FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2026

The purpose of this panel is to open a discussion on the skills required by audiovisual archive leaders in Latin America.

The objective is to explore, together with leaders of institutional, official, non-official, community, activist, and self-managed archives, how the "profile" of an audiovisual archivist is constructed in our region and what specific skills we have had to develop in accordance with our divergent realities and the influence of the current political and social climate and governments.

The panel will propose a dialogue based on a series of guiding questions, in which we could involve people with long careers as well as new leaders who can provide feedback on how they have integrated into the dynamics of our field, how the profession has (or has not) become professionalized, how we relate to best practices in the Global North, and how we communicate and educate our audiences and communities of interest about audiovisual archives. The objective of the dialogue could be, in a complementary way, the creation of a poster to be shared collectively, where we can recognize ourselves and enhance those characteristics that define audiovisual archivists in our region.