An interview with Zoe Reid, Keeper, National Archives Ireland

Zoe Reid is our Friday keynote speaker at our annual conference in Chester, she will also be presenting on the Thursday of the conference on her work on the Michael Collins diaries.

The following is an extract from an interview for Conservation Today by Annie Starkey. Annie is a member of the ARA Conference Committee with particular responsibility for the Conservation stream. She is Team Leader – Conservation at Liverpool Record Office and is also a member of the ARA Preservation and Conservation Group committee.

Annie: What does it mean for a conservator to become Keeper at the National Archives of Ireland – has a conservator been keeper before?

Zoe:  Well it is a first, and in this case someone who has a long-term institutional knowledge. I think for this role, at this time, that is definitely an advantage. I have 20 years’ experience here, so I know how the place ticks, and the staff, the collections and our key user groups pretty well at this stage. In the past I would have joked, that I didn't really read documents, of course I do, but as a conservator my knowledge focused on the gaining knowledge about the document through the materials that created it, the paper, the parchment, and the writing media. Visual memory is something really strong and whilst I might not be able to recall all the historical details, I do remember what I’ve worked on over the years. At this point I have conserved a considerable amount of material so I am familiar with the collections in a different way. What I find exciting about it is that I know I'm bringing a different perspective to the role. 

I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to keep a foot in each camp and attempt to fool myself that I could still be working a bench conservator. Although, I might write it into a contract that I have to have a smoke sponge put into my hand every so often so I can clean something!

Annie: You can take the Conservator out of Conservation but not the Conservation out of the Conservator, so let’s talk about what drives Zoe to stay away from the studio…

Zoe: It’s all about the people and bringing them on, a leadership role like this is about guiding and supporting staff. You do that well and in turn, they will support you. Over the past 15 years or so there have been a lot of project based roles, including interns and emerging graduates, in the conservation unit that I have managed, and that was a really enriching experience. Working with colleagues and knowing when to guide them through something closely and then when to stand back and give them the space to do it independently is really important. It is also about confidence building in your staff, getting them to acknowledge what they do know, but also know when to ask for help and support from others.

I’m aware that there might be some nuts and bolts operational stuff that I don't know, but I'm not afraid to ask. An archive is run by a team, not just one person.

Annie: I already feel like we may have covered this, but why does Conservator make a good archive service manager?

Zoe: We can all identify problems, but for conservators our role is essentially all about solving problems or trying to ensure that problems don’t arise or escalate, that whole area of risk mitigation in disaster planning. If you think about it as a conservator everything we work on is unique, historic and important, there may be thousands of documents in a collection but each one is important to somebody. They might all be physically the same - in terms of the format and the conservation process might be the same, but there is that element of uniqueness to them all. And ultimately our processes are to support and help the archive provide access to the records. As conservators that understanding informs how we approach a problem, we have to see it from quite a few different angles. As part of our ethical training we are taught that when we problem solve we have to research and information gather, to be able to articulate and be confident about the choices and decisions that we make.

We have to interrogate our solutions and be comfortable with going back over them, if they're not working, to identify where they need to be reformatted or reshaped. Also, another really important skill that we have as conservators is that we complete projects. We have to, because if we don't complete then access is going to be denied and we're not providing that service to the public. It's those kinds of skills I'm hoping to bring.

Annie: You have taken over at National Archives Ireland at an exciting moment during the decade of centenaries  – what have been the highlights for you?

Zoe: The Treaty, 1921: Records from the Archives Exhibition and subsequently publication has been a massive highlight so far. It is our first exhibition on this scale, and we did a preview run in London in October 2021 before opening in Dublin on 6th December for a three-month run, and now it’s going on tour to six venues around Ireland until July. We were a year in prep for the exhibition and luckily we had a great project team including a fantastic historian, Dr John Gibney. He was brilliant, he knew his topic well and how to articulate it to the audiences that we were hoping to reach and he was a pleasure to work with. I was determined in leading our curatorial team that it was going to be archival records and nothing else, creating a large-scale exhibition solely through archival documents was challenging. So, through the use of audio domes, film footage, contemporary photographs and really well written texts and stylised graphic design we were able to bring those documents to life for people. We had over 17,000 visitors to the exhibition over a three-month run, so I think we got it right. After we’d done all that it was John who suggested that we think about the book, seeing my name on the cover as co-editor and them seeing the book in the bookshop was a personal highlight for me.

