In August 2023, Ashleigh Harris partnered with ALMEDA researcher Pedzisai Maedza (University College Dublin), Nkululeko Sibanda (University of Pretoria), and Kelvin Chikonzo (University of Harare) to catalogue the manuscript collection of Rooftop Productions’ Theatre in the Park, directed by Daves Guzha.
In addition to cataloguing the 253 manuscripts in Rooftop Productions’ collection (all data is available on request), we also discovered the remnants of a fragmented archive of the National Theatre Organisation of Zimbabwe. Some materials from the NTO archive, including some historically significant materials such as the typed manuscript for a play, A Dying Beauty by Stanlake Samkange, has been incorporated into Rooftop Theatre’s collection. Another part of the NTO collection is being catalogued at the REPS theatre in Zimbabwe. The third part of the collection we found severely damaged in an open-air cage where it has been left to the elements. We are currently attempting to find out whether there is an available catalogue of this material so that we can assess whether to initiate a salvage exercise or not.
We have published our first Yorùbá-content dataset! Atọ́ka was a Nigerian photoplay or fotonovella magazine that was published in Lagos by the West African Book Publishers. The Modern Endangered Archives Program has created a digitized collection of the magazine in collaboration with the Archive of Sound and Vision, at the Institute…
Read the BIEA’s recent blog on this collaboration.
This dataset covers poems published in Two Tone magazine from its first volume in 1964 to its final issue in September 1982. Two Tone was founded by Phillippa Berlyn and Olive Robertson and was published by the National Arts Foundation of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and the Department of English at University of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. An interesting aspect…
Ashleigh Harris will present ALMEDA’s work with ‘Messy Data’ at the Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen at 15:00 on 6 May 2026. Abstract: A significant portion of African Literature and expressive cultures – from the late 19th century to the present – has been produced as print, audio, video,…