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

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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 [41, 20]. 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.