Archive - Lore

Photo archive Tag-Team: (current most-active archives project)

Come help tag older photos which didn't have as much metadata so that we have a far more searchable database. We've got stuff from ~2010-2021 which needs some tagging so we can find what year the May Queen first wore trousers, look up what pyramids Reds were doing ten years ago, or see if Processions had shakers in 2017 without having to go through every photo in the album. Our photo archive is a huge boon both on a personal and historical level and we'd love to have your help in making it more useful.

How it's organised: It's running via a discord group as it makes management and comms a lot easier. You'll get a login for the archive, and you will be assigned or choose an album or section of album (you can do 50 or 500!) and then you will tag pictures with relevant tags - usually e.g. "Martin McCarthy" "Bower" "Beltane" level.

There is also some space for folk who might be up for helping others identify groups but don't have the capacity to do actual tagging, too.

Adding to the Lore:

If you know lore and legends of old, I want your stories. If you are skilled at crafting, I want your knowledge. If you have the drums of the festivals ingrained into your soul, I want your beats. If there is anything BFS-related you are interested in, and you'd be up for collecting and sharing that information, then please get in touch. You don't need to have great writing skills - we can support people who would prefer to give their information verbally. If you're into art or poetry or prose and want to bring that into the mix then fabulous! If you want to contribute and don't have anything specific in mind, but could spend some time gathering information or scribing, for example, then please get in touch as there are always little bits to do!

(Yes, basically, we'll give you homework. There might be gold stars in it for you, too.)

Adding to the Photos:

Primarily we want to add photos to eras and festivals where we have limited images - so this would primarily be those prior to 2009/2010 and also any smaller festivals thatwere more recent (Yule, Imbolc etc.). There are some caveats - you have to own and have taken the photos or asked someone to take the image for you, it has to be of moderate quality (e.g. not a shaky phone photo of a polaroid). Any personal photos uploaded will still be owned entirely by the person who submits them and won't be used without permission for any commercial or advertising purposes. If you have physical photographs and would like to submit them or have a scanner and would like to help scan photographs then please also get in touch.

Photographing the Stuff:

There will hopefully be, at some point in the year ahead, a chance to help with photographing some physical items in storage at Beltonia. I'd like to have a few experienced photographers and 'item handlers' who could maybe commit a weekend day here and there to getting things digitally imaged for posterity and available online in the archive. Contact me if you'd like to be on a mailing list for this. Contact: lore@beltane.org for any of the below that you'd like to be kept in the loop about.