Kuumba = Swahili for creativity
Survivors = those of us still left alive
During the Maafa - the enslavement of African people - in some of the most horrendous conditions in modern history, we continued to survive. Our cultural heritage stolen from us, we preserved the memories of our experience. We continued, somehow, to remember, and to tell our stories.
How can we now, as artists, uplift African people through our creativity?
On this site, artists and writers of African heritage in London speak about how the history of enslavement informs our work, and how we are creating a new future for our community.
A people must know its history. In order to know where we are going, we need to know where we have been.
This website explores the interaction between history – our past as African people – where we are now and where we are going.
Those of us in the African diaspora know that we are the product of enslavement. Our ancestors were brought in ships, in unimaginably appalling conditions, to work for European people in the
White historians claimed that we had no culture, we had no history.
Throughout the four hundred years of exile which ensued, we were branded ignorant, lazy and bestial. Stereotypes about us were heaped upon us and we strained under their weight.
The modern branding iron does not need fire to heat it until it glows red. It is not made of metal, but it is just as unyielding. It carries the master’s mark all the same. The modern branding iron is the television set, the media, advertising images, MTV. It brands us with images which we have not made. It reminds us every day of what we have lost. It leaves its indelible mark on our minds.
We were rendered invisible to each other and to ourselves. We had to communicate with each other through the oppressor’s language.
Throughout all of this, we still continued to create. We continued to tell our stories. And now, we continue to weave the fabric of our culture, to search for the threads which we have lost – which have been stolen from us. And somehow, we have remembered that we are Africans.
The images that we were fed did not reflect us. Even when we appeared in the paintings, the sculptures, the songs, we did not recognise ourselves. But.
Still.
We remembered who we were. We told our own stories. Even when we could not get them published, when no one would listen.
Still.
We told our stories.
We sang our songs. We sang them for each other. When there was nobody else to hear them, we sang them to ourselves.
We remembered. I can still smell the sea, I can still hear the creaking of the ship as the waves crash against its sides. I can still feel the shackles on my arms and legs. I still wonder what became of people who were taken from the ship’s hold and never seen again.
I remember. It’s in my bones, it’s in my blood.
I can remember dancing on the deck to the sound of the drums, the only real sound in this unreal hell.
Still.
Enslavement was but a blip, it is not the whole of our history as Africans.
Still.
It has left its mark on my consciousness, on our consciousness as African people.
We were taught to hate ourselves, to hate our hair, to straighten it so it does not remind us so much of home, of our ancestors, of who we are. To hate our skin, bleach it to take away its natural rich colour. We are sold products to make us lie about who we are.
But still.
We remember.
Given our conditions within this historical context, it is inevitable that we view ourselves and our experience through a distorted lens. Still, it is the task and the privilege of the artist to make sense of our situation. It is our task and our privilege to record, as best we can, and share the stories of our people, choose the colours to put on the canvas, choose the medium, choose the brush.
Within the limited choices we have available to us, what are we making of this situation? What are we making of the world in which we find ourselves?
The founder of the Cultural Archives, Len Garrison, is interviewed in Black Success Stories
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