026 in person for our next session. A space for honest dialoge, colelctive reflection and meaningful action.
This workshop provides a safe and sacred space for Black men and Black masculine folk to confront and heal from the wounds of patriarchal trauma and oppression. Grounded in the teachings of Bell Hooks and the work of Resmaa Menakem, this workshop offers a holistic approach to healing, deconstruction, and repair.
Apply Now - Email: team@decolonisingthearchive.com
Find out more here…
Join DTA & University of Repair on Friday 29th July 2026 for our annual masterclass in Brixton, London, where the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March will take place. Our special guest this year is Bell Ribeiro-Addy, MP for Clapham & Brixton Hill and Chair of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for African Reparations. Emancipation Day/Liberation Day is globally celebrated by many African-heritage communities on 1st October, to reflect the emancipation from enslavement in 1833 under the British Empire.
Learn more about the Correcting our Collecting Reparative Archiving and Museum Restitution Ancestors Remains Ethical Enabler programmes and participate in our reasoning and self repair session with Colonel Sterling of the Moore Town Maroons (JA).
Register from: 5th November - 5th December 2025. Start Date: January 2026 (TBC)
Ancestral Remains held as items of display for entertainment is problematic. With this in mind, the Museum Restitution course creates a pathway for ethical and corrective measures to step in through the voices and efforts of descendants from the African diasporic community to intervene in the unfair incarceration of stolen tangible and intangible cultural intelligentsia. This will include working with trauma-informed archives and feature specialists in working with these fields…
Hood Futures Studio x Decolonising the Archive are honoured to host Dr. Marcus Goffe (LLB) in conversation with Connie Bell (DTA). Together, they’ll open space for deep reflection on what it means to own our past, shape our present, and co-author a future through archiving and reparation land practice. The talk will ground us in the politics for the Hood Futures community archive, to be developed in 2026 via a radical archivist training programme. Dr Marcus Goffe is an Attorney-at-Law who specialises in intellectual property law and the protection of traditional knowledge.
You’re Invited to the 5th Annual Olive Morris Awards & Luncheon. Theme: Women in the Business of Liberation. Get ready for a powerful, vibrant, and deeply inspiring day as we celebrate five years of honouring the bold, visionary Black women building stronger communities across the UK.. This year’s theme, "Women in the Business of Liberation," highlights the fierce and transformative work of Black women in community development—those driving positive change, grassroots progress, and collective care.
At the heart of the Olive Morris Awards is a commitment to uplift and spotlight Black women leaders who are not just doing the work, but doing it for the people. Inspired by the revolutionary legacy of Olive Morris and the freedom-fighting women who continue in her footsteps, we honour those who challenge systems, build networks of support, and hold space for joy, justice, and liberation. ALL ALLIES ARE WELCOME
Join us for our annual masterclass in Brixton, London, where the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March will take place. Reparations expert Esther Xosei will lead this Groundings session titled: Healing Forward: Self-Repair as Reparative Practice - Archiving Our Resistance, Reclaiming Our Power. Emancipation Day/Liberation Day is globally celebrated by many African-heritage communities on 1st October, to reflect the emancipation from enslavement in 1833 under the British Empire.
Join our next wave of graduates from our upcoming Correcting Our Collecting course: Trauma-Informed Archiving. This abbreviated version of the course offers fully-funded free scholarships for participants and is aimed at African heritage and BIPOC communities with lived experience of mental ill-health, distress and/or trauma – in particular, those who are involved in grassroots organising at the intersection of racial justice and mental health.
It will be delivered in a hybrid fashion both Online and In-Person.
Applications are now open and the closing date is 23rd June 2025…
This is our Public Access session to raise awareness on Restitution , share knowledge and creating progressive actions. We are honoured to have as a special guest Professor Kyle Mays ( California) who is an Afro-Indigenous (Saginaw Chippewa native American) writer and scholar of US history, urban studies, race relations, contemporary popular culture and author of his famous books An Afro-indigenous History of the United States, City of Dispossession and Four Hundred Souls. Drawing from the experience of Native Americans and their approach to both Restitution and Reparations.
Lecture: Complicity - From Corporate Slavery Restitution to Repatriation of the Benin Bronzes.
As part of DTA’s practical training course in becoming an Ancestral Remains Ethical Rights Enabler, one of our course’s international experts and lived experience scholars, Deadria Farmer-Paellmann will be a guest speaker during the Museum Restitution course’s public lecture series, providing an in-person Lecture and Reasoning session.
The course will be addressing the subject of African and Indigenous Ancestral Remains held in Museums covering issues of cultural amnesia, historical inequity and the basic right to a humane burial. To find out more, read on…
DTA and Black Heart Mind Consultancy have collaborated to provide 4 communal ritual healing spaces for African Heritage Men. This is a month-long therapeutic detox from the racialised trauma, isolation and relationship challenges that Black men experience as part of life in the UK. These will be facilitated by the experienced Somatic Healing expert, Dr. Rowan Carr, and provide intergenerational sessions with Professor Gus John. Apply now! Find out more…
Join our virtual Community Conversation with our trainee Community Archivists centring around Olive Morris. Come and share your stories, and opinions.
FRAMEWORKS is a conference and award ceremony exploring and inspired by the legacy of activist and organiser Olive Morris. DTA is excited to announce that there will be Keynote speakers at the 2nd Annual Black Activists Luncheon and Olive Morris Awards Ceremony. A space to explore and celebrate African heritage women’s organising (and nyam some good food!).
