Activists in the archives: making history in a diverse society

 

Mary Stevens, Andrew Flinn and Elizabeth Shepherd

Department of Information Studies

University College London

 

A summary of the report of the AHRC project, ‘Community Archives and Identities: Documenting and Sustaining Community Heritage’

 

17 September 2009

 

This is a draft document for discussion purposes only and is not to be cited. The full report, including responses from the case study organisations and reflecting the discussion arising from this document will be published with UCL eprints (http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/).

 

We would like to acknowledge the generous support of our case study organisations, Future Histories, rukus!, Moroccan Memories and Eastside Community Heritage, without whom this research would not have been possible, as well as all the other participants in our research and our colleagues in the Department of Information Studies at UCL. The research has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Executive summary

Archive collections generated and sometimes held outside of traditional repositories by groups of committed individuals represent an important cultural asset, not just for the communities they document, but for everyone who has an interest in promoting a better awareness of the contribution to our social, economic, political and cultural lives of the UK’s culturally diverse communities. Community-based independent archive organisations are able to access material stored under beds and in people’s heads that even the most well respected local archive would struggle to unearth, even if the resources were available for it to do so. Through a slow build-up of trust community-based archivists have gathered together thousands of hours of oral history recordings and many more thousands of photographs, flyers, pamphlets and other ephemera, many of which would until recently have struggled to find a home in mainstream repositories, either because their significance would not have been appreciated, or because their format did not conform to professional standards. We are all unquestionably the richer for it.

 

The value of this material, and the organisations that generate it, has been recognised by heritage professionals and policy-makers for a number of years. The 2004 report of the Archives Task Force, Listening to the Past, Speaking to the Future, declared ‘community archives’ to be ‘a new and rich source,’ ‘as important to society as [archives] in public collections’ (Archives Task Force 2004: 43). However, until now, very little in-depth research had been done into this sector. And whilst the worth of the collections was (sometimes) recognised, the value of the individuals who have devoted themselves to this work was often overlooked. During the course of many hours of fieldwork conducted over twenty months our research has brought to the fore the often unsung champions of our diverse heritage: individuals who have often made significant personal, professional and financial sacrifices for very little reward or recognition and sometimes in the face of active opposition and prejudice, in order that the struggles and achievements of past and passing generations might not disappear with them.

 

What drives these individuals and groups is rarely pure altruism, or historical curiosity, or nostalgia, or even the acquisition of new skills. Rather, the work of documenting hidden and marginalised histories is an explicitly political act. Central to this politics is a vision of full equality, brought about by a radical reworking of the dominant narratives about who ‘we’ are and where ‘we’ have come from.

 

This report aims to introduce these activists to a wider audience, and to help foster a better understanding amongst policy-makers, funders, heritage professionals and academics of the work they do, and why they do it. We argue that the independent archive organisations we profile in this research might better be understood as forms of social movement organisation and as networks of activists (or ‘living archives’) than as static collections of material. Like many social movement organisations, independent archive organisations go through various life-phases, from the first heady successes to the painful dilemmas associated with achieving sustainability. At different points in this cycle they may benefit from different kinds of assistance from different agencies, be that preservation advice or development planning, very little of which is currently available. But above all, the content of these collections cannot be divorced from their context, and making space for both as part of our shared heritage requires all the different bodies in a position to support such activity to think very carefully about the extent to which their practices encourage or undermine such organisations’ social and political aspirations.

1        Introduction

In the introduction to the report we explore the concept of ‘community archives’. We review the literature on ‘community archives’ and discuss how independent archival practices have come to capture the attention of archive professionals and policy-makers and how the terminology of ‘community archives’ has taken hold. Three factors account for the recent emergence of a ‘community archive’ movement: a boom in ‘memory work’, linked to societal change but dramatically facilitated by new technologies, changing attitudes within the archival profession and a growth in interest in the instrumental function of heritage, or in other words, its capacity to deliver social outcomes.

