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Whose memories, whose archives? Independent community archives, autonomy and the mainstream

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Abstract

Over the last three or four decades in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, an enormous variety of grassroots projects and initiatives have sprung up dedicated to recording and preserving the memories and histories of different communities, often under-voiced and under-represented within the mainstream heritage. The impetus for such projects arose from a range of motivations but in general all were responding to the desire to document, record and preserve the identity and history of their own locality and community. Some custodians and creators of these collections remain suspicious of the mainstream archival profession and are determined to preserve their independence and autonomous voice by retaining direct ownership and physical custodianship of their collections, at least for the foreseeable future. In this context, seeking to ensure that these valuable materials are preserved and possibly made accessible presents a number of challenges and opportunities, including an encouragement to re-examine some aspects of traditional professional practice. By examining independent community archive activity in the UK, and in particular in London, and its implications for community interaction and identity within the multicultural context of contemporary British culture and society, this article seeks to contribute a different but relevant perspective to international debates about contemporary professional archival theory and practice.

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Notes

  1. UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project, ‘Community archives and identities: documenting and sustaining community heritage’, 2008–2009. The research team comprises Andrew Flinn, Elizabeth Shepherd and Mary Stevens. This research would not have been possible without the help and partnership provided by all our case studies (Future Histories, rukus!, Moroccan Memories, Eastside Community Heritage) and all the other participants and interviewees. For further details see http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/icarus/community-archives/.

  2. Growing awareness of community archives and their importance in the UK has resulted in the establishment of a group (formally the Community Archive Development Group (CADG), now the Community Archive and Heritage Group (CAHG)) which acts as forum for community archivists and heritage professionals to come together to discuss issues of importance and to act as a collective voice for the community archives movement in the UK. More details of CAHG can be found at http://www.communityarchives.org.uk/. Among the documents which can be downloaded here is CAHG’s Vision which Flinn helped to draft in 2008. This seeks to define community archives and their activities in way which explains but does not seek to limit or exclude. Significant public policy documents relating to archives and heritage including the Museums, Libraries and Archives’ Council (MLA) Archives Task Force report (ATF 2004) and the final report of Mayor of London’s Commission on African and Asian Heritage (MCAAH 2005) recognised the importance of community archives in the consideration of the UK’s archival heritage. Other policy documents issued by MLA and others have made reference to the impact that community archive activity might have on different aspects of social policy (CADG 2006; Jura Consultancy 2009).

  3. For examples of Canadian community archives see Nanaimo Community Archive at http://www.nanaimoarchives.ca/ and the Mission Community Archives at http://www.missionarchives.com/index.html.

  4. Founding member of rukus!, Topher Campbell quoted on rukus! Black LGBT Archive Project website at http://www.rukus.co.uk/content/view/12/27/.

  5. FHFN080611.

  6. The testimonies of both Glenn Jordan (Butetown History and Arts Centre, BUTIN090731) and Eve Hostetller (the Island History Trust, IHT090721) are striking in this regard.

  7. FHFN080611; LMIN090717.

  8. For instance Ireland, ‘Living history Ireland’ at http://www.iol.ie/~plugin/history.htm and in the north, Duchas Sound Archive (Crooke 2007, 125-128); France, see work of Generiques project http://www.generiques.org/images/pdf/DP-Generiques-2-Anglais.pdf; Canada, see references to community archives in Miller (1998, pp. 131–132), the list of community heritage centres in the Aboriginal Archives Guide (ACA 2007) and the Canadian Women’s Movement Archives and the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives described in Carter (2006, p. 232); South Africa, the District Six Museum (Crooke 2007) and the Gay and Lesbian Archives (Reid 2002); US, many examples including for instance the Schomburg Centre http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/about/history.html and the Lesbian Herstory Archives (Reid 2002) in New York, the Tribal PEACE online Native American heritage site, Asian and Hispanic community museum initiatives in California (Shilton and Srinivasan 2007); Australia, community heritage centres or ‘Keeping Places’ supported under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library and Information Resources Network Protocols http://www1.aiatsis.gov.au/atsilirn/protocols.atsilirn.asn.au/index0c51.html?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a grant from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Studies (DIS), University College London, London, UK

    Andrew Flinn, Mary Stevens & Elizabeth Shepherd

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  1. Andrew Flinn
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  2. Mary Stevens
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  3. Elizabeth Shepherd
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Correspondence to Andrew Flinn.

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Flinn, A., Stevens, M. & Shepherd, E. Whose memories, whose archives? Independent community archives, autonomy and the mainstream. Arch Sci 9, 71 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-009-9105-2

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