MARCH: Memory-making and Anti-custodial Reclamation for Collaborative Histories
The ImaginX en Movimiento (IXeM) Collective and the Institute for Digital Arts & Humanities (IDAH) are each committed to providing a platform for historically excluded communities to document their often unheard or unseen histories as a way to share their stories and experiences as they navigate their lives amid predominantly white, male, heterosexual, Christian, English-speaking community structures. Out of this shared commitment, MARCH (Memory-making and Anti-custodial Reclamation for Collaborative Histories) was born. MARCH exists to support the preservation needs of historically-underrepresented communities to bring awareness about their socio-cultural identities and narratives through community-led digital archiving and storytelling. We hope to offer communities a platform to share how they maintain or adapt their socio-cultural traditions as they navigate the dominant socio-cultural structures as part of their everyday lives. We also hope that this public-engagement platform will allow historically excluded communities to surface customs and traditions that are otherwise suppressed or significantly altered so that community members are better positioned to take collective agency to advocate for and preserve their socio-cultural identities.