I’m Principal Investigator of the project CoaAst which has received a ARHC/CGFR grant.
CoaAst is a project which involves a small community (Bamburi Beach) located in the coastal area in Kenya close to Mombasa. The project foresees children from two local schools creating an archive of aural memories which will be accessible to the public. Children, coordinated by their teachers, will be equipped with audio recorders and they will hunt for memories in the village, to the shore, at their homeplaces. The final outcome of this project is an interactive work which will enable users to have access to the archive in a playful way. The archive will be visualised as a map and accessible both online on a web platform but also exhibited in the Fort Jesus National Museum of Kenya in Mombasa in the form of an interactive installation which will be artistic and informative at the same time. We believe that involving the children and the community to create an archive of memories will help the policymakers to better understand how the community perceives landscape, cultural, environmental and economic changes in the area and how those changes affect their everyday life. We believe that the process itself can help the community to better engage with matters which are important for them. The idea of connecting generations towards a process of self-understanding and understanding of the coastal Marine Cultural Heritage (MCH) will stimulate social cohesion around themes like economic growth and conservation.
