Learn about the Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution project | One of the cultural entities supported by the Life initiative
The Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution project documents and archives all forms of free intellectual and artistic expressions of popular culture in times of revolution and war. One of its aims is to enhance the action, impact, role, and place of the artistic Syrian resistance in society. It contributes to the writing of Syrian contemporary history, forms a collective memory, and builds an archive of national intangible heritage.
The project offers a qualitative addition in terms of rendering the arts easily accessible to everyone, as the archive includes visual, literary, performance and musical works of approximately 3200 artists, writers, and producers of these works, both men and women, as individuals, collective initiatives, activists, anonymous entities and others. Collecting this large production in one open and organized place, with easy access and browsing, allows these works to reach a wide segment of the public, and to build on the accumulated experiences and knowledge of these works’ producers. In parallel, it protects this production by documenting every work, ensuring its information's accuracy and the context in which it was produced.
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Many men and women researchers, journalists, artists, historians, and people involved in the issues of memory and archives benefit from this project, as well as postgraduate students. The project's website includes a large collection of artistic, intellectual and literary archives produced during the past twelve years, in Arabic, English and French. Users can browse through six sub-projects drawn from the archive that is being built and fed new material on a daily basis. Among these projects, for example, is an interactive map of the places where these works were produced, or the "chronology" of key events that changed and affected the Syrian reality, up to the most recent project "Detainees and Disappeared", which monitors creative production on these two topics from 2011 to this day.
The curators of the project affirm that the archive is not a "popular" place, so to speak, like a movie theatre, a festival, or a gallery. Interest in the archive is still a secondary concern in our Arab culture. Its importance must increase with time, when the harsh and difficult reality are behind us.
“Creative Memory” is currently working on renovating and developing its website, which is the main carrier of the project. This update includes an artistic design that addresses the needs and necessities of electronic strolling for a dense and diverse virtual archive. The new website will be launched on the tenth anniversary of “Creative Memory” in May 2023.
For more information about the “Creative Memory” project, please visit their website and their pages on social media sites Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can also subscribe to the weekly newsletter by registering your mail here. These activities are in the context of the initiative Life: Contributions to Support Syrian Cultural Entities.
