The Context of KONTEKST
This is the project timeline page. If you want to read in depth about our values and mission, please see our FULL Manifesto.
We started off as a group of BA Anthropology & Visual Practice students on the 2nd year of our degrees at Goldsmiths, University of London. We shared a passion for storytelling and wanted to make powerful films.
Yet, anytime we would tell people what we studied, we would only generate confusion as nobody knew what visual anthropology was…
SEPTEMBER 2023
We came up with an idea to organise a film festival, show our student films, and this way show to the public what (to us) the discipline was about.
We teamed up with MA visual anthropology students and made a programme.
NOVEMBER 2023
We hosted our first film festival - “Visual Anthropology Films” at Avalon Cafe in SE London.
With over 120 people in attendance, we realised that there is potential in what we were setting up. We decided to keep expanding the project so it could benefit more people.
We wanted to make it possible for those who missed out on the film festival to still be able to see our work. We also wanted to create a resource for anyone interested in getting into filmmaking to get inspired and use it as a point of reference.
DECEMBER 2023
We set up a website - with an open-access online archive of films.
We wanted to make it possible for those who missed out on the film festival to still be able to see our work. We also wanted to create a resource for anyone interested in getting into filmmaking to get inspired and use it as a point of reference.
2024
We grew our platform through Instagram and networking, made new connections.
We began using our Instagram page as a resource: reposting free courses, interesting events and opportunities related to sensory storytelling.
SEPTEMBER 2024
We founded
We saw forming a Collective as an organic continuation of this project - from early on our aim was to connect people through shared passions, support critically-minded storytellers in getting their messages forward and make real-life social change.
We could never achieve that mission working alone so we opened up our platform to anyone interested - not just anthropologists or students - as that would limit its potential.
Disillusioned with the contemporary creative landscape, we wanted to follow an alternative, anti-capitalist model of structuring our organisation, one that does not create a hierarchy and does not tokenise diversity. We hoped that what we create could one day serve as a blueprint for other similar initiatives.
We wrote a manifesto.
FEBRUARY 2025
