South Africa: Performing Stories – Centre for Popular Memory, University of Cape Town

Poster from the Performing Stories project’s exhibition.

The Centre for Popular Memory (CPM) is an oral history based, research, advocacy and archival centre located at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. The CPM trains students and organisations in oral/visual history research, theory and forms of public representation; and runs a publicly accessible multilingual archive that contains over 3000 hours of audio and video. It records and disseminates people’s stories to expand the democratizing possibilities of public history. Renate Meyer, Deputy Director of the CPM, reports on the recently completed ‘Performing Stories’ project:
‘This project is part of a larger collaboration between the South African National Youth Commission and the Flemish Community in partnership with CPM and four community  centres throughout South Africa in Cape Town, Tbha nchu, Durban and Soweto. ‘The project involved training young people between the ages of 18- 35 to conduct and use oral history recordings to create performative outcomes. Over two years (2008- 2010) they gathered life stories via interviews in their respective communities, about everyday life of young people now or in the past, during Apartheid.

*A Performance of Black Box based on oral history interviews.

 These interviews were INTERNATIONAL WORK digitised and archived by CPM and transcribed by the young people involved. In partnership with the community centres, CPM assisted in creating forms of public output such as audiovisual exhibitions, theatre scripts and performances using the oral history interviews as primary material.

‘There has been great appreciation  of the benefits of the “Performing  Stories” project from all participants. Below are some of the key outcomes:
• This project has directly trained sixty unemployed youths across four provinces, providing them with a
range of new communication skills.
• It has developed the capacity of the community centres through their involvement in effective training, management and creation of an end product. Three of the four community centres have initiated related follow-up activities, contributing to the financial and intellectual empowerment of those communities.
• The project produced: one eight panel audio-visual exhibition: ‘We couldn’t walk together: histories of Nyanga 1960-1980’; and two theatre productions namely: ‘The Black Box’ and ‘Memories of Thaba Nchu’.
• The project has contributed to the Centre for Popular Memory’s oral history collection with 120 audio interviews and ninety transcripts in five languages. These have been made available to the relevant stakeholders and community centres.’
l For further information on this project and other initiatives by the Centre for Popular Memory please visit: www.popularmemory.org.za

Source: International News Section of UK's Oral History Journal, Spring 2011, p24.