Also of course our involvement in the Beyond 2022 project, Virtual Treasury of Ireland, which people have heard me speak about before. It is an all-island and international collaborative research project working to create a virtual reconstruction of the Public Record Office of Ireland, which was destroyed in the opening engagement of the Civil War on 30th June 1922. It’s been a project that I have been involved with since 2017 and conservation has had a central role since then, in terms of the work on the archival material, collaborating with the historical research team and participating in public engagement. The Virtual Treasury will launch at the end of June, so that is a pretty big moment for all of us involved.

Then the next big thing is the conservation of the Michael Collins diaries. When I say big I mean in terms of profile, but actually the diaries are really small. There are five pocket dairies form 1918-1922, the last entry that we have is for 6th August 1922, he died in the Irish Civil War two weeks later. Meeting the family when they donated them to the State and handling them for the first time was something really, really special. There is such interest in these dairies, as we are coming to the centenary of his death there is a bit of pressure to do a good job, but I thought if I’m going to leave conservation I’m going to leave it on a high by doing something as amazing as that. I am delighted to say that the first paper that I will be presenting on the project will be to the ARA Conference in Chester.

Annie: When did you know that Conservation was the career for you?

Zoe: It was when someone told me I could play with paper all day! As a teenager growing up in Northern Ireland I had developed a strong passion for art history and my talents were creative rather than academic. I was really lucky that my parents supported and encouraged me. Conservation as a profession was not something that career guidance counsellors had heard of in the 1980s. After school, I did a foundation course in an art college in Belfast and was accepted into Art College for graphic design. But it was a small ad in a Sunday paper that my Dad saw that changed the course of things for me. The ad was for a course at a London art college, giving students the opportunity to study both art history, learn about materials that artists used and how to preserve and look after works of art on paper. So off I went at 18 to London. During the summer break in my first year, I came with my family to Dublin for a short trip. After a visit to the National Gallery, I found a directory in a bookshop on Nassau Street that listed conservators working in Ireland. I didn’t have the money for the book, so I bought a postcard and a pen and copied out the names of people working in paper conservation. I wrote to all of them, old fashioned letters in the post and one of them offered me a summer job for the following year. Once I graduated, I returned to work in that private studio.

Annie: What advice would you give to your younger self?

Zoe: Have more confidence to travel. It was different 30 years ago, opportunities were not so widely available, I wish I’d had the confidence to travel with conservation to go and work in different countries in Europe or the States.

Annie: As Keeper of NAI I bet your days are very full on now, what do you do to unwind in the evening?

Zoe: Cooking helps me to unwind, but I like to cook on my own, it means I can listen to an audiobook or some classical music. For pure escapism and joy The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osmond and I love the Dr Ruth Galloway (she’s a forensic archaeologist) mysteries by Ellie Griffith. I love a good podcast as well, a good archivist friend recommended the The Stubborn Light of Things presented by Melissa Harrison recently and it is a real treat!

Annie: What is the most important thing needed to sustain the archive conservation sector? Education? Training? Funding? Resources? Recognition?

Zoe: It’s people, we need people educated, we need them trained and yes we do need the funding to do that but Conservators need to step up to make sure that people understand and be better at positioning ourselves to get the recognition for the work we do and it’s down to us now to do that. So it’s people and that legacy thing, to make sure we teach and pass on that knowledge to others. I’ve had 20 years doing an amazing job in here and building it and I thought, why not take that step away from it, allow somebody else to have that role and that opportunity. We’re taking on two new people in conservation so I’m now really excited to see what we can do in there. Two permanent members of staff in Conservation, so just watch this space!

Annie: Finally, we all start somewhere and there is usually a someone that goes along with that. If you had to choose one person who you’d say you wouldn’t be where you are today without – who would it be?

Zoe: My Dad, it’s always been his support and his encouragement. He gave me that nudge to go on the Camberwell course and he was always so fascinated with what I do. It has been hard with some of the achievements I’ve made over the last couple of years since he passed away because I know he would have been proud. He was a civil servant as a surveyor for his career and when he retired he became quite a good print maker and artist. We had so many discussions about art, I loved abstract art as a teenager which he was very dismissive of but then he came full circle and I’d say some of his best works were abstract. One of the nice things for me is that we get our art that is in the National Archives from a central state art collection and a number of years ago they bought one of his pieces. I didn’t know about it at the time but I’d seen it, and I have put in the formal request to see if I can have it on loan for my office.  

Here’s a good story my Mum tells all the time. My Dad came home from work one day when I was about four years old and I was making teeny tiny books for all my teddies and he just looked at me with a bemused look on his face and said “what on earth is that child ever going to do, all she wants to do is play with paper!” So he was the one that saw it, I had an artistic streak, I was so lucky that my parents supported me in what I was doing.