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.
By Max van Loenen and Malin Runefelt During the spring of 2024, we collected metadata on African literary magazines published during the decolonization period of the 60s and 70s. ALMEDA creates data on and then links these ephemeral works. An important aspect of the collection process has been linking authors…
ALMEDA was officially launched with a meeting of all team members and some of the members of our distinguished advisory board. We were also joined by Tinashe Mushakavanhu, who presented a lecture titled ‘Metareading a Country’, in which he spoke about the value of “rogue archival” methods, which create “interference”…
The South African magazine, Zonk! African People’s Pictorial, ran from August 1949 until June 1964, during which time it published 298 literary works, predominantly short stories and photo plays. The rise of the popularity of the photo play in the 1960s is evident in Zonk!, which began publishings 23-page photo…
Edi Ganzel was a prolific writer of serialised novels in late 1960s and early 1970s Tanzania. Ursula Oberst has been using his work in Kenyan magazine Taifa Weekly to model serialised fiction in our metadata ontology. Give her feedback and see her current modelling on our Wikidata project site. Image:…