Trust for African Rock Art (TARA)

Website:  www.africanrockart.org
Grant Awarded: $495,000

A three-year grant from Arcadia is funding TARA’s archive and digital image centre, which is at the heart of the organisation’s work to protect Africa’s endangered rock art.

TARA is the world's only organisation dedicated to creating greater global awareness about the importance of African rock art, a fragile archaeological resource that is threatened by rising population, vandalism and theft.

Examples of destruction include a 5,000-year-old painting in Algeria damaged by graffiti, 4,000-year-old engravings smashed after attempted theft in Morocco and a 10,000-year-old engraving endangered from exploration.

TARA’s activities are divided between the survey of rock art, conservation, community projects and raising awareness. A primary aim is to become the hub for information on African rock art, encouraging the exchange of data, images, knowledge and experitise.

To that end it has established (with the support of Arcadia since 2007) a cutting edge digital archive. Over 12 years, 60,0000 images from over 550 sites in 16 countries have been collected. Of these, 14,000 have been digitised.

The archive and digital image centre has six full-time staff to sort, catalogue and digitise images into a searchable database.