Conservation as Storytelling
A conversation with Sruthin Lal of The Archival and Research Project (ARPO)
What exactly is preserved when a song is recorded? Is it the sound, the words, the performance, the knowledge carried by the singer, or the relationships through which that knowledge has been learned and passed on? A recording can hold a song, but the people who taught it, the occasions on which it is performed, and the social world that gives it meaning remain largely outside the frame.
This question stayed with us during our conversation with Sruthin Lal, who runs ARPO (Archival and Research Project), a cultural heritage organisation based in Kerala. Working primarily with intangible cultural heritage, ARPO documents songs, rituals, performances and most importantly, stories, while developing films, fellowships and educational initiatives. Much of its work concerns communities whose cultural knowledge has remained outside dominant narratives of Indian heritage.
Our conversation revolved around conservation as a practice grounded in storytelling. It brought together questions of representation and even the politics of documentation, while challenging some familiar assumptions about who produces heritage knowledge and what it means to conserve it.
Beginning with belonging
Sruthin’s account of ARPO began with Kerala and his own sense of belonging to the region. With a background in journalism, he approached its history as something he was personally connected to, but also as a collection of narratives that had not received equal attention. His initial question concerned the communities that had experienced the least economic and social progress and whose cultural knowledge had been neglected. This led him to work with Adivasi (tribal) communities and other historically marginalised groups in the region.
Caste emerged as a central theme in our discussion. In India, caste, to a certain extent, still continues to shape the recognition of knowledge. Certain communities have historically occupied positions of spiritual and intellectual authority, while others have been excluded from these structures. This exclusion has consequences beyond social and economic disadvantage. Prolonged marginalisation can also affect how communities perceive their own practices and whether younger generations see value in continuing them.
This raises an uncomfortable question for conservation: how do we recognise cultural practices when the communities that sustain them have themselves been taught to regard their traditions as inferior? ARPO’s work approaches storytelling as a way of addressing this disconnect. By documenting and presenting these practices with care, it creates opportunities for communities and a wider audience to reconsider the value of their cultural knowledge.
Documentation is not a neutral act
One of the most important aspects of our exchange concerned the agency of communities in determining what should be documented, conserved and remembered. ARPO’s documentation process is deliberately lengthy. The team initially spends approximately three to four months mapping community voices and perspectives before filming begins. Initial versions of films are screened within the community, where members can suggest revisions or request that certain material remain private. Where internet access is unavailable, the team returns to screen the work in person.
This process recognises that documentation involves decisions about representation. The person holding the camera, selecting the material and editing the final film exercises considerable influence over how a community is presented. Even with consultation, a particular recording can become an official account of a practice that may have several interpretations.
Sruthin described how ARPO sometimes documents multiple versions of songs and rituals rather than attempting to establish one definitive account. This is significant as communities are not homogeneous entities. There may be disagreements over who holds particular knowledge, who is authorised to speak, and which practices should be transmitted or safeguarded.
The question of who acts as a guardian of tradition becomes complicated here. Is it the elder who remembers a practice, the practitioner who performs it, or the community collectively? What happens when their interests do not coincide? Our discussion also touched upon intergenerational prejudice and the tensions that can arise within and between communities over cultural memory. These are not just peripheral ethical concerns. They are part of the realities within which conservation operates.
The aesthetics of cultural recognition
Another interesting part of our exchange concerned the aesthetic dimensions of documentation. Sruthin spoke about the importance of producing visually compelling, professionally made films about communities. There is a deliberate politics behind this approach. Marginalised communities have often been represented through images that emphasise poverty, deprivation or social difference, with little attention to the skill and knowledge embedded in their cultural practices. ARPO seeks to challenge this by giving their traditions the visual attention and production quality routinely associated with more established cultural institutions.
Sruthin described a project documenting the jewellery-making tradition of a historically marginalised, landless community. The film featured a young woman learning the practice. Short videos subsequently circulated on Instagram and attracted millions of views. The visibility generated recognition and renewed confidence among younger members of the community, challenging some of the negative social perceptions associated with their identity. This example raises an important possibility: aesthetic representation can become a means of cultural recognition. It can influence how communities perceive their own practices and how wider society values them.
