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The Modern Endangered Archives Program, or MEAP, a UCLA Library initiative that expands the capacity for digital preservation around the world, has announced 26 new grants awarded to communities and archives from 21 countries.
MEAP will provide $1.47 million in grants to its sixth cohort of grantees — the most in the program’s history. The selected projects will document and digitize a broad range of cultural heritage materials including: archival materials in eastern Ukraine; films in Ghana; newspapers in India; and architectural plans in Morocco. MEAP’s first project in the Ivory Coast to digitize the photographic archive of Paul Kodjo, “the father of Ivorian photography,” is also one of the grant winners.
The program was launched in 2018 with support from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. To date, over $5 million in grants have funded 139 projects in 57 countries.
Expanding Opportunity for Digitization
The new MEAP cohort demonstrates exciting growth of the Program over the past six years. Of the 26 new projects to be funded, 8 grew out of previously funded MEAP Planning Grants and an additional 5 projects are follow up grants, reflecting the success of MEAP funds to jumpstart archival projects and expand opportunity for digitization around the world. MEAP Planning Grants provide communities, archives and researchers with time and funding to organize and inventory archival materials, safeguard endangered materials and plan for digitization efforts. New MEAP grants reflect the success of these grants across the world.
For example, the Museo del Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken in Argentina completed an extensive survey of clippings and other documents related to the Film Censorship Committee, cataloging materials associated with censorship and the restriction of freedom of expression during the dictatorship years, such as reports, institutional observations, press kits for film distribution, photographs, posters, hand programs and film newscasts from 1969–1984. The team will now move forward with digitization, ensuring that their most requested materials are preserved and accessible for researchers in years to come. In India, a team of researchers met with fisher families in Tamil Nadu to document magazines, books, pamphlets, campaign booklets and souvenirs that trace the history, community life, struggles, occupational experiences and traditional knowledge from fishers. These materials are held across the community and MEAP resources have enabled documentation for the first time. A new Project Grant will ensure that these materials are digitized and accessible while families maintain ownership.
Beyond the documentation work that defines MEAP Planning Grants, many grantees engage in robust community conversations, meeting with community leaders and collection owners and hosting training events and workshops that build buy-in for digitization and secure permission for online publication. “I am particularly proud to see so many previous Planning Grant teams apply for and receive grants for digitization,” said Rachel Deblinger, Director of MEAP. “It’s a joy to build relationships with grantees over the years and to see elements of MEAP funding, including support for training, professional development and community engagement, grow into projects that will enable access to culture and knowledge that might otherwise have been lost.”
The expansion of MEAP can also be seen in the UCLA Library Digital Collections, where MEAP funded collections now account for over 73,000 unique digital objects, including photographs, newspapers, audio recordings, news reels, manuscripts and personal correspondence.
It’s a joy to build relationships with grantees over the years and to see elements of MEAP funding, including support for training, professional development and community engagement, grow into projects that will enable access to culture and knowledge that might otherwise have been lost.
New Regional Grants Funded
This new cohort of projects also includes the first set of Regional Grants, meant to create opportunity for expanded digitization by providing $100,000 to past grantees. In their first year of availability, MEAP will fund three regional grants, supporting digitization of 14 archival collections across Latin America, including posters, photographs, organizational collections and audiovisual materials from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. Each of the three projects will expand access to archival materials that help expand and reimagine the history of Latin America, looking beyond urban centers and dominant political narratives. Instead, these projects will create global access to materials that document human rights activism in the Andean countryside of Peru; efforts to investigate cases of forced disappearances throughout Latin America; and rural responses in Brazil during a period of mass immigration, scientific and infrastructural progress, and the abolition of slavery.
(Ac)counting the Countryside: Forestry, Rural Management & the Coffee Economy of Southeastern Brazil (1890-1990)
The Struggle of Relatives of the Detained Disappeared in Latin America
Archives of Memory and Persistence: Human Rights in Peru / Archivos de la Violencia y Sobrevivencia
Engaging Communities around the World
Local community voices will play a central role in describing all MEAP funded collections, adding new voices into the archive. This cohort includes projects that diverse voices – including those left out of national archives and global discourse – are documented, preserved, and globally accessible. Community archives in Tajikistan, Libya, Ivory Coast, and Indonesia will work to capture cultural narratives, images, and individual voices. MEAP funded work will also ensure that political resistance and the efforts of activists are preserved in Malaysia, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico and beyond.
