Creative Archives

Flickr can do things in ways traditional archives can’t: discuss.

About the program

The whole Flickr corpus is simply massive—tens of billions of digital objects, and growing every day. It’s one of the biggest image collections humans have ever created. Its huge scale makes it difficult to look after, let alone preserve.

Creative Archives investigates accessible tactics around ethics of care, decentralization, social or local archives, explorable formats, and machine-based support. 

We’re interested in archiving the foundation itself too, from the start.

Three men work in a testing facility. A person in a metallic space suit is suspended horizontally, supported by two others on either side. A grid pattern decorates the background.

Looking back over 2025

Here's a handy compendium of all the stuff we've done this year. Wheee!

Oreoluwa’s Midpoint Reflections

Flickr Foundation's Winter Research Fellow shares their reflections on the Fellowship so far and the next phases of their creative, archival research

New Podcast: How we made Flickr's community so nice

George talks with Rabble of Revolution Social to discuss her work designing Flickr and the model for an alternative internet with care, community and preservation at its core.