The content found within the Living Archive consists of many different types of data, which has been co-collected in a participatory manner. Stories include text, visual imagery, artistic work, audio recordings, oral histories, and beyond. These stories have been collected via the participatory heritage methodologies utilised and disseminated by the AHK and another partner project, Imagine IC, also in Amsterdam. Three (sometimes intersecting) main methods for collecting this content are used: Emotion Networking, ethnographic fieldwork, and interviews, each of which have ‘how-to’ guides embedded within the Fab City Hub Toolkit in the section Curate the Past Toward the Future.
Emotion Networking, a methodology developed by the Reinwardt Academy, part of the Amsterdam University for the Arts, and Imagine IC, brings together different stakeholders to collectively discuss and map their emotional responses to an item of discussion which could be understood as heritage - for example a bridge, a knitting practice, a polluted lake, a flag, a flower, etc - before adjusting their position based on the testimony of others. Several rounds take place, including the imagined perspective of absent stakeholders and the introduction of additional information, so as to give as wide a perspective on the (prospective) heritage item as possible.
Ethnographic fieldwork consists of exploring the site via communicating with people and recording sights, sounds, smells, and so on, and then documenting what happens through these ethnographic excursions.
Oral Histories and/or Interviews - undertaken with makers, local inhabitants, policy makers, creatives, business owners, former industrial workers, and so on - allow people with particular stories about the area the space to explain their understanding of the site, its history, the interrelation between past, present and future, or their personal relationship to it.
Once it has been collected - which often first takes place on the local level in the form of an exhibition - it is assigned tags according to notable characteristics, formulated into a narrative, and uploaded to the digital infrastructure of the Living Archive. This then shows both the geographical placement of the story and also how it connects to other collected stories which can be associated via one of these assigned tags. We hope you enjoy exploring these heritage items and their network of relations!
Disclaimer: The Living Archive is made up of content collected by the local pilot teams from within the CENTRINNO project’s 9 locations. Every piece of content has been collected with the due consent from the people involved in the stories. Image credit is given and, where relevant, copyright is issued under CC0 licence. If you are the owner of or dispute the usage of the any of the content found on the CENTRINNO Living Archive, please contact jonathan.even-zohar@ahk.nl