Some project teams have already started engaging community members in their work. In São Paulo, Brazil, in Cascalho, a neighborhood founded in an ex-rural settlement in the current municipality of Cordeirópolis, work has already started on “(Ac)counting the countryside: forestry, rural management & the coffee economy of Southeastern Brazil (1890-1990).” Project Lead Dr. Bruno Witzel invited community members into the archive at the Associção Trevisani nel Mondo - Cascalho to examine historical records from their own community for the first time. Witzel captured the excitement: “These historical documents have been housed at the association for years, but it was only yesterday that the directors looked into them with care and time. They were all astonished and amazed. [One community member] Mr. Zequita found his own registries as a schoolboy and was excited about it. Some minutes later, he found the registries of a childhood friend of his and immediately shared a photo of it with her, which apparently caused a festive excitement in the community's What’s App group. The excitement in that room was something to behold!”
Work on “Archives of Memory and Persistence: Human Rights in Peru / Archivos de la Violencia y Sobrevivencia” has also started in Ayachucho, Peru. Project Lead, Dr. Charles Walker, has already met with the “mothers of the Plaza” in Ayacucho, working to start organizing their collection, capture their experiences, and launch digitization. The team has also held meetings with the leadership of ANFASEP (National Association of Relatives of Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared Persons of Peru) and will follow up with a public workshop on archival preservation at the ANFASEP headquarters in Ayacucho in November. Read more about Dr. Walker’s project in the UC Davis Letters & Science(opens in a new tab).
New Call for Applications
For those seeking funding to work with endangered collections, the Modern Endangered Archives Program will offer another round of funding with preliminary applications due November 15, 2024. The 2024-25 Call for Applications(opens in a new tab) is now live and we invite applications that focus on preserving endangered collections from the 20th and 21st Centuries that reflect community voices, cultural expression, and historical experiences that have been left out of national narratives and archives.
Congratulations to all Cohort 6 projects
REGIONAL GRANTS
The Struggle of Relatives of the Detained Disappeared in Latin America (Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela)
Host Institution: Asociación Civil Memoria Abierta (Argentina)
Project Lead(s): Maria Alejandra Pavicich
(Ac)counting the Countryside: Forestry, Rural Management & the Coffee Economy of Southeastern Brazil (1890-1990) (Brazil)
Host Institution: Fundação Getulio Vargas (Brazil)
Project Lead(s): Bruno Gabriel Witzel de Souza; Thales Zamberlan Pereira; Leonardo Antonio Santin Gardenal; Mariana de Aguiar Ferreira Muaze
Archives of Memory and Persistence: Human Rights in Peru / Archivos de la Violencia y Sobrevivencia (Peru)
Host Institution: University of California, Davis (U.S.)
Project Lead(s): Charles Walker; Maria Jaime; Ruth Borja
PROJECT GRANTS
Intersectionality in the Archives: Black and Feminist Brazilian Collections (Brazil)
Host Institution: Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento - CEBRAP (Brazil)
Project Lead(s): Paulo Ramos
Digitization of South Indian Cinema Photographs by R. N. Nagaraja Rao (India)
Host Institution: French Institute of Pondicherry (India)
Project Lead(s): Rameshkumar Kothandapani
Archiving Printed Sources of Fishworkers in Tamil Nadu (India)
Host Institution: French Institute of Pondicherry (India)
Project Lead(s): Bhagath Singh; Balasubramanian Dhandapani
Imagining Ivorian Independence: The Photographic Archive of Paul Kodjo (Ivory Coast)
Host Institution: Les Rencontres du Sud (Ivory Coast); University of Massachusetts Amherst (U.S.)
Project Lead(s): Elizabeth Jacob; Ananias Léki Dago
Archives of Resilience: Digitally Preserving Haitian National Heritage (Haiti)
Host Institution: Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) at Florida International University (U.S.)
