Photo by Claudia Cortez
It’s been some time since we shared our last blog, but that’s not because we’ve been sitting still – quite the opposite! Behind the scenes, these have been very busy months for the RECLAMA project. After we successfully concluded our workshop on oral history/memory collection in May (described in a previous blog post: An encounter between knowledge and experience: ORALITY, THE BACKBONE OF THE AFRO-ESMERALDEÑA CULTURE (wixsite.com)), our fantastic team of peer researchers have been busy collecting over fifty interviews in Esmeraldas province. Working in their own cantons of Esmeraldas (there are seven overall), the peer researchers conducted interviews with older women in their communities, enabling them to share their life stories, which will go on to be part of a community archive by and for the Afro-descendant community of Esmeraldas.
Team members based in Esmeraldas at the NGO Mujeres de Asfalto have worked tirelessly to support and accompany the peer researchers throughout this process. It’s been an enormous task for all involved in Esmeraldas to collect and organise all the information, and it’s thanks to their hard work that the rest of the team have been able to get a first insight into the oral histories and stories told by participants; learning about what is important to them, their hardships and successes, cultural expressions, childhood memories, and the great stories of characters in and around the various cantons of Esmeraldas.
The next step for the project is holding a second, creative workshop; this will happen very soon. All peer researchers will return for this workshop, as well as fourteen interviewees who have shared their life histories with the project; two from each canton. This workshop will be a space to reflect on the interviews, and give participants a chance to work with them further, drawing inspiration from the life histories provided across the project as they work on creative projects. It’s too early to tell what exactly these ‘creative projects’ and ‘outcomes’ will be, as we want to ensure that this is a decision made by the participants of the workshop, and we’re very much looking forward to see what they create! We’re also very happy that circumstances now allow for members of the team based in Quito to travel to Esmeraldas, allowing them to be fully part of and witness to the process, and lend a hand wherever they can. Unfortunately, the UK-based members of the research team will still only be able to attend the workshop remotely, but we continue to monitor the situation, and are somewhat hopeful that by the time the creative products come to be part of exhibitions across Esmeraldas, the UK based team may finally travel – but more on that next step of the research to follow in the not-too-distant future!
A video from our first workshop:
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