The Communities in Conversation Symposium, set for May 21, will allow participants to work together to re-envision and re-connect archival collections to communities in engaging and ethical ways.

Co-presented by the Inclusive History Project, the Bentley Historical Library, and the School of Information, the symposium is part of the IHP’s Towards Community-Based Shared Stewardship project, which is led by Alexis Antracoli and Jesse Johnston.

“Our hope for the symposium is that it brings together community members and archivists in a way that generates the energy and ideas to make shared stewardship a core part of archival work,” said Antracoli, director of the Bentley Historical Library. “By encouraging source communities to activate the archive in meaningful ways, we expand the reach of the historical record and empower those documented in archival collections to take ownership for their own stories and futures.”

Taking place at the Leinweber Computer Science and Information Building, the CiC symposium programming will run from 10 a.m. to 6:15 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, with registration requested. It will also be livestreamed. A reception serving light fare will take place from 6:30-7:30 p.m. at the Bentley Historical Library.

The CiC symposium will feature archives-community collaborations from across the state, and will allow for in-depth conversations about how to build and encourage further shared stewardship among Michigan archives. 

The first Listening Panel Discussion will examine collaborations between archival repositories, libraries and local communities in order to preserve community histories in ways that are responsive to community needs.

The second Engaging Panel Discussion will reflect on a core question that repositories face when they decide that they want to engage in shared stewardship: Where do I start? Panelists will discuss their experiences with source communities outreach and working with organizations as community members. 

The third Capacity Building Panel Discussion will cover a range of issues, including technological infrastructure, funding, volunteers, shared decision-making, and creative problem solving. Panelists will discuss the creation and sustenance of programs, platforms, and services that meet community needs. 

Following the panels, a Communities in Conversation Keynote Roundtable will take place. Exploring innovative approaches to shared stewardship within institutional and university archival collections, this roundtable will shine a spotlight on how community partnerships reshape archival practices at local and national levels. 

The symposium will address the foundational questions of the IHP’s Towards Community-Based Shared Stewardship project.

“The overall shared stewardship project, supported by the IHP, grew out of a basic question: Archives and historical collections do really important work to preserve records and information to make them available to researchers, but how do we build more meaningful relationships between historical collections and the communities they document?” said Johnston, clinical assistant professor of information at UMSI.

“In part, this has been to develop public programs like the symposium, but it has also been a process of researching and recontextualizing archival collections to make them more accessible and usable.”