Archives Revealed resources for archives

JESS HOGG: Welcome to the Archives Revealed podcast, the place where we talk about the fascinating world of archives, and explore how they connect us to people, communities and the stories that matter.

I'm Jess Hogg, Sector Development and Engagement Manager for the programme, and if you're new to us, Archives Revealed is the UK’s only grant programme focused entirely on helping archives catalogue and unlock their collections.

It's supported by the Heritage Fund, the Pilgrim Trust, the Wolfson Foundation and The National Archives, all working together to make sure important collections are accessible for research, learning and enjoyment.

The programme has come a long way since it started back in 2006 as the National Cataloguing Grants Programme.

It was relaunched, as Archives Revealed in 2016, and in 2024 we were thrilled to welcome the Heritage Fund as a new partner, bringing in a £5 million investment.

That takes the total value of the programme to six million, with over 85% going straight to the sector through grants.

And there's something new this time around. Applicants now need to spend 20% of their funding on public engagement.

That means thinking about who your audiences are, not just the ones you already know, but new ones too, and how your project will make a difference to them.

In today's episode, we're chatting with two of our first-round grantees, Samantha McCombe and Sam Manning, about their project, We Shall Overcome: Unlocking Civil Rights Archives at The Linen Hall.

We'll hear how they identified their audiences, planned creative activities and opened up their collections in ways that really resonated with people.

So, hi, Samantha and Sam, thank you for joining us. Can you start by telling us a little bit about what you do at Belfast’s Linen Hall?

01:53

SAMANTHA MCCOMBE: I'm the 22nd librarian of The Linen Hall, and I'm a member of the senior management team, with responsibility for the library, archive and museum collections and collections-based services.

I set the strategy for the archives and collections, have operational responsibility for our library and research services, I drive the conservation and preservation of the collection, engage with stakeholders and partner organisations. I also source funding and manage our collections projects, including cataloguing and digitisation projects. And really the essence of my role is the promotion of knowledge through the custodianship of the archives and collections, and I strive to make them as accessible as possible.

I really do see myself as the champion of the collections and it is my responsibility to ensure they are celebrated.

SAM MANNING: I'm Sam. I'm the Engagement and Outreach Officer at The Linen Hall.

I'm relatively new in this post, I've only been here since September 2025, but in my role, I'm only working on two projects, the first of which is the one I'm here to talk about today, which is on the history of civil rights in Northern Ireland.

From next year I'll be working mainly on a project related to the history of integrated education.

In terms of the civil rights project, what I've been doing over the past few months is firstly engaging with community groups and inviting them into the library to see the collection and to show them some of the material we have relating to civil rights.

I've also been inviting in local school groups for the for the same purpose, to show them the material we have, including the civil rights material and trying to link that to the curriculum.

Earlier this year we also hosted an exhibition on civil rights, and part of my role has been taking that exhibition and placing it online alongside other content from the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association archive.

And that's kind of where I am at the moment with the project.

04:11

JESS: Thank you. Thanks both. And for people who might not know, can you just give us a quick overview of Belfast Linen Hall and the kinds of collections that you look after?

04:22

SAMANTHA: So, our official name is the Belfast Library and Society for Promoting Knowledge. What a wonderful thing to be - a society that promotes knowledge!

But we are more commonly known as The Linen Hall, and we developed from the Belfast Reading Society which was founded on 13th May 1788. The library was originally housed in Belfast White Linen Hall, which is where linen would have been sold from, and hence the name has stuck.

We are the oldest library in Belfast. We are also an archive accredited museum and arts and cultural centre, freely accessible right in the heart of the city centre.

The Linen Hall is renowned locally, nationally and internationally for its Irish & Local Studies collection, ranging from comprehensive holdings of early printed books – we’ve got fantastic resources to support genealogy and the study of family history, we've got strong Irish language and Ulster-Scots collections - to the Northern Ireland Political Collection, which is the definitive archive of The Troubles.

Our political collection began in 1968 with one civil rights leaflet and today contains some 350,000 items.

The library also has one of the largest collections of material relating to the poet Robert Burns outside of Scotland, and the Theatre and Performing Arts archive - really unique collections by and for the community which reflect our rich cultural heritage.

It is multifaceted, it is wonderfully eccentric, and it engenders really great loyalty and lifelong affiliation. The Linen Hall is crammed full of knowledge and alive with history.

Our history and collections are really intrinsically linked to the story of Belfast, and I feel the library has a pivotal role to play in understanding all of Northern Ireland's past, and the archives we hold are particularly relevant to this.

06:34

JESS: Thank you for that incredible overview of The Linen Hall and its collections.

With that context in mind, shall we explore the cataloguing project for a little bit and the audiences that you wanted to reach through this project?

So, I know you began the project earlier this year. Can you tell us what the what it set out to do, who are the audiences that you wanted to reach, and how you plan to engage with them?

07:00

SAMANTHA: Yeah, our logging project began in June of 2025.

The projects are to sort, catalogue and make accessible the official archive of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, known as NICRA.

NICRA formed in Belfast in 1967 to achieve reform by publicising, documenting, marching and lobbying for an end to discrimination.

The archive reflects a really momentous period of history and encompasses significant societal issues.

It was donated to The Linen Hall in 1991, and at over 30 boxes it is one of the largest archives in our collections.

And you know, as a grassroots people-driven movement for change, the civil rights movement really is of great relevance locally, nationally, internationally, and I felt it would have wide audience appeal. It’s a people's history archive, and the potential for engagement was huge.

As Sam has mentioned, civil rights is on the Northern Ireland school curriculum, and the archive therefore had great potential for education and research use.

So, drawing on The Linen Hall experience, a programme of engagement was devised with the aim of bringing the archive to life by telling its stories, really raising its profile and encouraging discussion and debate.

08:37

JESS: In terms of the cataloguing, how is that going so far? Obviously, you are only partway through. Have there been any surprise discoveries?

08:47

SAMANTHA: So, the NICRA archive was a complex archive, and the project archivists devised a cataloguing handbook and project plan to really work towards unlocking the archive and making it accessible.

They initially worked to sort the material, giving order and logic to the archive, and of course this included determining the series and sub series.

So, governance, administration, press releases. NICRA was an organisational archive, and they really worked with diligence and great attention to detail.

The archive is now sorted, and it is catalogued to file level using the library's collection management system. And for the NICRA archive, nine fields of ISAD(G) have been used.

I think, you know, the archive is not without its challenges. There was a lot of ephemeral material within it, most of which was undated. So, there was lots of detective work, but it was also very satisfying to work with. The project archivists also produced a list of archive highlights, which Sam has used as part of the engagement.

10:08

SAM: Yeah, so, by the time I came on the project, there was a really good platform for me to build upon. The catalogue, as Samantha had said, put together a list of highlights from the archive, which was really useful for me to put together materials for the community engagement workshops and for the material that we placed online, and for also the school groups.

10:35

JESS: Fantastic. You know, you've made such amazing progress in just a few short months. So obviously, as we've said, cataloguing is just one part of the story, and we've mentioned that Archives Revealed, there's a big focus on engagement for other projects. Can we talk about how you are bringing the archives to life for your audiences? Why was it important to you to put a real emphasis on public engagement?

