Manifesto

Why We Exist

The gap between academic research and lived experience is wide. Between the papers written about communities and the communities themselves. Between the cultural strategies designed in boardrooms and the cultures they claim to understand.

AnthroWorks was built to sit in that gap — to produce work that’s rigorous but human, research that starts with people, not theory.

We are a think tank and cultural research practice. Under AnthroWorks, we house research, creative ventures, and cultural projects — anything we believe contributes to a better understanding of how people and places shape each other.

What We Believe

“Creativity is a research tool. Arts, fashion, design, and storytelling aren’t just outputs — they’re how we observe, question, and reimagine.”

We believe that the most important knowledge about a place comes from the people who live there. That cultural research should be done with communities, not about them. That African knowledge systems — Ubuntu, indigenous ecology, oral tradition — contain design methodologies the world needs.

We’re not trend-driven. We’re not purely academic. We’re not commercial storytelling for its own sake. We choose depth, curiosity, and responsibility.

How We Work

Our practice is built on three principles:

• Observation We begin by paying attention. To landscapes, communities, systems, and the quiet forces that shape everyday life. Research starts with looking — carefully and without assumption.
• Participation Knowledge is produced through engagement, not extraction. We collaborate with communities, share authorship, and work alongside the people and places we study.
• Re-imagining We don’t stop at understanding. We use research and creativity to imagine how relationships — between people, place, and nature — might be reconfigured with care and intention.

Who This Is For

For brands seeking authentic cultural positioning, not surface-level “Africanness.” For cultural institutions and foundations that need genuine ethnographic depth. For government and policy stakeholders shaping creative industry. For creative practitioners looking for frameworks, intellectual community, and rigour. For anyone who believes that understanding people is the foundation of meaningful work.

From South Africa, for Anywhere Culture Matters

We are rooted in Durban and Cape Town, but our work reaches anywhere culture matters. The Indian Ocean world, the Global South, and the conversations that connect them. We draw on African knowledge systems, participatory methods, and creative practice as research tools — and we turn that understanding into strategy, creative work, and new ventures.