In 2021, Black History Month Belgium will be all about archiving and documenting the past and present of Black people in Belgium. The goal is to work towards the creation of a Black community-driven and controlled archive that will collect documentary, audiovisual, digital, material and artistic works related to the Black diaspora in Belgium. Our mission is to actively provide materials that express and represent the Black experience in Belgium, both past and present, from the Black perspective. The ultimate goal is to gain a more complete understanding of the Black experience in Belgium through primary sources and to provide information that supports the construction of personal and community identities as well as the social life and shared memories of Black communities in Belgium.
We see the month of March as a laboratory for what such a Belgian Black Archives could look like. By both thinking about new ways of archiving and diving into the existing archives. Archives that have often emerged within a white, Eurocentric framework and would particularly benefit from being viewed through a Black lens.
