Cultural institutions and creators often focus primarily on new productions and works and how to present them to the public through performances or exhibitions. The structural documentation and registration of productions and their archiving are often still exceptions. Yet, by archiving, you also invest in your work process: you select and organize what you have produced in the past and make it accessible, searchable, and usable for new creation.
Why Archive?
By organizing your archive, you document your working methods, can refer back to earlier materials, and make them accessible to a broader audience. This way, your archive (process) forms a foundation for new creation, new experiences, and new value. In your archive, with initial rough sketches, AV recordings of rehearsals, marketing campaigns, interviews, etc., stories are hidden about your creative processes, history, and artistic development, which can also be of great value to the public.
What is a Private Archive?
Private archives are all archives formed by non-governmental organizations and private individuals. For you as a creator in the cultural sector, this means everything you collect during and around your work. While you are working, you keep things or don’t throw them away. Because you need them for your work or because they are part of your work process. For example, you draw inspiration from previous productions, reuse study materials, or submit them as part of a grant application. In this way, you naturally collect a collection of materials and pieces. Increasingly, the archives of companies, individual artists, creators, and designers contain born-digital materials. There is also an increasing amount of co-production and remote collaboration using digital media. This means that many cultural institutions and creators develop large archives over successive cultural seasons, where digital materials can also be challenging to retrieve.
Organizing According to Archival Principles
A well-organized archive provides insight into what you have, what you can do with it, and the condition of the material. The better your archive is organized, the easier it is for you to use, and the more suitable it is for eventual use by others, such as an archival institution. The guide "Get Your Archive in Order" helps you take the first steps toward a sustainable and reusable (digital) archive in four steps.
Get Started!
Now that you know the potential value of your archive, it's time for action. In our guide "Get Your Archive in Order," you’ll discover why and for whom your archive may be interesting and find detailed explanations of archival principles. This way, you’ll gain insight into your own work process and materials and learn how to carefully build an archive with value for the future.
This guide was developed in collaboration with KIA (Knowledge Network Information and Archives). In addition to the guide, there is the reference work on Private Archives, which outlines what institutions can do. It contains more extensive information about private archives and four case studies on performing arts institutions and visual artists that can serve as examples. The final chapter contains references to practical tools and interesting articles for further reading. Information and archive specialists from the KIA platform on Private Archives actively contributed to the development of these documents. The complete guide provides these professionals at heritage management institutions with insights into how private archives function for creators and institutions in the cultural sector.
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