10:59

SAMANTHA: So, I mentioned the archives and collections at The Linen Hall being by and for the community, and I think that is a key ethos which underpins really everything we do. We work hard to build ethical and mutually beneficial relationships with community groups by offering collaborative, sustained and meaningful engagement with the archives.

These are not our archives, they are the community’s archives, and I think this is especially the case for NICRA, as it was a people-driven movement, it was made up of all strata of society and it was cross community.

11:38

SAM: Yeah, for me it's just a real privilege to work with the archive, you know, to start my role here and just to be able to explore the items that were in there as someone who has studied the history of Northern Ireland before. It was fantastic to see so much material that I hadn't seen before, and I think what really surprised me about the archive is that there are so many different types of material.

There's correspondence, ephemera like Samantha mentioned, posters, leaflets. There are records of international branches of NICRA as well. It's a really wide-ranging archive and it's a real privilege for me to work with that. And I think also, again, a real privilege to share that with the public.

You know, I don't just see my role as being knowledge transfer, it's knowledge exchange. It's really fantastic to get these groups in and not just to show them this material, but also to get their feedback and hear their stories and hear what they have to say about the archive and, yeah, and listen to how they respond to the material that we've shown them.

12:45

JESS: Brilliant. Thank you, Sam.

What kind of activities have you run so far and what stood out for you in those?

12:52

SAM: Well, so, we've invited several community groups. Those include local women's groups, local LGBT groups, university students. And what I would do would be to invite them in, introduce them to the library first of all, tell them a bit about our political collecting and how the NIPC started in 1968, how we've continued to collect material since then. And we would talk to them about our political collection, show them different items, but also, obviously, with a specific focus on civil rights.

Another activity that I've been engaged with since September has been to take an exhibition that we hosted on the history of civil rights earlier this year and adapt that onto our online platform. And then also after, exploring the archive to pick out some highlights, put them online as well. And then, you know, write some material explaining why they're important and how they're linked to the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland.

13:59

SAMANTHA: Dan's also done some amazing school engagement. I've had the pleasure of being in some of those sessions and they have been, you know, really, really excellent.

I spoke with a teacher after one of the school engagement sessions and she told me it was her PhD before she had access to an archive, and how impactful she felt it was for her pupils who were studying for their GCSEs to be able to get hands-on with archival material. She told me there is a question about sources on each of their exam papers and invariably the answer given is newspapers, and she felt it was so important for the students to see and understand the breadth of archival material that Sam has just made reference to and the different sources that that are available.

And the same teacher told me how valuable it is for schools who are teaching the history of Northern Ireland's recent past to be able to bring their pupils to a trusted archive where there is balance and all shades of opinion is represented.

15:20

SAM: And those school groups, the majority of the young people are people who are coming into The Linen Hall for the first time. They may not have even been aware of its existence before they came in on this school trip. So, it's really important to get them in, show them how institutions like The Linen Hall work, how an archive operates, the kind of material that they have, and hopefully get them more engaged and enthused in the kind of work that we do.

And we hope to see many of them back at The Linen Hall in the future.

15:55

JESS: That sounds fantastic. It takes us very nicely onto the next section around the wider impact. So, let's have a chat about that, the wider impact of your work so far. How do you think the project has changed or will change the way people see the story of the NICRA collection and its importance in the national heritage?

16:12

SAMANTHA: You know, the civil rights movement foreshadowed the period known as The Troubles and I think it is somewhat eclipsed in our history by what followed. So, I think this project has allowed us to give space for the civil rights movement's history, for their aims and objectives, for their actions, for their impact and for the human stories of drive and resilience.

I think we have helped reclaim this history and given it its place.

It’s a complex period of history which is difficult to understand and there is no agreed narrative. I think the accessibility of primary materials such as this archive has the capacity really to remove barriers to understanding, and allow people to, you know, to form and change opinions.

And I think something that The Linen Hall does really well is providing that safe and respectful place for difficult conversations.

All of the community engagement sessions stimulated really excellent discussion across all of the groups, and the groups did, you know, feedback to us that they had learned new things, but also that their perceptions were challenged during the sessions.

Discussions, you know, often dealt with empathy in an effort to encourage participants to think in terms of the other and, in turn, I think there was a greater sense of understanding by the end of each session.

We do have some quotes from groups that might illustrate the impact of the work and the benefits to the groups.

One said, “The experience was incredibly meaningful and it's difficult to overstate how much it deepened our group's understanding of Northern Ireland's political history and the lasting impact of the civil rights movement.”

Another said, “Engaging with the archival material was an exciting experience as many of our participants had never visited The Linen Hall before, and the chance to explore such an important historical collection firsthand was invaluable.”

And lastly, “It was a privilege to be part of such an important project, and I hope more grassroots community groups can benefit from similar projects in the future. “

18:38

JESS: Wonderful. It's so impactful to hear participants’ voices, isn't it, from the first-hand experiences that they've had. I think you've given us some really incredible insights there for the sector to hear about the work that you're doing and how important it is and the importance of archives in general.

I think our listeners would be interested to hear how you balance sharing challenging material with ensuring the wellbeing of staff, volunteers and audiences. You've already mentioned the importance of care when working with sensitive archives. Can you tell us what a trauma-informed approach looks like in practice?

19:14

SAMANTHA: It is challenging working with the recent past. You know, Northern Ireland is a small country, and most people were impacted by The Troubles in some form, and we are always mindful that these are real lives and real people, and we are respectful in our approach. We have a lot of sensitive and potentially triggering material, and we are careful and conscious of the potential impact of this on those who are engaging with the archives, and we work with groups to ensure that we do no harm.

But I'm also conscious of our team and ensuring their health and wellbeing is not adversely affected by working with Troubles-related material.

Now, the team are experienced and they're resilient and they are really passionate about the material we have and the importance of it being accessible, and therefore that is their touchstone. But I think the more we can all learn and apply trauma-informed practice, the better.

20:21

JESS: I'd just like to ask how the support from Archive Revealed has impacted your organisation?

20:28

SAMANTHA: We are a small organisation and, you know, we are operating, as so many organisations are, in a very challenging financial environment and, you know, there are key roles that we would like to have. Support such as the Archives Revealed funding allows us to have these roles for the duration of projects and, you know, these roles really do help us grow our knowledge and our understanding and demonstrate the value of those roles to what we can achieve. Sam's role for example.

And, you know also like many organisations, The Linen Hall has collections of national significance, but we are a non-national organisation. Therefore, support from Archives Revealed has allowed us to unlock the NICRA archive - which has been at the library for over 30 years, my goodness - and to shine a light on its fascinating content.

We have learned so much about best practice in archives and we now have a cataloguing handbook, we have templates, we have roadmaps which we can apply to other archives, which is invaluable.

21:38

JESS: Have you noticed any changes in how people or partners interact with you since the project?

21:43

So, I mean, the levels of engagement have been very good, and I feel that, as a consequence, there has been an increase in interest in the history of the civil rights movement. We have had several requests to access the archive, including a doctoral candidate who's going to be working with the archive, which is fantastic.

But you know, I've also been approached by academic institutions about potential partnership projects, and they have referenced our recent work on civil rights as a driver for their reaching out.

And from the collection’s perspective, we've received donations of civil rights material, which adds to the richness of our collecting in this area.

