Queering Participatory Archives & National Collections

Start date and time

Friday 26 May 2023

Location

National Library of Scotland, George 4th Bridge, Edinburgh

The Living Archives is a collaborative research project in which we explore connections between archives, identity and materiality. We challenge the hierarchy and centrality of institutional archives by inviting participants to recognise the value of personal archival artefacts through an exploratory, creative and discursive process.

In August 2022, experimental filmmaker, radical archist and curator, Lydia Beilby, and filmmaker/lecturer, Sana Bilgrami, worked with Alchemy festival. We held workshops in Hawick with a group of queer/non-binary young adults, using physical film and archival
objects to engage with concepts of identity and to challenge the dominance of digital culture and the hierarchy of public archives. The group shot a short black and white 16mm film on a Bolex camera. They used the language of experimental film to explore their personal archives and identities, and created their own archive on a film-strip.
In this workshop, we aim to deepen and widen our conversations on participatory archives and identity.

In collaboration with the National Library of Scotland (NLS), we will invite a wider group of ten new participants from LGBT Youth Scotland. At NLS premises, we will analogue-project the Alchemy group's 16mm film alongside a curated selection of short films, followed by a roundtable workshop on archives and identity. The Alchemy young filmmakers will reflect on claiming space to express their identity and on physical archive-making as a creative process. All participants will explore inclusive possibilities of breaking barriers between conventional and counter archives, and creating a sense of belonging, through a sharing of personal archival objects whilst exploring relevant books and ephemera from the Library's archives.