Building a Queer Digital Archive: First Steps | CollabFund

An insight into the CollabFund project Digital Queer Archive in Africa and the Diaspora by Dr Noam Gramlich.

The Queer Digital Archive Project was launched in January with a targeted Instagram campaign and an international open call. The aim was to reach activists, artists, researchers, and cultural practitioners across Africa and the African diaspora, inviting them to contribute to a digital archive dedicated to queer histories, cultural belongings, and alternative gender narratives in African contexts—both historical and contemporary.

Call for Contributors

The open call invited participants to propose digital archive entries in diverse media formats, engaging either with museum objects and their queer histories or with everyday practices, cultural belongings, images, and videos. Submissions addressed themes such as community, ancestry, visibility, healing, spirituality, body politics, and social inequalities.

Selected contributors receive a one-time honorarium of 600 euros upon completion of their final contribution.

We are pleased to announce that, from a total of 70 submissions, 16 proposals were selected for further development into digital archive entries—although it was not easy to make a selection given the overall high quality and richness of the submissions. The selected contributors are:

• Temiloluwa Johnson
• Boyega Taiwo
• Awo Dufie Fölie
• Neema Abeid
• Lize Elas (Namibian Dragnight)
• Nicola Stylianou and Napandulwe Shiweda
• 3spiral
• SN Nyeck
• Florence Khaxas
• Omary Baajun
• Ruth Ramsden-Karelse
• Mónica María Oberschelp Garabito
• Maneo Mohale
• Rachel Ngeitokondjo Sakeus

The response to the campaign was highly positive. Within a few months, the project’s Instagram account grew to over 1,000 followers and was featured by platforms such as On the Move and Art Africa Magazine. The visibility generated through social media led to numerous inquiries and collaboration proposals, helping to connect and make existing networks more visible through the project’s digital channels.

Call for Designers

Alongside the contributors’ call, the project launched a call for designers to develop the visual identity and digital interface of the archive. We are pleased to collaborate with Anisa Legessa, a designer based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

In her practice as a queer African designer, Anisa emphasizes the importance of creating design structures that hold space for multiplicity, fluid identities, and non-linear storytelling. Her approach foregrounds care, accessibility, and the need to challenge dominant visual languages and archival formats that often exclude marginalized perspectives.

Next Steps

As part of the next phase of the project, we are planning to develop a first design prototype for the digital web archive in May. At the same time, we have begun to work closely with the selected contributors, engaging in an intensive process of developing their exposés and archive entries.

This process also includes collaborations with museums, through which we aim to identify and connect relevant objects from their collections to the contributors’ projects. The archive is conceived as a platform to make queer histories within European museum collections accessible and meaningful for contemporary queer perspectives and communities from the African continent and its diaspora.

In addition, we are planning a joint meeting in Nairobi in collaboration with the community organization The Queer Time, a reading circle and collective focused on community building, connection, resource sharing, as well as wellbeing and health.

We are very much looking forward to the next steps and are excited to move towards the launch of the archive planned for later this year.

The Author

Dr Noam Gramlich
Co-Project Lead
TheMuseumsLab Alum

The initiative TheMuseumsLab CollabFund is funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation).