Prototyping collaborative (co-)archiving practices: From archival appraisal to co-archival facilitation

Abstract

Abstract-This paper presents a series of prototyped collaborative (co-)archiving practices developed within the interdisciplinary research project Living Archives. The aim is to explore co-archiving practices for involving underrepresented voices in contributing to our archives, and to create conditions for accessing intangible heritage resources beyond traditional methods. The methodological approach is design research, and participatory design. Six co-archiving practices are presented, designed to invite the user groups to collect, store and share their memories and cultural heritages. We argue that the co-archiving practices prototyped assume an inclusive and a democratic approach. They allow for the involvement of many senses when accessing and generating archive material in an open, but still highly structured way. Applying such co-archiving approach could potentially result in more representative archives, and support archivists interested in going from a focus on archival appraisal to co-archival facilitation.

The Co-archiving Toolbox – Designing conditions for diversity in public archives

“…As stated in previous work (see Dunbar, 2006;Warren, 2016;Johnstone, 2001in Nilsson, 2016Nilsson & Hansen, 2017), an ongoing debate in the field of archival studies is addressing the underrepresentation of marginalized communities in archives and how we can possibly provide the future with a more representative record of human experience. As argued, instead of continuing to document the "well-documented", archivists and museum professionals ought to be encouraged to assume a more inclusive approach and open up the archiving process to ensure increased diversity in our archives.…”

“…Until now, a series of design interventions have been conducted where various co-archiving practices have been prototyped and reported on (see e.g. Nilsson, 2015Nilsson, , 2016Nilsson & Barton, 2016;Nilsson & Ottsen Hansen, 2017). The first phase of the project had a focus on marginalized urban communities and neighbourhoods and resulted in six co-archiving practices designed to invite communities to collect, store and share their memories and cultural heritages: Eat a Memory, Plant Your History, The Memory Game, Soil Memories, Mosaic of Malmö, and Designing an Archiving Practice Using Comedy (Nilsson, 2015(Nilsson, , 2016.…”

“…The aim is to design co-archiving practices for inviting refugees to share and document their experiences from their point of view and not through the lens of the "other", that is, those who gather the documentation, interview, filter, select and archive. The target group for these co-archiving practices is not only the unheard, in this case, refugees, but also the archivists and museum professionals who are interested in assuming a co-archiving facilitation approach by engaging the subjects (the "archived") in the shaping of archives (Nilsson, 2016).…”