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An Introduction To Who We Are And Why We Came To Be

 

OUR PURPOSE

The Africa Centre is social innovator that provides a platform for exploring contemporary Pan-African cultural practice and intellectual pursuit as a catalyst for social change.

 

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The nature of our work requires that both what we focus on and how we operate must consistently evolve. Social change is and always will be in a constant state of flux. What is important today may not be in a month, year, decade or century. Our goals, objectives, ambitions and aspirations therefore will and must always be reviewed, adapted and change.

Initially our work centred around Pan-African artistic practice. Over time we have expanded the portfolio of projects we create into the broader domain of cultural expression. The core intentions have remained regarding social change it is the tools we use that have changed.

The current Africa Centre goals and objectives for 2011 and 2012 are to:

  • Create and support artistic, intellectual and cultural initiatives that explore and develop the full melange and variety within the ‘African’ perspective and approach. In so doing, we want to provide alternatives to the clichés and disrupt the commonly held notions that Africa and Africans are HIV positive, poor, corrupt and criminally inclined. We seek to create opportunities for both Africans and the rest of the world to reshape their understanding of who and what contemporary Africa is, and is capable of;
  • Formulate innovative models for presenting, debating and encouraging the cultural production and the pursuit of knowledge;
  • Enhance access to the creative work and ideas of historical and contemporary African thought leaders;
  • Develop and implement projects that are either a model for, or can from inception function on a local, national, continental and global scale;
  • Maintain the organisational flexibility and fluidity to function as the implementing agent, collaborator and/or funder of the initiatives and projects in which we engage; and
  • Consistently evaluate the nature of our work, goals that shape it, accomplishments and failures to inform the social change that we seek to effect.

SHAPERS

What shapes how the Africa Centre’s thinks about its work and the ways in which it can and should engage?

The Africa Centre is an entity that is:

  • Capable of speaking to multiple constituencies, some or many of which will only emerge as we grow;
  • Able to respond, as well as call;
  • Perpetually in a state of growth and change;
  • Reinventing itself in response to needs, considerations, ideas and technologies that emerge over time and space;
  • Willing to question itself and its relationship to the place and time in which it exists, the history from whence it stems, and the complexities with which it must engage;
  • Aware of inhabiting multiple locations, all of which have an impact on one another and the borders of which are distinct – at times impassable – and eminently porous; and
  • Open to multiple, at times contradictory and discordant, Africa’s.

Becoming part of multiple, shifting nodes that function in a network that privileges the exchange of ideas and practices.

 

MANIFESTO

The Africa Centre’s intention is to innovate, lead, challenge and transcend our geographical reality; to draw in new and wider audiences to novel experiences that will slowly recalibrate how we perceive and locate our society and ourselves.

We provide a space dedicated to the celebration, creation and performance of contemporary African cultural expression. We recognise that this voice is the fruit of an ever-evolving conversation, argument and counter-argument and, as such, the Africa Centre aims to reflect this multiplicity of identity, be proactive as well reactive and always provocative. The Africa Centre is a hothouse for avant-garde ideas, sowing original avenues for exchange and debate. It is a brain trust with the capacity to project manage, partner with other organisations, sponsor, curate and develop an archive of resources. We are a curious citizen committed to social activism through the tools of art, culture and intellectual innovation.