DCDC16 Conference Blog

Earlier this week we started our adventure with the National Archives and Hull History Centre. We travelled to Salford Quays, ‘the Venice of the North”, to attend DCDC16 – Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities 2016. This two day conference brings together hundreds of delegates and experts to discuss how to maximize the potential of our heritage collections.

Transforming Archives trainees at DCDC16

DCDC16 gave us the opportunity to not only discover the challenges that the archive sector is facing, but also show us the huge variety of ways in which archives and museums can utilise their collections and translate this into social, cultural, and economic impact.

It was also great to be able to meet the rest of our cohort, to get to know them in person and see the wide variety of backgrounds that Transforming Archives has brought together from all over the country.

A panel session in full flow 

Among the panels and workshops we saw many varied projects from different organisations that are trying to connect their archives with a new audience. For example, the Know Your Place is a digital mapping project which connects historical maps with modern communities. Poetic Places is a free app that brings poetry and historical records together and creates a dialogue between the archive collections materials and its original locations. The Cambridge Community Heritage programme was a clear example of how to engage local community into heritage and archaeology, as the director Professor Carenza Lewis explained how the CCH programme spoke directly to local groups and got them involved at every stage of the project.

On the train back home we had lots of ideas and thoughts about the last few days, remembering our excited conversations with our colleagues and thinking about how we can take these experiences and apply them to our own projects and ideas at the History Centre - watch this space!


Francisco Castanon and Tom Dealey
Transforming Archives trainees