Listening to the Past, Speaking to the Future

Developing Archives and AudiencesThis young Protestant football team played against their Catholicneighbours, despite a divided community. Photo: Star of the Seas,under 15s, Twinbrook, including Bobby SandsBlack History Month with a creative and diverse rangeof activities. Work by Commanet, and The Linking ArmsCommunity Access to Archives Project are developing ourunderstanding of this important area of work. The TaskForce firmly believes that such initiatives should be apriority for publicly-funded services.Community ArchivesCommunity archives are hard to define. The Task Forcehas found evidence of geographical, cultural and thematiccommunities of interest. The growth of communityarchives has been an important development in recentyears, and has part stemmed from a desire by individualsand groups to record and share culturally diverseexperiences and stories. This grassroots movement is anexpression of the often strongly felt need to celebrate,record, and rebuild the sense of community in our livestoday. The creation of such collections which can containphotographs, moving images, ephemera, personaldocuments and papers and oral history contributes to themaking of local or community history itself and adds a newand rich source to the work of publicly-funded archiveservices.Contributing to Community CohesionThe ability of Commanet projects (see page 28) to givea new slant to local heritage and bring people togetheris illustrated by Twinbrook Community Archive, based ona nationalist housing estate in Belfast. Here volunteerarchivists have garnered a wealth of material relating toboth Protestant and Catholic community memory.Founder member of the Twinbrook archive, JohnMcPhillips, sees it as a resource for helping young peopleto understand their area’s history, in particular thesectarian conflict that has shaped it since the early 1970s.Despite the difficulties of overcoming this history ofconflict, there are hopes that community archiving couldhelp to heal divided communities. At the Ulster People’sCollege, Karen McCartney provides support for Commanetgroups in Northern Ireland. She envisages a future role forCommanet in “building up community confidence andbuilding up networks through which people can sharestories.”Internationally, there’s widespread interest in whatCommanet offers to divided or isolated communities.A project in Cyprus is using COMMA software to promotereconciliation between Greek and Turkish communities.The Canadian Heritage Information Network is using aversion of COMMA software to enable 500 voluntarymuseums to create on-line ‘exhibits’ for the VirtualMuseum of Canada.The Task Force wants to encourage the growth of suchcollections. This is a ‘bottom up’ movement that willembed the importance of archives in the minds of manyand help create one of the most dynamic elements in theArchives Gateway. The Task Force is fully committed to theprinciple that the resources in community archivalcollections should be accessible to everyone, and thatarchives in the community are as important to society asthose in public collections.We therefore propose the establishment of a network ofregional Community Archive Liaison Officers to encourageindividual and community management participation andpromote the sharing of expertise, skills and enthusiasmwith the professional sector, and develop appropriateapproaches to access. There is much that the professionalarchival community can give in terms of knowledge andunderstanding of practical technical and historical issuesand much that can be mutually gained throughpartnerships between the wider community, communityarchives and the established archive domain.43