See you next year!

Aah, the end of an era. Isn’t that how it’s said? Yes, I’ll be saying that at the end of every year. How far, my people? Have you started closing up shop? Planning your enjoyment for December? Live o live! It’s been a long year for us, and the gloomy news is more than enough, so my dear community, this is a goodbye (for now) post. The project is officially on holiday until some time in January. So how about a recap of 2024? 

Let’s start with a re-introduction of the project. The Digital Archive Project was initiated in 2022, back when it was known as the Research, Documentation, and Data Management Project. A few things may have changed, but the aim of the project remains: documentation of Ghanaian LGBTQ+ data from the pre-colonial era to today. 

Speaking of change, as I’m sure you remember, we introduced a new website for the project. This time I’ll type it out in full; no hyperlink: digitalarchiveproject.info I visit you at least twice every month with a blogpost and the team visits once every quarter to fill you in on what we’ve been up to. We’d love it if you paid us a visit too; even if you can’t make it to our meetings, you can find us on social media. A major difference between last year and this year is our social media presence. We created social media accounts for the project on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. Please tell me you’re following us in at least two of these places; we’d love that. 

Which brings me to our town hall meetings: Community Chat 1, 2 and 3. I’ll tell you right now that that was a challenge. We held three Community Chats this year on asexuality, ex-homosexuals, and then the Ghanaian healthcare system. The first chat was my favourite; it was titled Prayed Away: An Open Discussion on Ex-Gays and our guest speaker was LGBT Rights Ghana. We had 141 listeners; I can’t get over that. Remember I mentioned that someone enjoyed it so much they recorded the space and shared it with us the next day? 

Enough about me though; let’s get into the archive. The research team uploaded 3951 files to the archive this year. Guess the number one source of that data. Exactly, social media—with the news following not so closely behind. By existing on social media as LGBTQ+ people and speaking for and about LGBTQ+ people, you’re contributing to the archive. How does it feel to make history? Take your time to respond; you’re literally an icon. Remember, we not only collect data; we also protect it. Our Data Security Expert has been working overtime, and it shows on our social media pages. Every month, we provided resources and data security tips to our audience to keep themselves and their data secure. To access certain types of data in our archive, you’ll need to fill out a form. In the unfortunate event that, after accessing this section of the archive, you experience a data breach or any of your devices are hacked into, contact us for our incident report plan and form for assistance. Yeah, we keep it tight. 

2024 was our first year of partnerships. The Project has formed partnerships with a number of organizations, including Rightify Ghana, a non-profit organisation seeking to equip and empower LGBTQ+ people through advocacy, human rights education, and community support activities, and Perfocraze International Artist Residency, an interdisciplinary arts program promoting exchange between artists, activists, curators, researchers, and queer people. We, of course, have some more partnerships in the pipeline and can’t wait to do another recap the same time next year.

The content on the blog may or may not change a bit, you know? I don’t want to give too much away, but expect... something different. Stay with us, community. We’ll be right back. Also, we have Community Chat 4 coming up in January next year, so be sure to check on us again. Thank you so so much for your support! Take care and enjoy the holidays, loves. You deserve it aaallll.