Funding Proposal: Archiving the Commons with #MakingHistory and #OMN
Project Overview:
The #MakingHistory project, powered by the Open Media Network (#OMN), aims to rip archiving out of institutional silos and place it in the hands of communities. We’re building a decentralized, community-driven archive to preserve grassroots, activist, and historical material — the raw, messy, vital history that gets erased by corporate platforms and forgotten by mainstream institutions. By leveraging the #4opens principles, we’re democratizing access to information, empowering people to curate their own narratives, and making collective history resilient.
Key Objectives:
Archiving Nodes: Set up decentralized archiving nodes where users can actively select and preserve hashtags, content streams, and community knowledge — creating a living, breathing archive, not a dusty digital tomb.
Lossy View: Build a "lossy view" tool that shows users what content is backed up (and what’s not). This transparency lets communities collectively decide what to prioritize, focusing archiving efforts where they matter most.
Institutional Collaboration (on our terms): Partner with libraries, universities, and archives — not as gatekeepers, but as allies. Our priority is grassroots autonomy, with institutions providing backup redundancy and infrastructure, not control.
Project Implementation:
Node Setup: Deploy archiving nodes with flexible templates, letting communities spin up their own archives without corporate intermediaries. Users control what gets preserved and decide how content flows through the network.
Lossy View Feature: Develop a real-time visualization tool showing what content is already archived and where gaps exist. This lets communities self-organize around preservation priorities, rather than relying on top-down decisions.
Partnerships (with backbone): Engage with archival institutions for long-term content storage — but maintain community sovereignty. We’re not here to feed centralized repositories; we’re here to keep history wild and decentralized.
Funding Needs:
Tech Development: Pay developers to build and maintain the archiving infrastructure and features — no unpaid labor, no burnout, just solid, sustainable coding.
Community Mobilization: Fund outreach to onboard communities, train people on using the nodes, and spread awareness about the project’s radical potential.
Partnership Coordination: Resource the work of maintaining alliances with institutions, negotiating terms, and ensuring partnerships don’t slip into co-option.
Impact:
Supporting #MakingHistory means investing in a future where communities control their own stories. This project is a direct pushback against the erasure of activist histories, the loss of collective memory, and the enclosure of knowledge. It creates an enduring public archive that grows organically from the needs and desires of the people — not the dictates of tech giants or bureaucratic institutions.
Conclusion:
#MakingHistory isn’t just an archive — it’s an act of resistance. It’s about building a resilient, decentralized network where communities are the custodians of their own history. With your support, we can compost the corporate grip on knowledge, preserve radical histories, and ensure that grassroots voices aren’t silenced or forgotten. Let’s build a future where our collective past remains alive, accessible, and untamed.
Thank you for helping this funding proposal — and for helping us make history, together.
