Unlocking the hidden, marginalised and particular: Coventry Digital, civic participation, storytelling and scaling sustainable place-based archives

We tell the story of Coventry University’s Coventry Digital, a digital archive project inspired by Coventry UK City of Culture 2021. Reflecting the value of accessible culture, we outline how Coventry Digital has become a place-based vehicle for collaboration with communities and citizens, making local history and revealing local knowledge. Through the project we addressed knowledge production and data ethics, and how the project could become financially viable with academic impact. Through an equitable partnership between community, business and the University, we highlight commercial conversation to create and scale sustainable digital archives.