8 MEMORJA
Yoked farm horses, Siggiewi. 1950-1951 - Philip Pisani Collection
8
MEMORJA
8.1
Introduction
MEMORJA is the oral, sound and visual archive of the National Archives of Malta intending to become the Maltese Islands’ main depositor of national and public memory. By employing cutting-edge research, methodologies, theoretical and archival approaches, Memorja collects, records, transcribes and preserves community/shared and individual memories, oral history/traditions, knowledge and experiences as well as makes them available for research, interpretation and educational purposes. MEMORJA’s team had started fieldwork in 2017 through face-to-face pre-interview meetings, leading to the creation of networks in the community. These new relationships with individuals from different backgrounds allowed members of the public to share their stories with the project through oral and video interviews and the donation of personal photographs, letters, film reels and artefacts. Given the opportunity to have their experiences documented for future research, these ‘partners’ are today addressing a lacuna often not found in official documentation and are thus providing more balanced and rounded perspectives on numerous themes and subjects.
8.2
Covid-19 pandemic theme
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting implementation of social distancing measures meant that fieldwork and face-to-face interviews – the methodology and bedrock of the project – was largely compromised. Research and fieldwork on existing themes had to be curtailed and the MEMORJA team shifted its attention to cataloguing its ever-increasing material. However, the project was proactive in transforming this challenging situation into an opportunity through the introduction of an initiative: The COVID-19 Pandemic Memory Project. Its aim is to preserve the experiences and memories of the public through the collection of journals and private diaries written during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are also collecting photographs and videos of everyday life during the pandemic, caricatures created by Maltese cartoonists and artists and other media such as newspapers which are paramount in reporting the pandemic’s situation in Malta. In this way, calls for further collaboration with the public enables work on MEMORJA to keep on going. Annual Report 2020
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