All Posts by FRANCESCA BUTT

Learning something from everyone

The most important thing to take from this article is that everyone has something valuable to teach us. However, information comes in many different forms and requires different approaches to process. It is up to us to take the information we are given and to apply it to our own

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Kente Cloth of the Asante and Ewe People

Kente Cloth produced by the Asante and Ewe people of Ghana has been valued by its creators for centuries and holds great cultural significance. In recent years the material has been used to create new products that can be sold to a larger number of consumers. The cloth is of

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Who Should Write African Fiction?

In her talk on ‘The Danger of the Single Story’, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche indicated that current literature presented only one image of Africa. This Africa was always rural, impoverished, and riddled with AIDS. Novels did not depict the vibrant and diverse Africa that she knew. Growing up in America, Adiche

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The Psychological Impact of Leaving Home

Migration means moving from one place to another. To migrate can mean moving from an urban area to a rural area (from the city to the countryside). However, typically migration refers to the phenomenon of moving country. Between 2000-2017 around 25 million people from sub-Saharan Africa left their countries of

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How can Disagreement be Positive?

Confrontation can feel like an attack on the things we believe in. Disagreement often surrounds the ideas that we find the most important, so challenges can feel particularly personal. Finding a ‘middle way’ to resolve issues provides a method of dealing with situations in which not everybody agrees. This ability

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A Gallery with no Pictures: The ‘Ghost Collection’ of the Ivory Coast

What does it mean to lose the art that defines us and how should we respond? The ‘Ghost Collection’ in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, shows the reaction of students after a local museum was ransacked in 2011. Students replaced 120 pieces of stolen art with their own sculptures. Each piece contained

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