Since August 2021, we’ve been working with a team of UK-based archivists to develop a framework for preserving our archives.
Led by Dr Etienne Joseph, co-founder of Decolonising The Archive, with Information Management Specialist, Lydia Julien and Archivist, Kaitlene Koranteng, the aim is to employ best practices to create a system that works within an African context for an African-centred archive.
Consisting of tangible artefacts such as books, letters, and photographs, and digital artefacts such as audio, video, and other electronic files, the LOATAD archive has been growing since 2017 and is set to expand as we focus more on our knowledge production, preservation, and dissemination work.
Meet the experts taking on this mammoth task for the culture:
Dr. Etienne Joseph is a London-based Archivist, Researcher and Producer. One of a handful of Archivists of African heritage operating in the UK, his work strives to understand the purpose and function of heritage within African/Diasporic cultural contexts. Specifically, Etienne’s interventions engage with the idea of the ‘living archive’ and the active role of history in African/Diasporic (re)evolution.
Lydia Julien is a visual and performance artist. Often working within sequences, she interlaces narratives based loosely upon personal or abstract experience, consciously intangible in nature. Using the self as subject, the work is often bound within analogue processes, primarily photographic works and artist books. She is a Library Services Assistant at Ravensbourne University.
Kaitlene Koranteng is an Archivist. She holds an MA in Archives and Records Management and is a Researcher with the Young Historians Project. She is Chair of the London Legacy Youth Board and was a trainee in the Royal College of Nursing Library and Archive team.
LOATAD Oral Archive 