Techne Conflux: Spontaneous memorials and community-building archives 

9th Dec 2019 11:00am-1:00pm 

This workshop is offered as a technē Conflux, an extended training, development, exhibition or performance programme which aims to enhance research or intellectual skills, or facilitate the sharing of expertise amongst doctoral students in the arts and humanities.

Sign up: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/archiving-spontaneous-memorials-the-shoreham-community-archive-tickets-74870809607

Following the Shoreham Airshow Disaster on 22 August 2015 West Sussex Record Office was asked to help with the preservation of the messages that were left on the Shoreham Tollbridge, the books of condolence and media reports. All of these records bear witness to the response of the local community and visitors in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.

Archiving spontaneous memorials is a very new development requiring us to think about practicalities, methodology, ethical considerations and personal sensitivities. In September 2018 a Spontaneous Memorials Network was set up by practitioners from across the UK and Europe to share best practice, offer support and explore all of these issues further. More recently links have been made with the US with a planning symposium for 2021 held at the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York in October 2019.

This presentation will look at the Shoreham Community Archive and explore the wider context and issues for this type of work. www.spontaneousmemorials.org/

Lunch and refreshments are provided.

For more details about the full programme click here.

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This event is part of the Techne Conflux and Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories: Rethinking Archival Research, Methods and Practice series. The Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories has secured Techne funding for a two-year Conflux programme that can address key methodologies and historiographies associated with archival research, practices and critical perspectives.

The archive’s authoritative status has come under increasing pressure across the arts and humanities in the last thirty years or so. This richly diverse programme of workshops and lectures will provide a framework to explore bigger questions about the ways in which the archive has been critiqued, problematised and de-centred in a range of academic disciplines, cultural contexts and professional settings.

Examining topics like ‘spontaneous’ community archives, ‘performing the archive’, the archival ‘turn’ and feminist archival practices, as well as what it means in practice to decolonise the imperial archive, the programme aims to highlight the extent to which differing approaches and methods can further enhance the generative possibilities of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives. The programme includes collaborative workshops with The National Archives, National Theatre, West Sussex Record Office, The Keep and the University’s Design Archives, amongst other guest speakers.