Archives, youth and firing up imaginations

This essay offers educator insights from a video project entitled ‘Performing the Jewish Archive’. I use videos, still images and text to suggest pedagogical methods for developing historical empathy among 12–17-year-olds through cross-curricular trans mediation. In what ways can instructors engage students’ imaginations to consider historical artists, art educators and community figures who have impacted our cultural landscape? I suggest a morphing with the archive in artmaking, treating artefacts as living objects with stories to share.