Project Lead(s): Katie Coldiron; Jamie Rogers; Frederick Mangonès; Tony Marcelli
Channel 7 News Belize Video Digitization Project (Belize)
Host Institution: Tropical Vision Ltd. (Belize)
Project Lead(s): Jules Vasquez
Film censorship in Argentina (1969-1984): Building New Research Sources (Argentina)
Host Institution: Asociación Civil Amigos del Museo del Cine “Pablo Christian Ducrós Hicken” (Argentina)
Project Lead(s): Ana Laura Lusnich; Pamela Gionco; Paula Félix Didier; Gabriela Solís
Digitizing South Africa's TRC Video Archive (South Africa)
Host Institution: Foundation for Human Rights (South Africa)
Project Lead(s): David Forbes
Afro-indigenous Brazil Struggles for Recognition: Videos & Photos 1980-2010 (Brazil)
Host Institution: Instituto Cultural Cultne (Brazil)
Project Lead(s): Victoria Birkbeck; Ana Lucia Nunes de Souza; Idjahure Achkar Kadiweuu
Digitizing the “Council of Ethnic Communities ‘We are all Equal’" Legacy (Guatemala)
Host Institution: Swiss Peace Foundation - swisspeace (Switzerland)
Project Lead(s): Corsin Blumenthal; Angélica Macario Quino
Visualizing and Sharing Memory: Indigenous Resistance in Chiapas 1998-2011 (Mexico)
Host Institution: Americas Media Initiative (U.S.)
Project Lead(s): Alexandra Halkin; Francisco Esau Vazquez Mota
Folklore Materials from the Rudaki Institute of Language and Literature (Tajikistan)
Host Institution: Folklore Program, George Mason University (U.S.)
Project Lead(s): Benjamin Gatling; Abdulmomin Majnunov; Nicholas Seay
Building Memory in Casablanca, Morocco (1917-1980) (Morocco)
Host Institution: Association Mémoire des Architectes Modernes Marocains (MAMMA, Morocco)
Project Lead(s): Lahbib El Moumni; Johanna Sluiter
Central Film Library Analogue Video Digitization (Ghana)
Host Institution: Ghana Academy of Film and Television Arts (Ghana)
Project Lead(s): Rebecca Ohene-asah; George Bosompim
Digitization of the "Tikkatir" Newspaper (India)
Host Institution: Roja Muthiah Research Library (India)
Project Lead(s): R. Prakash
PLANNING GRANTS
Protecting a Vulnerable Past: Preserving Local Archives in Bucha, Ukraine (Ukraine)
Host Institution: University College Cork (Ireland)
Project Lead(s): Tatiana Vagramenko
A Survey of Endangered Manuscript Libraries in Jebel Nafusa, Libya (Libya)
Host Institution: Ibadica (France)
Project Lead(s): Paul Love; Ali Mazawi; Soufien Mestaoui
Malaysia & Singapore's Transnational Progressive Networks, 1950s - 1980s (Singapore & Malaysia)
Host Institution: Pusat Sejarah Rakyat (Malaysia)
Project Lead(s): Muhammad Zikri Bin Abdul Rahman
A Community Archive of Rondas Campesinas de Chota (Peru)
Host Institution: CISEPA, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (Peru)
Project Lead(s): Alejandro Diez Hurtado; Paulo Drinot; Sandra W Rodríguez; María Rodríguez Jaime
Sahrawi Archives Survey (Algeria)
Host Institution: Seton Hall University (U.S.)
Project Lead(s): Sarah Ponichtera; Joseph Huddleston
Los Subterráneos (Cuba)
Host Institution: Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola (Spain)
Project Lead(s): Lucía Malandro; Daniel Saucedo; Fabio Quintero; Josué García Gomez
Southern African Transnational Cinema (Tanzania, Zanzibar)
Host Institution: Film Lab Zanzibar (Tanzania)
Project Lead(s): Simon Bright; Martin Mhando
Surveying the Recordings of the Oral Traditions Association (ATL), Indonesia (Indonesia)
Host Institution: Northern Illinois University (U.S.)
Project Lead(s): Hao Phan