Winners announced for Community Archives & Heritage Group Awards 2022

The winners of the Community Archives and Heritage Group’s 2022 awards were announced on Saturday 16th July at the CAHG conference at National University of Ireland in Galway.

Community archives and heritage groups perform an amazing service to the country as a whole; highlighting untold stories from the past and gathering in stories from the present that will provide a fuller, rounder picture of how we live now to any future historian. They can also bring communities together and support local people to feel more connected to the places they live in.

The Community Archives and Heritage Group (CAHG) is part of the Archives and Records Association (UK and Ireland). Every year it gives awards to outstanding groups and projects to highlight and celebrate their work across the UK and Ireland. Awards are given in three categories:

Community Engagement
Gathering and Preserving Heritage
Wellbeing

And one entry is also chosen as the overall winner.

Alan Butler, Chair of the Community Archives and Heritage Group said:

"We were thrilled to receive three times the amount of entries this year from last year and we believe this came about by altering the process into a two-stage one. In the first stage, we invited entrants to tell us why their group was special and, from those entries, we shortlisted and asked for more details. Lots of community archivists told us why they do what they do and it was inspirational".

48 entries were eventually whittled down to the three winners of the 2022 awards:

Overall winner and Wellbeing Category: Workie Ticket Theatre CIC
Gathering and Preserving Heritage: Scattery Island Heritage Group
Community Engagement: The Liberties Weavers

Artistic Director of Workie Ticket, JoJo Kirtley says:

“We are thrilled to have been awarded both the Wellbeing Award and announced as overall winner. I am so proud of the Workie Ticket team who worked so hard to bring this project together. For us, heritage is not just our buildings and land, it is our stories. Far too often women are left out of history or they are not equally represented in museum and archives collections, especially working class women. We believe in exploring and preserving our Cultural Heritage through drama. Workie Ticket always pays deference to women's contributions from the Suffragettes to Women Warriors around the world but with a particular emphasis on North East women’s stories. This project was no exception. Since the global pandemic, many women are still struggling and we wanted to pay homage to them. During the first two years of the pandemic we saw women in our region juggling parenting, home-schooling, adapting to working from home without support in the form of childcare, receiving inadequate medical care and suffering from lack of connection - due to shielding. Our Womxn Up? podcast & 'Her Primal Scream' film was a call to come together in recognising each other’s struggles, connecting with our wider communities to embrace, support and explore our challenges through Drama. Our aim was to become stronger together by preserving the very people who are silenced and giving them a voice and a place in the archives -preserving our herstories.”

The judges said:

“Workie Ticket are an example of ploughing through the pandemic and using it as an opportunity to engage and get people involved, using technology too, and showcase otherwise hidden voices. The podcasts and films show dynamism and a desire to keep progressing!”

More about the winners:

Winner Overall Award and Wellbeing Category: Workie Ticket Theatre CIC

Tyneside-based Workie Ticket Theatre CIC is a female-led theatre company producing work across the North-East which reflects current social issues. It aims to amplify unheard voices by creating projects to work with disadvantaged groups and use drama as a tool to engage the socially isolated whilst exploring issues that affect their lives such as domestic abuse, sexual violence and discrimination. It is committed to creating real positive social impact through theatre and is passionate about archiving its work and making sure ‘herstory’ is preserved for future generations.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided inspiration for the Womxn Up? Project, gathering North East women’s stories of the pandemic and sharing them through a podcast series and a film - 'Her Primal Scream'. The aim of the project was to explore and amplify the experiences of a broad spectrum of women who live in the region and to share how they coped (or not!) in order to survive the pandemic. This work will be accessioned into the Feminist Library in London on 10th September in a special celebration and screening of the film to be held at Sojourner Truth Community Centre.

A second podcast series #AllMenCan explores misogyny and femicide in the North East- this came out of the research from the original podcast series and will also be archived.

Womxn Up? was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and 'Her Primal Scream' by Comic Relief.

Click on a thumbnail in the gallery below to see full size pictures

Winner Gathering and Preserving Category: Scattery Island Heritage Group, Kilrush Co. Clare

The Scattery Island Heritage Group (SIHG) came into being in 2012 with a view to preserving, honouring and sharing the rich and varied heritage of Scattery Island. To this end the group liaised with the Office of Public Works (OPW), and Clare County Council, as key stakeholders involved with Scattery, and opened up membership to the wider community in Kilrush and West Clare with a view to further preserving the heritage of Scattery, and broadening its recognition

Scattery Island is a small island off the coast of County Clare in Ireland. Kilrush on the mainland is the closest town. The current Scattery Island Heritage group is partly derived from Kilrush Community Development (KCDL). Set up in the 1980s to improve the community in its widest sense KCDL became the prime mover in acquiring Scattery from Belgian owners in 1989, in collaboration with key stakeholders at the time.

