Participatory Design for the Anarchive: The Amagugu Ethu / Our Treasures Documentation Project

Abstract

This paper documents the collaborative design project: "Amagugu Ethu / Our Treasures: Understanding Zulu History and Language with Zulu-Speaking Communities and Their Belongings."With eight Zulu experts, and the company Museum in a Box [32], we collaborated to create an oral history documentation project that focuses on the belongings at the Iziko South African Museum (SAM). Using the Museum in a Box tool, we created a movable, audio-based exhibit that compiled stories and images of objects from the SAM, for use back in the community in KwaZulu-Natal. This paper documents our shared process and considers the development of this exhibit and documentation project as a kind of participatory anarchive or counter archive [20, 41]. We connect practices and theories in participatory design with those in museum studies and archival studies; and show the productive tensions that exist in an experimental, community-engaged oral history documentation project.