Democratising Archives

Building on the legacy of Travelling Museum of Communities (TMC) there is a desire to continue to share knowledge and learning and build on the partnerships across the three communities taking part.

People from Efford, Whitleigh and St Judes will be engaged in hearing, collecting, interpreting and responding to community stories and heritage that are underrepresented within museum and archive collections.

The demand for this work has come from the inclusive and creative approaches that were explored by this partnership during the TMC.

These creative approaches opened up community’s access to heritage; and creative techniques (drawing, making, audio, writing) enabled an approachable and accessible interpretation of community stories, supporting a harder to reach audience to engage with, and celebrate, their heritage.

The focus for Democratising Archives is:

1. Finding, recording and preserving unheard voices and stories that are important to the community.

2. Researching, learning from and testing how archives can represent the stories and lived experiences of those they don’t represent. To create a model of practice that doesn’t currently exist, that others can look to and learn from.

The project is about questioning decision making, questioning what's eligible to be part of an archive, and how imagination and creative responses can be included. Democratising Archives will work towards welcoming, diverse, accessible and representative archival collecting and building recommendations based on the research undertaken for the wider sector to consider and learn from. A learning event will celebrate the stories that are collected and reflect on the model developed; sharing the learning with community and archive partners and a set of recommendations back to the heritage sector will also come from the learning.

This project is being delivered in partnership with the Learning Academies Trust and is funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.