ARCMTL

À l’Affiche — Mercredi 29 avril, 16h-18h Gestion des collections d’affiches – Owning Our Histories Lieu : ARCMTL, 6600 rue Saint-Urbain, 306 Le centre d’archives d’ARCMTL @arcmtl comprend de nombreuses collections d’affiches. Celles-ci vont d’affiches faisant la promotion de mouvements radicaux et sociaux à des concerts et festivals locaux, en passant par des lancements de livres et des conférences, couvrant la période des années 1960 à aujourd’hui. Cette présentation détaillera comment l’équipe d’ARCMTL gère les métadonnées et le catalogage de ce type de collection, comment celles-ci sont numérisées et comment les collections numériques sont organisées. Cet événement s’inscrit également dans la série Owning Our Histories d’ARCMTL, qui met en lumière des projets et des organisations locales qui prennent en charge la gestion de leurs propres histoires. _____ Coming up — Wednesday, April 29, 4-6PM Managing Poster Collections - Owning Our Histories Location: ARCMTL 6600 Rue Saint-Urbain, 306 The ARCMTL @arcmtl archive centre includes numerous poster collections. They range from posters promoting radical and social movements, local concerts and festivals, book launches and conferences, all ranging from 1960s to today. This presentation will explain how the team at ARCMTL manages metadata and cataloguing for this sort of collection, how they are digitized and how digital collections are organized. This event is also part of ARCMTL’s Owning Our Histories series, exploring local projects and organizations that manage their own histories themselves. // #faimtl #printedfestival #printfestival #printmaking #mtl

Big thanks @arcmtl for hosting me for my first queer quilting bee in Montréal! And extra ✨ to be part of a queer archives series here! Owning Our Histories 🏳️‍🌈📖📚🏳️‍⚧️ I’m hoping to get a quilting 🐝 started in Montréal this summer, so stayed tuned and send me a DM if you’d like to join! ——🪡——🪡——🪡——🪡—— Un grand merci à @arcmtl de m’avoir accueillie pour mon premier atelier de courtepointe queer à Montréal ! Et un plus ✨ de faire participer à une série sur les archives queer ici ! Owning Our Histories 🏳️‍🌈📖📚🏳️‍⚧️ J’espère lancer un atelier de patchwork 🐝 à Montréal cet été, alors restez à l’écoute et DM-moi si vous souhaitez vous joindre à nous !

La série « Owning Our Histories : Une célébration des archives queers et PANDC de MTL » de @arcmtl se termine avec un atelier de courtepointe queer animé par l’artiste textile @amcintoshy . Découvre plus d’événements #communautaires sur Queer MTL, dont le lien est dans notre bio. 🧵 #2slgbtq #lgbttravel #mtlmoments #queermtl The ‘Owning Our Histories: Celebrating DIY Archives from Queer & BIPOC MTL’ series hosted by @arcmtl comes to a close with a Queer Quilting Bee hosted by textile artist @amcintoshy . Find more community events on the Queer MTL things to do, linked in our bio. 🧵 2slgbtq lgbttravel mtlmoments queermtl

A little recap of our events from the last month! We are halfway through “Owning Our Histories,” our series on DIY Archiving. It has been so inspiring and energizing to connect with so many of you and talk about grassroots effort to preserve and document queer & BIPOC history. A huge thank you to all you beautiful people who have shown up, taken part, or collaborated with us. You’ve made these events so special! We still have 5 more events to go over the next two weeks. Be sure to check out the programme in our bio for all the details. — Petit retour sur les événements du mois dernier ! Nous sommes à mi-parcours de notre série « Owning Our Histories » (S’approprier notre histoire) consacrée à l’archivage DIY. C’est tellement inspirant et stimulant de pouvoir échanger avec vous tous et de discuter des initiatives communautaires visant à préserver et à documenter l’histoire des personnes queer et BIPOC. Un immense merci à vous tous qui avez participé, collaboré ou simplement été présents. Vous avez rendu ces événements si spéciaux ! Il nous reste encore 5 événements à venir au cours des deux prochaines semaines ! N’hésitez pas à consulter le programme dans notre bio pour plus de détails. #communityarchives #owningourhistories

