Introduction to Living Archives

Living Archives might be a term new for many, but they aren’t an unknown concept. They have been considered a living, breathing, and moving revolution for several decades. Archives employ various mediums for capturing and transmitting events to the target audience as they occur. Archiving a budding youth participatory research has been adopted as the stepping stone of the decolonial social transmission of marginalized experiences in this new research project.

What is a Living Archive?

A living archive has been defined in several ways throughout history. For this project, it can be described as an initiative that caters to centering the underrepresented voices by registering the accounts of culturally diverse experiences.

As Ketelaar (2001, 2009) defines it;

A living archive is an act of collective remembering and a site of embodied learning with a tendency to fuel social movements

Documenting Racial Bullying Experiences in Athens

As part of the PhD project by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, the Greek youth of African descent are endeavoring to document their struggles with growing up as a racial minority in the country. Often considered marginalized with little to no legal and tedious social citizenship process, the AfroGreeks struggle to get their voices and stories registered.

Challenges Faced by AfroGreek Youth

The lack of legal freedom coupled with the excessive racism, bullying, and microaggressions in their everyday life leads to the youth struggling with a sense of belonging in a country they have known as home throughout their life but which regularly fails to feel like home.

The Anti-Bullying Collective: Co-created by Youth

Co-created with the youth involved in this project, the Anti-Bullying Collective is the first idea of its kind that focuses on counter-storytelling from the youth stakeholders themselves. It strives to dismiss the hegemonic Western narratives on what the research scholarship with the minority population should be like.

Building a Database of Racial Bullying Experiences

Together with the young knowledge-holders, the project dismantles the traditional research scholarship and builds a database of how, why, where, and in what ways racial bullying manifests itself.

The Anti-Bullying Collective’s First Year

The Anti-Bullying Collective is currently in its first year. It is serving as a coalition of AfroGreek youth fighting against the racial (cyber) bullying pandemic. The first collection including a list of zines, cards, letters, and other content is set to be released in September 2024.

Engaging with the Collection

The collection will be accompanied by an explanation of the artworks and accompanying material and will be open to virtual feedback and public viewing in Athens, Greece (by appointment only). Anyone who wishes to engage with the collection and interact with it in a social experiment can reach out to the coordinating candidate at kmaqbool@media.uoa.gr.

More updates to follow soon on the website.