Beyond the tangible and intangible
Our conversation returned to the limitations of separating tangible and intangible heritage. In many Indian contexts, architecture, ritual, objects, performance, landscape and ecological knowledge are maintained together.
Sacred groves in Kerala offer an interesting example of how the ritual, the landscape and the ecological relationships are part of the same arrangement of care. These forested spaces are often associated with serpent worship, ritual performances such as Theyyam and Thirayattam, and other forms of local worship. They may contain ponds, shrines and family altars, with particular areas subject to restrictions on entry or physical disturbance. Such restrictions, rooted in ritual beliefs and customary practices, have in a way contributed to the preservation of vegetation and local ecologies.
Architectural traditions raise another related question. In many parts of India, periodic rebuilding, replacement and material renewal are familiar ways of maintaining sacred structures, particularly in response to environmental conditions such as monsoons. These practices may sit uneasily alongside conservation approaches that privilege the retention of original material fabric. What one tradition understands as maintenance and continuity may be interpreted differently through another conservation framework.
This is where the idea of transversality becomes relevant to Critical Conservation. Conservation needs to move across material, social, ecological and spiritual domains, acknowledging relationships that cannot always be accommodated within separate heritage categories.
Archives and the circulation of knowledge
ARPO has accumulated an extensive audiovisual archive, with material continuing to be added. Its use of YouTube and social media has allowed cultural practices to reach audiences far beyond the communities in which they originate.
Yet, the expansion of an archive raises questions about ownership and future circulation. Can communities access and reuse the recordings? Who receives credit when researchers or filmmakers use the material? Should recognition belong to an individual performer, a village or the community collectively? ARPO’s inclusive approach does make a case as a good practice in that sense.
Then, there is also the fixation aspect. A recorded performance could gradually become the version against which subsequent performances are understood, even when the practice has always allowed variation. An archive can support cultural continuity, but it can also give one version greater visibility and authority than others. These questions, for us and for Sruthin, connect with the wider discussion on decolonising archival practices and visual representation. Sruthin reflected on the continued influence of colonial hierarchies in cultural recognition, particularly the tendency for locally produced knowledge to receive greater legitimacy after validation by institutions and government, despite most of them still having post-colonial policies and educational backbone.
ARPO’s work thus challenges the assumption that conservation knowledge is primarily produced within academic and institutional settings. Journalists, filmmakers, practitioners, storytellers and community members contribute to the production and circulation of heritage knowledge. Storytelling, in this sense, is not simply a communication tool used after conservation has taken place. It is part of the conservation practice itself.
What does storytelling make possible?
ARPO’s work suggests that documentation can do more than create a record of cultural practices. It can challenge inherited hierarchies of cultural value, bring neglected histories into public view and encourage communities to reconsider their relationships with their own traditions. At the same time, it requires continued attention to the ethics of representation, the circulation of knowledge and the authority exercised through documentation.
Perhaps the distinction we need to maintain is between preserving evidence of a practice and sustaining the conditions that allow it to continue. A film documents a song, but it cannot independently sustain the relationships through which that song is transmitted.
For Critical Conservation, this conversation reinforces the importance of recognising communities as active participants in the production of heritage knowledge, rather than simply as its custodians or beneficiaries. It also asks us to reconsider the role of researchers and conservation professionals as mediators whose choices shape what is remembered and how it is represented.
Storytelling is never simply an act of recording what already exists. It involves choices about whose histories are told, whose knowledge is valued and what cultural futures are made possible through their telling.
ARPO Project references:
Architectural Conservation | ARPO https://www.arpo.in/architectural-conservation
Cultural Archive | ARPO https://www.arpo.in/culturalarchive
Earthlore | ARPO https://www.arpo.in/earthlore
LoreKeepers | ARPO https://www.arpo.in/lorekeepers
Cite this article: Sruthin Lal, Hanna B. Hölling, Samidha Pusalkar, Juliana Robles de la Pava, and Marcello Rechberger, “Conservation as Storytelling” Center for Critical Conservation, October 11, 2026, https://centerforcriticalconservation.com/1723-2/