MeCCSA 2026 Conference

Archival Perspectives on Cultural Work and Precarity

Vanessa, Dave and I  had a wonderful few days at MeCCSA 2026, presenting our collective research on regional archives.

Vanessa talked about her work developing the archive of the costume designer, Joyce Hawkins, who worked for the BBC in Birmingham from 1958-1988. I discussed creating a community archive based on Birmingham photographer and cultural entrepreneur Rhonda Wilson MBE (1953-2014). And Dave’s presentation explored Birmingham’s 1970s and early 1980s alternative press as a distinctive mode of creative labour shaped by a climate of social uncertainty and uneven urban change.

Our panel focused on archival materials to explore shifts in media and cultural practices in response to ‘unsettled times’, considering how cultural producers responded to instability in their local environments. Each archival case illuminates shifts in labour conditions, altered institutional expectations and how uneven access to resources were navigated in the production of creative work. Collectively, the papers show that creative labour in the regions did not experience instability uniformly, revealing a complex and uneven landscape of labour conditions.

The papers show how archival research can place present pressures within a wider historical perspective, providing evidence that helps understanding of how creative and cultural workers can respond to uncertain conditions and how past practices might guide contemporary thinking.

The conference provided a valuable space to share ideas with colleagues from other HEIs, and reflect on the theme: ‘From Mainstream to Margins: Capturing Developing Practices, Publics and Persuasion’. Our panel addressed the margins rather than the mainstream, but certainly captured developing practices.