Archives, Digitization, and Preservation
Mediateca at Centro Arte para la Paz
In 2021, the Surviving Memory team partnered with Centro Arte para la Paz to support the establishment of a Mediateca (or Media Library), an initiative that aims to preserve and make accessible records related to the Civil War and the history of Suchitoto. The digital archive incorporates collections from the La Memoria Vive Community Museum, and offers both physical and digital spaces for consultation. It also provides equipment to digitize items, ensuring that the community's stories, particularly those of massacres, local festivals, and tributes, are preserved for future generations. The project is supported by a combination of funding from our SSHRC Partnership Grant and an Inter-American Fund Grant.
Digitizing Private Photo Collections: Scholars and Solidarity Actors
The Surviving Memory team has digitized multiple collections of photos, slides, and other materails from scholars and solidarity actors from Cananda and the US who visited the refugee camps and El Salvador during and immediately after the war. Thus far, we have digitized substantial collections from Oxfam Canada, Meyer Brownstone, Tommie Sue Montgomery, Bruce Cockburn, Dan Heap, the Loretto Sisters of Toronto, and Barb MacQuarrie.
York University CERLAC Archive on El Salvador
The Surviving Memory team has partnered with the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean at York University to digitize their entire holdings on El Salvador. This collection includes approximately 20 banker boxes of archival materials related to the history of the civil war, postwar reconstruction, solidarity campaigns, and significant materials from the Latin American Working Group (LAWG).
Arcatao Historical Memory Collection
Members of the Surviving Memory team has partnered with the Comité de Memoria Histórica Sobreviviente en Arcatao and Aarhus University research intern, Trine Andersen, to digitize their entire archival colletion of photographs and documents. These materails will become an important community archive and contribute to the curation process and exhibit development for our ongoing collaboration on the Arcatao Historical Memory Museum project.
Archiving the Present (AtP)
AtP is a multi-site digital community archive project of memory as creative practice. The project is made up of artists and community members of the Australian Salvadoran community, having arrived in Australia through the refugee and humanitarian program in the 80s and early 90s. AtP seeks to develop alternative practices of remembering through digital and public interventions.