Partner Article

Project launches African culture in the North East

A project aiming to celebrate the heritage of African and Caribbean families living in the North East was launched last week at Durham University. The Changing Perspectives project sees African people aged from eight to 80 take part in arts and cultural activities to create a multimedia archive of their experiences of living in the North East. The project will also collect oral testimonies from these families on their experiences and their lives in the North East.

The project includes creative writing, photography workshops, digital storytelling, art, dance and drama. It was conceived by Newcastle University PhD student Peter Oluwakayode Adegbie and is run in collaboration with NEEACA, the North East England African Community Association.

Peter Adegbie says: “I was inspired to initiate the project by my desire to raise the profile and confidence of African people in the North East and promote positive values of cultural identity, to build cultural bridges between ethnic communities as well as create social history.

“Participants at the launch and workshop event at Durham University took part in the first of a series of culture engaging workshops that will happen throughout the year. These events are aimed at generating a regional resource of accessible information about the experiences of participants, their present life in the region and their hopes and aspirations.”

The project hopes to turn out a number of end products including a book, interactive website, where participating members will have their own web page which can be viewed by the public.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .