With the dawn of a new year comes the start of our new archive service, which is now up and running at the beautifully refurbished York Explore. If you haven’t already popped in to have a peek at what’s new, then maybe our upcoming events are the perfect excuse to get acquainted!

Residents Weekend is the ideal time to get a flavour of what our archives are and how you can get involved. On Saturday 31st January me and Sarah Tester will be on hand in the shiny new Local History room telling you all about the fantastic community collections we are working on as part of the HLF funded Gateway to History Project. We will be showing off our new online catalogue, which has been made publically available for the first time, and are looking forward to demonstrating how it works and answering your questions. We hope it will inspire you to begin your own journey into our collections!

On the day you will also be able to see some of the types of fascinating documents we have in our collections as well as have the chance to tell us ‘What Should York Remember?’. Your responses will help us to understand what is important about York to local people and make sure we are recording a balanced history of the city for all time. The feedback we gather will also form part of a exciting future project – so don’t miss your chance to make history with us!

If you can’t make it on Saturday then don’t forget that highlights from some of our newly catalogued collections are on our Community Collections Pinterest Board.

As if that wasn’t enough we are also pleased to announce that as part of the Gateway to History project that we are now taking bookings for our Gateway to Your Archives workshops. These are a series of one-day interactive workshops for local groups and organisations (ie. societies, groups, businesses, charities etc.) aimed at giving local people the help they need to create, manage and use their own archives. The workshops include lunch and refreshments and run from 10am-4pm at York Explore on the following dates:

Thursday 12th February – FULLY BOOKED
Saturday 25th April
Thursday 9th July
Thursday 24th September
Saturday 24th October

Extra date added due to popular demand:
Thursday 19th February – LIMITED SPACES

Places are filling up fast so please book soon to avoid disappointment! You can do this by popping into your local library or by emailing sarah.tester@exploreyork.org.uk. If you need any more information or have a large group that cannot make any of the dates, please get in touch.

On top of that, we are also running a special one-off Gateway to Your Archives: Social Media and the Digital Environment workshop on the 19th March. If you think a representative from your organisation would like to attend, then please contact us for more details as spaces are limited.

Phew! We hope that you can join us at these events and more throughout the year, so make sure you stay tuned to our blog, Twitter and Facebook for all the latest updates.

See you there!

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