Activating Archives: A Blueprint for Egalitarian Archival Practice is a project within UCSB’s Burdick Global Scholars program that brings together UCSB undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and researchers with traditional and non-traditional archival partners in Medellín, Colombia, to collectively develop more egalitarian and community-driven approaches to preserving and activating archival materials in low-resource environments. To do so, participants will be encouraged to think critically about three key themes: What is an archive? What is the purpose of an archive? And how are archives activated?
In conjunction with a team of scholars and practitioners based in Santa Barbara and the Univerity of Texas at Austin, students will examine practices and theories of archiving and social memory, participate in field trips to traditional and non-traditional archives, and gain practical experience working with tools designed to digitize and preserve archival materials, all in order to become equipped to collaborate with our global partners in Medellín.
Students and instructors will travel to Medellin to take part in a series of workshops and laboratories with local collaborators from various institutions and collectives, including the non-profit Neogranadina, the activist collective Komuni, the community center Centro de Desarrollo Cultural de Moravia, and historians and archivists in Rionegro. These groups have experience with a broad range of archival practises and materials, ranging from late colonial era historical documents to more recent collections of photographs and collections of oral histories. Students will gain practical experience understanding the different purposes and needs of these varied institutions and learn from them, work with them, and develop their own research on the basis of their experiences.
This project will culminate in a co-authored publication, written collectively by the students, faculty, and community partners who participated. This will include a manifesto of sorts, reflecting on our collaboration and exploring the broader academic and epistemological stakes of egalitarian archiving, providing a blueprint and recommendations for best practices, to facilitate replicating and extending this work elsewhere in the future.