CollabFund | Digital Archive Footprints

Digital Archive Footprints

Alumni

• Melissa Kurkut – Project lead
• Billy Carl Kuatche Fowo – Lead researcher
• Atang L.S. Arnold – Lead researcher

Cooperation Partner

• Dr. Karolin Heinle – Key involving institution and digitisation training

Partner Museums and involved external institutions

• SAVVY Contemporary / SAVVY Kwata (Berlin)
• Milele Museum (Kigali), Space Botswana (Maun)
• Museum für Naturkunde Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung

Project Description

Digital Archive Footprints is a transcontinental collaboration amongst Milele Museum (Rwanda), The Space Botswana (Botswana), and Savvy Kwata (Cameroon), in dialogue with German institutions such as Savvy Contemporary and the Museum für Naturkunde (MfN). This project explores endangered ecological knowledge and traditional conservation practices through archival research, digitisation, and immersive storytelling. Building on shared alumni connections through TheMuseumsLab, the partners will investigate botanical and biodiversity collections in Germany, receive digitisation training in Berlin, and work with their communities to reinterpret this knowledge through art and technology. The project will expand the Milele Virtual Museum to include content from Rwanda, Botswana, and Cameroon, supported by a public program of hybrid seminars and publications. Rather than focusing on object repatriation, Digital Archive Footprints enacts a form of living restitution - returning appropriated knowledge to local contexts through shared experiences and creative engagement. The project connects institutions across borders through a collective commitment to ecological justice, digital inclusion, and the future of memory.

Project Development

This project is deeply rooted in the networks and shared values fostered through TheMuseumsLab Fellowship Programme. All three co-leads—Milele Museum, The Space Botswana, and Savvy Contemporary —are connected through the programme either as alumni or collaborators, and have remained in close exchange since. The connection between Milele Museum and The Space Botswana was formed during the 2023 MuseumsLab cohort, where both directors participated as Fellows. Their bond grew through shared commitments to artistic innovation, environmental stewardship, and inclusive cultural practice. The programme provided the space to reflect critically on postcolonial museum practices and helped build trust across contexts that often remain disconnected. Savvy Contemporary, a long-standing partner of TheMuseumsLab, has contributed to shaping the programme’s ethos of radical pedagogy and institutional critique. Their collaboration with Milele Museum began with the 2025 One Room 4 Archives project, a creative archival research process that combined oral traditions, ecology, and community-based knowledge production.

Together, these experiences have led to a growing sense of alignment. Not only in mission, but also in methodology. This project builds on those foundations, turning dialogue into co-creation. It brings together curators, researchers, and artists who met through TheMuseumsLab and stayed connected because of a shared drive to rethink how archives are accessed, narrated, and returned.

In that way, this project is a continuation of TheMuseumsLab’s vision—embodied through collaboration, grounded in equity, and aiming for long-term impact across continents.

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