Archival Co‐Curation and the Indian Workers' Association ( GB )

Civil society groups play a significant role in the global social fabric, often acting as voluntary (or partially voluntary) bodies aiming to advance the interests and concerns of particular groups or communities, producing bodies of knowledge, which reflect shifting social, political and cultural landscapes, changing organisational processes as well as more personal histories and biographies. The archives of such groups are important, yet civic organisations often do not have archival obligations, support or capacity to retain archives of their work. This article engages with some of these concerns by reflecting on a process of archival co‐curation with a diasporic civil society group based in Britain, the Indian Workers' Association (GB) (IWA(GB)), engaging with the possibilities of archival co‐curation as a research method. Rooted in the literature on participatory archiving, the paper details our archival co‐curation process, from gathering the material to cataloguing through to making usable pasts. The article positions archival co‐curation as simultaneously a (contested) research method through which to collect, curate and analyse research materials alongside its potential to stimulate wider social and political engagement.