Jenny Hunt
Vote for Jenny Hunt here
Career
Jenny’s first role as an auditor for Iron Mountain from October 2011 to March 2012 came after completing the taught part of MSc. Econ in Archive Administration, University of Aberystwyth. In March/April 2012 Jenny was appointed the Cataloguing Coordinator at the Royal Voluntary Service Archives. Her role included cataloguing Narrative Reports held by the charity dating from 1938-1945, completing administration tasks and supporting a team of volunteers. She qualified as an Archivist in July 2012. From 2014 to 2016 Jenny was the Project Archivist (Oral Histories) for the Royal Voluntary Service. This role included collecting stories from former and present volunteers, teaching others to collect oral histories, cataloguing the recordings and making them accessible.
From 2016 to 2020 she worked as the Deputy Archivist (later Archivist) at the Royal Voluntary Service. Her role involved blogging, social media, supporting the volunteer team, digitisation, supporting a Kickstarter Campaign, the day-to-day running of the archives, cataloguing, and repackaging.
In January 2020 Jenny was appointed the Project Relocation Manger at Rugby School and was responsible for preparing the collections for a move, listing collections, tackling the accessions backlog, opening up access to the collections and starting a volunteer team.
Jenny was awarded Registered status by Archives and Records Association (ARA) in December 2020. In September 2022, Jenny became the Archivist Manager responsible for outreach, exhibitions/museum curator and supporting the bicentenary of rugby football, social media, cataloguing, accessioning, day-to-day running of the archives, organising conservation projects and volunteers.
Nomination – Project Director from January 2023
Jenny is deserving of this award for her development of an innovative and award-winning archival research project, for placing learner engagement at the heart of her practice, and for a richly collaborative approach with fellow archivists and educators in the field. (Please see supporting evidence material below).
Led by Jenny Hunt in collaboration with Rugby School's History Department, and overseen by an independent academic advisory board, Schools of Empire: Class and Colonialism, c.1750–1945 is a 5-year, sector-leading project that draws on the rich resources of the Rugby School Archives, and brings together a network of partner schools, their archives, and universities. Schools of Empire Project (schoolsofempireproject.org)
The project has been recognised in the Highlights of The National Archives’ Year in Archives, won the Boarding Schools’ Association Award for Best New INDEX (Inclusivity and Diversity Excellence) Initiative, and was selected as a Finalist in the Independent School of the Year award for Outstanding New Initiative, 2023.
Research
One of the central aims of the project is to facilitate and support independent research. In collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Crankstart Foundation at the University of Oxford, the Schools of Empire Project provides opportunities for doctoral researchers and undergraduate students to access the archives of Rugby and other schools. In a programme devised by Jenny, archival interns receive on-site training in digitisation, archival handling, cataloguing and preservation. Jenny has also taken a leading role in co-supervising a full-time PhD studentship September 2023-2026 attached to the project in association with the Open University.
Student and community engagement
Jenny has also been tirelessly enthusiastic in encouraging school-age students to get involved in this research as part of a community outreach programme. She has created time for pupils to engage with the archives through Rugby School’s outreach and communities programme. Jenny has supported students through the process of producing podcasts on, and 3D models of, previously uncatalogued artefacts, which are disseminated on the project website. She has advised learners on correct usage of nomenclature in cataloguing, and on the ethics of object handling and preservation. She has also been a source of inspiration in eliciting creative responses, advising on artefacts and archival holdings for poetry and art workshops. An extended performance piece composed by poet John Agard in collaboration with student voices and the Archives is an example of such work (see supporting evidence below and project website). We have seen first-hand the transformational effect this has on learners and their engagement with contested histories.
Jenny also provided archival support for the Portrait of a Community initiative associated with the Schools of Empire project. Here, to better reflect the historical and current diversity of the school community, she helped curate a landmark photographic exhibition, including images and oral histories. She trained and coordinated the work of a student taskforce of oral historians to produce the finished exhibition, complete with QR code audio histories (see supporting evidence below).
Network
Jenny has been integral in building up a network of schools and partner archives as part of project outreach. Work here has included presenting at the Schools Archives and Records Association (SARA) conferences, hosting on-site visits from other school archivists, handling queries, preparing bids, and offering professional support and guidance. Her expertise has been sought by panels including the Institute of Historical Research and the Open University.
Nomination – Revolution in profile of School Archives
In addition to the leadership provided to the Schools of Empire project, Jenny has worked tirelessly to place the school archives on a more sustainable footing, whilst integrating its work much more firmly into the life of the school community and into the education and heritage sector of the town of Rugby:
Social Media and Communications Officer for the Archives Learning and Education Section (until January 2024), Archives and Records Association.Social Media Advisor, SARA.
Consultant to The Percival Guildhouse (Rugby local adult education centre): design of an archives programme for adult learners.
Refurbished the School Museum, updated displays and collaborating on new displays for the future.
Setup exhibitions for the School Bicentenary year and supported anniversary events including helping to script and produce a re-enactment of 200 years of rugby football history.
Conservation programme for the school’s collections.
Developed the school’s cataloguing programme.
Introduced a digitisation programme for photographs held in the collection.
Organised for more digital material to be added to the digital archives’ website for researchers to access.
Increased access for internal and external users of the collection.
Working to implement digital preservation practices at the school.
Increased the archives social media presence by setting up Instagram (@rugbyschoolarchives) and Twitter/X (@RugSch_Heritage) accounts.
Supported increasing access to archive collections for students through extracurricular activities and research enquiries.
In her vision and leadership of the Schools of Empire project, Jenny has established a ground-breaking, exemplary model for how local archives can best intersect with different community groups and bring them into dialogue with one another in exploring shared contested histories in a nuanced and inclusive way. She has helped to raise the profile of and engagement with institutional archives across schools, universities, and community groups both in Rugby, the Midlands, and, indeed, on a national level. She has placed accessibility and education at the heart of her professional practice and effected transformational change.
Testimonial from Referee:
Over the past four years Jenny Hunt has been a guiding influence over the social media activity of the School Archives and Records Association (SARA: https://schoolarchivesandrecordsassociation.org/), building on her reputation within the Association as an able and highly effective Archives Manager of one of the UK’s most important school collections.
Context: In the summer of 2020, in response to the pandemic, Jenny proposed and designed a structured social media campaign for SARA to undertake. The result was an initial campaign during the winter of 2020/21 comprising a carousel of weekly themes over a 22-week period, followed by a second campaign over a 19-week period during 2021/22.
Impact since January 2023. Evaluation of the strongly positive impact of the campaigns during 2020-22 (around 50 other institutions undertaking parallel social media activity through the structured design of Jenny's campaign) means that she is now an authoritative commentator on the use of social media by school archivists. This has arisen due to her intuition on when and how to innovate when it comes to promoting archive collections for both public benefit and scholarly purposes.
As Chair of both SARA (570 members worldwide) and the Academic Advisory Board of the Rugby School ‘Schools of Empire Project’, I would judge that in these two contexts during 2023-24 Jenny’s practice, as both an Archives Manager and a project creator and enabler, places her in the very top tier of effective and creative practitioners in her field.
I would commend her a most worthy recipient of the Record Keeper of the Year award.
Professor William Richardson (D.Phil. Oxon.)
School of Education, University of Exeter