On June 12, Network Archives Design and Digital Culture hosted a thought-provoking one-day symposium in Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam titled ‘Regenerative Archives: Transforming perspectives on design and digital culture‘. While traditional archiving prioritizes preservation, this event explored archives as living systems—engines of growth, transformation, and renewal.
The day kicked off with a keynote, ‘The Archive as Garden‘, presented by curator Pleun van Dijk and designer Jaap Knevel (Future Materials Bank). They challenged participants to think of archives less as static repositories and more like gardens: continuously evolving spaces that grow alongside their living materials, some of which may one day require their own conservation.
Next up was the launch of the NADD’s brand-new digital infrastructure: an open platform developed together with more than 50 national partners. By gathering linked open data from these partners, the system now offers a richly inclusive database with over 8,500 designers and makers, an impressive leap from just 1,940 in 2014. This grows in line with the National Strategy for Digital Heritage, and displays data via a sleek and intuitive interface, making design and digital heritage discoverable in a unified, vibrant online space.
Led by Remco van Bladel and Mariana Lanari (Archival Consciousness) and Bibi Bodegom (Projectlead digital infrastructure and website) the presentation introduced dynamic data visualisations and sparked a lively panel discussion with Lizzy Jongma (Oorlogsbronnen), Doug McCarthy (Open Future), and Migiza Victoriashoop (Amsterdam City Archives). Together, they unpacked crucial questions about sustaining and democratising digital archives as technologies, and societies, evolve.
During the lunchtime roundtables, attendees gathered around four thematic conversations exploring how to reimagine archives:
- Sound Archives: Diving into how audio can serve as both archive and testimony, tracing connections between eras, communities, and places—especially within remix cultures.
- Paper-based Archives: Spotlighting zines and creative re-publications that reanimate archival material—and democratise access through self-publishing.
- Encoded Archives: Reflecting on software, internet histories, and the ways digital memory can challenge dominant narratives.
- Growing Archives: Asking how to archive ever-changing landscapes, and sharing a case study of the Vedute piece at Nieuwe Instituut—revived through collaboration and ecological design.
Interactive sessions followed after lunch, including lectures on how sound heritage activates the archive by Atiyyah Khan, Femke Dekker and Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti. Also participants could follow practical workshops, like creating your own archive zine (with James Rae Parnell & Ari Ralph) and the How to Archive Better workshop, or experimenting with Wikidata for archival use led by Sandra Fauconnier.
Regenerative Archives was not just a symposium, it was a meaningful step toward imagining archives not only as records of the past, but as living frameworks for future stories.
Photography: Alex Heuvink
