Artist-Run Archives: Developing a digital community archive with PAVED Arts artist-run centre

Abstract

This case study details my partnership with PAVED Arts, an ARC in Saskatoon, Canada dedicated to supporting photography, audio, video, electronic, and digital arts. In this presentation I discuss how we designed a usable digital archive that serves PAVED's organizational culture and core uses. As an information technology librarian, I bring my IT and information management expertise to this collaboration with the PAVED staff and wider community to assess, organize, preserve, and provide access to their multi-format archives. Using community archiving and participatory action research methods, we focus on designing and implementing a digital archive that serves the needs of the PAVED community and is sustainable for this non-profit organization.

Canadian artist-run centres (ARCs) are vital experimental and emerging contemporary art galleries and production centres that serve researchers, curators, artists, and the public. Many of these non-profit ARCs have been active for over three decades, accumulating significant records about their history, artist-run culture, and the work they show and produce. Because this experimental work is rarely documented elsewhere, ARC collections can be the most authoritative source for this information. While some ARCs have digitized records, most have kept physical documents in file cabinets, basements, and storage units, making them effectively inaccessible and vulnerable to damage and loss. With a focus on supporting emerging and experimental work, but lacking a mandate to preserve and provide access to their archives, ARCs are in the difficult position of having valuable collections that they want to share, but lacking the resources needed to do so.