Equality and diversity

This is new blog series from the team at Heritage Quay where we’re going to be sharing the practical steps we’re taking to make our collections, staff and services more diverse and accessible.

This is a long-term project that we have committed to working on, so please get in touch to tell us how we are doing. It’s important to us that we are open about what’s going on.

Those of you who keep an eye on the archives sector may have seen that the last ARA conference ended very acrimoniously. This emphasised for us that it isn’t enough to say that we believe in equality and diversity in archives, we need to take concrete action to make changes.

We’ve started by drawing up a plan for the areas we think we need to work in. This gives us some ways of planning our activities and focusing our efforts.

To begin, we’ve identified some quick things we can do to lay the groundwork. This includes reading up on what other people are doing well, putting together a list of resources available to use, and mapping networks to speak to in the next phase.

That phase will involve a lot of listening and talking with those more qualified and experienced than us.

We commit to sharing the outcomes of those conversations here, and making changes in what we do. This will be a long-term project, and we are bound to get some things wrong, but we are committed to learning, openness and humility as we go. We also want to be allies to people already doing work around injustices in the sector, and offering concrete support and help to them where we can.