The Project
This project focusses on the ways in which monolingualism is challenged in museums, monuments, and memorialisation. The core activity of the network is to work with museums, civil servants, and NGOs to think through ways of using multilingualism to make heritage more inclusive. In many cases in post-colonial African countries, museums adopted the pattern of using one dominant language (often the language of the colonial power) in the organisation of their exhibits, thereby perpetuating the power structures which privileged small elites who speak English, French, Portuguese, and so on.
Led by Professor Robert Blackwood and Dr Stefania Tufi, the first stage of the activities of the network took place at the Resistance Museum which is housed in a former concentration camp in Tarrafal on the island of Praia, Cape Verde. The network members visited the renovated camp and, with the help of a guide and local academics, considered the ways in which – multilingually and multimodally – the site is presented. Reviewing the publicly displayed texts, the network analysed the narratives told about the history of the camp and its internees, drawn from Portugal, Guinea Bissau, Angola, and Cape Verde. In addition, the group attended to the organisation of different languages in the site, which is currently under consideration as a potential UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Collaborations
The project collaborates with non-academic partners in the various heritage sites. In addition to working with guides at the Resistance Museum the network members met with the Cape Verdean National Commission to UNESCO to discuss the experiences and lessons learned when the historic town centre of Ribeira Grande in Praia, Cape Verde, was awarded UNESCO World Heritage status.
Recent activities
In late 2022, the project team visited two sites in Ghana: Elmina Castle and Cape Castle on the Gulf of Guinea. In these two so-called ‘slave castles’, the group examined the practices adopted for representing the sites, both in terms of languages used and other icons and images drawn upon.
Funding
This project is funded by the AHRC as part of the Global Challenges Research Fund. A parallel project, which sees Professor Blackwood work with colleagues from the University of Zambia and the Livingstone Museum in western Zambia, is supported by the Newton Fund.