IASA 2019 Annual Conference

The challenges and opportunities that archival audio create are well known and understood within this conference. In Scotland, to address these issues we have established a professional network, Scotland’s Sounds, for all organisations and individuals with a stake in looking after and providing access to our heritage on audio formats. Through collaborative exchanges including, projects, knowledge exchange and training, public engagement activities and sharing skills and equipment we have managed to make a valuable impact on sound archives in the sector beyond the usual institutions that work with sound.
One of the challenges that Scotland’s Sounds have set ourselves is to do more to foster public engagement and creative re-use of the archive material, not just by providing access to the material but by facilitating projects and engaging new audiences to inspire creativity. As well as introducing the work of the network I will present a few examples and case studies of some of the work that we have undertaken in the network through projects, including for example running animation workshops around oral histories with children and community groups, and supporting artist-in-residence schemes to use the archive in their creative practice. In Scotland the field of ethnology is being revived around the wave of “Creative Ethnology”, resulting in ethnological practice manifesting in creative practice of, for example, new music, theatre or writing, inspired by fieldwork. I would suggest that similarly archives of the future will move beyond the preservation/access paradigm to become more active, rather than passive, in the creative re-use of its collections.