Join us for an event to explore wellbeing trauma-informed approaches to working with archives…
Join us at the Correcting Our Collecting Seminar in the Midlands. A one day seminar on independent Black heritage practice for communities. Get tickets as soon as possible
Read on…
This artist residency scholarship is part of DTA x LOATAD’s Out Of Many, One People 1-year Festival, celebrating transnational Black cultural activism inspired by the life and legacy of Ghanaian playwright and Pan-African cultural activist, Efua Sutherland (1924-1996). The residency is extended to both Ghanaian and international cultural playwrights /artists and activists who wish to use Efua Sutherlands’ method of creating plays for outdoor performance…*read more*
This applied theatre workshop will be led by memory worker Connie Bell as part of the Out Of Many, One People Festival 1-year celebration of transnational Black cultural activism inspired by the life and legacy of Ghanaian playwright and Pan-African cultural activist, Efua Sutherland (1924-1996). The year 2024 marks the centenary of Efua Sutherland’s birth, and Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD) and Decolonising The Archive (DTA) are organising a series of hands-on events to actively commemorate the occasion.
This 2-day workshop will explore storytelling as an intersectional tool to how we foreground invisible stories that have been erased due colonial practices. We will use our radical imagination to collectively play with new ways of culture-making and presenting by decentring dominant modes of curating that situate care and community co-production. This will enact speculative practices of world building and Black futurity to embody liberators care both interpersonally and collectively...*read more*
Finding What Is Ours is a one-day, in-person symposium widening access to ongoing work reclaiming African heritage knowledge systems. This day of interactive workshops, presentations and provocations from leading African heritage thinkers and doers in reparations, ethnopharmacology and (digital) heritage practice in the UK, the US and the Caribbean. They will be sharing their work and their skills and addressing Sloane in the process…*read more*
This is a workshop/focus group for African/African-Caribbean people with an interest in history. No special skills are required.
Participants will be asked to use the beta-version of the ‘Sloane Lab’ digital portal to search for African/African Caribbean histories. This will help the project team understand the kinds of questions we want to ask this digital knowledge base so the platform can be made more accessible to us.
FRAMEWORKS is a conference and award ceremony exploring and inspired by the legacy of activist and organiser Olive Morris. DTA is excited to announce that Carole Boyce Davies and Esther Stanford Xosei will be Keynote speakers at the 1st Annual Black Activists Luncheon and Olive Morris Awards Ceremony. A space to explore and celebrate African heritage women’s organising (and nyam some good food!).
Join us for an evening of film and rich discussion @ the Library of Africa & the African Diaspora, Accra, Ghana.
Dr Walter Rodney was an activist scholar killed in his prime for the work he was doing to bring about a better world.
Directed by father-son team Arlen Harris and Daniyal Harris-Vajda, the film explores the Cold War conspiracies, Black Power activism, and end of Empire politics surrounding Rodney’s life and death and how these connect to modern-day policing, surveillance practices, and social movements.
The film features personal contributions from Professor Patricia Rodney (Walter Rodney Foundation) and prominent historians, activists, and scholars like Angela Davis, Gina Miller, and former President of Guyana, Donald Ramotar, among others.
For this screening, we are honoured to welcome Professor Patricia Rodney and Director Arlen Harris as our special guests for the post-film Q&A
ADDITIONALLY, FOR OUR PALM WINE GROUNDINGS AND REASONING WE ARE HONOURED TO WELCOME:
Anakwa Dwamena - a freelance journalist, researcher, and editor focusing on the African diaspora. Inspired by African traditional religion, his work centers on the discovery, analysis, and preservation of African indigenous knowledge systems, narratives, and ancient ways of seeing and understanding the world through culture and memory.
Namata Serumaga-Musisi - a Pan Africanist with roots in Uganda. An architecture graduate, her work is intended to facilitate the movement towards decoloniality, focusing on the People of Africa and the Global South, and how we can facilitate the reclamation of African identity as defined by inhabited space and its making. Architecture led Namata to Socialism. She serves as Commander of Creative Arts & Communications with Ghana-based Nkrumahist movement, the Economic Fighters League.
Connie Bell - the co founder of Decolonising the Archive, a cultural producer and memory worker based in the United Kingdom. Connie’s work contributes to the development of strategies and methods for the identification, formation and access of ‘the archive’ by people of African heritage.
Walter Rodney: What They Do ‘t Want You To Know’ premiered at the British Film Institute’s largest screen to a sold-out auditorium. It is a must-watch for those seeking to understand the legacies of empire and colonialism and its impact on the modern world.
This event is organised by Decolonising the Archive (DTA), UK, and the Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD), Ghana.
Special Thanks to The Walter Rodney Foundation & The Ameena Gafoor Institute.
Pocomania is a seminal play written by African-Jamaican activist, feminist and journalist Una Marson in the 1930s. The piece addresses African spiritual practices, classism, identity and mental health. Hailed as Jamaica's national play for its excellent depiction of how a community forms a resilient identity in the midst of oppressive colonial frameworks and class division. The play is now revived and will be staged for it's British debut by Decolonising the Archive's Connie Bell.
In support of our play Pocomania, DTA is offering a community workshop and conversation titled Performing Indigeneity in a New Land : Applied Theatre on 14/01/2023.
We have invited some of the best lived experience professionals in the field of culture, theatre and archives (Shango Baku, Dr. Sarah Dorgbadizi, Dr. Lisa Tomlinson, David Gilbert and Connie Bell)
Learn about this unspoken African Caribbean spiritual ritual, embodied archives, its relevance to mental health in pre & post colonial Britain,
Special talk with Author and Journalist Amandla Thomas Johnson
Tickets go live November 23rd
