Glamorgan Archives

Glamorgan Archives has had a long relationship with People’s Collection Wales (PCW) but began participating actively again in February 2020. They are currently taking part in an extended PCW campaign with four other local archives across Wales and have published around 120 items on the PCW website.

Rhian Diggins, Senior Archivist at Glamorgan Archives, explains how working with PCW fits in with both their digital strategy and community engagement remit:

PCW acts as a ‘shop window’ for us, allowing us to reach new audiences who then visit us online to find out more.

Publishing great digital content

Glamorgan Archives’ first PCW Collection was a series of 73 photographs of individuals, family groups and groups from the Cardiff dockland community. More recently, Rhian and her colleagues have embraced the challenge of finding suitable items from the archive that link to the chosen campaign themes and are visually exciting. She has found that the technical and marketing support of the PCW team frees them up to focus on sourcing great content.

Pontycymmer Carnival: Photograph of Carnival Queen and attendants seated on carnival float, 26 May 1951.

Creator: National Coal Board.

During the week-long ‘Jubilee’ social media campaign ran by PCW, this photograph received 14,369 impressions on Facebook.

Joining forces to promote the archive sector

“It’s been good to be part of a sustained campaign”, Rhian affirms. “Normally our social media posts are ‘one offs’ and aren’t linked to any other content that we post. […] It has also been good to tie in with other archive services in Wales, with complimentary content being shared.”

Porthcawl: Children's paddling pool and Grand Pavilion, 1930.

This image is one of 15 that Glamorgan Archives contributed to the ‘Seaside Holidays’ campaign. It was also repurposed into the PCW’s ‘Memory Archive’, a free resource facilitating reminiscence with people living with dementia.

Evaluating social media impact

As the team at Glamorgan Archives does not have time to evaluate the impact of, and engagement with, their social media content, they found the in-depth marketing analysis PCW offers particularly helpful. After each campaign, this will highlight the most suitable platforms, the most popular items and themes, any lessons learned and recommendations on how to increase future engagement and reach.

Reaching teachers across Wales

Glamorgan Archives has also benefited from PCW’s status as a trusted and approved content provider for Hwb, the Welsh Government’s digital learning platform, reaching all classrooms in Wales.

We were struggling to reach teachers with our educational resources, but PCW’s expertise, support and link to Hwb has been brilliant – a bit of a game changer!

Having worked with the dedicated PCW learning officer to create PCW learning resources on topics as varied as the World Wars, Shopping in the Past, and the history of Welsh coal, Rhian is looking forward to exploring how Glamorgan Archives can contribute to the new curriculum in Wales.