Sylvia Arthur

Blog

  • The necessity of curiosity

    The necessity of curiosity

    I recently had the pleasure of giving a presentation and workshop on my National Geographic Society project to a group of schoolchildren aged between 13 and 16. There were, perhaps, 60 students in total, three groups in three different parts of the world: one in Europe, one in the Caribbean, and one in Africa, Ghana,… Read more

  • News: Forbes Africa Feature

    News: Forbes Africa Feature

    I’m happy to be featured in the February/March 2023 issue of Forbes Africa magazine in an article titled, “Re-telling The African Story”: “We live in the Age of Story. Every brand, every political manifesto, is built on narrative architecture. Now Africa is reclaiming its own stories, and harnessing generations of storytelling craft to reconfigure the… Read more

  • To Go or Not, Togo?

    To Go or Not, Togo?

    At less than 40 miles and just over an hour by road, the distance between Grand-Popo and Lomé is so short, it’s possible to live in the quiet Beninese fishing town and work in the bustling Togolese metropolis, as thousands do everyday, traversing the border. Yet the process of crossing the frontier, of leaving Benin… Read more

  • Talk: On the Liberating Power of Literature

    Talk: On the Liberating Power of Literature

    “For most of my life, I’d been reading outside myself, conditioned by the (education) system and society, in general, to read only books and authors that were deemed “classics” or part of “the canon.” When I began to read more narrowly, my perspective began to change, as did my understanding of language and the way… Read more

  • “Leave the Burden and Carry the Joy”

    “Leave the Burden and Carry the Joy”

    For the past three weeks, I’ve been in Benin, West Africa, working on my project to create A Women’s Oral History of West Africa supported by the National Geographic Society and Sennheiser. In 2022, I became a National Geographic Explorer. Over the next two years, I’ll be travelling along the coast of West Africa, from… Read more

  • Lessons from 2022 (Part 1)

    Lessons from 2022 (Part 1)

    As I look back over the past 12 months, two milestones, in particular, stand out. The first is the completion of the mudLIBRARY, a newly-built eco-library constructed entirely from sustainable materials, a collaboration between ArchiFair, an Austrian architectural NGO, Hive Earth, a Ghanaian rammed earth construction company, and the Library Of Africa and The African… Read more

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