A working model for developing and sustaining collaborative relationships between archival repositories in the Caribbean and the United States

  • Bertram Lyons, Association for Cultural Equity / Alan Lomax Archive, United States
  • Anna Wood, Association for Cultural Equity / Alan Lomax Archive, United States
  • Alan Lomax coined the term “cultural feedback,” by which he meant reinforcing the world’s diverse expressive traditions and aesthetic systems by a variety of means, including the basic method of returning documentation to the places, people, and cultures from whence it came. Advances in digital technology make it possible for repositories to work together both to safeguard intangible cultural heritage and to circulate it widely.

    In 2005, the Association for Cultural Equity (the Alan Lomax Archive), in collaboration with the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College in Chicago, began a program to donate high quality digital copies of sound recordings and photographs to regional cultural repositories in the Caribbean. These documentary materials, originally collected during a pan-Caribbean survey by late ethnomusicologist, Alan Lomax, represent one of the earliest comprehensive collections of field recordings from the Caribbean region.

    This process of repatriation adds valuable primary information to archival collections in regional Caribbean repositories. Included in these relationships are stakeholders from local and national governments, historians, archival staff, and community members.

    To date, the Association for Cultural Equity, in collaboration with the Center for Black Music Research has completed dissemination projects with the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society in Nevis & St. Kitts, Folk Research Centre in St. Lucia, and Mediatheque Caraibe in Guadeloupe.

    This presentation will detail efforts to develop, implement, and maintain collaborative dissemination projects between Caribbean and United States archives.