“Archive-based storytelling is the goal of this suite of projects. In its different elements, this website aims to render Southern African pasts visible; to promote engagement with historical sources; and to connect scholars, heritage professionals and creative artists with a broad public around questions of heritage, history and collective identities.”

About Archive to Narrative

From archive to public, this suite of projects aims to render South African pasts visible, promote engagement with historical sources, and connect scholars, heritage professionals and creative artists with a broad public around questions of heritage, history and collective identities. Some projects present stories that have not been previously told and perspectives that have not been foregrounded; others repackage existing material. In some cases, existing and well-known archives have become more widely accessible. Overall, the portal reflects a high degree of partnership between many contributors. We present it as a public resource for Southern Africans and all others interested in the region: we invite you to explore this rich heritage and deepen engagement with its diverse elements.

For all their variety, the digital exhibits presented here share a common goal: to tell stories (narratives) that are based on archives, visual, written and sound. In this portal, we have presented selected archives and collections or at least given a taste of their content as well as the kinds of narratives they harbour. In any one case, more detail and depth can yet be added. In many cases, an uncertain future faces the physical material underlying the current digital presentation.
 
The precarity facing heritage material is deemed newsworthy if, for example, it involves a sensitive real estate development or a major fire. Less obvious is neglect over time. Yet the death of an older person is also the loss of unique cultural knowledge. Family photographs lose their historical value if nobody has recorded whatever details are available, or if the last person capable of providing such information is no longer able to do so. Furthermore, many heritage institutions have lost expertise through retirements, departures or restructuring: openings often remain unfilled. In such instances, uniquely valuable information is lost forever, and so is its potential to generate collective, intergenerational memory.
 
Like an museum or library without walls, this digital portal promotes storytelling per se. We have pursued it in ways that are intended to animate historical archives. The many collections found here thus constitute a larger structure, a kind of museum of storytelling. The contributors encourage you to pursue the curation of archives as the basis for future storytelling and, beyond that, to tell the very stories which bespeak Southern Africa’s rich traditions.
 
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