"Black Cultural Archives was founded in 1981 to collect, preserve and celebrate the contributions Black people have made to the culture, society and heritage of the UK."
I first heard about the Black Cultural Archives (BCA) through a friend, Jessica, an Archivist working at the BCA as a Documentation and Cataloguing Officer. On Tuesday 19 May they are holding an evening event to celebrate their projects - 'Oral Histories of the Black Women's Movement' and 'Documenting the Archives'. It sounds like it's going to be a really interesting evening, and I notice on their website that it's already fully booked!
I thought I would just include a bit of information about BCA. This information is taken from the BCA website.
The Collection began in the early 1980's when volunteers from the Black community starting collecting a wide range of material relating to the history of the African diaspora and the presence of Black people in Britain. The types of records include personal papers, organisational records, rare books, photographs and artefacts.
As mentioned on their website the BCA's history is as a local, grassroots organisation aiming to promote and collect records covering the broad range of experiences of people of African and African-Caribbean descent. The Collection continues to grow and I just love the ethos behind a collection that is created by the community/communities for themselves and for everyone and anyone who is interested. In addition to the Archive there is also has a reference library and a collection of artefacts, acquired through donations by the public.
The event is to launch two projects - Oral Histories of the Black Women's Movement and Documenting the Archives. As part of the project to catalogue the Archive and make it available online there is also going to be an online image galley which will be launched at the Tuesday evening event. I've already had a sneak preview of the image gallery and there's some fantastic stuff there so it's well worth having a look once it goes live!
Here's a link to the image gallery.
ReplyDeleteI have been researching the photo archives of Pogus Caesar a black film maker and photographer based in Birmingham. Really fascinating material - if you are interested, a good starting point is www.oomgallery.co.uk or Flickr.
ReplyDeletehappy searching
thanks so much for these links Sarah. From the looks of those photos you must have had an amazing time researching in his archives!
ReplyDeleteThese archives are astonishing and fascinating in the true sense of the word. What they provide is one man's pov of his life, also the great historical events that have occurred over three decades. From black music to politicians, portraits, moving on to the historic Handsworth disturbances, then intimate photos of Black Audio Film Collective filming Handsworth Songs!
ReplyDeleteA real treasure trove of images!