Augustus Casely-Hayford

In 1743 William Ansah, a West African ancestor of mine, stepped off a boat at a Thames dockside and fulfilled a dream of a lifetime: walking on London soil. William Ansah was not exceptional he was one of tens of thousands immigrants from all over the world who had come to the most exciting city on earth to trade, to learn, to teach and to be. And he was continuing a tradition of West Africans coming to Britain that had, even then, been established for hundreds of years. But the 18th century was special. Look at a Hogarth print and you get a sense of a dynamic, chaotic city, brimming with new faces and cosmopolitan confidence. There were at least 5,000 and perhaps as many as 10,000 black men, women and children living in London at the time, similar proportions to today, but there were also people from all over the world – this was the London of Casanova, Benjamin Franklin and Handel. It is completely understandable that to make sense of all of this energy, this chaos, the idea of London being the hub of world ideas, that in that period The British Museum was established as the first universal museum: a space dedicated to the material culture of all of humankind, in the one city on earth that could feel like home to everyone.

And in a sense it is because of that history, that powerful unique context, that Africa 05, a huge yearlong cultural celebration has thrived. Turn on your radio in central London, re-tune it and slowly travel down the frequencies and listen to the dozens of cultural constituencies speaking to their discrete audiences, broadcasting to their London and you get a real sense of the complexity of the city. But visit our mainstream museums and galleries, and whilst the work on display is culled from our complex collective history, the audiences, so often do not represent that panorama. Whilst it would be wonderful if there were great umbrella multicultural radio stations that dealt with everything, that is simply not how we consume our culture, but the diversity model in which find our radio station and stay there, is comfortable, but not that satisfactory either.

What we wanted to do during Africa 05 was to broaden the number of frequencies that we all tune into, to blur the interface between the mainstream government funded arts sector, the commercial entertainment industry, and the small-scale un-funded community facing organisations: each with their favoured constituencies, each with a particular set of priorities, but all with a goal of engaging the public in the broader arts. We have tried to find ways to build equitable and flexible mechanisms for engagement between national museums and galleries, commercial companies and huge numbers of individuals who may represent themselves or communities and also to broaden our traditional outlook by thinking more internationally. This has meant that many of our partners have had to challenge their notions of what our cultural assets might be, to question who defines them and perhaps to think about who their partners and audiences really might be. Many Africa 05 partner organisations have seen how in the three years that it has taken to develop Africa 05; – the demography of London has changed – the Black and Minority Ethnic population of London represent a majority in increasing areas of the city, and the notion of ‘otherness’ has shifted: and with it our understanding of Africa.

Today Africa 05 is housed at the Arts Council, run by a small core team of three who manage out of house teams who deal with audience development, public relations, our website, evaluation, marketing promotions and urban marketing. This team has had to reconsider what participation might mean, to move the focus from physical attendance of events to virtual interaction, by opening up the website as the central focus, as a venue. This has given us an international profile from the beginning and a forum for real discussion and open debate.

There are now more than a hundred partners delivering many, many hundreds of events all over the country, not just visual arts but in every art form. Today, the AO5 website gets up to 65,000 hits a week and the participant facing pages of the web-site have had over 45,000 hits from people across the world interested in partnership. The exhibitions, such as Africa Remix at the Hayward, or Depth of Field at the SLG are getting audience figures that are similar to their regular audiences, but which have significantly different ethnic make-up – Africa Remix got 22,000 people using their Salon Afrique, the drop zone on the ballroom floor. And through fellowship and residency programmes we have managed to bring hundreds of African artists of Britain to animate programmes and create real relationships with galleries. The international interface to our work has helped us broker a number of key partnerships with governments and a significant amount of sponsorship and promotional partnership deals, including the BBC, Time Out and Starbucks – large organisations working together in ways that they had never previously conceived and doing it to deliver great art to diverse audiences.

We are also hoping that we can make this more than a season, more than a year; this needs to be the beginning of an ongoing commitment to a more inclusive, democratic and collaborative future that puts audience engagement and partnership up there as a priorities along with the scholarship and curation. Each element of the programme poses a set of questions for the host institution, how do they continue to engage and sustain this energy. Each organisation has come up with a particular set of aims, but every partner is linked by commitment to harness this energy and move forward in the spirit of change.

Dr Augustus Casely-Hayford June 6 2005