Lived Experiences, Moving Memories and the Refugee Archive
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
No booking required
How does the Archive respond to the lived experiences of refugees and the challenges of engaging with non-traditional document types? This presentation will take the notion of civic engagement, outreach and empowered collaboration as tools to empower displaced communities to right to determine how they are represented within the “Archive.” It will explore the concept of the archive as a contested space where preserving refugee rights in the records that we keep challenges existing discourses and notions of community memory, belonging and identity. It will explore how we have undertaken civic engagement and outreach work with refugees and asylum seekers in London and beyond to explore ways of documenting their stories using bottom-up oral history methodologies and the use of objectives and textiles as a means of preserving collective memories and new modes of representation beyond the traditional written word.
Examples will be drawn from different projects undertaken with the Archive including oral history work with refugees and asylum seekers in London and the creation of the Living Refugee Archive; an exhibition of objects and “Crafting Resistance” workshops documenting the Chilean diaspora in the UK and civic engagement and outreach work across our archival collections.
If you would like to attend, please email Jasmine Gideon: j.gideon@bbk.ac.uk
Contact name:
Jasmine Gideon