22:27

SAM: We definitely welcome further donations from, you know, anyone who has any material relating to civil rights in Northern Ireland. If you have any material in your loft, in your attic, wherever, if you think it could be housed with us, then please do get in touch.

22:44

JESS: Great. We can share your contact details on the web page. I think that's a really important message to pass on there, thank you so much for sharing that experience.

We're going to look ahead now and kind of just thinking about everything you've achieved so far, what's up next for the project and the collection, and do you have any more engagement plans in the near future?

23:07

SAM: We do. We still have several more groups coming in. There are lots of school groups coming in in the new year, which we're very much, yeah, looking forward to hosting.

The other thing I would encourage people to do if they haven't already engaged with the project, is look at the resources that we have available online. If they go on our website, they can see an online version of the exhibition that we hosted. They can see a selection of archival items that I have put together to showcase the archive. They include things like a letter from NICRA to Vanessa Redgrave to invite her to Derry for an event to mark the first anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

There is a selection of NICRA ephemera. There is a poster from an organisation claiming to be the Los Angeles branch of NICRA, which I particularly like, and I think does a really good job of showing the international outlook of NICRA and the fact that they're engaging with lots of different societies and branches across the across the globe.

The website also includes links to six podcasts that we put together in collaboration with the historian named Jason Burke, who we also worked on the exhibition with.

So, yeah, if people do want to engage with the project and they don't live in Belfast or Northern Ireland, then they can definitely do so via the website.

24:35

SAMANTHA: And the online exhibition is fantastic. It's, you know, designed for a general audience, but it takes, you know, really quite complex historical and political concepts, it makes them really accessible without sacrificing depth or nuance.

And it does serve as an educational resource, but also with a call to reflect on really how the struggles of the past continue to shape Northern Ireland's present and future.

The physical exhibition is also touring to community groups and to public libraries. It is in my hometown library just now, which is very exciting.

You know, at The Linen Hall, we try and take an innovative approach to engagement, and one of the ways that we do this is through creative responses to the archives and collections.

Recently, a group of creative writers gathered at the library and, following a tour and archives highlight session, including materials from the NICRA archive, a creative writing facilitator encouraged the group to respond creatively to the materials or to write a piece inspired by memories, reminiscence and emotions that the materials have prompted. Those who then felt comfortable doing so shared their responses with each other at the end, and that is something that we would absolutely love to do more of in the future.

So, engagement aside, we will also obviously take the learnings from this into future projects, and every project sparks ideas.

While the larger piece that this project is part of included the podcast series that Sam has mentioned, I have been really struck by how powerful the first-person narratives coming out of the engagement are.

I think there is definitely an oral history project around civil rights, and I also think intergenerational work would also be very beneficial.

26:43

JESS: Hopefully, this will be one of those cases where you can leverage this project for future ones, and I'll definitely be checking out the podcast.

I guess I just wanted to ask, finally, what advice you would give to other archives when they may be considering a cataloguing project that has a strong engagement element or anybody who is thinking of applying to Archives Revealed?

27:05

SAMANTHA: So, I think I would advise that organisations think carefully about the archive they would choose. The NICRA archive was one of the largest in our collections, as has been mentioned, but it was also one of the most significant and it was really timely as … approaching a number of anniversaries.

Anniversaries are often a time of reflection and re-evaluation, and I think it's always useful if you can link engagement to an anniversary, as it will naturally raise the profile of the work.

I would also strongly recommend applying for a scoping grant. Having the archive scoped was invaluable in helping us understand and articulate the scale, the provenance, the priority.

And in relation to engagement, you know, The Linen Hall has a lot of experience of meaningful and impactful engagement, but I would advise that even if this is not something archives have much experience of, that they use this as an opportunity to try.

I think engagement can seem daunting, but it can be scaled to suit your organisation and your level of experience in this area.

What we found really beneficial is asking your audiences what they are interested in and what appeals to them.

I think it's really productive as co-design and co-creation feeds back. Archive rummages, you know, highlights from the archive selected by community or local history groups, discussions and reminiscence are all valuable, they're all impactful and they're relatively easy to achieve.

I think also maybe think about how you engage people with your archives using existing platforms for what could be a quick win. Most organisations have social media presence, and online and digital content can be produced. It's a way to stretch the physical boundaries of the archive and gain reach.

29:19

JESS: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode from Belfast’s Linen Hall.

A special thanks to Samantha and Sam for their insights. If you're curious about the NICRA archive or want to dive deeper into the stories that we've touched on, head over to The Linen Hall’s website and check out their online exhibition. There's so much more to explore, and if you'd like to support their work or even contribute materials, you'll find all the details there.

Until next time, thank you for joining us.

JESS HOGG: Welcome to the Archives Revealed podcast, the place where we talk about the fascinating world of archives, and explore how they connect us to people, communities and the stories that matter.

I'm Jess Hogg, Sector Development and Engagement Manager for the programme.

If you're new to us, Archives Revealed is the UK’s only grant programme focused entirely on helping archives catalogue and unlock their collections.

It's supported by the Heritage Fund, the Pilgrim Trust, the Wolfson Foundation and The National Archives, all working together to make sure important collections are accessible for research, learning and enjoyment.

The programme has come a long way since it started back in 2006 as the National Cataloguing Grants Programme.

It was relaunched, as Archives Revealed in 2016, and in 2024 we were thrilled to welcome the Heritage Fund as a new partner, bringing in a £5 million investment.

That takes the total value of the programme to £6 million, with over 85% going straight to the sector through grants.

And there's something new this time around. Applicants now need to spend 20% of their funding on public engagement.

That means thinking about who your audiences are, not just the ones you already know, but new ones too, and how your project will make a difference to them.

In today’s episode, we’re chatting with one of the first-round grantees and seeing how they tackled this challenge.

We'll hear how they identified their audiences and creative activities, and opened up their collections in ways that really resonated with people.

In this episode, we're chatting with Emily Toettcher and Sam Goldstone-Brady from the National Paralympic Heritage Trust about their project, the Jean Stone Collection, celebrating influential women in the Paralympic movement.

We'll hear about what we can learn from Jean Stone as a person, and from her role in disability sport history and the gaps in the historic record they are looking to address.

Hi, Emily and Sam, thank you for joining us. Can you start by telling us a bit about what you do at the National Paralympic Heritage Trust?

02:01

EMILY TOETTCHER: Hi, I'm Emily, I'm Head of Programmes at the National Paralympic Heritage Trust. We were set up ten years ago so we're quite a young organisation and, really, we grew out of all of the positivity and success of the London 2012 Paralympic Games. After that, it was felt that there should be better recognition of the fact that the Paralympic movement started in the UK.

So, we were set up and in the last ten years we've grown. We're a staff team currently of 14. We have a heritage centre at Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire, which is where the Paralympic movement began. And we run a programme of exhibitions, events, workshops, outreach activities across the country, working with people with lived experience of disability and neurodiversity.

Sam's going to tell us a little bit about the collections that we hold.

03:02

SAM GOLDSTONE-BRADY: So, I'm Sam. Hi, I'm the Collections Engagement Officer, so I'm responsible for the care and maintenance of our collection and then some of the curation of our galleries and displays.

We have quite a mixed collection of both objects and records. Objects what you might expect with a sport-focused collection - awards, medals, equipment - and we have quite a large textile collection particularly related to London 2012 and the opening and closing ceremonies.

