About Us
The content on this website mirrors the ongoing conversations and processes of knowledge co-production within the project “Talking Mats: Interwoven Histories – Connecting Peoples”. The project is a collaboration between the Lamu Museums and Heritage Sites, National Museums of Kenya and the Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
Talking Mats was inspired by twelve mikeka – mats made from the leaves of wild date palms –, which are housed in the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, Germany. Eight of these mats bear Kiswahili poems in Arabic script. They prompted the idea to work together on German and East African interwoven histories.
Funded within the initiative “The Collaborative Museum” (2023 – 2026), the two cooperating institutions piloted multiple strategies and formats in order to enliven forgotten knowledge and foster exchange around the valuable heritage of the mikeka.
Whilst the core Talking-Mats team is composed of museum staff from both partner institutions, a community network of experts has grown throughout the project, sharing their passion and interest in the mikeka. In total, more than forty specialists, ranging from plaiters and poets to local knowledge bearers and academics, contributed by merging one strand of knowledge into another in order to form a unique, interwoven narrative, in which different forms of knowledge and practices are equally celebrated.