 

However, there are significant issues with this now widespread terminology, particularly with regard to the use of the term ‘community’. Whilst one of the defining characteristics of ‘community archives’ we studied is their bottom-up rather than top-down quality – all emerged in response to a need identified collectively by members or a particular group rather than as part of an initiative by a public agency – we note that community is often used as a reductive euphemism for an ethnic or faith minority. Instead we argue that certain ‘community archives’ might better be understood as forms of social movement activism, an argument that is developed in section 3.

 

It was important to us that the final direction of the research should emerge from within the research process itself, allowing our participants to help frame and direct the focus of the study. Nevertheless, our research was guided by some key research frames, which can be summarised as follows: the relationship between independent archives and ‘identity construction’, the relationship between the independent sector and the heritage ‘mainstream’, and the ways in which independent archives intervene in the heritage ‘mainstream’ to challenge perceptions of any given group.  This latter research frame explains our focus on culturally diverse groups, for whom disrupting dominant (mis)representations is often the major priority.

2       Our research: scope and approach

In this section we explain our choice of participant observation as a research method and the practical and ethical implications of this choice. We highlight the steps we took to ensure a collaborative research process and how our case studies were initiated and negotiated. This section is important in terms of understanding the immersive research context from which findings of the report emerged, but also for other researchers considering using a similar research methodology.

 

We also provide space for our four case studies – Future Histories, rukus!, Moroccan Memories, Eastside Community Heritage – to introduce themselves.

3        Making space

Recognising the parallels between independent archive organisations and social movement activism helped us to develop a ‘life cycle’ model for independent archives, since movement trajectories are a key theme in social movement studies. The idea of a ‘life cycle’ helped us to structure the report. This section, which is the first to present the research data, looks at the early phases in the life of an organisation. In particular we focus on the motivations of archive activists, which emerge as strongly political. The idea of archiving as an activist practice, rather than as part of a post-activist consolidation phase, is an original contribution both to the study of ‘community archives’ and, arguably, of social movement organisations. Archiving is a seen as a form of political activity, that challenges the invisibility of particular groups and the institutions that perpetuate this under-representation, whilst also empowering members of marginalised groups through developing an understanding of their histories and strengthening inter-generational ties. These powerful motivations are shown often to give rise to impressive early successes – the creation of websites, oral history archives and so on – that motivate activists to seek to establish organisations on a firmer footing.

4        Getting going

This section uses the example of Moroccan Memories, one of the newer of our case study organisations, to explore how challenging the transition from first project to setting up as an independent organisation can be. We look at the different dilemmas the organisation faced, such as succession-planning, what sort of organisation to create (charity or company for example), the impact of ‘professionalisation’ on community links and struggles over the organisation’s future objectives, to argue that Moroccan Memories would have benefited enormously from a peer-support network where experiences of different organisational models could have been shared. A successful transition depends on the resources the organisation has available – including social capital – and we also consider the idea that organisation’s that are most committed to self-sufficiency (and therefore to keeping their distance from the ‘mainstream’) might in fact be those best supplied with the reserves of passion and drive necessary to survive.

5        Keeping going 1: Strengths and opportunities

Some organisations do manage to sustain themselves successfully with very limited resources and in very difficult circumstances; this section considers how. We identified four resources that sustained independent archive organisations against the odds: the passion and dedication of their staff and volunteers, their politics, the support of the community and their ‘social capital’ (that is, the resources distributed throughout their wider networks of contacts and supporters). We also explore the opportunities offered by partnership working with ‘mainstream’ organisations and the obstacles to this.

6        Keeping going 2: Challenges and frustrations

Even organisations that had set themselves up on a firm footing and were committed to a clear vision of the future faced a variety of ongoing challenges and frustrations. Many of these difficulties threatened the long-term future of the organisations and the collections they have gathered and preserve. The purpose of this section of the report is to raise awareness of these challenges, which we divided into pressures on individuals, pressures on organisations (divided into funders and funding, human resources and physical and infrastructure challenges) and pressures on collections (divided into physical preservation and storage and digital sustainability).

