Yoruba Heritage Virtual Tour takes community partnership online
The Yoruba Heritage Virtual Tour has just launched to showcase West African cultural traditions and their influences in Australia and Latin America.
Professor Adrian Hearn takes a 360-degrees photo for the virtual tour with members of Melbourne’s Yoruba community. Photo supplied.
The project is funded by a Community Engagement Grant from the Melbourne Social Equity Institute. These grants are designed to support collaborative research between academics, members of community organisations, policymakers and people with lived experiences to help build fairer societies.
The virtual tour, which is also supported by the Faculty of Arts, is an interactive 360-degree experience that offers viewers the opportunity to learn about Yoruba culture from Yoruba-descended community members in Melbourne, Cuba, and their homeland Nigeria. Topics explored include talking drums, traditional beadwork, wedding ceremonies, tribal face marks, and the Yoruba diaspora. As well as the “on the ground” experience offered by 360-degree photos, viewers can learn more through pop-up information windows and video interviews.
Mr. Kunle Kolapo, a Yoruba man living in Melbourne, explains that Yoruba tribal face markings are a matter of cultural identity and pride. Photo by Professor Adrian Hearn.
Professor Adrian Hearn from the School of Languages and Linguistics developed the idea for the virtual tour in partnership with the Yoruba Heritage and Cultural Association of Victoria, community arts organisation Suns of Mercury, and Harmonic Whale Studio. The team initiated the project in 2021 by hosting a community forum that brought together University of Melbourne researchers with young people from the African Australian community.
“One goal of our work,” says Professor Hearn, “is to support more positive and genuine public narratives about African cultures, including among young African Australians themselves.”
Ms. Bosede Adetifa of the Yoruba Association notes that many young people of African descent are uninformed about their own traditions. “Some are curious but others are scared of tribal face scars because they don’t know the history and meaning of the practice,” she said. The virtual tour aims to fill in some of these knowledge gaps.
The team behind the Yoruba Heritage project previously produced the interactive 360 tour Who is Nature? and the short film I Am Ashé, and releases multicultural music on Spotify and other platforms.