ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on activist archiving and public history-making in a number of participatory popular music archive sites related to popular music histories of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. This latest interest in Birmingham's music heritage was reignited by a number of projects, some in the form of physical exhibitions, others in the digital environment. It also argues that the activities taking place online go beyond the notion of do-it-yourself (DIY). Websites relating to cultural heritage, community archives, and everyday histories are proliferating online, democratising our understanding, approach and access to traditional history and archive collections. The chapter then discusses the practices of building and sustaining alternative popular music histories and archives that can be thought of as doing-it-together (DIT). It then presents how new technologies have disrupted the established archive profession and, through the prism of contemporary archival theory, it further explains how scholars and practitioners are responding to these challenges and opportunities.
