Guest blog post: sustainable archiving --- overview of the article "Sustaining popular music's material culture in community archives and museums"

In this post, guest blogger Lauren Istvandity provides an overview of a journal article written by Sarah Baker (Griffith University) and Jez Collins (Birmingham City University) that emerged from the ARC funded project “Do-it-yourself popular music archives” and which was recently published in the journal International Journal of Heritage Studies.

Collaborations with colleagues at Birmingham City University

This month should have seen me visiting the UK and Ireland for events co-organised with colleagues from Birmingham City University. Circumstances meant I had to stay in Australia but the events went on in my absence. Accounts of both events have been helpfully blogged by Jez Collins.

Panel proposal accepted for the Pop-Life conference

A panel co-organised with Jez Collins (Birmingham City University and Birmingham Music Archive) titled “A pile of history, found in my parents attic”: The everyday histories and archives of popular music heritage” has been accepted for the conference Pop-Life: The Value of Popular Music in the Twenty First Century to be held at the University of Northampton, UK, on 6-7 June 2014. In addition to a co-authored paper by the co-organisers, other papers on the panel will be by Lisa Busby (Goldsmiths, University of London and Editions of You) and Paul Long (Birmingham City University).

Introducing the 'Music Archive Network'

If you are interested in the archiving of popular music then consider signing up to the newly formed Music Archive Network. This network has been set up by Sound and Music, the Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool and the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research at Birmingham City University.

Collaborations – the popular music heritage database

I’m currently working with activist archivist Jez Collins (Birmingham City University and founder of the Birmingham Music Archive) on the creation of a database that logs popular music archives and museums from around the world.

Jez Collins on 'activist archivism'

During discussion at the “DIY Preservation” round table held yesterday as part of the ‘Re/soundings: Documenting music and memory’ event in Rotterdam, Professor George McKay (University of Salford) questioned the use of the term DIY to describe the kinds of heritage institutions that I am exploring in this project. His argument was that “DIY is about grassroots, alternative culture and politics” and so using ‘DIY’ in the context of these archives and museums “depoliticizes” the concept.