Creative Archives

Flickr can do things in ways traditional archives can’t: discuss.

About the program

The whole Flickr corpus is simply massive—tens of billions of digital objects, and growing every day. It’s one of the biggest image collections humans have ever created. Its huge scale makes it difficult to look after, let alone preserve.

Creative Archives investigates accessible tactics around ethics of care, decentralization, social or local archives, explorable formats, and machine-based support. 

We’re interested in archiving the foundation itself too, from the start.

Progress Report: The Data Lifeboat viewer, circa 2024

See what you get when you download a prototype Data Lifeboat.

A Phoenix in Paris: Data Lifeboats for User-Generated Histories

The case for citizen-driven collections in enhancing our understanding of contemporary events.

Progress Report: Creating a Data Lifeboat circa 2024

Check out our prototype workflow for creating a Data Lifeboat.