Guest post --- An overview of Baker's work on DIY institutions of popular music heritage

In this post, guest blogger Zelmarie Cantillon provides an overview of key ideas emerging from my published work on DIY institutions; research that comes out of the Australian Research Council funded projects 'Popular Music and Cultural Memory' and 'Do-it-Yourself Popular Music Archives'.

Guest post --- overview of new publication on DIY institutions

In this post, guest blogger Lauren Istvandity provides an overview of a journal article written by Sarah Baker which was recently published in Archives and Records. The article, titled ‘Do-it-yourself institutions of popular music heritage: the preservation of music’s material past in community archives, museums and halls of fame’, emerges from research undertaken for the ARC funded project ‘Do-it-yourself archives of popular music’.

The Sarasota Music Archive: a DIY institution housed in a County Library System

I had arrived in Sarasota, Florida, with nothing lined up for my fieldwork. I'd been emailing the Sarasota Music Archive to try and set up some interviews but hadn't received any replies. Yesterday morning, then, it was a case of trying my luck by turning up on the Archive's doorstep and hoping for the best...

Article published on cultures of preservation at the Victorian Jazz Archive

An article I co-authored with Alison Huber has just been published in the journal Popular Music History (vol. 7, no. 3, 2012). Titled ‘Masters of our own destiny’, this article presents a case study of the Victorian Jazz Archive. 

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.

Forthcoming publication - a typology of the DIY archive and museum

An article on DIY institutions that I co-authored with Alison Huber has been accepted for publication in the European Journal of Cultural Studies. The article, titled 'Notes Towards a Typology of the DIY Institution: identifying do-it-yourself places of popular music preservation', identifies a series of commonalities that emerge across the DIY institutions we visited for the 'Popular Music and Cultural Memory' project.

What is a DIY institution?

As part of the research undertaken for the project 'Popular Music and Cultural Memory' (DP1092910, 2010-12), I visited a number or popular music archives and museums which encapsulated the spirit of DIY (do-it-yourself). Working with my colleague, Dr Alison Huber, we came to call these places 'DIY institutions' which we define as follows:

DIY institutions are places of popular music preservation, archiving and display that exist outside the bounds of ‘official’ or ‘national’ projects of collection and heritage management. These projects emerge instead from within communities of music consumption, where groups of interested people have, to some degree, undertaken to ‘do-it-themselves’, creating places (physical and/or online) to store -- and, in some cases, display publicly -- the material history of music culture. In these places, people (largely volunteers) who are not expert in tasks associated with archiving, records management, preservation, or other elements involved in cultural heritage management, learn skills along the way as they work to collect, preserve and make public artefacts related to popular music culture. These places are, we argue, suggestive of broader desires from within communities of popular music consumption to preserve popular music heritage. (Baker & Huber, forthcoming)