Hello and thank you for taking the time to read this guide.
The ambition for 100rural years is quite challenging, and we’ll only manage to achieve it with your help!
There are three main areas where help is needed:
- The Rural Community Historians team
- Story Telling
- Liaison with the RCCs (now known collectively as the ACRE Network members)
That’s where most of the work is (and more on this in a minute) but we also need any copies of old documents (so many things have been lost in the midsts of time!) and most importantly any and all personal recollections and anecdotes relating to RCC works over the years.
If it all looks too complex, or too time consuming, and all you are able to offer is some of those anecdotes then please do – these are really important to ensure that the site truly recognises and celebrates the people and the works of the RCC movement.
To get an idea of the stories we will be writing (and maybe jogging memories of anecdotes) you can see a list on our Story List page.
So, other than helping with finding old documents and telling your real-life anecdotes, what else exactly do we need?
The Work of the Rural Community Historians Team
As a volunteer team we share our work according to
- The time that our volunteers have
- Their specific skills and experiences
- Their interest in the work
There are 3 main roles in the work that we do, where you can help:
- The Rural Community Historian: writing the main stories on the site (like our first story, The history of Village Halls)
- The Rural Community Archivist: helping to log new (well newly found) materials into appropriate archives, and ensuring all archived materials are well documented (so they can actually be found and be of use).
- The Partner Archive Managers: liaising with other archives where we don’t directly deposit materials, but where there is information of great historical relevance to our own work.
You’ll see a fuller description of what actually needs to be done in each of these roles later in this guide – jump ahead if any of them immediately ‘take your fancy’.
What We Need From Our Story Tellers
You can get a good idea of the stories we want from the Village Halls story, and also from The Story Guide.
But we don’t just want to tell the history of RCC work over the years, we also want to celebrate the specific successes of the individual organisations. For example, take a look at our Tees Valley Rural Action page. Our volunteer Network Alumni Historians write these stories of success – ideally with a degree of personal experience.
Again, more details of the actual work involved can be found later, in the Volunteer Roles section of this guide.
The Outreach Work
If the foregoing sounds like just more than you are able to commit to, we completely understand – all of our volunteers are exceptionally time-poor! And in recognition of that, we are hoping to recruit Network Alumni Outreach volunteers. People who can take over the conversations with our wider group; receive documents and pass them on to the right person, draw out the anecdotes and ensure we make the best use of all the bits and pieces that come our way.
The Volunteer Roles
The Rural Community Archivist
- Become familiar with the categories we are using for archive materials
- Receive documents from Network Alumni Outreach, discussing/agreeing how they should be categorised
- Accession into the appropriate archive
- With help from Network Alumni Outreach, research the deposit archives to find deposited materials – updating the ACRE catalogues appropriately
- Identify the most interesting ‘stuff’ to be photographed or scanned for use by the historians in their story writing
- Store photographs, scans and any media clips for later easy access by the historians.
The Rural Community Historian
- Write a story for the website! Fitting into our Themes and Concerns
- Select from the materials that have been previously saved by the Rural Community Archivists to help illustrate the story.
- Research our Partner Archives for any additional relevant materials, noting the appropriate website links. Take help from the Partner Archive Managers as needed.
- Work with the Web Team as they publish the story and the materials.
- Proof the published work.
The Partner Archive Manager
- Help the Rural Community Historians to find relevant materials
- Create a relationship with the Partner Archive to promote sharing
The Network Alumni Historian
- Work with Network Alumni Outreach to ensure information and materials are available and that the RCC is happy with the outcomes. We will need:
- A good image for the top of the page
- An agreed Centenary Date
- The specific archives of relevance to this RCC
- A number of ‘key archive treasures’ to include in the RCC page
- Some anecdotes pertaining to our Themes and Concerns from the region of the RCC
- Write the success story for the RCC you know best, ensuring it relates well with our Themes and Concerns – in a similar manner to how the Rural Community Historians write the main stories of the website (see that role above)
Network Alumni Outreach
- Create a relationship with those who have volunteered documents and anecdotes from a given RCC’s area
- Help to acquire those and the information/materials needed by the Network Alumni Historian
- Use your knowledge of the RCC, the received documents, and the conversations held to help the Rural Community Archivist catalogue the materials.
In Conclusion
All of the foregoing is really an attempt to make clear the scope of works we are facing. Obviously it is tremendously helpful if people can step in and take such roles on-board, but we understand the difficulty in making such commitments – so we are actually very happy to hear from you even if you feel you can only commit to some of the tasks of some of the roles.
We hope you find something in all of this where you feel ‘I absolutely know what is needed there…’, because it is personal knowledge and experience that really underpins what we need from our volunteers.
Sometimes a picture helps, so you will see one below that looks complex at first, but perhaps draws all of this writing together. If not, ignore it! (You can click on the image to see a larger version)
With Our Kind Regards
The 100 Rural Years Team
