1. Project overview

Women in Lockdown aimed to document women’s experiences of the pandemic – in their own words – through written, audio, and creative accounts. Through a series of pop-up events, online events, and postcard boxes in community spaces, the project engaged new participants and asked them to contribute their stories. SFA worked with a socially engaged web design agency to co-design and build an interactive, open-access digital archive of the submissions that were collected.

2. Project stats

3. Key successes

• Being selected as one of The Audience Agency’s Opening Archives projects has enabled SFA to grow Women in Lockdown from something which existed solely online and reached a small audience, into a far-reaching community project with a diversity of participants.
• SFA have been able to make lasting investments and put their name out there as an open, intersectional feminist group, seeking to play an active part in Sheffield’s cultural and social life.
• Remaining adaptable. Omicron hit right in the middle of this project and put a halt on a lot of the in-person work that had been planned. Working with partners helped them to respond dynamically and keep the project live.

4. Key learnings

• Co-designing a website or any other content, digital or analogue, is about consensus and input from all stakeholders, and if the process is to be respected, it shouldn’t be rushed or pushed ahead.
• In order for a contemporary collecting project like this to be successful, it must be as accessible as possible. Potential participants should be met where they’re at,
  and the process of contributing and taking part must be straightforward and, often, come with no strings attached (eg anonymising submissions to facilitate honest reflections on the pandemic).

5. Top tip

Building up trusting, mutually beneficial and (we hope) lasting relationships with other community groups takes time, and these relationships are more often built over a cup of tea than an email or a tweet.

6. Link to digital outputs

• Sheffield Feminist Archive

7. Attribution

Digitally Democratising Archives (2022) by The Audience Agency supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Digitally Democratising Archives (Opening Archives) was an action research project, designed and led by The Audience Agency, supporting 10 organisations to explore archives, community engagement and digital tools. It was funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund in 2021/22 as part of the as part of the Digital Skills for Heritage’s Connect Heritage programme.

More help here

Digitally Democratising Archives: Case Study 7

Bearwood Community Hub: Podcast: Celebrating Bearwood Women — with the support of Sandwell Community History and Archive Service (CHAS), and local community groups, this project invited women in Bearwood to add their voice to the historic record and create a new podcast: Celebrating Bearwood Women.

 

Training digital volunteers to create podcasts

To capture Glasgow Women’s Library’s 30 year history a podcast series has been recorded with the support of digital volunteers to preserve institutional knowledge from organisational “elders” to help promote the library’s heritage and share the importance of the unique, grassroots nature of the organisation.

 

Video: Digital Volunteering project, Glasgow Women’s Library

To capture Glasgow Women’s Library’s 30 year history a podcast series has been recorded with the support of digital volunteers to preserve institutional knowledge from organisational “elders” to help promote the library’s heritage and share the importance of the unique, grassroots nature of the organisation.

 

Except where noted and excluding company and organisation logos this work is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) Licence

Please attribute as: "Digitally Democratising Archives: Case Study 8 (2022) by The Audience Agency supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, licensed under CC BY 4.0