Below is the latest information from Next Billion Fellow Mulenga Kapwepwe and her initiative 'Summitshare'. Learn more about the Next Billion Fellowship program and apply here. https://nxbn.ethereum.foundation/.
Mulenga KapwepweFounder of Zambia Women's History Museum In 2022, we posed the question to a small group of young tech enthusiasts in Zambia. Could something called “blockchain technology” offer new utility for historical preservation? She was starting a new initiative to: digital humanitiesThey will interact with young people who are excited about technology and want to apply their talents to the world of art, culture and history. The group of developers, designers, and artists she worked with shared their enthusiasm for “web3” and together they discussed some of the properties and capabilities of blockchain. So she began to consider how it could be applied to a truly challenging issue for African heritage: the repatriation of artifacts.
Historically, many regions around the world have had their tangible cultural heritage housed in European and American museums, raising complex questions of ownership, history, and identity. In the African context, this issue is particularly salient. 90% of Africa's tangible cultural heritage According to the 2018 Searle and Savoy report, it is now located in the west. Returning African cultural heritage: Towards a new relational ethics1. Debate over physical repatriation has been going on for years, but geopolitical and logistical complexities often make concrete steps toward a solution difficult.
This group had an idea. If the physical repatriation of artifacts is too tied to geopolitical, cultural, and logistical challenges, perhaps digital cast of artifacts as a viable alternative. By linking digital artifacts with their physical originals, this method has the potential to capture and evoke similar connections to heritage, creativity, history, and the valuable knowledge and lessons of the past directly experienced by museum users. At the same time, it has the potential to capture and evoke similar connections to the valuable knowledge and lessons of the past that museum users directly experience. Physical artifacts – forming innovative ways to connect with cultural heritage. With the right assistive technology, African artifacts currently housed in European and American museums could become accessible to Africans whose ancestors participated in their creation.
Virtual reality and augmented reality technology has advanced enough to enable high-fidelity scans of physical objects that can be displayed on screens, projectors, or VR goggles in museum exhibits. However, scanned objects still require the following important properties: uniqueness To have a meaningful sense of origin connected to authenticity. Scanning, casting, and displaying artifacts housed in far-flung museums as unique, provenance-confirmed digital items allows researchers, curators, and museum patrons to engage with artifacts in new ways. Probably. Moreover, social collaborations around these digital artifacts may enable meaningful exchanges and enable communities and professionals to jointly manage, share, and study cultural heritage in new ways.
Ticket proceeds from an exhibition on Southern African masks in Brussels (or Paris, or London) go directly to communities in Lusaka (or Harare, or Pretoria), communities with real, tangible connections to the craft. Imagine being profitable. For many community members who do not have the opportunity to see objects in person, this digital access has the potential to provide personal memories and unique cultural contexts unknown to researchers and anthropologists. Such contributions help to “recontextualize” these artifacts, restoring meaning and relevance to items that often appeared without the voices and perspectives of those most closely involved. There is a possibility that
Through the spark of curiosity that began with this question, the team laid the first building blocks of a new approach to cultural preservation. It's about combining the heritage of the past with today's technology and delivering it to the people who cherish it most. .
machine of history
Venkatesh RaoIn a lecture entitledblood coin” described blockchain as a “historic technology.” They provide a permanent and accessible medium for inscribing history in a ledger that will not fade or distort over time. This allows the blockchain to ideal tool or technology For museums and anthropologists. Blockchain is also an efficient way to institute “money” and other systems that act as mediums of exchange, units of account, and stores of value. These properties allow blockchain to become a medium that can preserve and recognize historical stories of debt and reparations, “injecting history” into records of value and ownership.
To explore this possibility, Mulenga Kapwepwe Thomas Gondwe, Neela Amofah Sekyiand Mario Jereco-founded SummitShare. Together, they set out to develop innovative digital methods to address the complex realities of history. SummitShare's approach emphasizes interactive, participatory and educational experiences that bridge the past with digitally fluent audiences and provide meaningful connections to cultural heritage through modern technology.
Just as the internet fundamentally changed how information is disseminated, blockchain has the potential to change the way history is preserved, providing forms such as: temporary persistence. SummitShare democratizes access to cultural heritage by creating digital representations of artifacts and marking their provenance: their journey through society and time. Although many artifacts now housed in European museums do not have full provenance, living communities preserve valuable contexts (songs, stories, memories) that can deepen understanding and restore meaning. It may have been. Digital casting of artefacts ensures that this context is preserved, while allowing heritage communities to share in the benefits these objects generate.
