Making African Heritage Accessible to All
Biography
Annina Van Neel is the founder of The Tiekie Box Project an African cultural heritage organisation working to decolonise Black history and archaeology and make accessible to the African Diaspora and descendant communities.
Skills
Education
She received her bachelors degree in Environmental and Geographical Science and Archaeology at the University of Cape Town, where she gained her foundational knowledge of cultural heritage.
Annina’s passion for African heritage was reignited when she emigrated to the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena Island 2012 to work as the environmental officer for an airport construction project. Here she encountered the neglected but most significant physical trace of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, The African Burial Grounds on Saint Helena Island. She has been campaigning for the preservation of this sacred site and history through creative community engagement and activism. Her journey is chronicled in the full feature length documentary, ‘A Story of Bones’ by British filmmakers PT Film and Archers Mark Production.