Fiscal Sponsorship
Southeastern Europe’s Balkan Peninsula region is where many ethnicities, religions, languages, nations, and people have historically intersected. The Balkans Community Memory (BCM) project celebrates the Balkans’ rich and nuanced history and culture, along with its diaspora, aiming to strengthen preservation of regional community memory through fostering networks, training, and general support of community-based archives and memory workers. BCM engages in a minimum of one collaborative program per calendar year in support of the preservation of Balkan culture and history.
Core Group:
Our professional collaborators have included:
2022-2023
The core group and colleagues developed a 4-day preservation training and cultural networking event in partnership with regional archive SKVER in Zaječar, Serbia. SKVER is a grassroots organization that preserves the cultural heritage of eastern Serbia’s Timok Valley region, responding to the dramatic economic and social decline of Zaječar after the closing of its vital crystal factory post-privatization. Held in August 2023 at SKVER, Timok Digital I focused on inventorying and assessing SKVER’s collections and culminated in a community open doors events in which local home movies and photographs were digitized and shared. There were additional presentations given by Serbian poet Maša Senečić, digital anthropologist Smiljena Antonijevic Ubois, and philanthropist and personal archiving specialist Jeff Ubois. Participants included archivists from around Serbia, including the Library of Bor and Yugoslav Cinematheque.
2024
February: The volunteer group became a fiscally-sponsored project of AMIA, naming the project Preserving Community Memory in the Balkans.
July: SKVER and the core group gave a panel talk titled “Timok Digital: A Model for International Community-Centered Archiving in the Balkans” at the 2nd Annual Global Audiovisual Archiving (GAVA) Conference in Toronto.
August: The core group partnered with SKVER to present a second Timok Digital Workshop, this time focusing on SKVER’s newly opened Memory Lab– the first memory lab in Serbia. SKVER staff and partners trained in care and handling of 16mm motion picture film, and digital transfer of MiniDV.
September: Members of the project partnered with the Smithsonian Institution’s Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative (AVMPI) and developed and delivered a one-day workshop with Arkadija, using CAW training modules. The workshop developed an inventory system for materials held in the archive, and techniques for newspaper conservation. The day culminated in screenings of the first Pride Parade in Belgrade. The AVMPI partnership included scans of select 16mm films from SKVER’s Ei Niš Collection.
December: Shay and Siobhan spoke about the project at AMIA’s annual conference in Milwaukee on the panel “Preserving Community Memory in the Balkans Project Report”, and Marie spoke about the Timok Digital II MiniDV transfers on the panel “The Community Speaks: Engagement and Experiences from the DVRescue Project”.
2025
The group took a much-needed break and spent time together considering the project’s scope and next steps, rebranding to “Balkan Community Memory” to simplify and include the Balkan diaspora.
December 2025: The group will present a poster at the AMIA annual conference, “Next Steps for ‘Preserving Community Memory in the Balkans’, and have collector’s edition posters as donation gifts made by Serbian artist Djo and printed at the women-founded press, Matrijaršija in Belgrade!
April 2026: We are excited to announce a two-part Community Archiving Workshop with Arkadija LGBTIQ+ Archive– a partnership between Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) Collective and BCM! Day one will be an intensive training and hands-on processing of Arkadija’s massive digital collections. Day two will focus on training and setup of Arkadija’s new community digitization project, the Memory Lab.
Your donations go directly to support programs in the Balkans and the Balkan diaspora! The first 100 donation at the link below of $50 or more will receive a one-of-a-kind hand screen-printed poster as a thank you gift for contributing to BCM. This is a limited edition run of 100 posters, hand-numbered, and signed. The posters were designed and printed by Matrijaršija, an autonomous cultural center in Belgrade, Serbia. Thank you for any and all help!
AMIA is the fiscal sponsor of the Balkan Community Memory project, supporting preservation of the rich and nuanced cultural memory of the Balkans and its diaspora through community-centered partnerships.
The many individual grassroots donors who contributed to our previous campaigns, and Myriad Consulting and VHS is Life!