Proof of Concept: Origins from WHMZ
In collaboration with the Zambia Women's History Museum, the SummitShare team Swedish Museum of Ethnology Access a digital repository of catalogs and artifacts. This partnership has provided SummitShare with valuable resources, including access to digital records with provenance information and early 3D casts of artifacts in the Swedish Museum's collection. Armed with these resources, the team began designing and modeling a 3D virtual exhibit featuring artifacts from Zambia and southern Africa with a rich historical background. Beyond digital modeling, the project also proposed tokenizing these artifacts to encode and store their provenance, an important step toward creating a decentralized digital repository.
Development and growth under Ethereum’s Next Billion Fellowship program
In 2023, Mulenga (as leader of the SummitShare team) joined the Ethereum Foundation's Next Billion Fellowship program, which allowed him to refine his project. This project received valuable open source contributions from anonymous contributors regarding the smart contract and initial subgraph design. Hanan Haji Ahmeda Palestinian designer who contributed early works amid the critical challenges of Gaza. Daniel Tembo, an accomplished 3D artist with a background in game design, served as SummitShare's virtual realm architect, creating a virtual exhibition environment to bring artifacts to life in an immersive digital format.
Leading Women's Exhibition: Models of Digital and Physical Collaboration
Throughout 2024, the SummitShare team prepared for its first exhibition, advanced research on repatriation efforts, and formed key partnerships, including a collaboration with Octant Accelerator to expand the platform. This exhibition entitled, leading women, This work focuses on the lives and legacies of six pioneering Zambian women who served in a variety of social roles, including generals, political activists, and tribal leaders. These artifacts provide unique historical insight and inspiration for modern society.
SummitShare allows museums and galleries to create exhibits with both physical and digital elements, each connected through smart contracts. This enables unique synergies that combine digital artifacts with tangible benefits to the heritage community, such as ticket sales for European exhibitions supporting cultural programs in Africa.
SummitShare exhibits are more than just sets of images and models of artworks and objects. They are linked to a set of smart contracts that provide objects with unique tags and allow them to be expressed on the internet of value. SummitShare smart contracts give you the provenance and uniqueness you need to meaningfully connect with your digital items.
In addition, the platform also manages ticket sales and interactive features of exhibitions related to digitized objects using the same set of contracts. Curation fees, revenues, benefits, and their relationships are all structured to return value to all custodians of heritage and cultural value, both historically and geographically.
of first class woman The exhibits have a special relationship with Zambia's Gwembe Valley communities and highlight the cultural origins of the crafts. The goal is to enable the Gwembe Valley community to benefit directly from exhibition revenue and participation.
Before launching this exhibit, the SummitShare team met with Gwembe Valley leaders to understand storage, governance, and information sharing practices, and to explain how the platform integrates traditional governance into decision-making processes. I did.
Gwembe Valley support extends to: 150 communities This provides a great opportunity for SummitShare to reach a wide and interconnected audience.
History with an eye to the future
SummitShare is not just about African heritage, it's about harnessing human collaboration to solve the global problem of cultural disconnect. By putting history and culture on-chain, we create an enduring record and a bridge between past and present, preserving heritage while empowering heritage communities.
At its core, SummitShare is focused on: history (information) and people. These guiding principles drive our mission to close gaps in access, knowledge, and representation. This journey is one of research, experimentation, and the design of a system that allows democratic access to cultural and economic elements that have long been out of reach.
of Leading Ladies Exhibition Early access now available for supporters. If you want to join the SummitShare initiative and contribute to the Gwembe Valley community, you can learn more about the virtual exhibition and secure access ahead of its official opening on December 13, 2024. On the SummitShare website.
If you work in a museum, university or cultural heritage sector and would like to find out more about SummitShare or want to collaborate on an exhibition, please contact us. info@summitshare.co or contact us nextbillion@ethereum.foundation.
Together, let's redefine cultural heritage for a connected, decentralized world that values shared stories and inclusive innovation.
If you are a leader, creator, or builder working on human-centered challenges, We're looking for your story! You can do it now Apply for Cohorts 5 and 6 of the Next Billion Fellowship. Applications for Cohort 5 will be considered until January 12, 2025
