If the large cultural infrastructure project has already taken place
If your parent organisation, or a specially created charitable trust in your local area, has already delivered a large cultural infrastructure project, there are still opportunities to collate some records and form an archive of the project:
- Review what information you have been able to secure and what you consider to be key gaps.
- Try to identify as many senior colleagues from the bid, delivery and creative teams as you can and ask them if they have any files that can be used to form the archive.
- After speaking to a colleague ask for a recommendation or e-introduction to another and this will help establish momentum.
- Approach the three largest external stakeholders and try to engage in conversations about locating critical content (the most significant gaps).
If the project is currently in-progress or being planned
If your parent organisation or a specially created charitable trust in your local area is planning, or is currently undertaking, a large cultural infrastructure project, this guidance is especially pertinent to you. You may already have a list of things to do, but the following may be helpful:
- Prepare a one-page pitch for colleagues about why the archive is important for the area and its communities and how it aligns with the authority’s vision and mission.
- Read the Guidance for bid and creative teams and recognise that artists and other creative colleagues may not be familiar with the work or remit of an archive service. Many consider the archives to be an ‘endpoint’ that only contains old papers. Your desire to engage communities and work with digital archives will surprise many.
- Review the collections your service already holds and identify key strengths and known gaps with particular emphasis on the cultural sector and communities.
- Read the Guidance for senior decision-makers, share the link with senior colleagues if they haven’t already seen it, and align the issues described there with those of your service – for example progressing service development in line with Archive Service Accreditation, community engagement and digital preservation work.
- Undertake a simple SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis (or complete the more detailed Resilience Indicator) about the service’s ability to archive the project and support the creative programming in addition to the public service. You might consider staff capacity, existing commitments, volunteers (current/future), relationship with other heritage partners, experience with digital archives, and the technical infrastructure to receive and manage digital archives. Share this with senior decision-makers and use it as a starting point for discussion.
Further guidance
Archive services are welcome to contact asd@nationalarchives.gov.uk for further information and advice on any aspect of this guidance.