7        Towards sustainability

We initially assumed that the clearest indicator of the long-term success of an organisation was the existence of its own premises and a plan for maintaining both collections and infrastructure into the future. Whilst this is certainly one model, increasingly we have come to understand that this model derives from the dominant understanding of ‘community archives’ as places with collections, rather than as people empowered to tell stories. We argue that a better measure for the success of an independent archive organisation is the extent to which it is able to secure the long-term presence of its (counter-)narrative in the public sphere. The fundamental criterion is the extent to which an organisation, or the ‘community’ from which it is drawn, is able to exercise control over the way the narrative is presented.  We therefore look first at how community archives might negotiate the deposit of their materials in mainstream repositories without relinquishing the power to interpret their history. Second, we explore those organisations that maintain a commitment to full control over their own collections, and consider what has enabled them to achieve this difficult goal.

8        Impacts 1: Shaping ‘identities’

The impact of independent archives on the construction of ‘identity’ was one of our key research frames. The influence of Stuart Hall was important here, and we were keen to explore the extent to which independent archives in culturally diverse communities were vectors for the ‘new ethnicities’ he has identified (Hall 2003). Furthermore, we were conscious of the extent to which ‘identity’ had recently emerged as an object of heritage policy, with museums and archives increasingly being evaluated on their capacity to construct strong ‘identities’ as the basis for a cohesive society. In our view however, this new policy framework has encouraged both heritage sector agencies and the ‘community archives’ sector to make claims about their contribution to this policy area that were neither backed up by detailed evidence nor took into consideration the relevant theoretical literature.

 

In this section therefore we establish a theoretical framework in which the contribution of independent archives to ‘identity’ can more appropriately be assessed, before taking each case study in turn to consider the impact they are having on the way ‘identity’ is configured within their respective ‘communities’. We argue that serious and innovative independent community-based archives are not engaged so much in fostering and sustaining ‘identities’ (although they may do this), as in the public discussion and continual reworking of identity discourses, which are far more dynamic than most of the existing policy frameworks allow. This shift in perspective has important implications for the allocation of funding to community-based heritage projects, which should not be decided on the basis of whether a project has a mono- or inter-cultural orientation, but rather on whether its attitude towards ‘identity’ is critical and reflexive or solely celebratory and reifying.

9        Impacts 2: Telling new stories

In this section we explore our last research theme: the ways in which the ways in which independent archives intervene in the heritage ‘mainstream’ to transform public understanding of a particular community. Assessing wider public impact is problematic, and beyond the scope of this study, but we nevertheless consider the specific impact of our case studies and other research participants on the practice of ‘mainstream’ archival institutions and the attitudes of heritage professionals more generally towards diverse histories. We also draw on work on public history to look at how independent archive organisations are impacting on public historical understanding and academic narratives.

10    Conclusions

A key purpose of this report has been to draw together our data to consider how it illuminates the research agenda outlined in the introduction. It has also given us the opportunity to report back to those organisations that generously granted us access to their members and to their work. The final report will also afford our participants a chance and a space to have their say on us and our research. What has it meant to and for them to have allowed us such access? What have we omitted, misunderstood or simply got wrong? And what - we hope - resonates with their experience and is deserving of a wider audience?

 

This study of independent community-based archives reveals real and significant achievement, from the collection and preservation of historical materials that would otherwise not have survived to the high-quality disseminations including books, exhibitions and events, and innovative online resources. The ‘constituting’ of these archives and the disseminations which arise from them take the form of politically and artistically informed interventions against the dominant historical narratives which have frequently excluded, ignored and misrepresented those of African, Asian and other heritage. Although the majority of our examples have come from London, we have also spoken to archival activists from Cardiff, Manchester, Liverpool, and Northampton and know of many others elsewhere in the UK and the world. This is definitely not something confined to London.

