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What might the archive look like?

There is no single ‘template’ that determines what a large cultural infrastructure project archive should look like. Each project is shaped by the topography, the local history and of course its people. The archivist will have identified material that they will want to collect. However, it is important that those working on the project continue to discuss what kinds of records are being created with the archivist throughout the process, so that new types of records can be collected as needed. It might be worth thinking about the archive as having three distinct components:

The business archive: how the project happened

This will comprise the records created by the central bid/delivery team. It will provide a record from the initial ideas all the way through the bid to the development and evolution of the programme and the wider infrastructure.

The creative archive: what the project looked like

This will comprise the records of the artistic programme delivered by a large number of creative partners. This will allow people to study the events but also to support a range of engagement activities as part of the project’s legacy.

The participatory archive: what the project felt like

This will comprise information and context from a wide range of individuals and groups to capture the response to and consequence of being part of the project. It might include oral histories, filmed interviews, and creative responses.

Format of the archive

It is likely that much of the material from the large cultural infrastructure project will be digital in format. Ensuring a file can be accessed in twenty years’ time requires deliberate intervention and active preservation. It is not simply a case of storing the file somewhere safe and leaving it, as files can become unreadable though age and deterioration. Placing material online is no guarantee it will be there in 10 years’ time.

The archivist will be aware of the specific needs and issues associated with the preservation of digital files. The archive for a large cultural infrastructure project will be thousands of digital files: the archive for Hull’s 2017 City of Culture collection received over 140,000 files, for example. These figures highlight the importance of the archive service having an effective digital preservation system which is specifically designed to support the long-term preservation and access of digital content, whether born-digital or digitised files.

Having a solution in-place to preserve, manage and provide access to digital content is a key milestone for all archive services. It will also help the local authority to meet its statutory responsibilities relating to archives, which apply to records in digital format as well as those in analogue format. The archivist will be familiar with the resources that The National Archives has produced in relation to digital preservation, and the support that is available to them to progress this work.

Collating the archive

The material needs to be gathered and sorted before work can begin on making it accessible. The archivist will need to check that appropriate permissions have been granted and identify any sensitive content that needs to be temporarily closed to comply with The General Data Protection Regulation.

Collating and reviewing the archive is a significant body of work. It is also an opportunity to involve members of the community, many of whom might have participated, supported or attended the events captured in the records. However, co-ordinating the volunteers will be an additional task for the archive service and needs to be resourced appropriately.

In the immediate period after project delivery, the archive may not be the focus for understanding the impact of the project, and the concentration is likely to be on monitoring and evaluation data. The monitoring and evaluation team will have collated this and will develop protocols relating to research access and use. However, it is important that the files of data are also passed to the archivist and become part of the archive of the project, so that they can be preserved alongside other digital records and made accessible in decades to come.

In conversations with senior decision-makers working across culture and heritage within a local authority context, some aspects relating to large cultural infrastructure projects arose time and again. These are addressed in the following sections but if you have any questions please contact asd@nationalarchives.gov.uk.