Centre for the Study and Promotion of Cultural Sustainability
The Centre keeps what the communities of the region have made and remembers — their languages, their craft, their music, their medicine and their architecture — and works to pass it on before it is lost.
Keeping what the region has made
North-East Nigeria holds an unusually large body of cultural material: the pottery and weaving of the river kingdoms, the town architecture of Borno and Adamawa, the “Yim” of the Kanembu, the oral traditions of dozens of communities, and a body of craft and dress that changes with every generation.
Most of it is undocumented. When a tradition dies its record dies with it, and cannot be recovered. The Centre’s work is to record what is still living, to describe what is left in the museums and the shrines, and to publish both so that the region’s own students can use them.
What the Centre promotes
- Documentation of languages, oral tradition and craft across the region.
- Conservation of the built heritage, including the earth architecture of the region.
- Collection and care of the objects held by the University and by the region’s museums.
- Cultural policy: how the state and the University can support what the communities sustain themselves.
- Exhibitions, publications and teaching, so that the material is in use and not only in store.
Fields of work
The Centre’s four fields.