SYNOPSIS and POSITION

The Imagining Futures’ Ghana Lab is hosted by the A.G. Leventis Digital Resource Centre (LDRC) at the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, University of Ghana. The Lab has investigated the archival records and archiving practices of the people of three prominent coastal settlements of Ghana, Elmina, Jamestown, and Keta. It also studied how the people apply information they have archived about their past to engage with their social and physical environment to live in relative peace and amity. These settlements evolved and became cosmopolitan as a result of trading, religious and other activities between various African and European agencies along the Gulf Coast of West Africa. They are currently inhabited by the descendants of people who established the settlements and immigrants. The Ghanaian coast has been the earliest site of direct contact and interaction between Africans and Europeans in sub- Saharan Africa. Beginning with Portuguese merchants, priests, and soldiers among others who in 1471 began operating on the coast, a succession of Danish, Dutch, German, French and British establishments and their African counterparts subjugated the local people amid strife engendered by physical and other forms of conflict, including clashes of values, interests, and ways of life.

OBJECTIVES AND METHODS

The Ghana Lab’s goal is to seek from orthodox and alternative sources data that will inform on what the people of Elmina, Jamestown and Keta remember about their past and memorialize, how memories of the past are kept, and how the people engage and interface with these memories to navigate their life circumstances and maintain relatively cohesive and peaceful social units. Our investigations focused on Elmina (https://www.threads.net/@the_ldrc), a town where Portuguese agents first settled and in 1482 constructed a trading post they named São Jorge da Mina, which is the oldest European edifice in sub-Saharan Africa today. Jamestown and Keta were also studied for comparative information. We have sought to explore, define and account for variability in the media and processes of archiving and in how the past is used within and between the three settlements. The Lab’s research team applied a combination of archaeological, ethnographic, ethno-historical, other anthropological and digital media research strategies to elicit data from multiple sources on archaeological and historic sites, structures, objects, local performances, and the landscape as archives that express and reflect the people’s past and present.

WORKSHOPS AND EVENTS

• Re-conceptualizing and Presenting African Heritages: Beyond Popular Narratives, 11th– 12th August, 2021. The Ghana Lab organized this conference in collaboration with an Andrew W. Mellon-sponsored project, Remaking Societies, Remaking Persons: A Supranational Forum for Rethinking Heritage, Museums and Memory Work (RSRP). The participants deliberated Africa’s (hi)stories and heritages, and shared knowledge, experiences, and other information to enhance the processes of reconceptualising, reconfiguring, archiving, and representing (hi)stories and heritages in ways that will render them relevant.

• Jamestown – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: An exhibition on Ga-Mashie Boxing Heritage. The exhibition at the Museum of Science and Technology in Accra, from 27th Jan – 4th Feb, 2022 explored the place of boxing in Ga-Mashie culture and the impact boxing has on the Ga-Mashie community. It also presented Ghanaian history from an alternative perspective – one that unites rather than separates people. For more information, including seeing young boxers in action, follow this link https://youtu.be/jT_Ig-oErJE.

• Words into Action Manifesto for Imagining Futures: Roles of Institutions in Egalitarian Archival Practices and Methods of Creating Digital Repositories. The 9th – 13th January, 2023 gathering in Accra the first of three gathering the Imagining Futures Team organized. It brought together international and local stakeholders to share multiple perspectives that laid the grounds for an Imagining Futures’ digital repository which the Ghana Lab will host. For more insights into the gathering, follow the link here: https://youtu.be/1mLKJH6nFU

• Digital Repository Training for the Ghana Lab team. IF organized the maiden training workshop at University of Exeter from 4th-8th Dec. 2023 and has followed up with weekly virtual training sessions for the team in preparation for the establishment of the IF ‘Unarchiving’ Repository in May, 2024.

ACTIVITIES