But we also hold many more archival records related to the history of disability sport, newspaper clippings and photos, particularly those from athletes’ personal collections, and we have a service level agreement with Buckinghamshire Archive, who are our county archive, to help us properly kind of care and store for those archive items.

The majority of the archival collections that we work with are from WheelPower, who are the National Disability Sport organisation for wheelchair sport, and their collections are much more extensive around administrative documents, correspondence, programmes from games, and then further records related to kind of the medical history of disability sport and the wider context of the Paralympic movement.

We previously worked with Buckinghamshire Archives on that collection and it's around 20,000 records, but this year we started a new project on the collection of Jean Stone MBE.

Jean was a prominent administrative figure within the disability sport movement. She worked for WheelPower for many years and then also worked within the Scottish disability sport movement and with the International Paralympic Committee.

So, it's quite an important collection for us and it's on loan from WheelPower, so with the Archives Revealed support, we're able to hire a project archivist to oversee the cataloguing of that collection.

04:53

JESS: Amazing. Thank you for sharing that really great overview. I'd like to move on to talking about the project itself and then some of the planning that went into it. You began the cataloguing project earlier this year. Can you tell us a bit about what the project set out to do, who were the audiences that you wanted to reach and how you plan to engage with them?

05:15

EMILY: So as Sam's mentioned, we started the project earlier this year. Jean Stones life's really important, and we felt we wanted to better recognise her contribution to the Paralympic movement. But the collection that we held on loan from WheelPower needed cataloguing and we needed the support of an archivist. So, we're really delighted to have the support through the Archives Revealed programme in order to be able to do that.

I suppose you could approach that project by working with an archivist and them doing all the work, but really our approach is always to involve people in the process of collecting as well as sharing collections, so involving volunteers throughout was really important to us.

So, as well as cataloguing her collection, we have recruited pretty much a completely new team of volunteers to work on the cataloguing with the archivist. That recruitment work happened over the summer, people were sort of trained in September and they've now been working through the autumn on the archive, which has been brilliant. It's been a really great opportunity for us to recruit new people who we hope will continue working with us once the project's finished.

So, that's kind of part of it, involving people in the process of cataloguing. The second part is then working with people to interpret that collection for a wider audience.

We really wanted to particularly involve women in the project because Jean was a woman and we're trying to better represent the lives of pioneering women in the Paralympic movement.

So, in the new year, working with an artist, we're going to run a series of workshops with a SEND school for girls. Then with a group of women of different ages, some of whom are our volunteers, some of people have been involved in the archiving project and some of whom will be new people that we recruit, all of whom have lived experience of disability or neurodiversity, and they will help.

They'll explore the archives that's been catalogued, and they will work together to create an exhibition which will take place in a local arts centre in March next year, in line with Women's History Month.

So, really excited, there's lots going on, but we're really trying to involve people right throughout the process of cataloguing and interpreting.

07:56

SAM: The other impetus for the project was actually just understanding more about Jean Stone herself. She was involved, you know, so intently with the disability sport movement. She actually sat on our board very briefly before she passed away in 2019.

And while, you know, she had this large collection, we didn’t really understand the full extent of it. We did some initial scoping before the application with Buck's archives, but, you know, the detail was still unclear. The narratives that could come through from that collection weren't, weren't fully clear.

So, when the project archivist began on the project, you know, we did a full audit of the collection, which really developed our perception of the type of content, like stories within. Part of that was just identifying that difference, and what was more the correspondence, organisational records, administrative documents, and then that, that's a bit more personal and tells us more about Jean herself.

As a really quick example, she attended the Seoul 1988 Paralympic Games as kind of someone, you know, working within the movement. So, you can see in there that mixture of, you know, photos that she took as someone who's working there, like photos of the event, and then also her personal tourism photos as she was clearly using this also as a chance to visit South Korea.

And it's nice that we get that balance, of personal stories that we often get for athletes, but we don't always get for administrators because they're the behind-the-scenes people. They're more invisible to the historic records so it's nice to understand Jean to a different extent than we could previously.

09:33

JESS: So, building what on what you've already said around the public engagement side of the project, what kinds of activities have you run so far and how do you think they're going?

09:43

SAM: From the initial group of volunteers that we've recruited, we did a training session with Buckinghamshire Archives to kind of introduce people to cataloguing. This is, as Emily mentioned, these people who didn't really have a connection with the kind of formal process and kind of archival theory behind.

And so a lot of what we've noticed as we've gone through the project with these volunteers is not just, you know, the benefits of that training and their growing confidence and their interest and their knowledge of the process and why, you know, you would list an item in a particular way for the end result for the eventual catalogue, which has been a really nice development and bringing in people into the sector who maybe wouldn't have had those opportunities previously.

In terms of our progress, we've listed about half of the collection so far. So, the collections are just under 100 boxes and we've got 47 boxes listed at time of recording, so it's nice to be at the halfway point at this point with the project. And we're now kind of beginning that process with Buckinghamshire Archives of uploading the initial listing now to their collections management system and creating the kind of catalogue entries all around the collection.

10:57

EMILY: I think, given that we are about halfway through and knowing that we're doing an exhibition at the end and that we're involving people in that process, we've been really thinking about what we're learning from the content of the archive. So, there's all that lovely stuff that Sam said about the kind of process of archive, but it's also really made us think, this is her mixture of personal and professional collection. What does it tell us about her as a person? What have we learned about her? How did she feel travelling at a time perhaps when other people didn't travel as much, particularly as a woman. You know, all those different experiences, can the archive tell us that? What do we know about what she did when she wasn't at work? She loved taking photos when she was away.

There's so much kind of richness there, but there's also gaps. And so, one of the things we've talked about quite a lot is will the exhibition aim to fill those gaps? Are there ways we could be creative and think about what do we not know about her? How might we fill that in?

And try to really kind of centre the programming and the exhibition around her as a person and not just a kind of a professional archive of a person's life.

I think that's really important for visitors and for people to be inspired by the collection that they can see the person in the story.

So, knowing that we're doing at the end has been really helpful, because then you really begin to think about what's there and what isn't.

12:32

JESS: I think that's such an important point and something that the wider sector can definitely take on with their own collections and projects. Thank you for that.

So, in terms of the wider impact, how do you think the project has or could change the way people see the story of the Jean Stone collection and Jean Stone herself, and its importance in national heritage?

12:53

SAM: I guess for some wider thoughts or some wider context, there's a lot of great work beginning or kind of ongoing around disability heritage. You know, disability is often an invisible category within the wider field of history and within wider collections and, you know, we're seeing a lot of development in the sector both in archives and also in museums around kind of addressing those invisibilities.

Within that, disability sport itself can still be a little invisible sometimes, and there's a lot of gaps in the historic record that, you know, we hope that ourselves and other organisations and researchers are addressing.

But as we mentioned previously, the totality of some of the profiles of certain individuals are quite large. So, Dr Ludwig Guttmann, who's the founder of the movement, you know, his presence is very large, particularly in the kind of British context of disability sport history. Then that does leave the roles of other administrators, particularly with female administrators, less visible within that background.

