VALLETTA ACCRA
PUBLICATION
2024
Valletta Accra, a travelling research project led by AP Valletta, David Kojo Derban, and Ann Dingli, 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.
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.
WIP: PUBLIC LECTURE
2024
A public conversation held on 07.03.24 will mark the half-way point for work on Valletta Accra – a travelling research project exploring heritage architecture in two capitals across two continents. The project re-evaluates the built heritage of the respective harbour cities, provoking discussions of regeneration potential versus pitfalls.
After a field-trip to Jamestown, Accra, late last year, the project's research has progressed into its second phase, analysing the architectural and heritage transformations of the Grand Harbour in Valletta. Work is in progress, reaching a half-way point that invites dialogue. The public conversation will be led by the research team, open to all, at the AP Valletta offices in Valletta.
More event information here.
LAUNCH & FIELD TRIPS
2023-2024
Valletta Accra is a travelling research project where Ann works as fellow researcher and writer alongside AP Valletta and Kojo Derban. The project – launched as part of Art Council Malta’s International Cultural Exchange funding stream – considers two capitals across two continents, each diversely holding memory of colonial presence and its wielding of mercantile potential. Heritage fabric becomes a transcript of the evolving urban, social and economic life of two harbour cities – Accra, the capital of Ghana on the Guinea Coast of West Africa, and Valletta, the capital of Malta, an island in the Mediterranean. Both carry the imprint of their role as adopted trading strongholds. Their comparison becomes a departure point for a deeper reading of both the colonial and post-colonial experience.
In its parallel observation, Valletta Accra unearths new dimension within the story of 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, this project questions how heritage might develop in line with authentic permeations of identity and urban ambition, positioning contrast as a methodology for revelation.
In November 2023, the team conducted the project's first on-site workshop in Jamestown, Accra. A photographic exhibition 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 will meet again in Valletta, where the project's second workshop will take place. The project will culminate in a publication, edited by Ann, documenting the team's research findings.