University of Amsterdam Students Research VBW Case StudyUniversity of Amsterdam Students Research VBW Case Study

Ella Bailey, Emma Brent, Ranish Balak, and Robrecht Haex, students of the MSc Archival and Information Studies (led by Dr Annet Dekker) at the University of Amsterdam, researched Het Nieuwe Instituut's Collection in January 2022, in particular the Vrouwen Bouwen Wonen network archive as case study (and its implications in the planned tools Archival Care Rider, and the HNI acquisition document Archival Processing Plan+. Quote:

"The term network-archive was chosen to describe the VBW archive at an early stage of the process of thinking about and acquiring parts of the archive. However, the implication of this term has not been expanded upon yet. What exactly is meant by a network-archive? This question is especially relevant because it touches upon two domains: archival practice and an understanding of the VBW movement."

From: Vrouwen Bouwen Wonen: A Network Archive Case Study Report, by Ella Bailey, Emma Brent, Ranish Balak and Robrecht Haex.

The Vrouwen Bouwen Wonen network archive enables us to better understand the situated, kaleidoscopic map of national and international women's movements, work, and feminist design strategies in spatial practice - particularly from the 1980s to the early 2000s. The archive, the practitioners involved, the way their network was structured, their modes of operation and outputs challenge the institutional operations carried out up until this point in Het Nieuwe Instituut.

The UvA course project focused on creating an inventory or index in the archive or Archival Processing Plan+ for one of these case studies, the recently acquired network archive of Vrouwen Bouwen Wonen. Bringing together the archives of Vrouwen Bouwen Wonen creates a collection that offers a much broader picture of the feminist and emancipatory ideas in architecture and urban planning that is significant for architectural heritage, and thus has greater impact than individual source material. The acquisition of the first Vrouwen Bouwen Wonen archive by the Nieuwe Instituut is a sign of the urgency of the situation. Nieuwe Instituut also has the ambition to propose ways of dealing with sensitive and under-represented archival material, and to provide handles and best practices on how to approach the material in its collection. In this respect, we refer to proposals such as Words Matter, by the RCMC/Tropenmuseum.

The proposed networked inventory builds on the existing policy of the Nieuwe Instituut and its archive or Archival Processing Plan+ and incorporates insights from this course as well as insights from the Collecting Otherwise donor-institution relationship tool, the Archival Care Rider. Specifically, through the Archival Care Rider we aim to: collect additional information on the donated documents, create archival spaces where multiple voices on the sources can coexist, offer co-constituted ideas for the care and maintenance of the archive, and underline its current and future relevance.