I was so lucky to attend the Open Day of the Zeitz Fellowship Students of 2025. I was thrilled to be invited to “Our People’s Library: Symposium” and see what the students had learned and achieved throughout the year.
Our People’s Library Symposium
Meet the Fellows
The first part of the Symposium was to introduce the students and an opportunity for them to share what they had learned through out the year. Personally, I was blown away by their learning: It was it interesting, it was challenging and definitley food for thought going forwards, as someone curious about the gallery and what it means for the Zeitz community.
Debra is a storyteller, and writer and a Nigerian American. She is a curator based in Philadelphia. She explored women in the archives, and why they are invisible… were stories left untold in the oral history, where stories erased? Bending expected ideologies with critical curiosity. This was very moving, it definitely juggled my worldview that women have been excluded from the narrative, to “What if some women didn’t want to be part of the narrative, in the first place?”
Myles, from Cape Town, is a museum practitioner. His research explored the role of museums and the material decay of artefacts within the museum. How much interaction between visitors and the artefacts is enough, and when does it become destructive? Tours provided the balance between preserving and educating and the more vivid the experience on the tour the more vivid the memories. Long live museum tours!!! And interesting to see that tours became a fundamental part of the Fellows experience at the Zeitz MOCAA.
Esinam, based in Accra, Ghana, is an artist-curator. Her question was why do we have so few museums in Africa, and yet so much artwork? It is time to think about the museums we want. How do festivals, celebrations and ceremonies come to the people, and how can we connect this idea to interactive museums?
Evyn is a Togolese American curator from New York, and an interdisciplinary artist. Evyn spoke about criss-crossing the Atlantic, between West Africa and America. Considering the metaphor of colonial construction of blackness versus humanity… and the imperial debris of colonialism. Can we use these found objects from landfills, oceans, streets to create the “unsaid” research, what were once products are now design.
Kea is a socio-graphical researcher from Botswana. She had a look at the dominant historical narrative with regard to heritage sites. And the fact that the heritage sites that she looked at have become a spatial legacy of apartheid: servant quarters, a criss-crossing of exiles and… no longer a home, but a demographic of smallness. What does this mean in terms of museum curatorship: What are we holding on to, lest we forget? What are we preserving here?
Arafa a multi-disciplined artist and curator from Tanzania and Kenya, shared the spatial politics of ballroom dancing, the glamour and the glitter, throughout Africa. From a historically flourishing District Six, to Kweto and de Waterkant, to clubs where visibility is risky and joy under threat. It’s a cultural heritage, but questioning the safety of surveillance in Kenya and disappearings in Dar Es Salaam… the safety of your personal heritage, where only community provides it, how does one protect that heritage?
Tours and a Lunch break
After a morning of talks we had a wonderful lunch, served by the hospitality team… and then on to tours of the Albie Sachs Collection.
Introducing Alternative Forms of Curation and Education
After a break for lunch the students took us on a collective journey through their year of learning. And what a year it was. Throughout the year they had a number of interventions, to further their learning and understanding of how a gallery works, and finding creative ways to connect the museum art and artefacts with the community and general public.
I loved that they took different teams of the gallery staff on tour, the hospitality staff, the security staff all got a closer look at the Albie Sachs exhibition. They had an acoustic intervention in the Atrium, with their subterranean sonics…
They had a poster making workshop, inviting the public into the gallery, for a tour and an art experience. An educational intervention, where members of the public where invited to create posters after a tour of the Albie Sachs exhibition. I loved it all.
The most important thing these Fellows did, along with all their curiosity and learning… they had fun, a lot of fun. And it showed.
Gather – Our People’s Library Game
When one realises just how much work these Fellows did, how many workshops they created and what they managed to achieve, you have to realise how hard it would be to create a useful publication that makes use of all their discoveries and processes and then present their learning in a useful way. A publication that would truly connect gallery visitors with the art. And they did it: Introducing their incredible Card Game:
An invitation for social, creative and collective practice to gather together in one inspiring and magical pack of cards. The artwork for the cards was collected at the poster making workshop…
On the back of each card is a creative question for the group… either a social – , a creative – or a collective – practice. Examples of questions in the game:
- Social Practice: Name three women from your home country who played a role in the freedom struggle. Share how each of them contributed.
- Creative Practice: There are nine sculptures in “Spring is Rebellious.” Draw a sculpture you would like to make, explaining which materials you would use and why.
- Collective Practice: Ideas thrive in community and conversation. Tell the Group about your next exciting idea!
Our group loved the opportunity to learn through play…
Thank You
To the Zeitz MOCAA team and this incredible cohort of Fellows who learned so much and shared so much, it has been my privilege to get to know you!!!
