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Safeguard Sudan's Living Heritage from Conflict and Climate Change.
We are a project funded by the British Council Cultural Protection Fund, supported by national and international partners, and managed by our Sudanese team.
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Campaign
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Living heritage holds communities together and provides a wealth of local knowledge and resources. The war in Sudan, the humanitarian crisis, and mass displacement of families and communities, pose an existential threat. On November 1st 2023 we launched a campaign to raise awareness of Sudan's living heritage. SSLH is capacity building communities inside and outside Sudan and making Sudanese living heritage more visible and accessible.
Please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X or LinkedIn, explore our YouTube channel, visit our online Museum.
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Conflict &
Climate Change
The SSLH project is rooted in the intricate relationships between culture, climate, and livelihoods in Sudan. We conduct research, create maps and exhibitions, and collaborate closely with vulnerable communities to document their culture and help build resilience. We are helping build a future where culture is interwoven with livelihoods and a healthy environment.
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Living heritage
Our mission is to rally support for Sudan's living heritage and its multifaceted cultural panorama. It encompasses how people dance, create music, cultivate their food, care for their livestock, craft artifacts, celebrate traditions, and practice their beliefs. This cultural legacy is deeply interwoven into Sudan's history, landscape and identity, both rural and urban. It serves as a wellspring of local wisdom and vibrancy that can help shape Sudan's future.
Stories
Sudan has a wonderful network of open markets full of people. They sell and cook local foods, you can buy fabulous baskets or snakeskin shoes, choose a cheese or wedding drum, exchange greetings, or pick up handcrafted utensil for the kitchen. There are many specialist markets too – camel markets, cattle markets, millet markets, onion markets. The list goes on.
Credits: TBC
Stories
Sudan has a lot more animals than people, mainly sheep, goats, cattle and camels, horses and donkeys, They provide food and transport and play an important role in Sudan’s cultural as well as economic landscape. Loss of rangeland habitats cause conflicts with farmers, sports like horse and camel races are seen as popular peacebuilders.
Credits: TBC
Community Spaces
Living heritage is practiced where people live and work. The task of sharing, safeguarding and promoting living heritage can be strengthened by bringing together people with different capacities in community spaces, whether event spaces or community museums, whether real or virtual. In community spaces people can interact, learn about each other, their past and present, make new connections, and shape their legacy for future generations.
Museums
Fatima Mohamed Al Hassan
See an inspirational clip from the film on Fatima Mohamed Al Hassan the cultural heartbeat of Darfur, who died on April 14th.
Millet Festival, Nyala, March 2023
Fatima was inspired by the cultural heritage of Darfur and worked tirelessly to share it with younger generations.
Credits: TBC
Collections
The stores in the Ethnographic Museum are in a bad state of disrepair. The plan under the SSLH project is to build a new storehouse, digitise the collection records, clean and stabilise the collections ready for storage or display. This work had just got underway when the war started. The collections are vulnerable to dust, flooding, insects, fire, as well as looting and missile damage.
Credits: TBC
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Collections
Khartoum
The Ethnographic Museum is in the middle of Khartoum. It has an invaluable collection of artefacts from all over Sudan that show Sudan’s regional diversity and how it is evolving. Some things are no longer made but a surprising number can still be bought in the markets, particularly in rural areas. People make them for everyday use and festivities.
Credits: TBC
Museums
Nura was encouraged by Fatima to open her own women’s museum in Nyala. Nura uses her museum for collecting traditional objects and training women in how to make and share traditions through food, crafts, music and dance. Nura’s museum is in a district with many displaced women and children.
Photo credit: Mallinson Architects
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About
Safeguarding Sudan’s Living Heritage against Conflict and Climate Change is a project funded by the British Council Cultural Protection Fund, managed in partnership with DCMS.
We are working inside and outside Sudan with:
Museums that hold histories of Sudan’s living heritage in their collections. This includes public and private museums and archives, the authorities that manage them, individual collectors and photographers.
Different community groups to help safeguard their culture, under the umbrella of the UNESCO
ICH conventions and with the National Council for Cultural Heritage and Promotion of National Languages.
International emergency response organisations to help focus attention on and identify funding for Sudan's intangible heritage, museums, heritage sites and monuments endangered by the current conflict crisis.
Safeguarding Sudan's Living Heritage grew out of the Western Sudan Community Museum project (WSCM), funded by the British Council CPF and Aliph Foundation (2018-2023). This project faced the challenges of the revolution, Covid, and the coup and all three project museums – the Khalifa House in Omdurman, Darfur Museum in Nyala and Sheikan Museum in El Obeid – were restored as vibrant community venues. The SSLH project started with the Ethnographic Museum in Khartoum and specific communities in Darfur and Kordofan. It now encompasses Sudan’s living heritage in general and has set up a host of new initiatives.
The SSLH project started in
December 2022
and will finish in
February 2025
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Lead Partner
Mallinson Architects & Enginerers Ltd, London.
Local Partners
Supervisory Committee of Sudan Museum of Heritage (Ethnographic Museum, Khartoum). Sudan National Corporation Antiquities and Museums (NCAM), Khartoum, Sheikan Museum, El Obeid, Kordofan. Centre for Darfur Heritage, Nyala University, South Darfur. Kaman Collective, Nyala, South Darfur. CEARCH Foundation, Khartoum. Studio Urban, Khartoum. Likikiri Collective, Juba, South Sudan, KVS
International Partners
ICCROM ATHAR Regional Conservation Office, Sharjah. British Institute Eastern Africa, London and Nairobi. The British Museum, London, Department of Africa, Oceana and the Americas, Department of Egypt and Sudan. Cambridge University, the MAEASaM project hosted by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre. Cairo Child Museum. Sudan Memory, Kings College, London. Yoho Media, Bristol, UNESCO Cairo Office, UNESCO Khartoum Office, Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties JSPS Sudan Living Heritage Project 東京文化財研究所 スーダン・リビングヘリテージ・プロジェクト(科研費)
Project Team