The archive is a dwelling place not only for the historical record, but also for people. Nonetheless, ideas of welcome and hospitality are not often associated with the archive despite engagement and inclusion often being at the heart of organisational strategy. To complicate things further, records and archives can be key sites of trauma. Leading practitioners Nicola Laurent and Kirsten Wright, have outlined five broad principles to trauma-informed approaches in the archive:- safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment. Michelle Caswell has also worked on the potential of the community archive for liberatory memory work, healing and justice. Nevertheless, centring people and attending to their experiences, can be challenging. For those who belong to groups that have been historically marginalised or have lived experience of diaspora or trauma at the hands of the state, the experience of engaging with archives, and specifically government records, is challenging. In this paper, Chloe Lee, explores ideas of dwelling as a response to trauma-informed approaches to the archive, discussing key moments of reflection that offered insights into the limit of welcome, through workshops co-delivered with Bethany Thompson, and documentation by illustrator, Angela Vives. The session will engage with what it might mean to work slowly and urgently, attending to the embodied and emotional possibilities of archive collections now.

This paper proposes that embracing the archive as a site of intergenerational connections and utilising intergenerational practice in the archival process would be an effective method of democratising records and illustrating the archive’s value to broader society.

It will be argued in the paper that the links between the activities of intergenerational practice are eminently compatible with the role of the archive in society, and that embracing some of the key tenets of intergenerational practice as a lens for the archive profession, we can better understand and advocate for the archive as an institution and the profession.

The paper aims to encourage professionals in the sector to adopt intergenerational practice as a new and effective solution for making the archive more collaborative, engaging, and representative of the communities they serve.