FAMILY HISTORY NEWS
The UK National Archives has announced that the Archives Revealed funding programme will award £1million to archive services over the next three years.
Rachel Bellerby reports on the latest from the world of family history
Archives Revealed is a partnership programme between the Wolfson Foundation, The Pilgrim Trust and The National Archives, and is the only funding stream in the UK dedicated to cataloguing and unlocking archives.
The purpose of Archives Revealed is to ‘open up significant archive collections to the public for research and enjoyment’. These collections represent the lives and perspectives of people all across the UK, and since its inception, Archives Revealed has funded a wide range of archive-holding organisations.
Jeff James, CEO and Keeper of The National Archives said of the award: “At a time when the archive sector, like many other sectors, is going through a challenging time and looking for innovative ways to open up collections to a new and diverse audience, £1million will allow us to make more grants than ever before. This programme is a very real demonstration of how different organisations can make a huge impact when they work together.”
Archives in action
One example of making archive material accessible to the public is the museum Aerospace Bristol, which used their £29,000 grant to catalogue all 328 boxes in their archive collection, transforming this material into an accessible resource for all. In the newly available records, Aerospace Bristol has found stories of the supersonic airliner Concorde, its advocates and its critics. While detractors discussed the environmental impact of Concorde, early marketing material found in the collection describes how Concorde would cut journey times and connect people by shrinking the world.
Aerospace Bristol built their travelling exhibition The World Shrinker around this theme and attracted around 7,000 visitors to their marquee at the Bristol Balloon Fiesta. They have also used the collection in new learning workshops and outreach activities, especially during the fiftieth anniversary of Concorde’s first flight. Researchers and the public can search the collection on The National Archives’ catalogue Discovery and visitors to Aerospace Bristol can now also interact with the collection at the Concorde Gallery archive station.
Find out more about the Archives Revealed funding programme at: https://familytr.ee/revealed