DIGGING CRATES
Digging Crates is an ongoing project that looks at the intersection of de/colonial narratives, museum and heritage spaces, and modern and ancient cultural practices, imagining new purpose for heritage institutions in the context of the 21st century through the lens of Hip Hop.
Bringing together sound, narrative, object, space and people, we ask who authors history, why, and how it might be retold, creating new insight regarding the evolution, migration and celebration of human creativity by bringing new life to heritage spaces and the objects they care for.
The name of the project comes from a term used in Hip Hop culture to describe the process of searching in crates of vinyl records in order to find sounds and melodies that can be repurposed to make new instrumentals. In this context, it can also refer to the archeological crates that are used for transporting and storing museum bound objects at excavation sites.
Using Hip Hop's foundational elements - Visual Art, Sound Production, Dance, Words and Community as a lens, we re-interpret object and place by using them as inspiration to create new art, and demonstrate the interconnectivity of the human experience, coalescing common themes that drive the human desire to create.
DIGGING CRATES: Africa at the Pitt Rivers
The first iteration of Digging Crates took place at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.
Drawing inspiration from the African instrument collections held in the museum, and working in collaboration with musicians from colonised African nations, artists from Inner Peace Records composed new music inside the museum space, creating among objects taken from communities all over the world.
Sampling the sounds of instruments linked to the museum's African instrument collection, the team created original Hip Hop tracks exploring the legacy of colonialism and empire.
Alongside a 7 track album Digging Crates Vol. 1, the project produced a one hour documentary recorded during the main four days of activity in the museum. The film has been shown to two sold out cinema audiences.
To launch the album, the team performed a sold out live show at Oxford Art Gallery OVADA.
DIGGING CRATES: The Messiah Violin
This short film is based around a live recording made in the Ashmolean Museum's stringed instrument gallery, in the presence of the priceless Stradivari violin known as The Messiah - one of the iconic violin maker's most celebrated masterpieces.
Through poetry Rawz questions the use of the violin as a silent collector's piece, played only a handful of times in it’s almost 300 year lifespan; casting the violin as a fairy tale princess, locked away by a possessive and paranoid king, a twisted act of protection preventing her beauty and her song being shared with the world. He performs the poem alongside cellist Lou Lyne and violinist Natalie V who co-composed a string accompaniment based on Vivaldi's Concerto in A Minor. The strings almost "sample" the Vivaldi's classic work, in tune with the Hip Hop sensibilities of Digging Crates, providing a dramatic and achingly compelling backing to Rawz' words. The piece explores notions of beauty, silence, expression and the value and purpose of art and collecting.
In addition to writing and performing the spoken word, and initiating the project, Rawz also directed and edited the film.
Audio Recording & Interview
An audio recording of the piece accompanied by an extended interview with Rawz sharing some of his thoughts and inspiration behind the Messiah Violin piece is available for listening and download here.
DIGGING CRATES: The Gathering Place
Building on the success of the first iteration of Digging Crates, Rawz was invited to become one of the first ever "Creative Fellows" of the Pitt Rivers Museum alongside South African artist and activist Xolile "X" Madinda. Together Rawz and X envisioned bringing together Digging Crates with X's Xhosa heritage and the tradition of Ubuhlanti - a solution oriented approach based on mutual understanding.
As the only artist on site for much of the residency Rawz conceptualised and planned a transformation of the museum space into a living art work, a meeting place of cultures, histories and sounds from throughout time and space. A Gathering Place.
Rawz created 3 new tracks using the museum's sound archive - bringing together audio recordings made across Africa throughout the 20th century to form something new. He presented these works live alongside performances from X and Nigerian arts collective Taruwa inside the transformed museum space.
This short film documents the event Rawz curated as the culmination of his creative fellowship with the Pitt Rivers Museum.
MAKING THE MUSEUM PODCAST
In this podcast episode produced by the Pitt Rivers Museum, X and Rawz discuss their experiences producing new work using sounds from the museum archives. The project team talk about how understanding more about makers (rather than takers!) fits into the work of a modern museum.
Listen to the podcast.
INNER PEACE RECORDS PRESENTS...
