Thinking about “community archives” from the frontlines of natural disasters

Community archives are a way for local people to preserve and make use of records of their communities. This is a program for widely sharing these skills by combining the records of multiple regions and experiences. Keeping records helps us to communicate memories of events. In particular, at the sites of natural disasters – frequent occurrences across Japan – many things are lost, but there are also countless attempts to record scenery, landscapes and events.

This program brings together participants who have been involved in disaster relief efforts around the country. We make use of knowledge from resources such as Sendai Mediatheque, a library which opened the “Center for Remembering 3.11” after the Great East Japan Earthquake and became a platform for a variety of projects in which local people preserve records and engage in diverse activities; Art Support Tohoku-Tokyo which Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Arts Council Tokyo have worked on since 2011; and the Tokyo Artpoint Project’s Karoku Recycle initiative. In 2024, we will hold a discussion to share skills developed in response to devastating earthquake damage to the Noto Peninsula.