Community Archives and Heritage Group

Committee Profile 2011

The annual general meeting of the Community Archive Heritage Group was held during the Community Archives and Heritage Groups fifth annual conference at University College London on Wednesday 22nd June 2011.

The following were elected as committee officials and members.

Chair

Laura Cotton Buckinghamshire Archives

Laura is Archives and Local Studies Manager (Senior Archivist) at the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies and currently Chair of CAHG.  She has been a member of the committee since 2008, previously taking on the roles of Publicity Officer and Treasurer before becoming Chair in 2011. In addition to her involvement with CAHG, Laura is also a Trustee and Board member of the Archives and Records Association (UK and Ireland), thus ensuring that CAHG is directly represented at the heart of the archival profession.

Treasurer

Judith Harvey Cambridgeshire Community Archive Network

Judith has been involved with Cambridgeshire Community Archive Network (CCAN) at the local group level since it first started in 2006 and has been on the CCAN committee since the committee was formed. 

She joined the CAHG committee in 2009. Her background is not archive related so she is one of the CAHG committee members representing grass roots community archiving.

Secretary

Jane Golding  English Heritage

Jane works for English Heritage in Swindon and is currently responsible for creating a 'community of practice' for the sharing and development of local engagement expertise amongst local authority Historic Environment Record Officers. Whilst working for English Heritage she has led a wide range of community projects across England including working with groups in Swindon and Lancaster to develop and maintain community archives.

Jane joined the steering committee of the Community Archives and Heritage Group (CAHG) in 2007 and was appointed secretary for the group in 2009, a role she has enjoyed over the past two years. Jane is a council member of the British Association for Local History, a member of the Historical Association's Public History committee, and is an active member of the Institute for Archaeology’s newly formed Voluntary & Community Archaeology Group. She is interested in developing links and sharing expertise across community archive and community archaeology groups.

Committee

Brian Brackley Shrublands Community Archive Project (Gorleston, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk)

Brian is the project coordinator for the Shrublands Community Archive Project in Gorleston, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk.  It is a 5 year project just commencing its fifth year. This digital project is archiving the extensive history of the Shrublands Youth & Adult Centre, together with the local Shrublands and Magdalen estates.  He is also involved with the regular weekly history group meetings where he trains the members in IT and computer related subjects.  

Brian is also the chairman of NORCAN, (Norfolk Community Archive Network), a group set up a few years ago to specifically assist the existing groups within the original ARCH project that was run by Norfolk County Council until their funding expired. Apart from chairing the organisation his role is to also help coordinate the website and work alongside the webmaster.

Brian has an extensive IT tutoring  background together with many years’ experience of the Norfolk Adult Education Service as an Area Manager.

Julie Creer Lancashire Cultural Service

Julie is Senior Community Heritage Manager at Lancashire County Council she has a BA Hons (2:1) in History & Environmental Studies and a PGCE (Secondary) History. She taught History in a large Comprehensive School until 2006. She was offered a job with the British Postal Museum & Archive where she researched and created learning resources and outreach on the role of the post office during the first world war, the project received a 4 star archive award

Following on from this Julie became a freelance consultant, advising small volunteer run museums on engaging audiences with their collections. In 2008 she joined Lancashire County Council as their Lifelong learning and outreach officer for their museum service, with the responsibility of developing audience development for 6 museums, by the end of 2009 she became Acting Head of Learning and Access. In January 2011 she took up her current role working for the Heritage strand of Cultural Services, managing 6 Community heritage staff and 4 assistants, housed in various libraries around the county all of whom support, develop and promote Lancashire collections, resources, stories and its people.

Andrew Flinn University College London

Andrew is a senior lecturer and director of the Archives Masters programme at University College London. He has been a member of the CAHG committee since 2006. A social historian he has a long interest in people taking responsibility for the preservation and writing of their own community’s histories and has written extensively about independent community archives and their relationship with mainstream heritage bodies.

Helen Foster Royal Commission on the Ancient & Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS)

Helen develops and delivers education and outreach for the RCAHMS, Scotland ’s national collections of buildings, archaeology and industry. She works largely with the RCAHMS’ digital services, interpreting and enabling access across both formal and informal education sectors. 

Helen is fascinated with how people connect with places and, in particular, with how this can be recorded through oral histories. She currently works across a range of projects with community groups in Scotland who are collecting and creating their own archive materials. She can offer guidance on how they can make their digital collections available for schools and also how they can contribute to and enhance RCAHMS’ own digital collections.  With a national remit, Helen is always interested to find out more about community archive work going on across Scotland .

Judith Garfield Eastside Community Heritage

Susan Hampson Canvey Community Archive & SEECA (Essex)

Susan is Chair of the Canvey Community Archive and a Representative of South East Essex Community Archive (SEECA)which comprises of six archive projects.

Benfleet   Billericay    Hadleigh   Laindon

Rochford District and Wickford

Daphne Knott Hertfordshire County Council

Daphne is the Learning and Access Officer at Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies. Since 2009, she has helped local volunteers around Hertfordshire set up and run the Herts Memories network of community archive websites.

Jack Latimer CommunitySites

Jack is the Creative Director of CommunitySites (http://www.communitysites.co.uk/), a company which specialises in designing and supporting websites and cataloguing software for community archives and heritage projects.  CommunitySites has set up nearly 100 community heritage websites in the UK and Ireland since it was established in 2006.

Jack was responsible for setting up the Community Archives website (http://www.communityarchives.org.uk/).  He also wrote the Community Archive Cataloguing Guidelines, and regularly gives advice to groups on cataloguing and digitisation issues. He has co-written guidelines on digitisation for the Heritage Lottery Fund. 

Jacks involvement in community archives began when he founded the My Brighton and Hove community heritage website in 2000 (http://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/). He led the project on a voluntary basis for its first six years.  The website won two awards (Best Small Museum Site and Best Community Site) in the international Museums and the Web competition, 2008.  He also led the Letter in the Attic community archive project, which created a collection of letters and diaries through an appeal to the general public in 2007-2008.

Peter Mason Lustleigh Community Archive

Peter is Chairman of the Lustleigh Society which manages the Lustleigh Community Archive. Lustleigh is a small village on the eastern edge of Dartmoor. Before he retired he was County Arts Officer for Hampshire. He has curated exhibitions and managed public art projects. Peter writes on cultural matters for a number of magazines including Crafts, Museums Journal and he has recently been commissioned to write a series of articles on community archives for the Dartmoor Magazine.

James Patterson Director, Media Archive for Central England and Senior Academic, College of Arts, University of Lincoln

James is one of the UK's most experienced film archivists having worked in the sector at national and regional levels for over 30 years. He left the National Film and Television Archive in 2000 to establish MACE, the regional moving image archive for the Midlands, which is now based in new premises at the University of Lincoln. He has a particular interest in the way film, and especially home movies, can enhance and enrich our understanding of community. MACE is currently engaged in a major community film search and engagement project across the East and West Midlands.