Hackney has been home to African-Caribbean people for centuries. As a local authority archive, it is Hackney Archives’ job to support the many different communities that live in our borough in preserving and sharing their heritage. However, like many cultural institutions in the UK, our collections have never properly represented the seismic cultural contributions people of African heritage have made to the borough in the community’s own voice. This all changed in 2020, when the Sir Collins collection – a huge selection of papers, photographs and audio-video recordings collected by the late Charles Constantine Collins (aka Sir Collins) – was deposited at Hackney Archives by the Older Generation, Younger Generation organisation, headed by his son Gary Collins.
Sir Collins was a Hackney-based music producer, entrepreneur, campaigner, organiser and citizen archivist who arrived in London from Jamaica in 1957. Throughout his long and enterprising life, he was focussed on creating and documenting a legacy that his family and his community could be proud of. His collection, the most comprehensive of its kind we have seen at our service, documents community activity in Hackney and beyond from the 1960s through to 2017. It includes visual and textual records of festivals, protests, performances and a broad range of community events.
Sir Collins stands outside the Royal Courts of Justice
Once the deposit of the collection had been finalised, we immediately got to work on planning future work – our first step was to approach Archives Revealed and apply for a scoping grant to support us to gain a better understanding of the collection and to support our planning to make it more accessible.
A successful application for an Archives Revealed Scoping Grant meant that we were able to commission a consultant archivist to survey and produce a scoping report for the collection. This was no mean feat as it comprised over 100 boxes of material of varying formats and age, although thankfully mostly in good condition.
The consultant was amazing and through their hard work a comprehensive report was produced providing a broad overview of the collection and a detailed discussion of specific issues we would need to consider. Having a Scoping Report for the collection was a really positive development for many reasons. It supported advocacy for the importance of the collection within our organisation, and also strengthened our position when approaching external funders and partners.
Sir Collins and Former Hackney Mayor Linda Hibberd plant commemorative trees for victims of the 1981 New Cross Fire in Hackney Downs Park, 1997
Since the completion of the report in 2021, we have been able to work closely with London’s Screen Archives and the BFI to digitise a sample of the thousands of videos in the collection. We also made a successful application for an Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grant which means we are now in the midst of creating a catalogue for the collection which will support much greater public access and provide the foundation for our planned future phases of work.
Apart from benefitting the collection directly, we have also been able to create collections related positions (both paid and voluntary) which have supported entry into the sector – something that we think is particularly important at our service.
We are incredibly grateful to Archives Revealed, the consultant Archivist and all who have supported the collection to date and we continue to work to make the Sir Collins collection accessible to all.