Culture at risk: Digitally preserving the referendum on the 8th Amendment

As part of Culture Night 2020, the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) will be hosting a lively webinar exploring the long-term preservation of at-risk culturally significant digital materials for our event 'Culture at risk: Digitally preserving the referendum on the 8th Amendment'.

In 2018, Ireland voted to repeal the eighth amendment to its constitution, paving the way for the legalisation of abortion in certain circumstances. The ‘yes’ vote was the result of a long grassroots campaign in the approach to the referendum. Can you remember the campaign materials that you saw in the months and weeks leading up to the referendum?

• What part did social media play in this campaign?
• Why are the materials that were created and circulated online now at dire risk of being lost?
• What can be done to ensure that they survive in the long term, to be available to researchers and the public in the future?

Join the DRI to explore these questions and more in a lively webinar featuring expert speakers involved with the Wellcome Trust funded DRI project ‘Digital Preservation of Reproductive Health Resources: Archiving the 8th’.

Speakers include

• Amy Walsh, Termination for Medical Reasons (TFMR): Amy is an artist, academic, activist and lecturer. In 2016, Amy became a Director of TFMR Ireland. TFMR is a pro-choice organisation made up of women, couples and pregnant people who received a diagnosis of a severe or fatal anomaly in pregnancy in Ireland.
• Linda Kavanagh, Abortion Rights Campaign (ARC) and Together for Yes: Linda Kavanagh is an abortion rights activist, graphic designer, and social media specialist. She was a spokesperson for ARC and a Communications Officer with Together for Yes, the national civil society campaign to remove the 8th Amendment.
• Clare Lymer, National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL): Clare Lymer is the Digital Collections Officer at NIVAL. Clare will be speaking about the NIVAL Artists' Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment Archive which is currently being ingested into DRI.

Interviews are conducted by the PIs of ‘Digital Preservation of Reproductive Health Resources: Archiving the 8th’, DRI Software Engineer Kathryn Cassidy and DRI Policy Manager Aileen O'Carroll.

Book for free on Eventbrite