I'm in the process of organising my next stint of overseas fieldwork. This will be another trip to Europe, beginning mid-April. So far I've lined up a visit to the Klaus-Kuhnke-Archiv für Populäre Musik in Bremen, Germany.
This is a reference archive that covers a broad array of
popular music genres. I’m particularly interested in hearing the foundation story of
this archive. The KK Archiv was established as a non-profit organisation in the mid 1970s,
before eventually partnering with the City of Bremen and becoming an Institute
in the Bremen Academy of Arts in the early 1990s.
One of my interests in this
research project concerns the sustainability of DIY archives and museums, and
as the KK Archiv’s website states, these partnerships ‘ensured the existence and the
development of this archive’. Lots to be learned from the KK Archiv’s experiences, I’m
sure.
