Diversity & Inclusion Allies

The ARA Diversity and Inclusion Allies are a group of volunteers who work to improve diversity and inclusion across ARA and the wider record-keeping community.

The group aims to:

  • Work with ARA as a critical friend to help drive the highest professional and ethical standards within the ARA and across the wider sector. 

  • Work on a range of specific issues relating to Diversity and Inclusion.

  • Ensure lines of communication remain open between the Diversity Allies and ARA’s other groups and forums.

Early work included:

Currently active groups:

 Accessibility –

The group advocates for disabled people in the profession, access for disabled users and care for the disabled people in our records.  One output was the Digital Accessibility Guidelines

Inclusive Cataloguing –

Evolved from an initial decolonising focus, the group now looks more broadly at best descriptive practice.

Future work:

Developing work with marginalised communities

New leadership is required to help curate case studies that will support the sector to build relationships and meet community needs.

Inclusive Collecting

New leadership is required to help develop practice that seeks to build a more representative future archive than will be accrued by the natural processes of deposition (see the 2020 statement of intent).

 

If you are interested in finding out more and getting involved in the Allies’ work, contact us today at diversityandinclusion@archives.org.uk

 

You can read the blog posts produced by the Diversity Allies’ working groups here.