Archives in motion: An artistic and digital odyssey
In Senegal, preserving cultural heritage and creating opportunities for youth in the cultural and digital sectors are recognised national priorities, reflected in the Sénégal Numérique 2025 strategy. Although less than 30% of African cultural archives are digitised and only 5% of museums on the continent have an online presence (UNESCO), initiatives are underway to bridge this gap.
This project, led by Mandji, offers an integrated response that is rooted in local needs and aligned with national priorities. It aims to preserve the archives of the 1966 Festival of Black Arts, in collaboration with Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN) and the Théodore Monod Museum, while strengthening local professional skills through training in digitisation and archive management.
In the short term, the project will safeguard the archives, improve their accessibility, and develop practical skills. In the long term, it will contribute to the promotion of African heritage, the economic inclusion of young people, and the strengthening of links between artists from the continent and the diaspora.
Budget
€ 45,938
In partnership with
This activity aims to inform, motivate, and mobilise young people around digital training, promoting the heritage of the World Festival of Black Arts and highlighting the cultural and professional scope of the project. A targeted communication campaign will highlight links to African cultural heritage, the digital skills to be acquired, professional opportunities and artistic engagement.
The objective of this activity is to identify, inventory, and organise a representative collection of 200 archives (paper, audio, video) from the 1st World Festival of Black Arts (1966), with a view to using them in digitisation training activities and promoting them in the future. This is an essential preliminary step in the training process and will take place mainly at IFAN with the support of its archivists, curators, and logistical resources.
This activity aims to strengthen the professional skills of 20 young people and ten staff members from IFAN and EBAD through a 30-day intensive training course combining theoretical and practical learning on the digitisation of paper, audio, and video archives. The training will enable young people to acquire skills that can be directly applied in the cultural and digital sectors.
Two separate and complementary artistic residencies, organised ahead of the Festival's 60th anniversary event (activity 4) in Dakar, will showcase the digitised archives through contemporary creation. They will bring together eight artists from Senegal and the diaspora in a co-creation process supervised by an artistic director from the diaspora, a curator, and the Théodore Monod Museum. The program includes preparatory online workshops, a ten-day in-person residency, and will culminate in activity 4 with a collective musical and audiovisual performance and a visual exhibition integrating the archives.
This activity is the culmination of the artistic residencies (activity 3), showcasing the works created from the archives of the World Festival of Black Arts. It celebrates contemporary creativity and intercultural dialogue through a musical and audiovisual performance and a visual exhibition, promoting African heritage and encouraging citizens to embrace their cultural memory. The performance will be preceded by talks led by the artists and experts. The event will be held at the Théodore Monod Museum and will be open to the public.
This activity assesses the results of the project. Qualitative and quantitative assessment tools will be used at each key stage of the project (training, artist residencies, exhibition) to gather feedback from beneficiaries (young people, artists, trainers, partners). The results of the evaluations will be analysed with the partners and integrated into a capitalisation process aimed at supporting the replication of the model in other contexts.