Can you spare a fiver? Support New Professionals’ Conference Bursaries for #ARA2022
12th May 2022
Support New Professionals’ Conference Bursaries by donating a fiver to our crowdfunder.
Your Conference
The ARA Conference is an exciting part of our professional lives. Attending gives unique opportunities to engage with professional issues, learn best practice and new ideas, and network with colleagues. We have a number of bursaries available to help people get to conference – funded by ARA and Ancestry - but the New Professional’s Conference Bursary is special. It gives established members of the profession an opportunity to invest in the future by providing a bursary for some of the newest members of our community. We only need 111 of our thousands of members to give £5 to reach the target – if double the number gave then we could potentially fund two bursaries!
“Bemoaning that there was no way I could afford to attend such an event, a colleague said she had been previously on a sponsored place and urged me to apply. “I’ll never get that, there must be hundreds of applicants,” I replied. The lesson is, it’s worth a shot… Always thirsty for new learning experiences, I was looking forward to ARA2018, but was reconciled to the fact that it was going to be academic. But actually, it’s like 3 days of niche TED talks, tailored to your specific form of geekery. Totally unexpectedly the conference had me WIRED. I’d been dreading the obligatory networking but socialising was, on the whole, painless and even fun! Fonds and series of thanks to ARA and sponsors for giving me the opportunity to attend these three days of intense, energising information overload. I was exhausted at the end of it, but inspired and proud to be starting out on a career in a sector which invites challenging questions, in the knowledge that doing so only serves to strengthen the services we provide.”
Gillian Boll, 2018 recipient of the New Professionals Bursary
Our appeal
This year, therefore, we are once again asking for your help. We feel strongly that those starting out in their career benefit greatly from Conference, but we know that it is not always possible for them to meet the costs themselves or gain institutional support. So, for the last five years, many individual members have supported the Section for New Professionals in crowdfunding a bursary to send a member of the section to Conference.
The target
This year we have set ourselves the target of raising £555 to provide a full conference bursary to a member of the Section for New Professionals to attend our annual Conference in Chester (31st August to 2nd September). The bursary is open to any archivist, records manager or conservator early in their career.
To get things moving, the ARA Board has generously agreed to support the travel costs of the eventual recipient from central funds (to a maximum of £100).
Details of how to apply for the bursary – and other Conference bursaries on offer this year - are at: https://conference.archives.org.uk/delegates/
How you can help
So, can you spare a fiver, or maybe a bit more? However much you choose to give, anything is greatly appreciated. If just 111 members gave £5, we’d easily reach the total.
Our supporters
Rosie Al-Mulla, Chair of the Section for New Professionals, in supporting the appeal, says:
“Those who have attended the ARA conference know what a stimulating and vibrant event it is - a space to share ideas, connect with colleagues, learn something new and meet people you would never get to meet otherwise. By supporting a new professional – someone who is at a point in their career where they are least likely to be supported to attend conference through other means – you will be helping them to feel at home in their chosen sector and supporting them in their professional development. ‘New Professionals’ covers such a range of circumstances and many of our members haven’t yet entered a professional role – wherever our members are up to, building networks of colleagues and continuing to learn from others in the sector is invaluable and I cannot thank you enough for helping us to provide this opportunity.”
What do you need to do?
It’s simple. Please visit our Golden Giving webpage at: https://www.peoplesfundraising.com/donation/support-new-professionals-bursary and follow the instructions to make a donation. And we don’t have to stop at £555 - last year, your generosity meant that we exceeded the target and were able to award an additional day bursary to a new professional.
Thumbnail image by micheile dot com on Unsplash