Africa Centre

Africa Centre

A Short Story:

An introduction to who we are and why we came to be

Founded in 2005, as a not-for-profit organisation, the Africa Centre provides a new arts and cultural voice in Africa, for Africans. For a range of historical, political and economic reasons, most of the important collections and productions of African art today are located/performed outside of Africa. As a result, Africans living on the continent have limited access to their own artistic heritage and the work of contemporary practitioners.

Based in South Africa, the Africa Centre is both a physical entity and an ongoing philosophical journey that aims to redress these imbalances.

OUR PURPOSE

The Africa Centre is a platform for exploring contemporary Pan-African artistic practice as a catalyst for social change.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

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

We will:

  • Create and support artistic initiatives that explore and develop the full melange and variety within the ‘African’ perspective and approach. In so doing, we will 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 enable both African’s and the rest of the world to reshape their understanding of who and what Africa is, and is capable of;
  • Formulate innovative models for presenting, debating and encouraging the production of art;
  • Enhance access to the creative work and ideas of historical and contemporary African artists;
  • Examine the role, identity, transience, performance and creation of art;
  • Develop and implement projects that are either a model for, or can from inception function on a local, national, continental and global scale;
  • Pursue innovative ways to generate financial resources outside the confines of traditional philanthropy;
  • 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 both distinct – at times impassable – and eminently porous;
  • Open to multiple, at times contradictory and discordant, Africa’s; and
  • Part of multiple, shifting nodes in a network that privileges the exchange of ideas and practices.

MANIFESTO

The Africa Centre is an international arts and culture centre based in Cape Town, South Africa. Our 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 artistic and intellectual expression. We recognise that this voice is the fruit of an ever-evolving conversation, argument and counter-argument. 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, sewing original avenues for exchange and debate. We are 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 and a sustainable future, as well as the capacity of art to enhance the full range of the human experience.

Today the vision of the Africa Centre is brought to life with a number of programmes that are presented across the calendar year and are the result of our determination to actively participate in altering the cultural exchange in society. The Spier Contemporary, Badilisha Poetry X-Change, Infecting the City, Pan African Space Station, and Space for Pan African Research Creation and Knowledge are the recognition and celebration of both what it means to be in Africa today and what is possible for 21st century Africans.