DIGGING CRATES VOL. 1
Using objects from the African instrument collections held in the Pitt Rivers Museum as inspiration, artists from Inner Peace Records composed new music inside the museum space, working in collaboration with musicians from colonised nations in Africa, among objects taken from communities all over the world.
Sampling the sounds of instruments linked to the museum's African instrument collection, the team created original Hip Hop tracks exploring the legacy of colonialism and empire.
RAWZ & Miles Ncube - Recorded Live @ OVADA
A delicately woven combination of Spoken Word and Mbira, this live recording was captured as part of a night of celebration marking the launch of Digging Crates Vol. 1, the show was presented to a capacity crowd at Oxford art gallery OVADA.
After a year working on the groundbreaking project, Inner Peace Records launched Digging Crates Vol. 1 with a live performance of the entire album. Before the main event, the gathered crowd were treated to an energetic performance from veteran African jazz band Wanda-NA-KL, followed by this intimate performance from two artists who struck up a friendship through their work together on the first ever Digging Crates project.
Digging Crates Vol 1: Africa at the Pitt Rivers
Full Documentary
Recorded in August 2022 as part of the seminal iteration of Digging Crates, this documentary film follows a team of musicians as they work to create new music from the African instrument collection at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, UK.
Led by Rawz, members of Hip Hop collective Inner Peace Records spent four days in the museum collaborating with African born musicians, sampling the sounds of instruments, and engaging with the wider African collection.
This inspirational process resulted in the creation of a 7 track album, a music video shot inside the museum's main gallery, and this film.
Visual Research:
Rethinking Relationships
Rawz was asked to spend some time conducting research with objects from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda held at the Pitt Rivers Museum as part of the Rethinking Relationships project; a sector leading collaboration between the Museum Ethnographers Group and four museums with world cultures collections (the Pitt Rivers Museum - Oxford, the Horniman Museum - London, the World Museum - Liverpool, and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology - Cambridge).
To do this, Rawz developed a unique art based, curiosity led methodology, centred on spending two consecutive days in the same physical space as a selection of objects, and responding to any questions and feelings that arose from this experience by creating visual art. He consulted museum archives and staff for further information to inform the creative process.
What follows is the content of his research report.
With the help of project staff, I identified a selection of ten objects from the Pitt Rivers’ vast digital catalogue. This was a difficult and time consuming task - the amount of material was quite overwhelming, and not all catalogue entries held pictures of the objects. I often relied on text descriptions and imagined what objects might look like. I selected objects based on instinctive curiosity, trying not to think too much about why I wanted to spend time with an object. The only constraint I gave myself was that I wanted to bring together a group of objects created over a wide timeframe - I tried not to select too many objects from the same decade.
There were some complications regarding availability, but we managed to curate a satisfactory host of objects and on the morning of November 25th 2025, I felt excited as we laid them out on the table for my first day of research.
I began my process by holding each object and looking at it closely, imagining what the person who created it might have been feeling while making it, what techniques and tools they might have used, how long it must have taken, how hard they had to concentrate. After a short time I began photographing the objects as a different means of looking. This mode allowed me to view things more closely and preserved the way I saw those objects on that day, providing material for future interpretation. It also enabled me to see from angles not otherwise possible. I found it interesting to photograph the objects through a magnifying glass provided by a member of the project team.
Photographing this beer gourd through a magnifying glass gave me insight into how someone who had just consumed the vessel’s contents might have looked at it.
I was able to photograph the inside of this medicine bag from an angle I couldn’t see otherwise. One of my most vivid memories from the days I spent with these objects was the overpowering smell of tobacco coming from this bag, possibly from time it spent stored in the office of a pipe smoker.
Using my phone’s camera enabled me to play with scale - helping me to imagine this lion as a life sized sculpture.
After photographing the objects, I opened the bag of art supplies I had brought with me and began drawing. I didn’t plan what I would do, or have any preconceived concept. I wanted what I produced to be a record of my thoughts and feelings while sharing space and time with these objects. I let my instinct decide which objects I focused on and how, I ended up spending most of the first day exploring and reinterpreting the patterns on the Ugandan beer gourd, and much of the second day with a Tanzanian carved figure of a woman.
On the second day I found myself curious of what the woman may be carrying on her back. With no information forthcoming from the museum archive, I asked a friend from Tanzania who, after consulting her father, informed me that it was likely migomba which are plantains, or possibly firewood. It would be hard to say for certain without knowing which region of Tanzania the carving was from.
