An archiving workshop took place at the Thompson Public Library yesterday.

 

Titled, “Memento: Archiving Memory”, it was led by Cree filmmaker, Jennifer Dysart, who tells us about it here.

 

“For my workshop, I decided to give people the chance to share a personal memory related to an object of significance to them. And to help them tease out the important pieces of that memory so it can be recorded and then potentially shared with future generations later.”

 

The workshop was part of a nationwide project called Home Made Visible.   Dysart tells us about the components of the project.

 

“The first stage of it was asking Indigenous people and people of colour to digitize their home movies so they could be placed in the York University Library Archives. The goal of that is to re-imagine the future of archives so they’re not such stuffy, scarey institutional things.”

 

“The second part of the project was the commissioning of several artists to make either a film or an installation.”

 

“The third part is the tour, both the films to the different libraries across Canada and also the offering of workshops, generally on the topic of archives.”

 

The workshop Dysart presented was followed by the viewing of six short films, many of them inspired by the theme of archives.

 

Dysart says she has found inspiration for her film projects through the use of archived video footage.