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A group of children in a churchyard – taking part in the South Humber Bank Wildlife and People project

Case Study - Unseen Archive 

Programme: Your Heritage 
Applicant: Suffolk County Council 
Grant awarded: £35,800 
Project length: 2 Years 

Unseen Archive - printable (MS Word, 222KB)  

Summary

The archive of the East Anglian Daily Times (EADT) newspaper houses over 2 million photographic images, covering the last 50 years of Suffolk life. This project digitised 80,000 images from the archive in order to give public access to them on the web and to enable them to be used more widely. Suffolk County Council worked in partnership with the EADT, employing a project officer three days a week for the life of the project.

As well as digitisation itself, the project officer promoted access to the archive in the community through events, undertook outreach work to develop the archive as an educational resource, and created a dedicated web site for the project.

The aims of the project

  • To digitise 80,000 images from the archive and create a web site
  • To develop the archive as an educational resource;
  • To promote and improve intellectual access to the archive 
  • To employ a part-time project officer to carry out the project

Benefits for heritage

  • The public now has access to a very rich local history resource which was previously unavailable
  • The thematic approach to choosing the images to digitise means that people can see material on popular topics such as agriculture, celebrations, festivals, transport and the environment. The images chosen highlight everything from village fetes to major events and dramatic moments in local history
  • The East Anglian Daily Times has monthly displays from the archive which encourages greater awareness of its existence and its availability on the web

Benefits for people

  • Local schools have education packs with archive images and resources; these are also available online
  • Engaging with the archive allowed children the opportunity to learn about the social and economic history of the 20th Century
  • The project developed reminiscence sessions and the memories recorded were used in the educational resources
  • The project was an opportunity to highlight local heritage to the wider public through displays and events
  • Volunteers carried out some of the digitisation

Lessons learnt

  • Don’t underestimate how much people will want to get involved and share their memories of local life

Long term benefits

  • The archive web site links into the County Council’s SLAMnet website, an online learning tool for children
  • Photographs are still being digitised for the newspaper’s regular feature ‘The Way We Were’
  • The archive is available on the Unseen Archive website 

The budget

Main Project Costs
£
Funding
£
Equipments / materials
2,000
 Other grants 8,000
Staff / recruitment
2,075
 Non-cash contributions
4,000
Traning 1,000
HLF grant (75%)
 35,800
Design / writing / printing educational material 14,000    
   
Total costs
 47,809





Archive photo from the collection  

1960 Suffolk Docks 

Sector

Cultures and Memories 

Activity

Conservation; Participation; Learning