It's notable that even for ourselves, as we were developing the application for this project, there was still actually so little we knew about Jean despite, you know, all of the work that she had done even up to recent years, up to her passing. So, it's about addressing, you know, that wider context and that wider visibility of those individuals.

I think, also, it's a slight tangent, but the context of what a disability sport collection is as well.

I think, you know, going into this we were assuming that the collection would be very focused on her role as an administrator and maybe her role, as you know, within her personal life and how that was reflected in the collection.

But both this and other collections we worked on do show the much wider remit of, you know, what we think of as disability sport.

There's documents in there that refer to say some of the wider political changes within the organisation, some of the medical collections with the development of disability sport. So, yeah, seeing it not just as a sport collection, but as an important collection to the wider kind of history of disability within this country or internationally, you know, that's also incredibly important to our wider work.

15:02

EMILY: I think the only thing I'd really add to that would just be about, you know, the project’s enabled us to do that piece of work, to begin to kind of position people like Jean in the story. But also, you know, on a kind of local and national level, we've tried to think of ways in which people will be able to access that content.

So, there'll be the people involved, there's obviously the group involved in the cataloguing, there'll be the participants in involved in creating the exhibition, people that will come to the arts centre.

What we're hoping now is that the exhibition will then travel to a second venue in Buckinghamshire, so there'll be that kind of local engagement.

And because of the funding and support from Archives Revealed, we've been able to secure an additional grant from a local community foundation, Heart of Bucks, which has enabled us to sort of develop the exhibition side.

But we'll also be complemented by digital content. So, there'll be content on our website and hopefully a series of vlogs, so that a kind of wider audience who aren't as local to us will be able to find out about her life, too.

16:11

JESS: It's fantastic that you've been able to secure further funding. I think that's such a great achievement for you and your organisation.

So, could you tell me a little bit about what the support from Archives Revealed has meant for your organisation?

16:34

EMILY: I think it's, you know, obviously amazing to have the financial support for the project. Without it we simply couldn't have catalogued the collection so that in itself is brilliant and we are really, really grateful for that.

As I said, it's enabled us to bring in additional funding, but it's also being part of a network of organisations who are funded to do similar projects.

We're small, you know, we've existed for ten years. We do have great support from Buckinghamshire Archives, but we are a young organisation with a small staff team. So, knowing that through the period of the project that you're there, Jess, that we can contact you and ask for help and support.

The fact that you're making these podcasts so that it enables people to share details of their project, their expertise. You know, everyone's got strengths, everyone's got areas they're developing. I find that really, really helpful.

17:24

JESS: Perfect.

So, have you noticed any changes in how people or partners interact with you since the project started?

17:29

SAM: So, in terms of our volunteer base, definitely the group that we recruited to work on this, they've quickly grown in confidence. The kind of halfway point that we've reached already, I think is really indicative of how kind of quickly and how they become confident in the work and understanding the process.

We have an existing partnership with Buckinghamshire Archives, and their support has continued and that has been lovely.

But supporting these new groups of volunteers and expanding our kind of collection volunteer network has been really lovely.

I suppose more broadly, in terms of that skills and that confidence, it's us thinking about our kind of inclusive participation in recruitment.

You know, one thing our project archivists noted was that, you know, we're a very disability friendly organisation. It's very much within our remit, something that, you know, they didn't have experience with previously in terms of their training, in terms of how to enable neurodiverse or disabled people within that heritage environment and how to best support them to encourage their success.

And certainly, some of that's been a learning process for us as well. Some of it comes down to individual needs and recognising different barriers for individuals in terms of the cataloguing process.

Some of it's just been about being flexible, knowing that certain volunteers work best with certain types of records, maybe for things that are more repetitive and more suitable to other people, and just being able to be flexible in what we're assigning to each volunteer.

But it's very much been a learning process and it's encouraging that we're able to make those adaptations where possible, whilst also still kind of cataloguing to the needed quality and to the standard.

19:10

EMILY: I think we also saw, you know, seeing the projects as an opportunity more broadly to engage with and connect with the wider community of people in the local area, and creative practitioners who have lived experience of disability and neurodiversity.

So, having an artist involved in the exhibition who will lead the workshops in the new year with the SEND school and with the group that we're setting up, that's brilliant, that's an opportunity for us to work with someone new.

The exhibition at the arts centre, we haven't worked with them before, so that's great and we've been exploring lots of opportunities with them.

Then our plans to extend the exhibition beyond that, that's another opportunity to connect and perhaps find a venue that we haven't used before.

We're quite keen that the exhibition didn't take place kind of on our site or in a museum. We wanted to put it perhaps in a place where someone who might not visit an archive or a museum would find it.

Not all those partnerships are fully formed yet, but the impetus of the project has kind of encouraged us to go out and make new connections.

20:23

JESS: Absolutely. And I think it's just incredible how much you've been able to achieve in just a few short months, and there's still kind of half the project to go.

Can you talk a little bit about what's next for the project and the collection? Do you have more engagement plans coming up?

20:41

EMILY: So, we're in the process now of recruiting the artist, at the time of recording, so we hope to have that person in place in the new year, in early 2026.

And then the workshops are planned for February and the exhibition for March in time, as I say, for Women's History Month.

So, it's quite a busy process doing that at the same time that the archivist and the volunteer team are finishing off the cataloguing.

And I suppose then there's that relationship between those two things and how that material and content’s shared. Like how will the artist, with our support, kind of decide the pathway and theme to follow in creating the exhibition? What will the participants be interested in?

So, there’ll definitely be a lot of kind of interplay, I suppose, between us kind of sharing and providing the catalogued material with the group who are going to interpret it.

21:40

SAM: I think in terms of development for the collection, there are some objects related to the collection which we're hoping to kind of catalogue separately, as objects as part of the archive collection. And so kind of making sure those objects are properly listed and cared for.

Then also the longer-term kind of research usage and how that links to other collections, like the wider WheelPower collection is kind of where some of the collections work may go in the future.

22:10

JESS: Great, thank you. I think that brings us nicely to the final question, which is what advice would you give to other archives considering a cataloguing project that has a strong engagement element, or those who are thinking of applying to Archives Revealed?

22:20

EMILY: It's important that the people leading the project and involved in the project really buy into that commitment. So that, you know, our archivist is archiving, but they're also managing and supporting a team of volunteers to do the same thing.

So, it's having people with an intent to do both those things, even if perhaps they haven't done it before or they haven't got the skills. So, I think that's really important to understand the time and resource to support people, to recruit them.

Sam mentioned some of the training to support them and being responsive to them having particular needs that you might need support with.

I think drawing on advice from your team, Jess. There's so much good support and advice certainly in the museum sector more widely, and I'm sure it's the same in archives around supporting volunteers.

I think the other thing, and the reason we chose an artist, is sometimes having a creative response to an archive or an object enables people in more easily than if you just provided the object or the archive in itself. By saying, you know, look, we're going to take a few things, a collection of photographs - and we found a poem recently that Jean had written - and say would we like to read that and create a response ourselves that's also creative, whether it's piece of art or poetry?

And it's having a professional with that expertise to facilitate that process, which lots of community engaged artists can do means that you are more likely to draw people in and for them to have a positive experience.

24:05

JESS: That's really good advice and amazing insight there. Thank you.

Thank you so much to Emily and Sam for joining us today and for sharing your work. It's fantastic to see how cataloguing something that often happens behind the scenes can lead to creative ideas, community involvement and real impact.