SIHG joined the Irish Community Archive Network (iCAN) in 2019 and working in partnership with them developed a digital archive: Scattery Island Heritage - Our Island Story. The archive tells the story of Scattery Island, from St. Senan’s monastic settlement, to the maritime, agricultural and musical traditions of the Island. This work brings value to the local and wider community, making the heritage of Scattery accessible to all and enhances the work of local historical and oral history groups. A core part of the archive is that it invites contributions from the community, local, national, international, opening the door to heritage for all.

The judges awarded the Gathering & Preserving award to the Scattery Island Heritage Group for

Their work safeguarding oral histories, documents, photographs and artefacts relating to the Scattery Island community in the 19th and 20th centuries. ,
Their plans to digitise and display the information
Their work with Irish Life and Lore on a project to capture new oral histories related to the Island.
The work of group members working on replicating artefacts and furniture from Scattery to photograph, share and donate back to the Island via the OPW.

Eve Brennan of SIHG says:

“We feel that our work has been essential in recent times from a connectivity view, to capture and preserve a time in Scattery Island’s heritage that might otherwise be lost, or at best, fragmented. There are descendants of Island families and those who lived on Scattery whose accounts and memories of Island life are an integral part of reflecting the living heritage of the Island in the 19th and 20th centuries. Our work aims to secure, and preserve their accounts of this period through photographs, stories and artefacts building up collections, new and old, digitally, to share on our archive, and store for future generations.”

Click on a thumbnail in the gallery below to see full size pictures

Community Engagement Award : The Liberties Weavers

The Liberties Weavers is a voluntary community group dedicated to breathing new life into the 1,000 years of history, weaving and textile production in the Liberties, in the centre of Dublin. Since they began their work in 2020 they have woven their way into the hearts and homes of textile and local history enthusiasts in Ireland and abroad. They share their research on the textiles that were produced in the Liberties, and in the lives of the people who made them. They also encourage people of all ages and backgrounds to learn the craft of weaving and create new beautiful handmade textiles that reflect our lives in the 21st century.

The Liberties is an area of Dublin 8 which has historically been home to an industrial working class, and in recent decades, with the decline of the textile and other industries, a community that has become increasingly impoverished. Parts of the area are now described as ‘socially disadvantaged’. Recent years have experienced a shift in population profile with many economic migrants and refugees and at the same time a wealthier element starting the process of ‘gentrification’.

Marja Almquist of the Liberties Weavers says:

“Our project focusses on weaving history, but its underlying aim is community development. By raising awareness about the rich history of the area we are targeting all of the above groups, to build a common sense of pride and local identity.”

The judges were impressed by the impact of this relatively young group who had already seen the idea that weaving is an integral part of local heritage and identity take root. For instance, at a recent opening of a new park the Lady Mayor, in her speech referred to the area’s ‘important weaving and brewing heritage.’ Four years ago textiles did not exist in the official narrative about the Liberties.

Another success is that through lobbying local politicians they have succeeded in getting a mention in the Dublin City Development Plan (currently being drafted) on the need to establish a ‘local heritage and craft centre, anchored by The Liberties Weavers’. Other evidence that the messages are getting through can be seen in the naming of new public spaces, such as Weavers Park and a recently completed student accommodation building has been named The Loom.

Marja Almquist of the Liberties Weavers says:

“Key to our success has been involving and listening to local people at every stage of our development. To some extent we have been lucky, in that the area is crying out for recognition of local residents and their stories, in the face of massive developments and unaccountable profiteering. We were also in some regards lucky with Covid, in that people were confined to their homes for nearly two years and taking up a new craft helped people overcome this hardship.
We work to core community development values and practices, such as equality and inclusion. The important thing for all our students is not to make perfect weaving, but rather to enjoy the sociability of our events and to gain the confidence to explore their own creativity and family stories.”

Click on a thumbnail in the gallery below to see full size pictures

The Community Archives and Heritage Group (CAHG) Awards Process

A call out was made in February 2022 via CAHG and Archives and Records Association mailing lists, mailing lists of associated organisations (eg ICAN in Ireland, Scottish Council on Archives in Scotland, the UK National Archives) and through press releases sent to local press across the UK and Ireland and social media activity. Groups were directed to the CAHG website to fill out the entry form.

The first round entries required no more than details of the group and a short paragraph of why they thought they were special and should win an award.

48 first round entries were received by the deadline of 18th March. 21 entries came from Ireland, 18 from England, 7 from Scotland, 1 from Wales and 1 from the USA. A list of entrants is given below.

The Awards judging panel, comprising four members of the CAHG Committee, then made a selection for the second round resulting in a shortlist of 18 entries.

The selected groups were then asked to submit a longer form with more detail. The second round of judging then resulted in the selection of the three winning groups.

The awards presentation will be made at the CAHG Conference in Galway on Saturday 16th July. A video of the event will be available shortly after and will be hosted on the CAHG website. www.communityarchives.org.uk