 

Given the generally counter-hegemonic nature of these activities, we have consistently viewed these culturally diverse independent archives as political entities, sites of cultural and historical resistance engaged in radical and (generally and broadly) progressive educative and history-making endeavours. In seeking to better understand these activities we have followed Brian Alleyne (2002) and Elizabeth (2007) Crooke in viewing them as (or part of) social movement organisations. Engaging with these materials as archivist, volunteer and user opens up the possibility for a discussion of shared meanings and self-understandings and identifications that remains rare in mainstream heritage institutions.

 

Nevertheless these achievements, completed to ‘professional’ standards, are not accomplished without significant cost and the overcoming of many challenges. In almost every case these organisations are reliant on one or two key individuals supplemented by a small number of other staff and most importantly a body of volunteers. The impact on the workload, health, wealth and well-being for these core individuals can be enormous.

 

Autonomy is often highly valued by such organisations but independence does not preclude partnerships, if equitable, with mainstream heritage (and other) organisations for the purposes of dissemination and ensuring the long-term sustainability of their collections. Increasingly many archive professionals are recognising the importance of working with and supporting local and occupational community archives. We argue that independent archive organisations may require a different kind of approach that respects their desire for autonomy and their political motivations. Nevertheless we take the view that professional archivists, policymakers and funders have a responsibility to respond to the needs of the full range of ‘community archives’, including those that are more politically informed, and that changes in priorities and attitudes may be required in order to do so.  We hope that this report may go some way towards helping ‘mainstream’ actors identify those needs and analyse the values and assumptions that underlie their current provision. But making the changes will be up to them.

 

10.1   Recommendations

10.1.1 General

These points apply to all individuals and organisations who work with independent archives: sectoral bodies, funders, publicly-funded ‘mainstream’ heritage organisation and researchers and higher education institutions.

 

a)     Recognition and acknowledgement. Whilst welcoming recent increased recognition of the important role of independent and community-based archives by the mainstream heritage sector, we argue that it is important to distinguish between less explicitly politically-motivated activities and the independent activist practices documented here. Although we firmly believe that seeking to document and tell one’s own story in any context constitutes a radical and critical intervention into existing fragmentary, incomplete and frequently biased public narratives, it is important to recognise and respect the distinct struggles and contexts from which the independent archive organisations studied here (and many others like them) have emerged and the special contributions they make. Recognition of that distinctiveness on the part of ‘mainstream’ partners and funders is crucial when seeking to acknowledge, understand, support and encourage such endeavours.

 

b)    Evaluating impacts. Participating in independent archival activity undoubtedly has an impact on individual lives in terms of the acquisition of knowledge and skills, as previous research has shown. However, we take the view that it is crucial also to highlight the deeper, harder-to-measure impacts. We argue that focussing too much on impact indicators such as ‘employability’ or ‘transferable skills’ threatens to obscure the fundamental role of these organisations in terms of fostering debate around multiple identities and questions of inclusion as well as challenging and critiquing mainstream (mis)representations, marginalisations and silences. In addition, independent archive organisations can open up much needed spaces – physical and virtual – for discussions of difference and sameness between and within families and communities (however defined). The value of independent archive organisations needs to be appreciated and assessed in more than just narrowly instrumental terms.

 

c)     Not ‘identity’ but its exploration. On a related noted, there are legitimate concerns about the extent to which organisations dedicated to documenting the history of particular groups may foster division and exclusive identities rather than cohesion. However, many organisations that work with single ‘communities’ act not to reinforce these categories, but to empower people to develop their own understandings of ‘identity’ and not to accept received wisdom or stereotypes at face value. Such organisations should not be penalised or excluded from funding streams on account of the actions of a few more ‘exclusive’ organisations and a change in public policy emphasis. A simple solution would be for sector-wide bodies, funders and others to replace ‘supporting identity’ as a desirable social outcome for museums, libraries and archives (independent and otherwise) with ‘supporting the exploration of identity’ and to evaluate projects and applications on these terms. 

