Preserving Endangered Cultural Memory at a Time of Heightened Risk: Evaluating the Recordings at Risk Grant Program, a Shift Collective Report

In this report, researchers from Shift Collective summarize the findings from their two-year assessment of CLIR’s Recordings at Risk regranting program. Since 2017, this program has awarded over $6 million to collecting organizations for the preservation of audio and audiovisual content on fragile and obsolete media. Zakiya Collier, Lynette Johnson, and Gabriel Solís surveyed and interviewed program participants and other stakeholders in order to understand the program’s impact and future potential. Insights from their investigation will help CLIR better serve applicants, and the potential redesign of the program mapped out in the report can help CLIR and other cultural heritage funders make more substantive changes to better serve under-resourced collecting organizations.