Karin Altmann and Nana Opoku
Our cotton and spinning research began in Tamale, in the Northern Region of Ghana. Our aim was to visit and interview two women in their nineties, who still spin cotton by hand. But when we arrived in Tamale and called the community chiefs, we learned that both spinners had recently passed away. We were aware that this textile heritage is vanishing, but we didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.
The unexpected loss of key knowledge holders highlighted the fragility and urgency of intangible cultural heritage and necessitated a reorientation towards adaptive, field-based, and ethnographic methods.
Instead of planned interviews, the research became contingent on local networks and chance encounters. This led to a stronger focus on oral histories, observation, and relationship building, and an examination of the loss of knowledge.