Westway Archive Project

The story of the Westway Trust is inspiring. How it has developed in the light of the changing communities of North Kensington is vital to our sense of belonging and pride.

We’re embarking on a three-year archiving programme so that everyone can know the history of the creation of this precious community-led asset, and to understand how their story connects to it, or could connect with it in the future. What we document will be able to assist others in the future. The benefit of this will be that a unique and important story will be captured for the community 

Through this programme, we will make a start on the archive of the Trust and we will encourage community archiving.  We are doing this because we realise our role as a potential driver for positive change and we want to capture evidence of that within the present as well as acknowledging all aspects of our collective past.  Records associated with this process are crucial to our understanding and reflecting the society in which we live and helping us shape the future. In other words archiving fits with our Community Centred approach and our ‘will’ to enable community empowerment.  

By archiving, we can secure information that may be lost to the collective memory for long periods of time.  With archives as a primary data source we can be sure that we are not missing out and by making material accessible we can ensure that communities are not missing out.  

Community archiving can be particularly beneficial to minoritised communities that may have been absent from the processes and collections of the dominant community. It can offer communities tangible and intangible benefits of belonging.  By preserving local histories, building a sense of identity, and fostering community engagement, archiving empowers communities to control their own narratives, providing access to stories and records that might otherwise be untold, lost or overlooked.  

As Kathy Eales (1998) writes, 

a key premise of community archiving is to give substance to a community’s right to own its own memories 

Storytelling about one’s own community calls attention to issues of power and politics: 

…accessible documents, photographs, oral histories and many other records which document the histories of par­ticular groups and localities, community archives and closely related heritage and memory initiatives make invaluable contributions to developing a more inclusive and diverse local and national heritage… 

(Gilliland and Flinn 2013.) 

Communities can make decisions about what is of enduring value to them, shaping collective memory of their pasts, and controlling the means through which narratives about them are constructed in the present and future.  

In a world where we can so easily isolate ourselves from diverse discourse, accessible archives can also be an important public validation.  

This is a demanding project, in which we are feeling our way and learning.  We want to share that journey with others in North Kensington, so please look out for opportunities to join in. 

If you’re interested in getting involved in our archiving project, join us at our next Archive Forum.