This image is the work I started on those first two days - it remains unfinished.
I spent some time after those two research days contemplating what to do next.
I considered spending some more time working on the piece started in the research office, but felt that energy had dissipated.
I decided to use the pictures I’d taken during my research days in the museum to create a digital collage. This turned into a collection of six new works.
Three of the pieces are aesthetic works inspired by the shapes textures and patterns I encountered during my research.
Three of the pieces use metaphor and symbolism to transmit my feelings regarding the objects, their connected histories, and their presence in Oxford.
BAR CLOTH
When I arrived for my first research day I learned that museum staff had spent much of the morning trying to remove the bark cloth I had requested from display. It had been placed in a case alongside other examples of bark cloth from around the world and they had not been able to move it as the bark cloths had effectively been built into the case. The project worker pointed out the requested item through the glass of the case and I took this picture.
I was reminded of the track Glass Cages, made during the first iteration of my Digging Crates project which took place in the museum.
I used an image of the bark cloth I thought I recalled my museum friend directing me towards to create the digital collage on the previous page, picking out a rectangular motif and repeating it to symbolise prison bars, perhaps imprisoning the bark cloth, perhaps locking the viewer behind bars.
Since creating the piece I have realised that the item I requested was in fact the bark cloth displayed below the one I used to create the collage, adding a not displeasing layer of irony to the concept of my piece.
WAVED
I felt very drawn to the pattern on the Ugandan beer gourd from the first time I saw it on my first research day on this project, and it has stayed with me throughout this process. I picked out a curved motif that I felt had similarities with several works I had created before encountering this object.
Using digital software, I repeated and interlocked this motif in a way I found pleasing, and was happy to find that the repeated pattern combined with the lighting in my photograph produced an effect similar to the waves of sand dunes in a desert, water in an ocean, or hair in a popular African/ diasporic hairstyle.
I used filters and blending methods to accentuate this effect before laying a slightly distorted black and white photograph of the beer gourd viewed through a magnifying glass underneath. I enjoyed how the circle of the magnifying glass mirrored the circular shapes created by the beer gourd pattern.
PROTECTION
I was unable to access the amulet for protection against evil I had requested, so identified this silver amulet by means of replacement.
I couldn't find a translation or translator to help me understand the inscription on the front of the amulet, but found its shape reminiscent of ramparts or a similar defensive structure. Other clues suggested it may have been made as some kind of protection or good luck device.
I liked the smooth surface on the back of the amulet, and found it interesting that it was broken only by the ascension number assigned by the museum. I layered multiple copies of the amulet on top of each other, using different blending techniques to create an image reminiscent of a target, or a fortification viewed from above.
APPROPRIATION
THREE LIONS
During this research project I have been somewhat preoccupied by the rise in British “patriotism” manifested in protests outside hotels housing refugees, and the flying of flags from lamp posts around roundabouts and other places frequented by motorists.
It has called into my mind a renewed inquiry into the symbolism of flags, and the tensions between where British culture and identity comes from, where people believe it comes from, who benefits from patriotism, and who decides what is British and what isn't.
The two pieces above respond to this.
HERSTORY REPEATS
One of the objects I felt most connection with was the small wooden carving of a woman from Tanzania.
Throughout my time with the piece I felt that the label tied to her ankle was symbolic of the practice of fixing chains to the ankles of enslaved people and prisoners to hinder their movement and prevent “escape”.
I was thinking about this when I made the initial sketch on my first two research days, and I remember taking the photo used in my collage with this in mind.
I decided to look into modern forced labour practices in Tanzania and came across a few reports on the prevalence of child labour in industries such as agriculture and mining. I felt that the image portrayed in the wooden figure was one that has been common in that region for a long time, probably only slightly shifting due to the different things women carry. I repeated the image several times to symbolise this.
I came across the image of a young woman in an American Institute for Research article on child labour practices in Tanzania and felt it embodied the feeling I am trying to express with this piece. I adjusted a portion of the photo to appear in sepia tone, reminiscent of older photos found in the museum's archive, inviting viewers to question the age of the photograph. The colour of the image of the young woman is clearer when viewed through the wooden carving.
