Collaborative models of care: preserving Australian First Nations digital cultural heritage sought to address two main issues impacting First Nation Communities.
The first being the rapid rate of technological growth and ongoing audio-visual format and software obsolescence, making digital materials one of the most at-risk forms of cultural heritage being produced and conserved today. UNESCO’s Charter on the Preservation of Digital Heritage states “The world’s digital heritage is at risk of being lost to posterity. [..] Attitudinal change has fallen behind technological change. Digital evolution has been too rapid and costly for governments and institutions to develop timely and informed preservation strategies. The threat to the economic, social, intellectual and cultural potential of the heritage – the building blocks of the future – has not been fully grasped”. The ramifications of this potential loss are even more severe for First Nations communities, which are often unequipped to actively preserve, store and access their own “obsolete” materials as well as those being handed back to them through repatriation processes.
The second underlying issue the project sought to address is the problematic history of conservation professionals going into Australian First Nations communities and attempting to ‘fix the problem’ in the form of conservation interventions. No matter how well-meaning any given individual may be, prefacing non-First Nations knowledge and skills above that of the communities themselves when caring for First Nations materials is problematic. ‘Conservation’ as practiced by contemporary cultural institutions and taught in university conservation degrees is inescapably Eurocentric, founded by anthropologists whose understanding of ‘culture’, and what it means to ‘care for culture’, is fundamentally antithetical to that of First Nations communities.
Part of piloting Collaborative models of care: preserving Australian First Nations digital cultural heritage was to research and establish ‘best practice’ for future collaborations between contemporary conservators and First Nations communities in Australia. This took into account and acknowledged the problematic history, but also provided alternative methods of engaging and contributing professional knowledge and skills in ways which are First Nations led in their form and outcomes. It is for this reason Bula’Bula Art Centre chose to work with Agency Projects to deliver this pilot project; Agency Projects is a company which acts as a conduit between the Western, Eurocentric art world and remote First Nations communities to create spaces which are culturally safe for all involved.
Agency sent Coby Edgar, a First Nations Curator and well-established cultural consultant, as a ‘cultural conduit’ to advise on what was and wasn’t culturally appropriate at all times, including advising on digitisation priorities to shortlist and be approved by the Art Centre Manager, what digitised content would and wouldn’t be appropriate to show certain members of the community (ie. images for women’s eyes only), and improved cultural literacy when communicating digital preservation concepts to members of the communities for whom English is a second language.
This project was very exciting because it centered around digitisation and digital preservation outcomes which staff and artists at Bula’Bula Art Centre and Milingimbi Art Centre themselves identified as most important for their communities.
Bula’Bula Arts is still at a very early stage in its digital preservation journey and the focus was to actively preserve and access their own “obsolete” materials from an archive spanning over 40 years. Consequently, in March/April 2024 Coby accompanied Bula’Bula Art Centre Digital Preservation Analyst Rebecca Barnott-Clement to Ramingining in North-West Arnhem Land where they spent three weeks digitising a large selection of Bula’Bula Art Centre’s archival assets (including optical discs, colour slides and photographs, approx 3000 assets in total). To advertise the digitisation project within the Ramingining community and garner interest in the archive, Coby and Rebecca worked with Art Centre staff to organise a community ‘slide night’, complete with microwave popcorn, in the local hall. At the conclusion of the three weeks Rebecca conducted a RAM assessment in consultation with Art Centre staff to highlight areas of digital preservation strength and weakness, identify achievable next steps for the Art Centre, and use the RAM assessment as both a benchmark against which to measure improvements and a tool to be used in future grant applications.
Milingimbi Art Centre, by contrast, is much further along in their digital preservation journey, having designed their own custom digital asset management (DAMs) system and having begun the ingest process. Via a number of in-person and phone interviews with art centre staff Rebecca undertook a RAM assessment for Milingimbi Art Centre for them to use as a benchmark while implementing the DAMs system. Following the RAM assessment, and having seen the successful outcomes of the work at Bula’Bula Art Centre, Coby and Rebecca were invited to travel back to Milingimbi Art Centre at a later date to work with art centre staff on their RAM assessment goals; notably including providing digitisation and digital preservation training to art centre volunteers, and working with Milingimbi Art Centre to build on and share their open-source DAMs with other Yolngu communities in Arnhem Land including Bula’Bula Art Centre.
An official second phase of the project, based on achieving outcomes identified through the RAM assessments and involving more First Nations team members, is currently being drafted in consultation with both Bula’Bula and Milingimbi Art Centres to take place later this year. A second iteration of the project, involving other art centres and digital cultural professionals, is also being planned for next year based on this collaborative model.