 

d)    Networking and sharing expertise. Despite the many successes and achievements of independent archive organisations, they face tough challenges and many barriers to sustainability. Whilst they are able to draw on very high levels of commitment from activists and supporters, they often struggle with limited physical, financial, technological and human resources. Our recommendations seek to address many of these issues.  However, we suggest that there remains a strong need for a network (physical and virtual) where different organisations, with diverse experiences and varied in-house expertise, and at different stages of their organisational life-cycles can advise and support each other, and help build capacity within the sector. Existing networks such as the Community Archives and Heritage Group (CAHG), the NCA’s Major Archive Projects Learning Exchange (MAPLE) or the Network of Radical Libraries and Archives may be able to provide some support or models in this regard, but an independent self-organised network of similar groups would be hugely beneficial, perhaps even essential.

10.1.2 Professional and heritage sector bodies

e)     Advocacy. We believe that sectoral bodies such as MLA, the National Council on Archives (for as long as it remains a distinct body), TNA Archives Sector Development, the Community Archives and Heritage Group (CAHG) and professional bodies such as the Society of Archivists, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) and the Museums Association should all recognise the value of the heritage work being undertaken by independent and community-based organisations, and advocate for such groups with government, policy-makers and funding bodies. Whilst it is important that these bodies continue to speak up for all ‘community archives’, it is crucial that they also recognise the diversity within this sector and, where appropriate, highlight the distinct contribution of independent activist-led organisations.

 

f)       Support for networks, training initiatives, etc. In addition to advocating for independent archives, MLA and other sectoral or professional bodies should where appropriate and desired, find ways to facilitate expertise-sharing networks (based on an appreciation of the importance of two-way learning between publicly-funded and independent archives) and support access to genuinely affordable regional and national training initiatives (in cataloguing, digitisation, preservation, etc.).

 

g)      Encouraging greater diversity within the heritage professions. A recurring problem identified by many of the organisations working in the sector is the comparative scarcity of archive and heritage training and expertise among people of African, Asian and other minority heritage in the UK today. Currently even in London the archive and heritage professions remain unrepresentative of the wider UK population. Whilst many independent archives are keen to support the development of such capacity, encouraging greater workforce diversity and identifying and overcoming barriers to entry, recruitment and promotion should be a priority for sectoral and professional bodies like MLA and the Society of Archivists.

10.1.3 Funders

Whilst we would welcome any increase in support for independent archives we recognise that in the current financial climate this is unlikely. Our recommendations therefore focus on how funding could be distributed more effectively and used to support long-term sustainability, with a view in the long-run to producing a less vulnerable, more autonomous and more dynamic independent archive sector.

 

h)    Support for organisation development. The majority of available funding supports specific projects (an exhibition, oral history collection, a digitisation programme) rather than the organisation itself. Given the obstacles to sustainable development for independent archives documented in this report, we suggest that public and private funding bodies make available some fixed-term grants (and the expertise which such funds could purchase) for longer-term organisation planning. This funding, which would be expected to result in a business or organisational development plan, could be seen as an investment in the future of a more diverse heritage, since the aim would be to empower organisations to support and sustain themselves (perhaps via the exploitation of their collections or the selling of related products) without relying on successive rounds of project-funding which result in damaging cycles of growth and then constriction.

 

i)       A greater diversity of funders and funding. We have seen the importance and significance of a small number of funding bodies (notably the Lottery and the Arts Council) for independent archive organisations. There is no doubting the value and positive impact these organisations have had in supporting numerous projects and organisations, but such funding is not without its problems or drawbacks for the recipients. We recommend that a greater variety of public and private funders, including government bodies and independent trusts, should consider supporting independent archive work, and that existing ones might expand their remit to look beyond individual projects to sustaining the structure of the organisations involved. This does not need to entail greater total public investment – although we would welcome this – but rather a wider distribution of spending across agencies.

