If you would like to help us grow this archive with images from your own family albums, or relevant artistic interventions or performances you can email us directly. We will try and make the process as easy as possible. When you get in touch you can let us know a little about your submission. We would also be happy to move the conversation over to Whatsapp if that is easier for you.

We don’t want to be too restrictive in what goes up so there is plenty of leeway if you want to participate! The most important thing is that it should relate directly to the historical period of Independence in Namibia or items/images that pertain to the idea of Namibian Independence. If you have a specific memory you want to share in the form of video, audio or text, we would be happy to find a way to add this to the archive too. We are also very excited about the prospect of you adding an artwork/ performance/ intervention/ unconventional item to the archive. If you would like to do so then please email us about it. If your idea is ambitious and requires funding we will try and support an application for funding to do so.

Absolutely anyone may contribute to the archive so long as their contributions relate to the topic at hand!

The archive runs on little to no money. It is mostly supported by StArt Art Gallery (run by Helen Harris and Gina Figueira) through being hosted on their website. However the archive has also been funded in the past by the National Arts Council of Namibia. We hope to be able to get further funding in the future in order to expand. If we do get funding from other sources we will be sure to add that information here. If you would like to financially, or otherwise, support the archive please email us and we will start a conversation about how best to do so.

The archive web-pages clearly state that ownership of the images remains with the contributor. However with the internet being the wonderful open platform that it is we are acutely aware that we cannot always control how people interact with the content they see. We are strongly committed to protecting your contributions through clarity of communication with those who interact with the archive. For anyone who would like to add to the archive without their contributions going online we are open to having a conversation about how to make this work in whatever way you are most comfortable with. Ndinomohlo Ndilula’s contribution to the archive is an interesting response to this exact issue.

This is a question that we go back and forth on. This project is really an ongoing collection of items/images/artworks/texts/audio/video/stories around a specific idea. We could call it an exhibition, but exhibitions tend to have an end date and we really hope that this project never ends. Perhaps we will re-name it one day when a more appropriate word comes along but for now ‘archive’ feels right.

When we started the project initially we called it a ‘Community Archive’, then we realised that we couldn’t neatly define what we meant by community in this context. Even if we were happy to let that remain vague we weren’t sure that everyone who would like to contribute would be comfortable with the idea of belonging to one community. So we changed it to ‘The Everyday Archive of Independence’. Shortly after that we realised that we weren’t comfortable with what was implied by the word ‘The’ and swapped it out for the word ‘An’. Namibia is full of small and large personal archives, photo albums and collections that exist in private homes and are treasured by individuals and families. We would like to think of the space produced by this project as just one of the many, rather than one of a kind.

The word ‘everyday’ has become really important to us. We want it to be clear from the outset that this space is for the quotidian, for the ideas, picture and stories that might not seem immediately important to everyone but are very deeply important to the people who contribute them and even more important to a larger, expansive understanding of Namibia’s recent and not so recent history.

The Border War ended in 1989 and Namibia officially became an Independent democracy on 21st March 1990. We initially thought that the focus of this archive would be the ten years prior to independence and the ten years after, so around 1980 to 2000. But as the project grew we realised that restrictions on dates would only limit the potential for the space in a way that impoverished it. Because of this we have decided to place no restrictions in terms of dates, and only ask that all contributions relate to the idea of Namibian Independence in some way.