Indonesian Activism Archive

Activism in Indonesia significantly influences people’s lives and shapes societal change. Besides its impact, activism also produces valuable knowledge that can be shared with others. Gaining insight from this knowledge and understanding the history and impact of activist movements can help prevent future mistakes, preserve history of these movements, give crucial context, and inspire others to carry on these movements.

However, because this knowledge is often produced in informal and non-formal settings and lacks proper archives to learn from, many stories of activism and the knowledge created in the pursuit of activism are often at risk of being lost, forgotten, or overlooked.

This Master's thesis seeks to address this gap by focusing on designing and investigating a centralised archival website for Indonesian activism that is built through a decentralised, collaborative process. Its content and content curation are driven by contributions from diverse activist groups in a participatory manner, while the website serves as a central hub for activist histories and knowledge.

This approach ensures that the website remains inclusive, representative, and ethically grounded, and at the same time it centralises access to activist records for those interested to learn from the archives of activist movements.

This thesis delivers a design for a centralised archival website focused on Indonesian activism, while theoretically proposing how decentralised and collaborative processes could shape its content and curation. The project aims to foster ethical, inclusive archival practices and inform future development of activist archives.