Our Vision

Ulli Beier, the man whose archive will form the nucleus of the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding (henceforth referred to as the Centre), was completely at home in Yoruba society and thought highly of its culture. After he left Nigeria, first in 1966 and finally in 1974, he consistently sought to make the other societies in which he lived and worked understand the luminosity of not only Yoruba verbal and plastic arts, but also of its wisdom. In his connections with the arts and cultures of various other societies, from India to Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands to Aboriginal Australia, he always crossed cultural boundaries in his efforts to connect these various cultures and their arts—and therefore peoples. In all this, Yoruba culture and society was his base—the perspective from which he viewed all other societies and cultures.

Perhaps most important of all, he was not an academic in the conventional sense of the word: he sought to put in something into the cultures rather than merely study and write about them. This was particularly so in the case of Yoruba culture and society, in which, from 1950 to 1966, he achieved the following: the founding of Mbari Club and its organ Black Orpheus; the publication of the first African literature texts; the translation of Negritude poetry into English; the redirection of Yoruba travelling theatre from frivolous entertainment into a vehicle of cultural-historical education; the founding of Mbari Mbayo in Osogbo; and, with Georgina Beier, the founding of the now world-famous Osogbo Art School.

The Centre will take its inspiration from all these activities: while it will do studies, it will devote more energy, time and imagination to rejuvenating and ‘modernizing’ Yoruba culture and society. This, we must emphasize, can only be meaningfully done not through isolation, but by intensive cultural interaction in all cultural aspects with other African cultures and arts, as well as with the rest of the world. Thus, while Yoruba society will be the base from which the Centre will always take of ff and on which it will always land, it will seek that reinvigoration—or ‘cross-fertilization’—through the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the cultural achievements of other societies. Towards these ends, the Centre’s vision and mission may be translated into the following two categories of programme of activities: long-term (permanent); short-term.