GATHERING

WISDOM

A REPORT FOR THE FIELD

OPEN ARCHIVE INITIATIVE

DECEMBER 

FROM THE

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Introduction

How do we hold, reflect and

illuminate culture?

Communities articulated inside cultural institutions may be rendered

invisible because of marginalization, exclusion or colonial practices

that deny agency and power to those whose stories are appropriated

for exhibition to predominantly white audiences. Performance, digital

media and hybrid works are not adequately preserved and shared with

respect for the original and future storytellers.

The archives of some of our most prolific media makers and devoted

culture bearers are currently at risk; stories are being lost, collections

orphaned, and voices silenced because of a scarcity of resources and

shared vision. Many valuable media archives that do exist are behind

institutional walls, inaccessible to those whose lives inhabit the sto-

ries, and whose past, present and future dance in the shadows.

Thanks to a generous grant from The MacArthur Foundation and ad-

ditional funding from the National Endowment for the Arts CARES

program, the Alliance for Media Arts + Culture launched the Open

Archive Initiative in January 2020 to investigate best and emerg-

ing practices for creating and sustaining open archives that disrupt

corporate ownership, center collective authorship and indigenous

rights, and insure access for future generations. We identified an ur-

gent need to collaboratively address these issues across disciplines

and geographies, so we brought together a group of international

digital archivists, cultural preservation and storytelling experts with

independent and community-based content creators and technol-

ogists to gather and synthesize the collective wisdom. We invited

three US-based Fellows from this international group to work with us

during the summer of 2020, going deeper into emerging themes and

helping us think strategically about the ramifications of integrating

ethical technology into platform solutions.

This report synthesizes the first year of work of the Open Archive ini-

tiative; we intend to action these findings in the coming years as part

of a buoyant, systemic solution to cultural erasure and inequality.

Sincere thanks to Jocelyn Arem, lead researcher and facilitator of the

Alliance Open Archive Initiative and author of the Gathering Wisdom

report. Because of her dedication to and shepherding of this project,

we have become a more enlightened, co-creative community and dis-

covered how much more we have to learn.

Wendy Levy

Executive Director, The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture

TBLE OF CONTENTS

07 About the Open

Archive Initiative

13 Key Findings

15 Meeting One: What is an

[Open] Archive?

21 Meeting Two: What are the

Ethics of Open Archives?

25 Meeting Three: What are

Open Archives Collaboration

Best Practices?

29 Meeting Four: What are

the Impacts of Remixing

in Creating Access to

Archives?

33 Meeting Five: What are

Open Archives Technological

Access Best Practices?

37 Meeting Six: Overview

and Final Thoughts

40 Recommendations

43 Participant List

45 Fellows

47 Guest Speakers

WISDOM

A REPORT FOR THE FIELD

JOCELYN AREM, SENIOR PRODUCER AND AUTHOR