ALTERNATIVE ARCHIVE PROJECT

Derby Museums has recently begun a project to digitise photographs, record oral histories and commission new portraits working across Derby’s South Asian diaspora communities. The project, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund is a response to research into Derby Museums’ collections where South Asian voices have been found to be under-represented. This is partly because much of the documentation relating to collection objects does not record personal stories, except perhaps having brief information about makers, owners or donors.

The rich collections of family photographs in South Asian homes hold stories almost completely lacking from Derby Museums’ social history collections. Diverse South Asian communities account for approximately 15% of Derby’s population and their lives, particularly over the last 50 years, have shaped the city.

We hope the project will enable us to create a richer, fuller picture of the history of Derby from the 1950s-80s by developing a community-led archive of material which might otherwise never be publicly accessible. The project runs alongside Derby Museums’ work, supporting a heritage project led by Derby West Indian Community Association to document and make more accessible the organisation’s historic archive – a project also funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

During the development process for the Alternative Archive project, a leadership group with lived experience of Derby’s South Asian communities, identified the need to document the stories of their parent’s and grandparent’s generations, amid concern that photographs and contextual information held in personal collections would be lost to historical record or retained without important accompanying information.

The project team is already exploring stories about growing up in Derby, school life, shopping, home life, night life, sports teams, the development of faith centres and work – the latter including stories that connect directly to collections currently on display at the Museum of Making. South Asian communities have not always engaged with Derby Museums, and we are working hard to reduce barriers and develop relationships. We want to find new methods for shaping archives for the future and supporting new ways of working that are community-led and enriching by contextualising the collections with personal images and histories that are often lacking.

Through the project we will be collaborating with multiple partners and co-delivering with Black Country Visual Arts (BCVA), who have experience of developing a similar archive of images and stories in Wolverhampton (the Apna Heritage Archive). Led by photographers and curators working in socially engaged practice, BCVA has links across the Midlands and a reputation for supporting photographers of colour through the Reframed Network.

Together we will work with a group of volunteers to co-develop and maintain the archive, and we will also be working with students from the University of Derby. Skills sharing will be at the heart of the project, alongside engaging new audiences with heritage. We will collaborate on an exhibition at the Museum of Making during 2024 and we also anticipate connecting with the FORMAT International Photography Festival to share learning from the project across the sector.