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What might the archive look like?
There is no single ‘template’ that determines what a large cultural infrastructure project archive should look like. Each project is shaped by the topography, the local history and of course its people. The archivist will be keen to work with you to identify key information that can form the basis of the archive; but it might be worth thinking about the archive as having three distinct components:
The business archive: how the project happened
This will comprise the records created by the central bid/delivery team. It will provide a record from the initial ideas all the way through the bid to the development and evolution of the programme and the wider infrastructure.
The creative archive: what the project looked like
This will comprise the records of the artistic programme delivered by a large number of creative partners. This will allow people to study the events but also to support a range of engagement activities as part of the project’s legacy.
The participatory archive: what the project felt like
This will comprise information and context from a wide range of individuals and groups to capture the response to and consequence of being part of the project. It might include oral histories, filmed interviews, and creative responses.
Format of the archive
The format of the archive
It is likely that much of the material from the large cultural infrastructure project will be digital in format. Ensuring a file can be accessed in twenty years’ time requires deliberate intervention and active preservation. It is not simply a case of storing the file somewhere safe and leaving it, as files can become unreadable through age and deterioration.
Placing material online is no guarantee it will be there in 10 years’ time. The archivist you are working with will be aware of the specific needs and issues with digital archives including the resources that The National Archives has produced to support this work, and The National Archives can provide further advice to individual archive services.
Collating the archive
The material needs to be gathered and sorted before work can begin on making it accessible. The archivist will need to verify appropriate permissions have been granted and identify any sensitive content that needs to be temporarily closed to comply with The General Data Protection Regulation.
Collating and reviewing the archive is a significant body of work. It is also an opportunity to involve members of the community, many of whom might have participated, supported or attended the events in the records. The archivist will be able to discuss with you the possibilities relating to volunteer participation at this stage.
In the immediate period after project delivery, the archive may not be the focus for understanding the impact of the project. The monitoring and evaluation team will have collated its own data and will develop protocols relating to research access and use of this data. It is important that this data is also passed to the archive service so that it forms part of the project archive. Similarly, colleagues from other large cultural infrastructure projects wanting to understand lessons learnt are likely to directly approach colleagues in similar roles, rather than waiting to consult the archive. However, in the long-term future the archive will be a valuable resource for those wanting to understand practices and processes, for example those wishing to understand how creative professionals shaped these large-scale projects.