In April 2025, KW organized a 2-day workshop, led by archivist and filmmaker, Chantal Partamian, on
how to archive as a technology that can support us in sustaining and transmitting the work and the stories. The workshop also included sessions on digital security, as we thought with guest facilitator, Nadine Moawad, about what safety means to us. Together with Chantal, we covered a spectrum of topics, from the ethics of record keeping and archiving, to creative ways of mobilizing archives. Participants were introduced to different archiving methodologies, but also had some time to start developing classification plans for their groups.
The intention of the Archiving for Ecology workshop was threefold:
1, to explore how to archive in ways that reflect how we already work, and recognizing the barriers we face, while also thinking in terms of how our work can survive. Archives thus become about strategically thinking long-term, about the stories we want to preserve–of our groups, and the communities we work with. And to think of ways that these stories can have a life of their own, and be accessed after us.
2, to connect and learn from each other, across disciplines and movements and groups. KW created a space where people interested in archives meet with those interested in seed and food sovereignty, permaculture, urban justice, feminist facilitation, sexual and reproductive justice, plant-based knowledge and practices, especially with dyes.
And 3, we were also thinking of how ecology and nature can guide the way we think about archiving and documenting: favoring symbiotic relationships rather than extractive data collection, thinking about how archives and the stories they hold can be regenerative rather than stored in bank-like structures, etc. At the same time, there are also land-based practices and technologies around us that are being forgotten, and for that– as Chantal reminded us, it is important to have the appropriate ways to document and archive, ways that respect the perspectives and desires of the people involved.
Prior to the closed workshop in which representatives from 7 groups were present, we held a public online talk with Chantal under the same title, to give more members of our communities and newcomers a chance to get acquainted with this topic and framework.
This project was made possible by a SDFHS subgrant from the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) that allowed us to bring Chant to Beirut for the in-person workshop at KW.