 

j)       Support in making funding applications. In many cases, officers from funding bodies or the advisers from bodies such as the National Council on Archives offer very useful advice and support in making effective applications, especially where the organisation has developed a long-term relationship with the case officer and the funding body. However in other instances, there seems to be a failure on the part of funding bodies fully to appreciate the limited physical, administrative and technological resources available to some independent organisations. It is not realistic to assume that these organisations will always be able to manage the same level of bureaucracy and reporting demands as much better resourced ‘mainstream’ organisations. Funding bodies should consult with current and former award-holders to seek ways to acknowledge and accommodate these differences while ensuring that necessary accountability is maintained.

 

k)      Recognising independent expertise: support for autonomous projects. Much funding for independent community-based organisations is only obtainable through partnerships with mainstream organisations. Whilst the benefits of (equitable) partnerships are not to be discounted, it should be easier for independent archive organisations to apply for funding on their own and without tying themselves into potentially unwanted, unnecessary and occasionally unhelpful partnerships.  Heritage sector bodies could draw on the Arts Council’s mechanisms for supporting independent artist-led activity, which do not necessarily require a ‘mainstream’ partner.

 

l)       Support for digital preservation activities. One area of particular concern to all those working in the heritage sector is digital preservation. In the independent archive sector, as elsewhere, there is growing anxiety about the future sustainability of digital material. This is a particularly pressing issue for independent archives as they often combine a central and innovative use of digital / digitised material in their dissemination activities with a lack of a sustainable framework to ensure the long-term preservation of the same material. Funding streams that directly address digital preservation training and activities are essential.

 

m)    Funding excellence: support for high-quality outcomes as well as impacts. This report has demonstrated whilst many independent archives work in very challenging conditions, they continue to produce excellent outcomes. Some participants suggested to us that funders are often more interested in the social impact of their work (and in the project process) than in the final outcomes, however impressive they may be, particularly in the case of smaller grants. Whilst there is clearly a place for an instrumental approach to heritage work, independent archives should no more be assumed only to produce social impacts (as opposed to high quality resources) than their ‘mainstream’ counterparts. An overwhelmingly instrumental approach fosters a damaging two-tier system where ‘minority’ heritages remain marginalised.

10.1.4 Individual heritage organisations (national and local)

On the basis of our research we take the view that consideration of how best to work with and support independent archive and heritage organisations (where appropriate) necessitates a rebalancing of professional theory and practice, and that such a rebalancing needs to be reflected in a re-ordering of institutional priorities and budgets. In short, publicly-employed archivists and other heritage professionals should seek to support the best possible care for archives held in the ‘community’ as well as retaining their traditional duty of care to the archives within the walls of their own institution.               

 

n)    Seeking equitable partnerships. Where mainstream heritage (or other) organisations do seek to work in partnership with independent community-based heritage organisations, they should do so in ways that demonstrate genuine long-term commitment to partnership without giving rise to suspicions of a ‘tick-box exercise’. Commitment to mutual respect and equitable partnership can be demonstrated through a number of working practices (some of which are outlined in the report). But it also results from a long-term process of establishing trust and prioritising this approach for all staff and not just by one or two select individuals. Moreover, independent archives must not be assumed to be the concern only of local and regional (rather than national) institutions.

 

• o)    Guidance and support as required / requested. More heritage professionals and heritage organisations should offer their expertise and services available to independent archives. Clearly there are resource implications about fulfilling such a role, and it may be that budget priorities need to be reassessed to meet these needs. In a more limited fashion, support for independent archives could be more widely incorporated into the general outreach activity of the service.

 

p)      Joint funding applications. It is essential that when mainstream institutions (heritage, higher education, other) are applying jointly for funding with an independent archive organisation that the latter is properly recognised and remunerated as a full and equal independent partner.

 

q)      Capacity-building and workforce diversity. We have already noted the importance of seeking to support greater cultural diversity in the heritage professions. It is essential that mainstream heritage institutions support such initiatives, perhaps entering into partnerships with independent organisations to offer mentoring, training and internships to staff and working to increase mobility between the two sectors where desirable.