If you'd like to learn more about the project or the Archives Revealed programme, you can find more information and some links on the page below.

JESS HOGG: Welcome to the Archives Revealed podcast, the place where we talk about the fascinating world of archives, and explore how they connect us to people, communities and the stories that matter.

I'm Jess Hogg, Sector Development and Engagement Manager for the programme, and if you're new to us, Archives Revealed is the UK’s only grant programme focused entirely on helping archives catalogue and unlock their collections.

It's supported by the Heritage Fund, the Pilgrim Trust, the Wolfson Foundation and The National Archives, all working together to make sure important collections are accessible for research, learning and enjoyment.

The programme has come a long way since it started back in 2006 as the National Cataloguing Grants Programme.

It was relaunched, as Archives Revealed in 2016, and in 2024 we were thrilled to welcome the Heritage Fund as a new partner, bringing in a £5 million investment.

That takes the total value of the programme to six million, with over 85% going straight to the sector through grants.

And there's something new this time around. Applicants now need to spend 20% of their funding on public engagement.

That means thinking about who your audiences are, not just the ones you already know, but new ones too, and how your project will make a difference to them.

In this episode, we'll be speaking to Georgia Bould and Karen Davies from Sandwell Archives about the Illuminating the Chance Glassworks project, which is uncovering a collection that includes letters from Prince Albert, and wage and welfare records that shaped working lives from one of the largest archival collections ever held at Sandwell Archives.

Hi, Georgia and Karen, thanks for joining us. Could you start by telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do at Samwell Archives?

01:59

GEORGIA BOULD: Hello, so my name is Georgia Bould and I'm the archivist for Sandwell Archives. I've been working here for around 3 years now and not only am I responsible for the general archives duties such as accessioning, cataloguing, listing, but I also help and organise all of our events. So, promoting the archive service, who we are, what we do, not just internally, but externally as well.

And responsible for all of our volunteers - we've got a lovely volunteering team -responsible for our staff and their wellbeing as well. So, yeah, across the board, quite a few jobs, quite a few duties, as well as being an archivist as well.

But it's enjoyable.

02:51

JESS: Fantastic. Thank you. And how about you, Karen?

02:55

KAREN DAVIES: Hi, I'm Karen Davies. I have been appointed the project archivist for the Chance cataloguing project. So, basically, I'm responsible for cataloguing as much of the collection as we can, and it is a big, big collection.

I have been on the project now since July, so it's only a few months, but it's going very well and I'm enjoying it immensely.

I do have some responsibility for the outreach as well. I know Georgia is leading on that one, but I am basically helping with the oral history interviews especially, setting those up and finding candidates for them, and various other bits and pieces outreach events that I've been asked to help out with. But primarily, I'm responsible for cataloguing the Chance archive collection.

That's what I do.

04:01

JESS: And following on from that, for the people who might not know who are listening, can you just give us a quick overview of Sandwell Archives and the kinds of collections that you look after?

04:13

GEORGIA: Yeah, no problem.

So, we're a Local Authority archive service run by Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, and we're responsible for collecting, preserving and providing access to archived material for the Sandwell area.

But if this is your first time hearing about Sandwell and who we are, we're comprised of six main towns, including Oldbury, Rowley Regis, Smethwick, Tipton, Wednesbury and West Bromwich, and are mainly known for our industrial heritage, extensive canal network, glassmaking, pottery. Then for any West Bromwich Albion fans that might be listing, football successes as well.

So, we're a diocesan records office, holding Church of England parish records for the Deanery of Warley and All Saints Church, West Bromwich, as well as being a place of deposit for public records. But some of our most requested items include business records such as Chance, but other companies including Patent Shaft, TW Camm and GKN, as well as our local studies photographic collection, which holds over 12,000 original photos.

We're a very small team and a relatively small archive, but we share a space with Smethwick Library as well, and we work collaboratively with library colleagues and museum colleagues as well, not just working on archives projects, but promoting and providing access to the material we hold across the board as well.

05:49

JESS: Thank you. That's a really great overview. I'll move on to talking about the project now.

So, you began the cataloguing project in July this year. Can you just tell us a bit about what the project set out to do, who the audience is you wanted to reach and how you plan to engage with them?

06:06

GEORGIA: Yeah, sure.

Well, put simply, the Illuminating the Chance Glassworks project aims to make available as much of the material associated with the business practices of Chance Brothers and Company as possible, and to make it accessible to as many people and organisations as possible.

So far, we've reached, or will reach over the next few weeks, the following, which consists of the other archive repositories at Dudley, Wolverhampton and Walsall, other libraries including Smethwick and West Bromwich libraries. We have displays planned for the Chance project for both, although a more extensive display will be put up a bit later on in West Bromwich Library.

We've contacted universities and colleges, primarily Sandwell College, Birmingham University and Aston University… Going various outreach projects and tasks involving students volunteering to boxes the Chance collection, assisting with transcription of the oral history interviews and helping with open days.

We are in contact with local history groups such as the Chance Heritage Trust, the Smethwick Heritage Centre, the Black Country Society, Black Country Living Museum and the Stourbridge Glass Museum.

I've written articles on the project for Chance Heritage Trust’s newsletter, The Black Country Society's magazine called The Black Countryman and Smethwick Heritage Centre’s magazine called The Telephone.

Newspapers and magazines, we have contacted the Sandwell Herald. Express and Star we've thought about, but we haven’t contacted them yet. The Black Country Bugle was another one we thought of.

I am in the process of writing an article for the Sandwell Herald as well.

Chance family members, we are in contact with a couple, most especially Henry Chance, who I understand will be visiting Sandwell Archives next week. We intend to take him on a tour of the rooms holding the catalogued and uncatalogued Chance material, which should be fun.

08:21

JESS: That's amazing. It's so much activity in such a short space of time.

And in terms of the cataloguing then, Karen, how's it going in itself? And have there been any particular surprises or discoveries along the way that you'd like to share?

08:38

KAREN: Well, the cataloguing is progressing very well. It is the largest archive collection that we hold at Sandwell Archives, so it is a sizeable task cataloguing it all!

Chance Brothers and company were pioneers in glassmaking. As well as producing a thriving home market, they also exported all the way around the world. Consequently, over 160 years of glass production has resulted in around about 180 boxes of uncatalogued material.

I'm wading through boxes of business ledgers, personal and business letters of correspondence. I've found out that the members of the Chance family, who were large, there are many of them, were prolific letter writers, so we have lots and lots of letters.

Minutes of meetings, production reports, promotional sales, literature, trade catalogues, and so forth. What you'd expect from a business archive collection.

I found the oldest document, which is written in 1823. It's a beautiful thing. It's a little bit fragile, but it is the oldest so far.

I found links with Neville Chamberlain, former Prime Minister of Great Britain. He wrote a letter to Walter Chance thanking him for his contribution to the Midlands Union.

I found letters from Prince Albert, Consort to Queen Victoria. He wrote a letter to Robert Lucas Chance discussing a mutual guarantee bond allowing the Royal Commission, of which Prince Albert was the president, to access funds for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

I've also found letters from the Prince of Wales writing in 1878, and he would later be, obviously, King Edward VII. He wrote a letter to Robert Lucas Chance asking him to be a juror on the committee for the English section of the French Exhibition of 1878.

