IASA's 55th Annual Conference

This session consists of 4 presentations and a joint Q&A with the presenters. The session contains:

➺ Viktor Johansson - The Karl Tirén Joik Collection – Experiences and lessons learned nominating Sami cultural heritage to the UNESCO Memory of the World programme (Short presentation)
➺ Nathan Gibson - Community Engagement Through Archives-Based Artist Residencies (Long presentation)
➺ Dzidzor Azaglo , Crystal Bi Wegner - Collective Imagination throughout Time: How imagination has shaped the physical landscape of our communities in Boston (Long presentation)


**Abstracts:**

➺ The Karl Tirén Joik Collection – Experiences and lessons learned nominating Sami cultural heritage to the UNESCO Memory of the World programme
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Viktor Johansson (Short presentation)
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Between 1913-1915, the Swedish folk music collector Karl Tirén recorded about 300 phonograph cylinders containing Sami joik. In 2023, the Karl Tirén Joik Collection was nominated to the UNESCO Memory of the World programme, which aims to protect and preserve archives with culturally valuable documents. The application to UNESCO was initiated by Svenskt visarkiv, a governmental archive who is the current owner of the collection. The phonograph recordings made by Karl Tirén is one of the oldest sound collections in Sweden. The recordings were made in a time when the Sami culture was oppressed by the Swedish society. Today, the collection is a unique documentation of one of the world's recognized indigenous peoples (as well as one of five national minorities in Sweden) and the collection has great significance for the survival and development of the Sami joik. The Karl Tirén collection also tells us stories about changing roles of the archives: From being a part of the construction of the modern national state – where the cultural expressions of minorities often have been neglected – the archives of today aspires to be public sources available to all people. The focus of this presentation is the Karl Tirén collection. But foremost, it discusses experiences from working with the UNESCO nomination. The process has provided important experiences and lessons learned about the work of a governmental archive in relation to the rights of national minorities to decide for themselves about the use of their cultural heritage.

➺ Community Engagement Through Archives-Based Artist Residencies
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Nathan Gibson (Long presentation)
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In 2022, traditional fiddler Beth Hoven Rotto spent the spring semester as UW-Madison’s Musician-In-Residence, exclusively working with the Arnold Munkel Collection in Mills Music Library. Rotto’s knowledge and mastery of Upper Midwestern fiddle traditions and its many community members vastly enhanced the archival collection guides and her residency provided undergraduates with firsthand access to Upper Midwestern fiddle and dance traditions. Transcribing more than 80 tunes from the Munkel collection, Rotto then formed a community ensemble and taught both community and campus members selections from the varied and oft-forgotten Scandinavian-American old-time tunes held in the Mills Music Library's Wisconsin Music Archives. This presentation highlights the resident-musician, institutional, and communal benefits unlocked when archives incorporate folk musicians and traditional artists into residency programs.

➺ Collective Imagination throughout Time: How imagination has shaped the physical landscape of our communities in Boston
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Dzidzor Azaglo , Crystal Bi Wegner (Long presentation)
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Department of Public Imagination - a public art and archival project - examines archives of collective, horizontal imagination work by communities of color in Boston. Often our communities are reshaped by top-down design in ways that don’t take into account the needs of residents of color. Horizontal imagination work, by contrast, is a result of communities designing and imagining what they need based on deep local knowledge. Through Dzidzor Azaglo and Crystal Bi’s work, they highlight archives which preserve collective imagination through history; drawing a map throughout Boston to hard-won community spaces such as Villa Victoria, Mary Hannon Park, or Chinatown Library. These spaces demonstrate how collective imagination work has altered the physical landscape of our city with more equitable and vibrant public spaces and community infrastructure. Through this public art project, Dzidzor and Crystal also engage folks in Boston to add to a living archive through an installation of a Dream Portal for Imagination Collection and live soundscape events which encourage collaborative envisioning.