How can textiles preserve history? What are the scraps of connection that make us who we are? This workshop investigates piecework and appliqué as means of expression and conceptual platform for 2SLGBTQIA+ expression. Starting with a scrap exchange of meaningful cloth, participants will work with collective material as a nod to the tradition of a quilting bee. We will focus on ‘crazy quilt’ patchwork and ‘fancywork’ embroidery, where participants can embellish a small patchwork quilt block (12″ x 12″) with markers of their identity and contemporary times, such as names, dates, sites, and souvenirs. 🗓️March 29, 2-5 pm 📍Les Affûtés (Village), 1385 Ontario E. 👉REGISTRATION REQUIRED (free & limited spots! See the full programme in our bio for sign up) Aaron McIntosh is a cross-disciplinary artist and fourth-generation quiltmaker whose work mines the intersections of material culture, family tradition, sexual desire and identity politics. His exhibition record includes numerous solo and group exhibitions, most recently Hot House/Maison chaude at FOFA Gallery, The Gloaming at Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Entanglements at Northeastern University, and Radical Tradition: Quilts and Social Change at the Toledo Museum of Art. Since 2015, McIntosh has managed Invasive Queer Kudzu, a community storytelling and archive project across the 2SLGBTQ+ Southern United States. Part of Owning Our Histories: Celebrating DIY Archives from Queer & BIPOC MTL #communityarchives #queerquilting #owningourhistories

From the Sir George Williams Computer Riots of the 1960s to the 2012 strikes against tuition hikes to recent encampments in Palestinian solidarity, Montreal students have organized against universities that systematically prioritize profits over human rights and accessible education. These movements produce posters, flyers, journals, banners, zones, and other ephemera. But who gets to preserve this crucial history? Archivists from QPIRG Concordia, QPIRG McGill, and the Student News and Protest Archive (SNAP) discuss the challenges and opportunities of archiving student-led struggles for liberation. Moderated by Éloïse Desjardins, archivist and Master’s student in Library Sciences at Université de Montréal with a research focus on activist community archives.  🗓️ March 17, 4-6 pm  📍 QPIRG Concordia, 2100 rue Guy, #205 Part of Owning Our Histories: Celebrating DIY Archives from Queer & BIPOC MTL (full programme in bio) Free and open to all. #communityarchives #owningourhistories #studentactivism

How do queer people write their own history? Join us for two presentations on archiving queer joy and resistance through creative projects. 🗓️March 17, 1:30-3:30 pm 📍QPIRG Concordia, 2100 Guy, #205 Accessible entrance: 1625 de Maisonneuve W. (code 0205 to be buzzed in) Queer/trans writer and architect Elio (Élo) Choquette presents Here We Will Be, an ongoing research and creative writing project archiving queer joy(s). Through field research, visual documentation, crowdsourcing, and creative writing, the project creates an incomplete, subjective database about queer communities, spaces, and the power of queer joy and love in all their forms. Followed by an artist talk from Brazilian-Canadian artist and zinester Eloisa Aquino on her new project, The Scaffold, as well as the zine series The Life & Times of Butch Dykes. The series features portraits of women throughout history who have defied society’s expectations of feminine behaviour and appearance to live more authentic lives. These short vignettes combine biographical sketches with evocative illustrations. Eloisa has been making zines since the 90s and runs the queer micro-press B&D Press with Jenny Lin. Part of Owning Our Histories: Celebrating DIY Archives from Queer & BIPOC MTL - full programme of events in our bio. Free and open to all. #communityarchives #owningourhistories #queermtl #zines

ARCMTL’s Louis Rastelli, Chloe Martin, and Delilah Edouard Williams present grassroots research projects documenting under-represented Black Montreal music history as part of the Heritage Talks 2026 from the Quebec Anglophone Heritage Network. For over a decade, ARCMTL has worked with local community partners to explore and share little-known history of Black Montreal music and culture through zine workshops, radio broadcasts, and Nights of Montreal, an online interactive map that tells the stories of the places and people who made this culture thrive. 🗓️March 12, 7-8 pm 🖥️ Virtual, registration link in the “Owning Our Histories” programme (in our bio) Louis Rastelli has been the Director of ARCMTL since 2013, a cultural historian, writer and DJ since the 1990s, and involved in many heritage and arts projects in Quebec and Canada. Chloe Martin is a music educator, with a background in music history, and project coordinator with ARCMTL. Since 2024, they have been involved in ARCMTL’s Nights of Montreal mapping project and the “Our Places, Our Stories” zine-making workshops. They are the organizer of “Owning Our Histories: Celebrating DIY Archives from Queer & BIPOC MTL” an ongoing ARCMTL series. Delilah Edouard Williams is an art and cultural curator dedicated to elevating contemporary emerging BIPOC artists and fostering inclusive, community-engaged arts programming. Delilah has collaborated with ARCMTL as a workshop facilitator for the “Our Places, Our Stories” zine-making series chronicling Black Montreal music history. Free and open to all. #communityarchives #owningourhistories

