On the 2nd and 3rd February 2022, the AfroCuration event in Zimbabwe, in partnership with the National Gallery of Zimbabwe will bring together young participants from colleges and universities in Zimbabwe to train them on how to tell their stories through Wikipedia. The event will be both virtual and physical with influential speakers in the arts and culture sector to stir up the enthusiasm of the young participants to tell their stories.
AfroCuration Requirements
Participants must be 28 years and below.
Enrolled for tertiary studies (National Certificate, Diploma or Degree).
Must be able to write articles in the local language (Shona, Ndebele, Tonga, Namibia, etc).
The AfroCuration event will focus on coaching young writers and artists in engaging in global debate in support of decolonisation discourse. The African story has to be told by Africans. The event will come shortly after the 3RD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON AFRICAN CULTURES whose theme is. The 3rd ICAC is scheduled for the 23rd to 25th November 2021. It is therefore strategic for the young participants to engage at the lower level of the debates about repatriation and restitution of African cultural objects. The focus for the AfroCuration workshop will be to mentor these young minds into writing and editing articles on the issues:
Painting
Sculpture
Dance and Music
Literature
Theatre
Important Information
Registration: Click this link to register:
Charge: Participation is free!
Participants limited to only 80. The workshop will be hybrid (in-person and virtual) event in observations of all COVID-19 protocols. Be the first to register and book your place for this exciting event.
Venue: National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare Offices
Expectations: The official language to be used will be English, further engagement, research and publication of articles from participants in local languages
Motivational speakers and experienced mentors
The growth of the WikiAfrica movement
WikiAfrica is an international movement that takes place on the African continent and beyond. It encourages individuals, interested groups and organizations to create, expand and enhance online content about Africa. It started from a collaboration between the lettera27 Foundation (today the Moleskine Foundation) and Wikimedia Italia that in 2006 conceptualized the idea and released all its content under creative commons license to facilitate sharing, innovation and maximise impact.
Hosted at several institutions in its various guises (including, Africa Centre, Ynternet.org, Wikimedia CH and Wiki In Africa), the WikiAfrica movement has consistently instigated and led multi-faceted innovative initiatives. These various independent but collaborative projects have activated communities and driven content onto Wikipedia. Examples include Share Your Knowledge, #OpenAfrica training Courses and Toolkits, Kumusha Bus (in Ethiopia and Ghana), WikiEntrepreneur (in Ethiopia and Malawi), Kumusha Takes Wiki (Cote d’Ivoire and Uganda) and Wiki Loves Africa.
Why is it important?
For a range of historic and other reasons, Africa is the least visible continent on the internet. What has been written about Africa has mainly been written by people from the West. This has created a paucity of information about an entire continent of around a billion people. This results in limiting our understanding of the complexities that exist on such a vast geographical space around such diverse issues as culture, economics, politics, history or contemporary entertainment. It perpetuates what the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls 1 “the danger of a single story” about Africa.
One of the dangers of this single story about Africa on the Internet is that as Africans start accessing the internet in their millions via mobile phones, they too will start to believe what they read. The WikiAfrica Education program aims to change this by introducing a new generation of editors based in Africa, to Wikipedia. Whilst learning about knowledge systems, theory of knowledge and critical thought, the students will also be contributing vital, researched articles that reflect their geographic and social reality.
For further information contact
info@nationalgallery.co.zw
l.muchefa@nationalgallery.co.zw
TEL: +263-242-704666/7 or +2638677002043
WhatsApp +263773965648 -techzim