 

10.2     Moving forward / points for discussion

Although we believe this research to be innovative and far-reaching in its scope, we make no claims as to its comprehensiveness and acknowledge that as ever with ‘real world’ research (Gray 2004), it points to further areas of study to complement and supplement the findings we offer here.

Some possible areas for further research include:

• Heritage activity and the negotiation of identities online. Exploring the impact of the web and the formation of virtual community spaces, again with an archive or heritage focus, would build on the findings of this project and enable us to examine one of our stated (but largely unexplored) research questions. This research theme would also link with the research interests of other staff within DIS and UCL more broadly. It would be particularly useful to explore this theme in the context of diasporic communities, building on the work of the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (2003), in comparison with other forms of online network.

 

• Digital lives, digital communities. Again, connecting with existing research interests in the Department of Information Studies on the challenges of personal digital record-keeping to explore the implications for independent self-organising online communities.

 

• Independent archive organisations and the community archive movement. This research has focused on archival activity, mostly but not exclusively amongst groups of African and Asian heritage and we have drawn a contrast with other community archive activity engaging other identities, notably place, from a less overtly politicised perspective. Whilst we have also offered peripheral consideration to issues of gender, class, place and sexual orientation it would be useful to investigate more fully the similarities and differences between different independent and community archives, and different political traditions.

 

• The UK and the rest of the world. Some early academic responses to our work have noted our (not exclusive) focus on London and have wondered whether London might be exceptional in this regard within the UK. We are not sure that we accept claims of London’s exceptionalism but we certainly acknowledge the worth of conducting similar research across a broader geographic framework. Similarly our reading and conversations with others across the world has indicated many similar endeavours and activities internationally, and again it would be very useful to explore this more thoroughly to examine areas of similarity and difference.

 

• The reception and consumption of the outputs of independent archive organisations. As we have noted, in contrast to much traditional archival practice, our participating organisations are ‘living archives’ in which participants are actively engaged in history-making and using their archives in very explicit and public ways. Our research has revealed a great deal about the motivations and experiences of those directly involved in the archives themselves (‘the producers’) but rather less about how these materials are received and used by their intended audience. These are not of course two distinct groups: ‘producers’ (particularly when volunteers) are also often ‘consumers’ and we have been able to point to some useful evidence of the impact of participation on identification, but a more through-going study of the reception of these materials could be very significant.

 

• Community archives, user-generated content and ownership. Exploring the impact of user- or community-generated content applications in the heritage sector is something staff in DIS are already keen to explore.[1] There are obvious and important connections between this sort of content and on-going community and oral history heritage work. Among the issues that arise from consideration of community-generated content are questions around access, ownership of intellectual property, proper acknowledgement, reliability, professionalism and sustainability.

 

• The history of independent archive and community history endeavours. Some introductory work on the historical antecedents of contemporary activities has already been undertaken but a more rigorous approach to these questions would reveal important factors of continuity and distinction as well as enable fuller engagement with contemporary developments and debates regarding the future of public history, oral history, heritage, etc.

References

Alleyne, B. 2002, Radicals against Race: Black Activism and Cultural Politics, Oxford, Berg.

Appadurai, A. 2003, “Archive and Aspiration,” in Information is Alive, in J. Brouwer & A. Mulder, eds., V2 Publishing/NAI Publishers, Rotterdam, pp. 14-25.

Archives Task Force 2004, Listening to the Past, Speaking to the Future: Report of the Archives Task Force, MLA, London.

Crooke, E. 2007, Museums and Community: Ideas, Issues and Challenges, London, Routledge.

Gray, D. E. 2004, Doing Research in the Real World, Sage, London & Thousand Oaks, Ca.

Hall, S. 2003, “New Ethnicities,” in Identities: Race, Class, Gender and Nationality, in L. Martín Alcoff & E. Mendieta, eds., Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 90-95.