Talk by Sue Shaw, Chair of the Northumberland Archives Trust, 8th January 2025
The Northumberland Archives Charitable Trust was set up in 2020 to promote and support Northumberland County Council’s Archive Service in Berwick and at Woodhorn. There are currently seven trustees, all volunteers, so the Trust’s running costs are minimal. The Trustees have a bold ambition to extend and enhance what the Archive Service can achieve.
So far, the Trust is unique in the archive world. With an emphasis on fundraising, it differs from the Friends of Berwick & District Museum and Archives, who concentrate more on research and other practical support. The two charities complement each other nicely.
History matters. The level of public interest in exhibitions of some of Berwick’s photographic material proves that local history has a special impact. It can engage a community to regenerate pride in its heritage, renew confidence and inspire new energy. The Archive Service should participate in this process: the Archives are the county’s collective memory, to be cherished as evidence underpinning the county’s history and culture. Northumberland Archives matter.
Why is additional funding needed? Northumberland County Council covers the Archives’ staffing and accommodation costs but is not duty bound to do much more. There are always more pressing claims to take priority. And in the modern digital world the public’s expectations of an archive have increased. To meet these, the archivists have become expert fundraisers, raising substantial amounts from sources including the National Lottery Heritage Fund and The National Archives. They continue to raise funds but can always use more. Since 2021, the Trust has raised more than £150,000 from charitable sources, the amounts increasing year on year.
All public archives have a backlog of uncatalogued material and Northumberland Archives are no exception. The Trust’s ambition is to unlock this material. The £150,000 includes three grants totalling £15,000 to catalogue three small but important collections, £30,000 from the Foyle Foundation to fund the purchase of a sophisticated book scanner needed for digitising bound volumes, and £30,000 from the Sir James Knott Trust (which requires match-funding) towards a wider cataloguing programme. It has also funded “To the Future” projects for schools in less advantaged communities, looking at the town’s past, imagining its future and stimulating the children’s interest in STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). So far, this has successfully run in Blyth and Ashington.
Sue attended a celebration after the Ashington project and enjoyed a light bulb moment seeing its positive impact on the children who took part.
At the end of Sue’s talk, Linda Bankier talked about the Trust-funded work in Berwick, emphasising that none of it would have been done yet without the Trust’s contribution. She highlighted the work to conserve, catalogue and digitise images from the Photo Centre collection, recording life in Berwick and the Borders in the second half of the twentieth century; and cataloguing a collection of documents relating to the Barmoor Estate in the late eighteenth century.
In questions at the end, Society members showed particular interest in the impact of digitisation on archives.