Remembering Alfie Wade (1932-2026) On February 6, we lost a legendary figure in the history of Montreal nightlife. Best remembered as a pioneering disc jockey and promoter in the 1960s at places like Don Juan, Le Drug and Vieux Rafiot (better known as Alfie’s), Alfie Wade grew up down the street from Rockhead’s Paradise, started the first Oscar Peterson fan club in the 1940s and studied piano with Daisy Peterson Sweeney. He came of age in the 50s alongside the generation’s most notorious artists and writers: Cohen, Roussil, Vittorio, and was a well-known fashion and nightlife icon covered in both the English and French media of the times. ARCMTL had the privilege of conducting multiple interviews with Alfie in the last few years of his life. An edited transcript of an interview from June 2021, which chronicles his childhood and impressive career in Montreal up until the late 60s, is now available on our blog, nightsofmontreal.com (link in our bio). Slide 1: headshot of Alfie Slide 2: Alfie with longtime friend Charles Burke, courtesy of Burke Slide 3: ad for Le Vieux Rafiot in The Georgian, 1967 — En Souvenir d’Alfie Wade (1932-2026) Le 6 février, nous avons perdu une figure légendaire de l’histoire de la vie nocturne montréalaise. Mieux connu comme disc- jockey et promoteur pionnier dans les années 1960 dans des endroits comme Don Juan, Le Drug et Le Vieux Rafiot (mieux connu sous le nom d’« Alfie’s »), Alfie Wade a grandi dans la même rue que Rockhead’s Paradise, a fondé le premier fan club d’Oscar Peterson dans les années 1940 et à étudié le piano avec Daisy Peterson Sweeney. Il a atteint sa majorité dans les années 50 aux côtés des artistes et écrivains les plus célèbres de sa génération : Cohen, Roussil, Vittorio. Il était une icône bien connue de la mode et de la vie nocturne, couverte à la fois par les médias anglais et française de l’époque. Une transcription éditée d'un entretien entre Alfie et ARCMTL, réalisé en juin 2021, qui retrace son enfance et son impressionnante carrière à Montréal jusqu'à la fin des années 60, est désormais disponible sur notre blog, nightsofmontreal.com. #montrealnightlife #blackhistory #alfiewade

~~~~RESCHEDULED TO MARCH 23rd~~~~ Learn new tools for archiving our fast-moving cultures. In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn the basics of 3D scanning, a technology that quickly creates replicas of physical objects and spaces. No prior experience needed. Leave with the skills to produce basic 3D scans at home. 📍Cyber Love Garden, 10 ave des Pins, #114 👾March 23, 6-8 pm 👉registration link in the full programme on our website (link in bio) Hosted by Things+Time (T+T), a Montreal-based digital archival platform dedicated to preserving ephemeral histories rooted in objects, spaces and lived experiences. Their platform enables users to create multimedia storytelling environments by adding annotations (texts, audio, video, images, map points, and links) to 3D objects. The T+T team will remain available to discuss potential collaborations. 📲 Before attending: Download the free app Polycam on your phone (iOS 17.0 or later, Android 10.0 or later). Part of Owning Our Histories: Celebrating Queer & BIPOC DIY Archives. 10 public events celebrating how communities document themselves. Free and open to all. #communityarchives #diyarchiving

Join us for a guided tour of Les Archives gaies du Québec and explore their collection documenting over 40 years of Quebec’s queer history. Built and maintained by the community since 1983, this is one of Montreal’s vital specialized archives. 🗓️March 7, 3-4 pm 📍1000 Atateken, Suite 201-A Free and open to all. (Stick around the neighbourhood for our “Queer Voices in Print” event happening later the same day! 😉) #queermontreal #communityarchives #gayvillagemontreal #owningourhistories

Poets, writers, and publishers Faith Paré, Chris DiRaddo (@violet_hour_mtl ), and Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch (@metonymypress ) discuss independent queer publishing as a form of community archiving. How do book clubs, small presses, and poetry readings document queer lives and preserve stories that mainstream publishing overlooks? The conversation will explore creating spaces for queer anglophone voices in Montreal, navigating the city’s language divide, finding and prioritizing emerging writers, and what it means to put these stories in print and circulate them as acts of cultural preservation. The panel will be followed by a poetry reading from local queer poets Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch (@sherlockh0m0 ), Liana Cusmano (@lucadove6 ), Erin Mouré (@vagaceira ), Faith Paré (@paretriarchy ), and Misha Solomon (@mishasolomon ) 📍L’Euguélionne Bookstore @librairieleuguelionne 🗓️March 7, 5-7 pm Part of Owning Our Histories: Celebrating Queer & BIPOC DIY Archives. 10 events celebrating how communities document themselves. Free and open to the public. #queermtl #diyarchives #owningourhistories #queerpoetry #angloquebec