Conwy Archive Service
Conwy Archive Service joined People’s Collection Wales (PCW) in 2010. Since then, they’ve contributed 189 items to the site, ranging from striking photos and brochures to building plans. They are currently taking part in an extended PCW campaign with four other local archives across Wales to raise their own profile and promote the sector.
We would not have had the same reach just using Conwy’s social media.
The first Punch and Judy show in Llandudno, 1864, with Richard Codman and Dog Toby.
During the month-long ‘Seaside Holidays’ social media campaign ran by PCW, this photograph received 31,743 impressions on Facebook.
The target audience for the campaign was people over 30 who live in the Conwy area, who enjoy or have shown an interest in history, culture and heritage, and have recently visited the areas depicted in the photographs.
Proactively engaging with local archives
Kate Hallett, Archives, Heritage and Records Manager at Conwy Archive Services, appreciates how PCW has started to engage more proactively with local archives. While they are already digitally confident as an organisation, enlisting PCW to aid them in widening their digital outreach is helpful. She describes working with PCW as:
Pleasant, straightforward, co-operative, useful.
Promoting reminiscence resources
During the 2022 Dementia Action Week campaign, PCW promoted Conwy Culture Centre’s 15 themed, bilingual memory boxes which can be borrowed free of charge.
Child of the 70s Memory Box.
Some of the posters accompanying the boxes were also repurposed into the PCW’s ‘Memory Archive’, a free resource facilitating reminiscence with people living with dementia.
Decolonising the collection
When sourcing content for the Seaside Holidays campaign, one of the images from the Conwy Archive Service collection showed the Churchill’s Minstrels at the Happy Valley Theatre, Llandudno, in the 1930s.
As part of the Charter for Decolonising the Collection, PCW worked with Kate to write a description which allowed the image to be published while acknowledging the racist stereotypes underlying this popular entertainment
Future collaboration: disseminating learning resources
Conwy Archive Service are working with three local primary schools to create educational resources for the new curriculum. By also uploading these resources onto PCW, a trusted and approved content provider for Hwb, the Welsh Government’s digital learning platform, they’ll be reaching teachers and pupils across Wales.