Notes towards a typology of the DIY institution: Identifying do-it-yourself places of popular music preservation

Abstract

This article presents some notes towards identifying what we have come to call 'DIY institutions': places of popular music preservation, archiving and display that exist outside the bounds of 'official' or 'national' projects of collection and heritage management. These projects emerge instead from within communities of music consumption, where groups of interested people have, to some degree, undertaken to 'do-it-themselves', creating places (physical and/or online) to store-and, in some cases, display publicly-the material history of music culture. In these places, people (largely volunteers) who are not expert in tasks associated with archiving, records management, preservation, or other elements involved in cultural heritage management, learn skills along the way as they work to collect, preserve and make public artefacts related to popular music culture. These places are, we argue, suggestive of broader desires from within communities of popular music consumption to preserve popular music heritage. Keywords institution-archive-museum-do-it-yourself/DIY-popular music-heritagepreservation-sociality-affect-communities of practice Volunteer 1: We are also old! [Laughter] Volunteer 2: No! That's just her! [Laughter] Sarah: How long have you all been volunteering here? Volunteer 1: I've been volunteering over 7 years. Almost from the beginning. Volunteer 3: For me, about 3 years. Volunteer 2: Almost 2 years Sarah (to Volunteer 1): So you've been here the longest. What brought you here to volunteer? Volunteer 1: The music. And, well, we have the same friends, and I had no work. Sarah: And so you're here most days? Volunteer 2: She came for one afternoon. [Laughter] Now she's here on Thursday, on Friday, if we were open on Sunday.

Queer punx: young women in the Newcastle hardcore space

“…DIY signifies collective resistance to commodified culture (Gartside 1998, 59). For example, the principle was held that a creative amateur can make music as readily and effectively as a professional (McKay 1998;Strachan 2007;Dale 2008;Baker and Huber 2013). Ideally, a DIY music scene stresses 'values based on equality, communalism, political awareness and action, and doing things for passion and not profit' (Culton and Holtzman 2010, 274).…”

Sonic Artefacts: "Record Collecting" in the Digital Age

“…Officially authorised heritage is often state-sanctioned and supported, while self-authorised heritage receives only limited state support and is typically sustained by the enterprise and energy of enthusiasts and volunteers. Baker and Huber (2013) refer to self-authorised heritage projects such as museums, archives and halls of fame as "DIY institutions", and these may be contrasted with online community archives, such as fan shrines and social media sites focused on particular artists, genres or scenes, which seek no authorisation and may not even conceive of themselves as archives (Baker and Collins, 2015: 986-987). In Roberts and Cohen's (2014) definition, these online community archives would be described as unauthorised heritage, and the two fan practices discussed in this paper would also fit into this category since validation is received primarily from other music fans, and for the most part they operate outside official music industry frameworks and copyright legislation.…”

Alternative Radio: exhibiting radio and music heritage after the Christchurch earthquakes

“…For objects of musical culture this kind of 'heritage' framing is often at odds with music's status as 'popular' or 'commercial' culture (Brandallero and Janssen 2013, 225). However, being put together by independent practitioners from archives kept by the community organisation, and its community members, the exhibition reflected a democratisation of memory and meaning-making in museum practice (Black 2011;Baker & Huber 2013;Brandellero & Janssen 2013;Roberts & Cohen 2013).…”

“…The heritage of popular music has been surveyed in writing on dedicated museums (Reising 2001;Kam 2004;Bruce 2008;Mortenssen and Madsen 2014), exhibitions in generalist museums (Leonard 2010(Leonard , 2015, and a range of smaller scale 'DIY' spaces and archives (Baker and Huber 2013;Baker and Collins 2015;Collins 2015). Marian Leonard has described a range of music-focused exhibitions emerging from the personal practice of collecting popular music and culture artefacts (2007), addressing specific local music scenes in Liverpool (2010), Manchester, andBirmingham (2015).…”