AfroCuration
Client: Moleskine Foundation and the Constitution Hill Trust,
Period: 2019
Multi-stakeholder partnerships
Education & knowledge
Civic & public
01 — The sneak-peek
Our history, in our own languages
AfroCuration is a movement to put South Africa's indigenous languages into the world's knowledge commons. For the Moleskine Foundation and the Constitution Hill Trust, BBA Liminal created the brand for the movement and ran its first event — where educators and learners wrote the makers of the Constitution into Wikipedia, in the languages of Mzansi.
02 — The liminal moment
Of all the material about South Africa online, very little exists in the country's indigenous languages. The national story, told largely in English, leaves most of its own languages out of the record. AfroCuration set out to change that — a movement to place indigenous languages at the heart of education and institutional life, by encouraging Wikipedia editors to write the South African narrative in those languages.
The Moleskine Foundation and the Constitution Hill Trust asked BBA Liminal to create the brand for the movement. The brief was an identity for a movement. The deeper problem was whose story gets told, and in which words: a question of who holds the pen on the national record. The first AfroCuration event was hosted at Constitution Hill on World Teachers' Day, October 2019.
03 — The transformation
A brand for a movement. We created the identity for AfroCuration — a movement to put indigenous languages at the heart of how South Africa records and teaches its own story. The brand carried a clear idea: that "We the People" should write the national narrative, in the languages we speak.
04 — The craft
We the People, writing the record
A movement brand and a first event at Constitution Hill: workshops that wrote 100 of the Constitution's heroes into Wikipedia in indigenous languages, and the full suite of collateral — signage, name tags, theme walls, tote bags and more — that carried the day.
05 — The validation of purpose
“A partnership with the innovative Moleskine Foundation, using a global platform such as Wikipedia, presents a great opportunity to empower young people to take charge of telling our story our way — because our history tells us that it is only ‘We the People' that can make change happen.”
— Cheryl Carolus, Chairperson of the Constitution Hill Trust
100 Wikipedia entries created
10 indigenous languages represented
100 heroes celebrated
Brand & communications strategy
Facilitation & convening
Capacity building
Copywriting
Brand identity design
Positioning & narrative
