ARCHIVES GO TO THE LANGLEY ACADEMY ON A SUNNY SPRING DAY

On Friday 23 March ALES held a training event in partnership with the Langley Academy, which is the first school in the UK to offer Museum and Heritage Studies as part of the curriculum.

The idea of running a training day in a school was suggested at a meeting of the ALES committee at Cheshire Archives and Local Studies in September 2011. The theme of the day was how archivists could engage more proactively with teachers and educators in order to create resources which were relevant to the classroom and enhanced the learning experience.

The programme included six speakers who offered a mixture of practical sessions and case study presentations. Mary Mills from English Heritage conducted a practical demonstration of Heritage Explorer, which provides access to over 9,000 images that can be used to create teaching resources adapted to the students’ needs. Clare Horrie from TNA provided a fascinating presentation of their new web resource, ‘The Victorians’, which has been developed in partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum, and whose aim is to encourage primary school pupils (Key stage 2) to work and think like historians by using primary sources.
Jenny Blay and Suzie Parr from the Langley Academy presented some of the work they have developed with their students around museum learning and encouraged archivists to build bridges with teachers and educators from an early stage. Guy Baxter, the archivist at the University of Reading, explored the concept of reaching audiences through internal partnerships developed between the archives and various university departments.
The afternoon session had a Scottish accent. The Aberdeenshire Heritage Partnership highlighted the benefits of collaborative working between the archives, libraries, registrars and the arts development team at Aberdeenshire. The introduction of the Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland in 2010 had provided the partnership with a springboard for the creation of linked educational resources. Finally, Margaret McBryde from the National Records of Scotland explored the process of developing an interesting resource on WW2 for upper primary/lower secondary pupils based on government records and those of the Northern Lighthouse Board. The session included practical tips on how to create a flexible resource on a shoe string budget.

The event proved really popular. 31 delegates from England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, including several school archivists, and some teachers from the Langley Academy attended the training day. Discussion was lively and stimulating throughout and most participants mentioned that the day had provided many ideas and opportunities for networking and future partnerships.

Most speakers are very keen to have their presentations uploaded in the ALES section of the ARA website, so we hope to make another announcement as soon as they become available online.