major update
HISTORIC AFRICATOWN Added to 2022 World Monuments Watch List!
On March 1, the World Monuments Fund (WMF) announced that it added Historic Africatown in Mobile, Alabama to its 2022 World Monuments Watch. The community was selected as one of 25 of the world’s most irreplaceable heritage sites whose extraordinary cultural significance and vitality to local communities puts them in need of immediate preservation. Professional Competition Advisor Renee Kemp-Rotan wrote and submitted the nomination as an individual on behalf of the Africatown community.
CHOSEN AMONG 225+ SITES
The World Monuments Watch is a biennial program that advocates for heritage places in critical need of protecting and galvanizes action and support for their preservation. The Watch not only brings awareness to these pressures on heritage places but is the impetus for developing new field projects that provide local solutions with global relevance.
The World Monuments Fund (WMF) holds an open call for nominations that undergo extensive internal and external review every two years. Its 2022 Watch open call resulted in more than 225 nominations from individuals and community-based organizations that span the globe. This process ensures that the Watch remains a powerful platform for amplifying the voices of local community members and residents.
The World Monuments Fund Watch provides a critical platform to raise awareness of and support heritage sites of global significance facing pressures relating to climate change, imbalanced tourism, under-representation, and recovery from crisis.
WMF works directly with the site’s nominator throughout the Watch cycle. A list of the organizations the nominators have partnerships with can be found here.
- READ ABOUT THE WATCH . . .
WMF OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
Watch Official Videos Announcing Historic Africatown’s Selection as One of 25 Global Sites.
2022 World Monuments Watch Video Announcement
The 2022 World Monuments Watch, WMF’s biennial selection of 25 of the world’s most irreplaceable heritage sites of extraordinary cultural in need of immediate attention, has been revealed.
Official 2022 World Monuments Watch Webinar
Discover the 2022 World Monuments Watch, WMF’s biennial selection of 25 of the world’s most significant heritage sites in need of immediate attention, in this launch event hosted by WMF President and CEO, Bénédicte de Montlaur.
LOCAL REACTION
|Updated: Mar. 01, 2022, 12:26 p.m. | Published: Mar. 01, 2022, 12:23 p.m. | by Lawrence Specker | lspecker@al.com
The World Monuments Fund has included the Africatown community on its 2022 World Monuments Watch, a selection of “25 of the world’s most significant heritage sites in need of immediate attention.”
The confirmation in 2019 that the Clotilda’s ruins had been found put fresh impetus of efforts to preserve the community. The recognition by the World Monuments Fund is an endorsement that the work is of global importance.
Sites are grouped by the nature of the challenges they face, such as climate change, tourism and crisis recovery. Africatown is ranked among sites challenged by underrepresentation.
“Commitment to elevating underrepresented heritage means more than identifying and preserving the material vestiges of peoples’ pasts,” says an introduction in a WMF video announcing the new list. “In the case of Africatown in Mobile, Alabama, inclusion on the 2022 Watch will bring further visibility to a shameful episode in history.”
The practical impact of inclusion on the list remains to be seen, though it obviously raises awareness of Africatown . . .
Friday, March 4th 2022 | 2:17 mins | by Lisa Librenjak — AFRICATOWN, Ala. (WPMI) — There’s always been a fear among Africatown natives like retired Marine Major Joe Womack and Anderson Flen, that one day this historic community will be lost, taken over, and forgotten. But there’s always been hope, and that hope has landed Africatown a spot in the World Monument Fund. It’s now one of 25 of the world’s “most significant heritage sites in need of immediate action . . . “
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