×
Harvard Law SchoolAfrican Creative Economies InitiativeGuzangs and Harvard ACE, the African Creative Economies Initiative at Harvard Law School, are spending a year on one question, across an editorial column, a research report, a public forum and an exhibition. It starts with textiles, where the question is oldest. It ends with a case for who should hold the rights.
Follow the workBeginning in October, the Harvard Corner will publish new work every two weeks by Harvard students and alumni, from op-eds and interviews to analysis and research on Africa’s creative economies.
The Corner opens soon
Appliqué cloth, hand-stitchedAfrica’s creative industries make things the world wants: sound, cloth, image, story. The value they generate mostly leaves the continent, and it leaves at a specific moment. When an artist signs a global deal. When a weave becomes a print on someone else’s runway. When a body of work is scraped to train a model.
That moment is where the rights get decided. This partnership spends a year on it, in four connected pieces of work that build on one another. It begins with textiles, the material where the question is oldest and the exhibition will make it physical, and widens from there to the sectors ACE works across: music, film, fashion, sport and the data behind all of them.
“Africa’s creative capital remains under the control of Africans.”
ACE, on its founding aim
Each piece of work hands something to the next. The Corner builds the reporting. The report makes the case. The forum argues it in public. The exhibition puts it in a room, in objects.
A permanent section on Guzangs for op-eds, interviews and research by Harvard students and alumni, written for readers rather than journals. Two new pieces every month, starting with textiles and widening to music, film, fashion, sport and data.
Year one opens with textile authorship: who holds the rights to a material once it leaves the community that made it, what protection exists, and what the law elsewhere would say. ACE’s student researchers write the legal and comparative analysis. Guzangs brings the market intelligence and produces the report.
The year’s research argued in public, under the theme of The Sovereign Stack: data, intellectual property and technology in African creative industries. Researchers, practitioners and the readership the work is written for, in one room.
One structure, repeated: a historical material and the knowledge system behind it; its contemporary counterpart once it enters a global market; and the rights question sitting between the two. Who owns it now, who profits, what protection exists. The report’s argument, made in objects.
ACE sits within the Center for the Study of African Societies and Economies at Harvard Law School, where intellectual property and development are the home discipline. Its students and alumni bring the analysis: who holds the rights, under which law, and on what terms African work enters global markets.
Guzangs reports on the industries and people beneath the culture. It brings the market intelligence, the reporting and the audience the work is written for, and the editorial production behind all four threads: the Corner, the report, the forum and the exhibition.
Readers
Every Corner piece, the report when it lands, and invitations to the forum and the exhibition.
Harvard Students
The Corner and the report are written by ACE’s student committee. Degree-seeking Harvard students can join through ACE.
Partners and Institutions
If you hold a collection, a venue or a stake in the question, talk to us.
A weekly letter on African fashion, art, and design, and the people making the work. Reported properly, and worth your time.
