Large cultural infrastructure projects such as City of Culture and Borough of Culture provide exciting opportunities to celebrate communities and the transformative power of culture, creating a positive legacy in local areas.
Archives are part of culture. They tell stories about people and places; they enable access to the past and for us to see the present day, ourselves, and each other in new ways. Archive services can be valuable partners in the delivery of large cultural infrastructure projects, with their collections able to inspire, inform, and enrich project programming. Archive services are also essential in ensuring that there is an archive of the project itself, from bid to legacy reporting, that can evidence what happened, how it happened, and how people experienced it.
We have commissioned Simon Wilson to produce this guidance to help ensure that archives are part of project programming, and that relevant records are collected so that the positive impact of these projects can be understood in future decades. This guidance is intended for three key audiences: senior decision-makers in local authorities, creative teams working on projects, and archivists.
Supplementary PDF versions of this guidance will be available soon.