'Entrepreneur Museums' and the preservation of Icelandic music heritage

Over the last few days I’ve been re-reading interview transcripts from the fieldwork I did in Iceland in 2010 and 2011 as I try and finalise a chapter on the working conditions of Icelandic musicians following the financial crash of 2008. The interviews I conducted in Reykjavik covered a lot of territory and I spoke to people from across the music sector. While the chapter I’m writing is completely unrelated to this current project on DIY archives, revisiting the interviews I did with people interested in Icelandic music heritage reminded me of an interesting conversation I had with one of my interviewees about the current status of popular music preservation in that country.

Andy Linehan on the DIY roots of the British Library Sound Archive

The fieldwork continued today with a visit to the British Library to interview Andy Linehan, the curator of the popular music collection in the library's sound archive. I met with Andy in order to learn more about the history of the archive and its DIY beginnings. The British Library Sound Archive is an excellent example of how a grassroots-style institution, in this case the British Institute of Recorded Sound founded by Patrick Saul, can become legitimised to the extent that it amalgamates with a national institution with the gravitas of the British Library.

Visit to the National Jazz Archive in Loughton, UK

It has been a jazzy start to the DIY Archives project. Following my visits earlier this week to the Nederlands Jazz Archief in Amsterdam, today I travelled to Loughton in Essex, UK, to meet with the wonderful folk at the National Jazz Archive.

Visit to the Nederlands Jazz Archief

Over the last two mornings I've been at the Muziekgebouw aan't IJ to visit the new office of the Nederlands Jazz Archief, a DIY institution founded in 1980. The NJA is still in the process of setting up their office following the closure of the Music Centre Netherlands at the end of 2012 (the NJA had been part of the MCN for the past 4-odd years). The cessation of the MCN has led to a separation of the people at the heart of the archive's activities from the archive's collection which will now be housed at the University of Amsterdam (where Ditmer Weertman will continue its curation). This is a very new situation and as Paul Gompe described it, the NJA is in something of a "twilight zone" as they start figuring out how the "new" enterprise will move forward.

Conference paper: 'Archiving affectively'

Today I presented a paper (co-authored with Alison Huber) at the "Popular Music Heritage, Cultural Memory and Cultural Identity" (POPID) conference in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

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.

"Do-it-together" - a round table on DIY heritage practices

This afternoon I participated in a round table on “DIY Preservation” that was held as part of the ‘Re/soundings: Documenting music and memory’ event in Rotterdam. The round table was billed as a “knowledge exchange” and this turned out to be a very accurate description of what ensued.

The DIY enterprise and issues of sustainability

The fragility of DIY institutions was highlighted for me today following some correspondence with a DIY archivist in the UK. I was saddened to learn that the British Archive of Country Music (BACM) could possibly close its doors if someone isn’t willing to take on this collection of over 500,000 recordings and associated country music artefacts. If this doesn’t happen, the archivist foresees that the collection may very well end up in a tip.

Presentations on DIY archives - Rotterdam, 30 January-1 February 2013

Later his month I will be presenting a plenary paper at the "Popular Music Heritage, Cultural Memory and Cultural Identity" (POPID) conference being held in Rotterdam on 31 January-1 February. The paper, co-written with Alison Huber, comes out of the work we did for the Popular Music and Cultural Memory project and draws on our interviews and fieldwork at the Australian Country Music Hall of Fame in Tamworth, New South Wales. Prior to the conference, on 30 January, I will be participating in a round table discussion on "DIY Preservationism" at the Re/soundings Knowledge Exchange Event.

Another publication in the pipeline - the cultural and social functions of the VJA

Another article I co-authored with Alison Huber has been accepted for publication. The article, titled '"Masters of our own destiny": cultures of preservation at the Victorian Jazz Archive in Melbourne, Australia', is scheduled for publication in the journal Popular Music History.