The “Queer Archiving in India” workshop was held at ISI, Bengaluru, on Aug 17th and 18th, and was attended by more than 70 people. The aim of the workshop was to bring together people and organisations, including allied groups, who have been, or are interested in queer archiving practices in India. This interest could stem from the need for documentation arising organically from activism, as well as an interest in capturing fast fading queer experiences, behaviour, and modes of interaction. The workshop was designed to lead towards collaborative effort in the future.

The first day saw presentations by around 20 panelists from across India, who ranged from activists to film makers to website creators to professional historians and archivists. It was clear at the end of the day that “archiving” meant many things to many people, and that there is both a thriving set of people already archiving what is around them, as well as a deeply felt need to both augment the necessary skills as well as coordinate across groups and regions in the future.

The second day had a set of three general discussion sessions amongst everyone present. These ranged from more pedagogical conversations around on archiving itself (who archives, what is to be archived etc), to more practical matters of the nature and scope of networking and future collaborations, including a more technical session on digital archives.

A report of this workshop was compiled by Niruj Mohan Ramanujam, with detailed summaries of every session, as well as list of useful
resources that were talked about in these two days. Read the report here.