Midlands Region

The ARA Midlands Region covers a huge area across the middle of England from Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in the north to Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire in the south, not forgetting Shropshire, Staffordshire, Leicestershire (and Rutland) and Northamptonshire!

We offer

  • Meetings and events where members can connect with colleagues within and outside the region.  We talk about the things that interest us, worry us and we follow the developments which affect us all, no matter our area or level of professional expertise.

  • Continuous professional development (CPD) opportunities for members

  • To keep our members in touch with the latest news from ARA via email and the platform formerly known as Twitter.  You can also share your views and concerns about a range of subjects via our Teams site. We have channels covering Cataloguing, Digital Preservation, Diversity and Inclusion, Information Governance... and more! Just drop us a line to join the conversation.

  • A voice for record-keeping professionals in the Midlands.

We aim:

  • To hold at least three events a year, in person and online with interesting speakers on relevant subjects

  • To try to make sure at least one event will be a specifically CPD event

  • To disseminate information from and provide feedback to the Board

You can get in touch with us at

Email: aramidlands@archives.org.uk

Twitter: @ARAMidlands

 Why not drop us a line to say hello!  We would love to hear from you.

What we do

Regular Meetings

The South West ARA Region meets three times a year. We hold our meetings in person, at archives throughout the region, but members are welcome to join online if they cannot attend in person. We can often offer a bursary to attend a meeting in person, if you would otherwise be unable to attend.

Recent meetings have included a joint meeting with MAPLE (TNA’s Major Archives Project Learning Exchange) at The Box in Plymouth focussing on partnership working; an online meeting (due to a weather warning) looking at accreditation and ARA professional membership; and a meeting at the UK Hydrographic Office in Taunton on working with depositors and Covid-19 relief fund case studies.

Our next meeting will be held at the University of Bristol Theatre Collection on Monday 20th March 2023

We send out email announcements to the region mailing list, advertise them on Twitter (@ARASouthWest) and post details on the ARA Training & Events webpage.

Training

We run our own training events and also partner with other sections and groups of ARA to provide both in person and online training in our area.

As with our meetings we will send out email announcements to the region mailing list and also post details on the ARA Training & Events webpage.

Most of our training is provided free to members, very occasionally we may charge a nominal fee to cover speaker or room hire costs.

Who we are

The committee of the ARA Region is made up of volunteers drawn from the membership of ARA.

Our committee is as follows:

Chair - Ally McConnell

Secretary - Elissa Truby

Joint training officers - Hannah Little and Jess Clark

Communications officer - Jennie Hancock

Treasurer - Anne Lovejoy

Committee members serve fixed terms on the committee and when we have vacancies for committee members or other volunteering opportunities with the group we advertise them on the Volunteering with the ARA webpage, in ARA Today, on social media and via emails to the group mailing list.

Join us

We’d love you to join us - drop a line to

Email: southwest@archives.org.uk

And we’ll be in touch as soon as we have something to share.

Get in Touch

Or if you have a specific query or want additional information on volunteering opportunities use the same email above and one of the team will get back to you as soon as possible.