HORIZONTAL MENTORSHIP: A Preservation Solution for Marginalized and Underrepresented Audio-Visual Works

The “magnetic media crisis” is the idea that media created over the past century is at risk of degrading and becoming unplayable over the next 20 years. This poses an enormous challenge for content that falls outside of the collecting scope of well-resourced institutions. Audio-visual preservation on a shoestring budget is being addressed head-on by New York City’s XFR Collective (pronounced Transfer Collective). At the core of XFR’s mission is lowering the barriers to audio-visual preservation, especially material from marginalized and/or underrepresented communities. The collective’s success stems from fostering a “horizontal mentorship model,” which supports the idea that audio-visual preservation skills can be taught to anyone, given they are provided with accessible documentation, tools, and instruction. The hope is that individuals and groups may adapt XFR’s model to address their own community’s at-risk media.