HACSA hosts a virtual launch event with a keynote address from NYC Mayor Eric Adams
The Heritage and Cultural Society of Africa (HACSA) Foundation, launched its innovative and groundbreaking Sankofa Virtual Heritage Tours this week. The digital tours showcase pivotal world heritage landmarks, located in Ghana, that are a crucial part of the African diaspora journey and of world history. To mark the launch of the heritage tours and exhibits on the Google Arts & Culture Platform, HACSA hosted a virtual event on Monday, February 28, featuring a keynote address from NYC Mayor Eric Adams and messages from other notable guest speakers including Clarke Peters (The Wire, Da 5 Bloods), Hugh Quarshie (Holby City, Star Wars), Akosua Busia (The Colour Purple) Gramps Morgan (2022 Grammy Nominee), Rocky Dawuni (2022 Grammy Nominee) and Alexander Smalls ( Alkebulan).
The Sankofa Virtual Heritage Tours are now available as a free, permanent exhibit hosted on the Google Arts & Culture platform. There are over 15 main exhibits and over 100 audio-visual pieces, exploring sites in Ghana like the Christiansborg Castle, Ussher Fort, Osu Salem School, Brazil House, Jamestown Lighthouse and the Independence Square. In line with Google Arts & Culture’s own theme for Black History Month, two of the exhibits feature Afro-futurism stories. These exhibits look from the past to the future but also define Afro-futurism not as distant fantasy but the reality of technological innovation and entrepreneurship occurring in Africa today. The tours can be accessed on the HACSA Foundation website thehacsa.org and via the Google Arts & Culture platform.
Founded in 2016, the HACSA Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to preserving African heritage and culture and building and curating experiences that bridge the gap between Africa and the diaspora. The Sankofa Virtual Heritage Tours, created with support from the Embassy of France in Ghana and Google Arts & Culture, will help further HACSA’s mission of making monuments and sites related to world history and based in Ghana more accessible to people around the world. The important history of these sites is critical in understanding global history and how the diaspora came into being. Ghana played a central role both in the arrival of the first European settlers to Africa in search of gold and in the brutal transatlantic slave trade that followed, as well as in the struggle for independence from European colonialism, the liberation of the African continent and the US Civil Rights Movement. Many in the diaspora look for ways to reconnect to that history and to their roots. With a firm belief in the idea that we must learn from the past to progress in the