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VALLETTA ACCRA

RESEARCH PROJECT LAUNCH

2023-ongoing

Valletta Accra was a travelling research project led by Ann Dingli, AP Valletta and Kojo Derban. The project – launched as part of Art Council Malta’s International Cultural Exchange funding stream – surveyed the built heritage of two capitals across two continents, each holding memory of colonial presence and its wielding of mercantile potential. Valletta and Accra's heritage fabric was studied a transcript of the evolving urban, social and economic life of two harbour cities – the capital of Ghana on the Guinea Coast of West Africa, and the capital of Malta, an island in the Mediterranean. Both still carry the imprint of their role as adopted trading strongholds. In Valletta Accra, their comparitive analysis was made a departure point for a deeper reading of colonial and post-colonial experience.

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FIELD TRIPS

In its parallel observation, Valletta Accra developed a new research methodology in studying heritage architecture and its scope for development in the present – its capacity to either resist, or evolve in service to, native cultural expression. Through on-site observation and critical research, the project questioned how heritage might develop in line with authentic permeations of identity and urban ambition, positioning contrast as a methodology for revelation.

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In November 2023, the team conducted the project's first on-site workshop in Jamestown, Accra. A photographic exhibition followed, with work by Paul Addo, Guillaume Dreyfuss and Luis Rodríguez was opened in North Ridge, Accra at the Malta High Commission of Ghana, to mark the first phase of the research project and launch a visual starting point to its comparative observation. In March 2024, the team met again in Valletta, where the project's second field trip took place. A WIP public talk was launched as part of the trip, opening up the research's findings to a wider forum of dialogue.

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PUBLICATION LAUNCH

Valletta Accra launched its culminating publication launch on the 25th April at buro Ghana, introducing the full analysis of the project to the community in Accra. The publication's scope tallies with the wider project's – to propose versions of heritage regeneration that have been nurtured by close, critical reading of the heritage evolution of Valletta and Accra. The book unfolds in two parts: the first is a collection of four written and photographic essays; the second, a speculative design proposal for a heritage site – the Osu Salem Presbyterian Primary School – in Osu, Accra.

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The goal of the speculative proposal is to restore the school’s building fabric as a significant heritage site in line with the learnings of the wider research project. In doing so, the design project becomes a methodological tugboat for a transferable, scalable heritage regeneration approach. One based on a hybrid act of looking, learning, and acting directly on what has been jointly discovered. 

OSU SALEM

The design for the Osu Salem school was the final chapter in the Valletta Accra research project. Its aim was to develop a practical regeneration proposition for the revival of a heritage site in Osu, Accra – the Osu Salem School. The school, established by the Basel Mission as a Presbyterian boys’ secondary boarding school, was the first ever custom-made boarding school in Accra, founded in pre-colonial Ghana in 1843 and built in 1865. The goal of this speculative proposal is to restore the school’s building fabric as a significant heritage site in line with the learnings of the wider research project. In doing so, the project becomes a methodological tugboat for a transferable, scalable heritage regeneration approach. 

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ANN DINGLI
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M.A. Design Criticism (University of the Arts, London)

M.A. Art History (University of Malta)

B.A. (Hons) Art History (University of Malta)

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