2026 Annual Update
April 30th, 2026
As always, we’re excited to hear from you and find ways to partner to create a more just and equitable world!
How We’re Supporting the Field of Cultural Memory in 2026:
Shift Collective developed the free and open source Community Cloud Storage project to address the needs of community-based archives for affordable digital storage that offers offsite redundancy along with privacy. For decades, "the cloud" has been our digital safety net. It’s convenient, it’s invisible, but relying on corporate infrastructure carries risks. It exposes sensitive materials to:
Surveillance & Censorship: Vulnerability to government overreach or corporate gatekeeping.
Data Exploitation: Materials being used for monetization or unauthorized AI training.
Security Gaps: Centralized servers remain high value targets for large breaches.
Over the last three years, Shift Collective has partnered with diverse community-based archives to build a better way forward. We call it Community Cloud Storage—a decentralized alternative designed to keep control where it belongs: with the community.
Shift Collective continues to support the Archiving the Black Web (ATBW) project. The first cohort of 23 fellows from ATBW’s Web Archiving School (WArc School) have successfully completed the 1-year program. After receiving more than double the number of applications since our inaugural call, we have selected a second cohort of 23 Web Archiving School fellows who began their learning journey in April, 2026. WArc School is a 1-year program with a comprehensive curriculum focused on web archiving education that invites participants and instructors to bring the fullness of their experiences and interests into the classroom. This year’s fellowship is also partially sponsored by Onyx Impact, who provided financial support for 8 fellows in our newly created Information Integrity and Web Archiving fellowship. We are thankful for Onyx Impact’s support and for the continued support from the Mellon Foundation for our work. In 2026 ATBW will also continue our Freedom School Webinar Series where our guests will discuss a number of topics from digital literacy in the age of AI to careers in the archives field. We have also launched a new series of webinars that will be focused on the human, environmental, and labor impact of AI innovation. Register for the webinars on the ATBW website. You can also find our events on Instagram, Linkedin, Bluesky, and Youtube.
Historypin.org turns 15 in 2026, and we’ve launched a new beta version of the site. Shift Collective is excited to be working with Exygy, a San Francisco-based technology organization we hired in September 2024, to redevelop Historypin, one of our core free digital tools. We embarked on this multi-phased project to update Historypin.org’s technical infrastructure, refresh its visual design, and create new tools to support the use and growth of this public service humanities platform. Historypin, in use by over four thousand cultural memory organizations, strengthens community through shared local history and encourages diverse digital storytelling from communities around the world.
Strategic Planning, Program Assessments
Each year, we take on a small number of strategic consulting partnerships. We’re always thankful for these opportunities and this year we will be wrapping up our work with the Digital Library of the Caribbean and Project STAND. To learn more about the services we offer and how you can work with us, please visit the Work With Us section of our website.
Fiscal Sponsorships
Shift Collective continues to support mission and ethics aligned projects through fiscal sponsorship. In 2026 we welcome Freedom Needs a Soundtrack, as our newest partner. Freedom Needs a Soundtrack is a narrative podcast and cultural strategy project rooted in the belief that stories fuel movements. Launching on the 30th anniversary of the Tibetan Freedom Concerts on June 15, 2026, the project blends behind-the-scenes history with a bold new story collection effort that invites people to share how music, protest, and personal turning points have shaped their path to activism. Through a Story Sharing Hotline, live events, merch drops, music playlists and digital storytelling, we’re building a collective time capsule of the personal experiences that inspire and sustain movements—past, present, and future.
If you’re interested in joining our network of fiscally sponsored projects, please reach out to us at hello@shiftcollective.us
2025 Wrap Up:
Shift Collective completed our work on a two-year research project with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to retrospectively assess CLIR’s Recordings at Risk program. Recordings at Risk is a national regranting program funded by the Mellon Foundation and administered by CLIR to help preserve “rare and unique audio, audiovisual, and other time-based media of high scholarly value through digital reformatting,” according to CLIR. Over the past two years, three Shift Collective researchers, Zakiya Collier, Lynette Johnson, and Gabriel Solîs, designed and administered a comprehensive survey to learn more about the experiences of those who have considered applying for, applied for, or received a Recordings at Risk grant. We also conducted interviews with grant recipients and other applicants, the program’s independent review panel, and CLIR’s staff to evaluate the program’s impact on collecting organizations and the communities they serve. Our research aimed to shed light on the persistent challenges faced by stewards of fragile and obsolete audiovisual media and help guide future endeavors by CLIR and others “committed to the safekeeping of rare and unique audiovisual materials.” In April 2026, CLIR published our public-facing report, Preserving Endangered Cultural Memory at a Time of Heightened Risk: Evaluating the Recordings at Risk Grant Program, in which we document our findings.
We’ve concluded a three-year collaborative research and development project with major support from the Filecoin Foundation for the Distributed Web. Modeling Sustainable Futures: Exploring Decentralized Digital Storage for Community-Based Archives explored how the ethical, cultural, and technical needs of small cultural memory organizations can utilize and inform emerging decentralized storage technologies. The project resulted in the newly launched Community Cloud Storage project referenced above.