AIC 53rd Annual Meeting

The Collection Care Department at The UK National Archives ensure the continued access to 11 million archival records. But the idea of ‘access’ within a heritage context is changing as organisations work to become equitable and inclusive spaces. As a result, our preservation decision making is changing with this, aided by a dedicated engagement team within the department. 

Historically, conservation was rarely at forefront of public or institutional view, and to our detriment, we were often viewed as a barrier to increased access. Over the last three years however, we have made a concentrated effort to shift this narrative towards one of partnerships and mutual benefit, innovative heritage science and conservation practice that has wide appeal, and collective responsibility to care for our collection.

This presentation will focus on a key area of our ongoing work – supporting increased engagement with school aged children and audiences with additional needs. Through several case studies we explore how we are trying to meet the needs of these audiences; increasing the reach of our work digitally as well as through onsite displays; and building deeper relationships through effective engagement activities based on the materiality of our collection and role of the conservator. These include:

* A collaboration with education researchers, teachers, museum education teams, and heritage scientists across the UK to align heritage science to the UK primary school science curricula. We investigated how heritage science can help to break down silos between the teaching of arts and sciences, creating curricula maps and lesson plans that can be led by non-specialist museum staff and teachers.
* A collaborative research project exploring how multisensory experiences can be used to access, engage with, and understand the materiality of archival collections. Through this already impactful pilot project we are now working with SEND specialists to centre materiality in our SEND education lessons; we are also working with our outreach team to deliver enriching activities for people who have dementia based around smell; we are collaborating with PurpleStars, a group of researchers with and without learning disabilities, to develop inclusive and empowering research practices based on materiality of our collection; as well as creating multisensory, inclusive displays.
* Our object lessons for ‘high use records’ used regularly by our Education team to approach holistic decision making for access. Here, we bring together multiple internal and external stakeholders to create audience driven decision making frameworks that not only support our conservation team’s work, but also accountability and responsibility across the organisation.
* A project to create lesson plans with increased tactile access for students who are partially sighted or blind. This novel project challenged our assumptions on how our records will be used. 

Each case study will include an overview of the projects, focusing on the collaborative approach of each, as well as their benefits and challenges. More broadly, the presentation will also reflect on how we navigate internal relationships within a large organisation with competing priorities to create these opportunities, and how we built processes to evaluate the impact of our engagement activities.