Other material catalogued, well, from what I've been reading has helped to highlight the social and working conditions of the day. For example, levels of illiteracy amongst the working population were quite high. I found written contracts dated 1839 for builders erecting new factory buildings on the Spon Lane site, which is where Chance Glass Factory was based in Smethwick. These contracts were signed with an X because they were unable to write - unable to even write their name.

I've come across letters of correspondence written in 1845 discussing the fact that female apprentices were bound only until they were 21 or married, whichever came sooner, on the assumption that once married, their husbands would be responsible for their financial wellbeing. Great!

I have read letters written during World War I relating to the reluctant decision - well, I get the impression it was a reluctant decision - to allow girls to take over the jobs in the glass cutting room that were usually occupied by the men. But because the men were called up to fight, the decision was made to allow girls to take their places.

Chance Brothers’ business activities concerning women, I would imagine would be no different to other companies of the day, but these letters, well, they do give a really good insight into the general attitudes towards women in the workforce of the 19th and early 20th century.

I can also see from material catalogued that there is a lot on employees, for example, wage books, union correspondence, pension and workers’ welfare schemes.

From reading these documents, Chance Brothers to me seem to be fair and decent employers who cared about the workers and their working environments. They even built a school on site for the workers’ children, which is still there.

However, on the other hand, I've also discovered letters discussing the visit of an environmental engineer in the 1840s who climbed to the top of one of the factory towers using wooden scaffolding, to take samples of the chimney emissions to try to find out why Chance Brothers glass was turning green during manufacture.

So, that's really not a good example of health and safety, but I can just imagine this man climbing up a chimney, a factory chimney on a wooden, probably a very flimsy wooden scaffolding.

So, the stories like that, there's lots of stories to be to be told.

So far, I've catalogued 16 boxes, which is round about 568 items so far, and I'm finding it very satisfying seeing those catalogue boxes going back on the shelves, all nice and safe.

So, yes, there's quite a few stories to tell there.

13:30

JESS: To follow on, I think, as you've described the kind of behind-the-scenes work in terms of the cataloguing, the project also put a real emphasis on public engagement.

Georgia, do you want to talk a bit about why that was so important for this collection?

13:51

GEORGIA: This project is actually our first externally funded project in over a decade, so we felt really motivated to just grasp this opportunity and make the most of it.

I'm sure in the archives sector a lot of people agree in the fact that a cataloguing project doesn't just stand alone, it needs to ensure access and engagement as well. So, it's not just obviously the hard work that Karen's been working on cataloguing the collections and everything behind the scenes. Not just cataloguing but repackaging and cleaning documents. But it's also about making these collections more meaningful and accessible for the people they belong to and the people who are interested in this.

So, we as a service know why the Chance collection is of local and international significance, and obviously our current researchers do as well, so we started by asking how we can engage people who've never really visited archives before, or haven't visited Sandwell Archives.

So, public engagement, be it through creative events or Instagram reels that we've been creating, really seems to break down any general misconceptions about archives being these more sterile, silent spaces, and people can really engage with and learn about the materials in different ways.

So, yeah, we're hoping to retain this level engagement, and we're using these events that we're running as part of the Chance Brothers project and the feedback we receive to inspire future activities that we may do with other works and other projects as well.

15:34

JESS: Great. Yeah, that sounds amazing. I think it is important, as you say, that one thing can't happen without the other.

And it brings us on to the next point, which is kind of to talk a little bit more about what kinds of activities you've run so far and how they're going.

15:51

GEORGIA: Yeah, so, despite the fact that the project only started in July, we've already had a Chance Open Day as part of Heritage Open Days in September. That was more to showcase the material that Karen's already worked on so far, but also just the general project and what we're hoping to achieve.

It included a creative workshop hosted by myself, which was more if I could test a version to see how the public received it. And we had two Chance talks, both in the morning and in the afternoon, which are hosted by our local studies librarian, Mo.

Obviously, alongside the newly catalogued finds that Karen has described for us, we created a mini exhibition display that we put on display in Smethwick Library, just to entice people into the search room and ask a few more questions.

Luckily, that was really successful. We received 55 visitors in total and we're hoping to host another event in 2026, because Karen will have catalogued more material and we'd have more to showcase as well.

But alongside that, we've got some creative workshops that, as of November 22nd, we're running those between November and January. That includes hiring local artists who have been inspired by the Chance Archive collection to run workshops for the general public. We're focusing primarily on families and young people.

One artist is reimagining the Crystal Palace, which the Chance Brothers contributed the glass to, and the production of it as well.

Another is showing attendees how to make their own Chance handkerchief vases out of paper. So that's something that we're really looking forward to getting involved with ourselves as well.

But, yeah, it's been a great and busy time so far. We've got even more planned moving forward, and our volunteers who we've recruited over the past few months have been helping us all along the way. They were helping at the open day, they've been helping with the oral histories and Spotlight interviews that Karen's been recording.

So, yeah, it's been great so far.

18:19

JESS: I think that's really inspiring and I hope archives can learn, you know, that some of these activities are possible, even with not so many staff members.

Obviously, funding helps, but yeah, that's just, yeah, fantastic.

Is there a story or moment that stood out for you, where you kind of saw the collections connect with people in a powerful way?

18:41

KAREN: Well, I have seen how social interaction can change history, which in itself is powerful. For example, on the Chance Heritage Trust guided tour. The Chance Heritage Trust organised guided tours of the factory. Part of it is still standing in Smethwick. That was over the Heritage Open Week, so I was invited to go on that tour.

I spoke to a fellow tour member who was also an ex-Chance employee - a lot of those tour members did once work for Chance. He assured me that he was working there until at least 1985. Which is really interesting, because everything that I have read on the Chance history says that the company closed in 1981. We have nothing to say that they continued manufacturing until 1985, which in itself is very interesting.

So, this person we will hopefully try to engage as one of our interview candidates, to see if we can find out any more about that, which is very interesting.

So, he will be able to fill in what hasn't been written down, basically. I found that quite, quite impactful actually. Someone was actually working at the factory at a time when the factory was meant to have closed.

So, I found that quite impactful.

20:14

JESS: Just drawing on that, I guess, how do you think that the project has changed the way people see the story of Chance Brothers so far? I mean, it's early days, isn't it, in the project? But I guess with that story there is potential there for that changing of minds, in terms of the importance of the collection in people's thoughts and in the national heritage.

20:37

KAREN: Yeah, that's absolutely true. The sheer volume of material produced during the running of the business of Chance Brothers and Company tells me that they were certainly a force to be reckoned with.

The more material that's catalogued, the greater the impact on the audience accessing this material.

Chance Brothers were one of the biggest employers in Smethwick, and many local people are being made aware of the impact that this company had on their lives and on Smithwick in general.

For example, many people from Smethwick and beyond associate Chance Brothers with lighthouses. That's not surprising, considering that from the 1850s onwards, Chance produced phenomenal amounts of glass optics for lighthouses all the way around the world. There are glass lighthouses in every corner of the… Chance glass lighthouses in every corner of the globe. A good number are still in operation. So, we have kind of leant on the lighthouse theme consistently as an audience engagement tool, because it seems that that is how a lot of people associate and remember the Chance Brothers, through lighthouses. So, we’ve used that quite consistently in our outreach and various other activities.

