Workshops
2024
April
Crossing Fonds Symposium
January
Participatory Design Workshop – Omeka Prototype
Omeka prototype exploration with all committees, led by PI Sara Diamond, the Research Access Committee, and RA Kahani Ploessl
2023
April
BLAC Tour
Led by Becky Bair.
Tour of BLAC’s new gallery space and overview of BLAC’s development, past and future projects and scheduling, and continued projections of involvement with Crossing Fonds.
April
Enhancing Archival Content, Annotation, Redescription and Engagement
Led by Andrea Fatona with Syr Reifsteck, Aisha Simpson, Becky Bair, and other BLAC team members.
The workshop considered centering blackness, pedagogy, the concept of slow research to build trusted relationships so not create more harm over time. It discussed Relationality between data and people, people who are makers and communities who supported the making of the artwork, and the accountability not just to communities but to sustainability.
We discussed the ways that digital is conflicted – Computers made by labour that is elsewhere, mining cobalt, etc. Environmental impact and the need to scaffold thinking through.
We discussed “polyvocality”, how to manage standardization and how this manifest in objects. 3 phases, excavation, digging into catalogues and being surprised, discoverability through meta data, and realizing that these point to where content exists.
There is a need for simplicity for the user. Networks of site. Like Crossing Fonds, who produced, crews, surface communal nature of work. Look for the past in present, genealogy and of ideas. Find continuity in works and communities. Research using case studies, currently with A Space catalogue and archive and 3 phases at V/Tape. The workshop discussed the process of mapping V/Tape Black artists and paralleling themes with Black diasporic studies. This work led to thinking about enhancing archival content, annotation.
The workshop then considered description for a number of video works by Black makers and built and discussed description and redescription for these, including ways of representing expressions specific to diasporic cultures. Lessons were then considered for future archival description.
April
Participatory Design Workshop – Prototype and Plugins Exploration
Led by Research Access Committee, PI Sara Diamond, and RA Kahani Ploessl at SFU.
Interactive explorations of Javascript Libraries, Plugins, and Phase 0 Prototypes in Leaflet, D3, and Mirador.
Audio of workshops were recorded for future reference by the Crossing Fonds team but are reserved as private.
April
Beyond The Archive
VIVO Programming
April
Interpretation Committee Workshop
Workshops led by Interpretations Committee at VIVO, including tour of VIVO’s collections and facilities.
Contemporary archival practices including: issues of neutrality, establishing a culture of care, Indigenous and Black sovereignty in digital context, accountability exercises, harmful language in the archives, OCAP, and related questions.
Audio of workshops were recorded for future reference by the Crossing Fonds team but are reserved as private.
February
User Journey Workshop
Committees shared and discussed single and joint persona user journeys, use case scenarios, and potential Crossing Fonds platform functionality.
Video of workshops were recorded for future reference by the Crossing Fonds team but are reserved as private.
January
Building a Digital Art History: Let’s Talk About Metadata
2022
December
Participatory Design Workshop – Creating Personas and Imagining a Platform
Led by Dr. Sheelagh Carpendale
This workshop chose a number of personas who represented individual users of archives, pairs of users and archivists to brainstorm and body storm use cases. Participants then enacted the use cases. The workshop provided a step by step sense of what a platform might provide given these different user needs. This pointed researchers towards the kinds of tools and widgets to prioritize in the next stages of Crossing Fonds.
November
Introduction to Archival and Visualization Tools and Widgets
Presented by Joey Takeda, SFU Digital Humanities Lab and Dr. Sheelagh Carpendale, Computer Science
This “show and tell” workshop was made up of two parts. It first provided an exploratory overview of open source tools and widgets used in archival applications. What kind of platforms and widgets/tools can be used in this project for the creation of this digital ecosystem? The second part of the workshop explored visualization practices and bespoke visualization research and applications that could be relevant to exploratory work within and between archives.