1.5 How to Use This Manual
This Manual is intended for community scholars, tradition bearers, practitioners, fieldworkers, folklore researchers, students and others who wish to learn about and document performing arts. You do not need previous training in archiving, metadata or professional media production. Curiosity, respect and a willingness to spend time with knowledge holders are the essential starting points. A notebook and a basic recording device are sufficient to begin.
The Manual is organised around the five interconnected pathways: Art Form, Artist, Performance, Instrument and Space. You may follow the sections in sequence or begin with the pathway most relevant to your encounter. For example, you may begin by meeting an artist, attending a performance, examining an instrument or visiting a culturally significant space. Each pathway will gradually lead you towards the others.
The Manual supports three levels of engagement.
Level 1: Learn and Write
You can begin through conversations, observation and field notes. The outcome may be a short artist profile, a performance account, a description of an art form, an instrument record or an account of a cultural space. No audiovisual equipment is required.
Level 2: Make a Basic Documentation Record
You can combine writing with photographs, audio or video recorded using a mobile phone, camera or basic audio recorder. The Manual will help you obtain consent, record contextual information, organise files and prepare a structured account of what you have learned.
Level 3: Undertake Extended Documentation
Where time, equipment and trained collaborators are available, you can undertake multiple interviews, detailed audiovisual recording, transcription, translation, instrument measurement, specialist photography or 3D digitisation. Extended documentation may eventually be prepared for publication or archival deposit.
The forms and question guides provided with this Manual are aids, not compulsory scripts. Select and adapt them according to the person, practice and circumstances. At every level, explain your purpose, obtain ongoing consent, review the resulting account with participants and decide together what may be retained, restricted or shared. The quality of documentation depends less on expensive equipment than on the care with which relationships and knowledge are approached.
The sections that follow move from these foundations into practical preparation, field recording, interviewing, description, file organisation, preservation and archival access. Readers undertaking basic documentation may use only the relevant checklists and forms. Those planning extended documentation can follow the complete workflow. In either case, the same ethical principles apply.