21:48

JESS: Can I just talk a little bit more about the wider impact then, and just ask you about what the support from Archives Revealed has meant for the organisation and for the cataloguing?

21:58

GEORGIA: Yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, this has been our first externally funded project in a while, but we were also fortunate enough to receive TNA’s Resilience Grant funding in the same year.

We've really hit the ground running with both of these projects, and let them complement one another in different ways.

Our Resilience Grant project included hiring a consultant to review our service’s sustainability. So, it's been great to highlight some treasures within our collection through the Archives Revealed grant, while actually addressing areas for further development as well.

I'd say since starting here a few years ago, we've seen a significant increase in internal interest within the organisation. We're regularly contacted by departments who now know of our existence and know our remit as well.

I feel that positioning this project as more of a creative initiative alongside the archives cataloguing side was more of a strategic way to really increase our visibility and secure more advocacy from different teams within the organisation.

So, we've presented the archive as this resource that can really inspire creativity, innovation and also strengthen community engagement as well.

It really invites different departments to potentially see themselves as future project partners and see what we can produce with funding, and what we could also produce for any internal projects that may come up.

I feel that the creative framing of this project has really encouraged not just internal staff, but external partners and visitors, regular users to view archives as more of like a living asset that can really enrich the identity of not just the organisation, not just Sandwell Council, but the local community itself as well and the people within Sandwell.

24:08

JESS: Have you noticed any changes in how people or partners interact with you since the project started?

24:16

KAREN: I personally felt that we've had more interaction with the Chance Heritage Trust since the project started. I felt this especially on the organised tour of the factory premises that I mentioned during Heritage Open Day.

It was a very positive engagement with their staff as well as with tour members, many of whom, as I say were, were ex Chance employees. As mentioned, they are now some candidates for our oral history interviews.

But I feel that we've grown quite a lot closer to the Chance Heritage Trust through this project.

The staff visit to the Stourbridge Glass Museum, again, in my opinion, was a very positive experience, especially since the curator there was a work colleague of mine who I used to work with when I was working at Black Country Living Museum, which isn't very far away.

She said, I quote, “I'm happy to do glass with you.” (LAUGHS) Which I thought was great.

I think I can speak for my colleagues as well, we were also very impressed with their fabulous Chance glassware which they have on display in their lovely museum.

So, I feel that we have certainly grown closer with our fellow heritage colleagues, shall I say, which is great.

25:35

JESS: It’s great to have an opportunity to get out of the archive and see other things, yeah, and to give that to staff, too. Yeah, fantastic.

So, we've covered the project's impact. Looking ahead, what's next for the collection, in terms of the project itself and engagement plans, too. I don't know if you want to cover that one, Georgia or Karen.

25:58

GEORGIA: Yeah. So, Karen and our colleague Rory are currently responsible for recording oral histories related to the project. We've still got a few more to collect.

Karen, do you want to talk a bit more about that?

26:16

KAREN: The oral histories? Yes, absolutely.

We are doing a series of what we call Spotlight oral histories as part of the project remit. Basically, our volunteers have found some really, really interesting items.

Because they're doing the box listing, they're the first to, I suppose look into these boxes, get into these boxes and find out what's in there.

But three of our volunteers are very interested in doing what we call Spotlight interviews. They're usually about five or ten minutes long, no more than that, and what they aim to do is talk about the particular item that they find of interest. Which means we sit them in front of a camera, which can be very intimidating, and get them to talk about how they feel about this particular item that they found.

My colleague, Rory Powell, has helped out a lot with the cameras and the tech side of things, and we have had some very interesting responses from our volunteers.

We are also aiming to do three hour or longer interviews with people who, for example, were ex members of or ex employees of Chance.

We are putting our net out, casting our net quite wide to see if we can find someone who can fit that category. So far, so good, and some very interesting things have come out of that.

28:01

GEORGIA: Yeah, and alongside the oral histories and videos that Karen's producing, which we will then have edited and posted on both YouTube and Instagram, we're creating an exhibition that we're hoping to tour. That's not just within Sandwell libraries and possibly Sandwell Museums, but as Karen mentioned, we went to Stourbridge Glass Museum as a staff visit, but with some of our volunteers as well, and they were interested in hosting the exhibition.

So, we're hoping to not just represent Sandwell within the local area, but essentially send it out to different areas in the Black Country and the West Midlands.

We're really looking forward to working with our volunteers on the research side of it and putting everything together and making it this really visually interesting, but also collaborative exhibition.

We're hoping to pull together the different artistic elements that we've been producing as part of the creative workshops, and encouraging the community to actually contribute to the exhibition. This could be through Post-it notes about what they've learned from the exhibition, if they've got any family members that worked for Chance.

But, yeah, really opening up for conversation as well and making it more of an accessible and collaborative piece, as opposed to just something that stands alone.

29:20

JESS: Yeah, I think this project just really shows how cataloguing can spark that kind of creativity. Then the community involvement who, yeah, absolutely, such a good example.

I'm just wondering if, finally, you've got any advice that you could give to other archives who are considering a cataloguing project either with a strong engagement element or anyone who's thinking of applying to Archives Revealed?

29:54

GEORGIA; Yeah, for sure.

As a team, we actually established a plan and assigned tasks to staff before Karen had even been appointed, because we knew that Karen was going to be working primarily on the cataloguing aspect, but we really wanted to push the public engagement side.

So, we made sure that everyone had a role, essentially, and we've stuck to that, which has been great.

In terms of volunteering, when I started working for Sandwell Archives, we only had two volunteers. Since this project has been advertised and promoted, we now have 12 volunteers and we're still actively recruiting.

So, if you know that your volunteer onboarding process can take some time, which it does for us, we'd say ensure you've established a team, or at least a few volunteers, before the project officially starts. Because this saves time when you appoint the project archivist, but it also ensures that your volunteers don't lose interest and move on to a different project or a different archive.

Another one I'd say is work with the public and focus on public feedback, and kind of shape your project as it goes.

Not everything may work as you've anticipated and, obviously, when you put the bid together. It might be different in reality, but it's always OK to kind of change your goal as you're moving through the project. See what works well and maybe what didn't work so well, and if you can repeat something that works well, go for it.

We also, as well as assigning like a plan and assigning tasks to each other, we established an audience that we'd really like to engage.

So, we focused on families and young people because they generally have a low engagement rate with archives in general, but Sandwell Archives as well. I really feel this motivated us to go for a more creative route and obviously, again, heavily public engagement wise.

32:03

JESS: Really good points there. Thank you.

Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure hearing your stories and hearing about the work. Thank you so much.

32:12

GEORGIA: Thank you, Jess, it's been great.

32:13

KAREN: It's been a pleasure. You're welcome.

32:16

JESS: Thanks again to Georgia and Karen for joining us today and for sharing their work.

Their project shows just how much impact thoughtful engagement can have, not only in unlocking collections like the Chance Brothers archive, but in reimagining how archives are experienced and valued.

If you’re thinking about how cataloguing and engagement can work hand-in-hand, we hope today’s conversation has sparked a few ideas.

If you’d like to learn more about this project, or about the Archives Revealed programme, you’ll find links to both on the same web page you’re listening from.

See you next time.