The internship that I have been working with is the Chester Justice Collection. As I have been working on this digital archive, I’ve found that the most relevant thing we discussed in class was during week one! We were asked to read two different articles about digital archives and grassroot projects. The first was “‘A process where we’re all at the table’: community archives challenging dominant modes of archival practice”, and the second “‘To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing’: Uncovering the Impact of Community Archives”. I ended up writing my final essay about this subject, so I had a lot of experience reading from various sources beyond our syllabus all aimed at dissecting the importance of digital archives for at-risk communities.
The themes that were present in these readings are central to the work I am doing with Chester Justice Collections. In my work on my final project, I explained why there was a necessity for these archives, and now I am actually doing the work of carrying out the creation of one. There are two main components to my internship; the behind the scenes work of the website, and the community engagement to ensure the archive is what is in the best interest of Chester residents. One of the readings from my final project really emphasized on the incredible importance of community involvement in the creation of the archive. The work I have been doing recently is on this side of things. I have been in touch with community partners, recording videos of their stories for the website, and always checking in to make sure that they are happy with the end product. These articles that I read for class play a key role in practically every aspect of my internship.
While I believe that the work I am doing in my internship is extremely important, if I was given the opportunity to speak with mayor Stefan Roots, to be perfectly honest the first issue I would bring up would most likely not be about digital archival. I would bring up the issues we learned about from the weeks we spoke about the effects of environmental racism on Chester. I would speak to him about the health issues numerous residents are facing because of the incinerators and back up this argument with data from articles we read during the fall semester. If I were to speak to Stefan Roots about something pertaining to the specific work I am doing with my internship, then maybe I would ask him to endorse the Chester Justice Collections and get him to show up to our Women Changemaker Event on Saturday!