Amani Creatives CIC will be delivering an exciting project over 18 months to explore and gather naming traditions and heritage from the Congolese and African diaspora community in and around Manchester.
The National Lottery Heritage Fund has awarded a £77,457 grant for the project, thanks to money raised by National Lottery players.
The ambition of the project is to uncover and record naming stories from the African diaspora community, create portraits that explain this heritage as an exhibition, presented physically and digitally, to share the heritage further afield as well as archive the information for future generations to access.
The project aims to engage people around Manchester from the African diaspora, connect with our international partner DRC Museum to support in translations and explaining the heritage, and add to the Manchester Archives and RACE Archives to extend their representation of ethnically diverse heritage that makes up the population around Manchester.
The project will be spread over 18 months, to:
– Recruit volunteers to interview people in the community and collect their sayings and narratives
– Train volunteers in oral history recording, supported by Ahmed Iqbal Centre’s oral history experts
– Create documentation of the project including photographs, portraits, videos and audio recordings
– Share the heritage through a mixed digital and physical photo exhibition at Manchester City Library, a printed and animated booklet, with a celebratory launch event
– Archive the documentation with Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre archives at Manchester City Library
– Involve local African diaspora groups around Manchester
– Involve the community of African artists in our region already connected to Amani Creatives.
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