Our ambitious strategic vision for the archives sector, Archives Unlocked, focuses on the needs and potential of archives across the country, and realises in practical and tangible terms their unique relevance in preserving the diversity of our nation’s heritage.
The vision and the priorities that emerge from it are the result of extensive consultation and development work with the archives sector, our partners and beyond, including a two-stage consultation process between April 2016 and January 2017.
Sector and partner engagement included roundtables in Wiltshire, London, Manchester and Birmingham. The roundtables were attended by 179 people from across the archives sector, while our first online survey received 235 responses. A subsequent public consultation on the draft vision included an additional online survey (which received 100 responses) and six expert panels attended by over 100 strategic partners. Throughout the consultation process we were supported by a reference group from across the archives sector.
Our strategic priorities 2023-25
Read the Archives Unlocked strategic priorities 2023-2025
The vision
Read the original Archives Unlocked vision document (PDF, 12.7 MB)
Read the accessible version of the original Archives Unlocked vision document (PDF, 1.1 MB)
Progress made through Archives Unlocked
Since the publication of Archives Unlocked, we have made progress in a number of important areas of work. The below list summarises some highlights.
- In 2019, we launched the Collaborate and Innovate funding programme to empower archives and archive networks to develop creative solutions to shared challenges. In its first year, we awarded £142,500 to archives across the country to support collaborative and innovative projects. This work now continues as the Research and Innovation grants programme.
- In 2020, we launched Plugged In, Powered Up, our ambitious digital capacity building strategy for the sector. Work delivered since then includes Archives School, our hands-on digital preservation training taught by leading experts at Kew, and Novice to Know-How, a game-changing online learning pathway, which we developed in collaboration with the Digital Preservation Coalition. Over 1000 professionals have now completed a Novice to Know-How course. We created the Digital Archives Learning Exchange (DALE) and a new peer mentoring programme, which have provided advice, inspiration and coaching for archivists. To build on the success of Plugged In, Powered Up, we have launched our new digital capacity building strategy, Our Digital Century.
- In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the necessary closures and changes to service provision, we provided up-to-date guidance, resources and support, including worksheets to support archives in re-opening inclusively when it was safe to do so. We carried out research into the different impacts of the pandemic on archive services, we advocated for the needs of the sector. We secured £500,000 of funding from central government for a new COVID-19 Archives Fund to help secure vulnerable and at-risk archive collections that might otherwise be lost or destroyed as a result of the crisis. This work continues through our Resilience grants and our Records at Risk grants.
- Between 2019 and 2022, our Bridging the Digital Gap programme, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and in collaboration with host institutions across the country, ran traineeships for 24 people with much-needed digital skills but no previous experience of archives. Our ambitions to diversify the archive workforce and bring new talent into the sector continue through the Level 7 Archivist and Records Manager apprenticeships, which we launched in autumn 2023.
- We continue to distribute £660,000 of New Burdens funding each year to local authority places of deposit as part of the 20-year rule programme.
Current steering group members
Emmajane Avery (Chair)
The National Archives
Guy Baxter
Museum of English Rural Life (University of Reading)
Paul Bristow
Arts Council England
Alistair Brown
National Lottery Heritage Fund
Beth Brunton
The National Archives
Justin Cavernelis-Frost
Rothschild Archive
Isabel Churcher
The National Archives
Alison Kay
National Railway Museum (Science Museum Group)
William Kilbride
Digital Preservation Coalition
Emma Markiewicz
London Metropolitan Archives
Tina Morton
The National Archives
Anna Sexton
Forum for Archives and Records Management Education and Research (FARMER)
Richard Wragg
Natural History Museum