Listen first. Work with care. Build knowledge that remains useful.
Our approach begins with the recognition that cultural knowledge cannot be understood through images or objects alone. It must be approached through people, places, histories, practices, and lived experience.
We seek to work through five principles.
1. Community-centred engagement
We begin with the knowledge holders, practitioners, families, and communities who sustain a tradition. Their voices and perspectives should guide how their work is understood and represented.
2. Context before visibility
We do not separate a practice from its social, ecological, historical, or spiritual context. Documentation should help people understand not only what is made or performed, but why it matters and how it has evolved.
3. Responsible documentation
Documentation should be accurate, respectful, and useful. We aim to record techniques, histories, terminology, processes, and lived experiences while remaining attentive to consent, privacy, ownership, and representation.
4. Preservation through continuity
Preservation is not simply the storage of information. It also involves supporting the continued practice, teaching, adaptation, and transmission of knowledge.
5. Impact with accountability
We distinguish between intention, activity, output, and outcome. We will seek to communicate clearly what has been done, what has changed, what remains uncertain, and where further work is required.