Grassroots Archiving
A National Preservation Strategy for DanceSponsored by:

Dance Collection Danse
Society for Canadian Dance Studies/Société des études en danse canadiennes

Step 1: Roundtable Discussions (by invitation)
November 2005–July 2006

• One date to be chosen during each conference listed below:
• Montreal, November 11, 12:30-1:30 p.m. during CORD conference, location TBA
• Ottawa, June 2-10, during CDF, National Arts Centre
• Banff, June 15-18, during SDHS conference, Banff Centre for the Arts
• Toronto, July 17-21, during WDA Global Assembly, York University
• Purpose of meetings:
• To receive feedback regarding first draft of the grassroots archiving strategy (see attached strategy document)
• To identify individuals in Canada’s major dance centres who can be trained as freelance dance archivists
• To identify collections willing to house donations of dance archives (see Directory of Dance Collections on SCDS/SECD web site)

• Circulate final draft of grassroots archiving strategy for final feedback
• DCD to make contact with individuals identified in Step 1
• DCD to make contact with collections identified in Step 1

• Throw the plan into action

Grassroots Archiving
A National Preservation Strategy for Dance

1. Identify dance professionals within various major Canadian cities who would be willing to train and work as freelance dance archivists to address two needs within the dance community.
        Need one: Artists who do not have the time to preserve their work beyond placing items in boxes and putting them aside.
        Need two: Artists or companies who need one-on-one training with an archivist and who can then attend to their own preservation needs once shown the process.

2. Identify existing dance organizations, universities, libraries and archives that would be willing to become repositories for individual or company archives. Several such organizations are already listed on the Directory of Dance Collections on the SCDS/SECD web site. Currently, Dance Collection Danse is the country’s largest archives for housing Canadian theatrical dance collections. Certain municipalities across Canada have libraries that house special collections and performing arts departments. There are also archives and libraries associated with universities that will accept performing arts collections.
The various provincial archives and the National Archives of Canada do not have the mandate nor the capacity for accepting performing arts collections unless the collections belong to very high profile Canadians such as Celia Franca or Karen Kain.
        Step 2 also includes adding information about these organizations to the SCDS/SECD web site as a resource for dance artists and companies across Canada.

3. Gather the people identified in Step 1. Bring them to Toronto for two days of training at Dance Collection Danse. They will learn the basics of artifact conservation and cleaning, organizing methods, building inventories, how to handle artifacts from documents to costumes, electronic archiving, how to manage audio-visual collections and how to budget for a preservation project. They will also get a crash course in Canadian dance history and will walk away with a copy of the Encyclopedia of Theatre Dance in Canada/Encyclopédie de la Danse Théâtrale au Canada and Building Your Legacy: An Archiving Handbook for Dance.

4. The web sites of Dance Collection Danse and SCDS/SECD will maintain a directory of these freelance grassroots archivists as a resource for dance artists and companies. Dance Collection Danse will continue to act as a resource for the archivists when questions or problems arise in their work. DCD will also hold annual training seminars for new archivists.

5. It is hoped that the Canadian Dance Assembly and the Regional Arts Service Organizations will be able to organize workshops so that the grassroots archivists can pass on their knowledge to interested individuals within dance communities across Canada.

6. We would like to see coordinated efforts between CDA, the RASOs, DCD and SCDS/SECD to inform dance artists and companies that the grassroots archiving system exists and that funds from such programs as the Flying Squad or Compass (and its provincial counterparts if they exist) are available for preservation projects and education.

7. It is hoped that a playbill, poster and flyer preservation strategy can be built with the aid of the CanDance Network whereby CanDance members can agree to collect the above artifacts from each production and to deposit them regularly with Dance Collection Danse and another regional collecting organization.

8. Funding bodies need to be a part of this discussion and must be brought onside in order for this strategy to work. The support of the funders is not only needed at a financial level but at a policy level whereby artists are strongly encouraged to include a preservation strategy as part of their productions or company operations.

TO BE NOTED: This strategy targets the preservation of the artifacts but not the art work. Keeping choreography alive is another area of preservation that requires much discussion and action.

HOME > Grassroots Archiving -A National Preservation Strategy for Dance