 Our first presentation, which is online teaching and learning with digitized collections in higher education contexts, and our two speakers are Katie Eagleton and Susanna Waters. Dr Katie Eagleton is Director of Libraries and Museums at the University of St Andrews, and Susanna Waters is Head of Academic Services at Liverpool John Moores University. They're presenting the findings from a year long AHRC funded project, which researched the move towards online collections based teaching as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. A workshop at DCDC 2021 so this place last year contributed to this research that was then in progress and this presentation brings back to the DCDC community the results of that research and lessons learned for the post pandemic future of our sector. So Katie, Susanna, I shall hand over to you. Thank you and it's wonderful to be back at DCDC. To start with a description of me, I am also in my mid 40s. I'm wearing a kind of black t-shirt top, but I'm here in Scotland it's been beautifully warm but the sun has just gone behind a cloud so it's just mercifully cooled down a bit just in time. So I'm grateful for that. I have mid length brown hair although it's just been dyed so there's more than a hint of ready purple about it at the moment. And I'm wearing a headset that still two years on makes me feel like an air traffic controller when I'm on a call wearing it so I'm just going to share the slides and then we can get started. Susanna do you want to describe yourself while I'm doing the slides. Yes, thanks Katie. Hello everybody. So I'm Susanna. I am talking to you from Liverpool today in a very hot small room in our library. I am also in my mid 40s and I have mid length light brown hair and I'm wearing glasses. Back to you Katie. Great. Thank you and Susanna and I are two of a larger team who've been working on this project together. Which is really came out of conversations among a group of university museums in Scotland. Susanna at the time was at Glasgow School of Art. And we started as all of us in this sector did with a big challenge which was COVID-19 hit us all. And there was a sudden and dramatic impact on teaching with collections that we had historically like, like many of you mostly done in person, often with object handling as the really special part of that experience. So there's lots of headlines. We all struggled with this. We all pivoted and took stuff online faster than we'd ever thought possible. And a group of us at the time started looking at this and thinking, you know, what's happening? We're teaching online. There's a rapid acceleration of a change that was already more slowly happening. But what's happening? Can we capture it as it's happening to try and really understand what's going on? How do we capture conversations being scaled up and speeded up? How does that then feed teaching and learning? How does that tell us things about our choices and our sort of pace pandemic future options? So we started with a group of very, very simple questions. What worked? We were all doing this as quickly as we could. There was lots of information sharing. It was a really kind of wonderful collegial time to be in the sector. So I thought if there was a project to bring together what worked, what didn't. What we did in the short term that actually could and should become a permanent change and where we should invest or think about more or put sort of commitment of time and resources in the future. These were the kind of questions we were asking. So simple ones, but really powerful ones and ones that they're really best captured while something's happening. I already mentioned that it was this collaboration across Scotland that was at the heart of the project. There's a group of nine university museums in Scotland, which were already in touch very, very closely, which meant we could get this project off the ground really quite quickly. Four of the universities were formally partners on this research bid and then the project that came from it, but actually all nine in different ways contributed to it. And I think it's a strength, not only of conferences like DC, DC, but of sector networks is you really lean on them when you need to pull something off at audacious speed. So grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding this project as part of their COVID urgency funding because I think they like we saw the potential for capturing something while it was happening, potentially then to follow up on later. Our methods and data were slightly fitted around what we could do given that we were all operating at capacity and there wasn't really time to do anything like ask people to try things and then evaluate how they worked. It was a lot of surveys, analysis of things like social media, online module information, and then we complicated, complimented that with interviews and workshops and focus groups. And this last category is where DC, DC last year was that really gave us input from a much wider group of people than we'd been able to talk to in the interviews. For a handover to Susanna, I want to just flag one thing that something we found right from the beginning of this project. We couldn't really resolve it as a team and we found all the way through our data and our analysis that there's a real problem of terminology words like remote and hybrid and blended get get thrown around. Actually try and unpick them and work out how to describe a particular moment when say a museum curator is in the store with an object showing it to somebody on a camera to a student online. What is that is that hybrid is it blended, you know what what do we describe it as so with that warning that there's a little bit of a challenge around the terminology. I'll hand over to Susanna to tell you a bit about what we found from all this data that we collected. Katie, can you pop it on to the next slide. That's great. So the research resulted in a number of findings and conclusions. There were definitely a few factors that made it easier for organizations for some organizations more than others to start with. So those that had pre pandemic experience capacity or plans already in place digitization where naturally in a better starting position when we all wanted to move to online teaching because we had to because of the pandemic. But interestingly, this advantage became less significant over the course of the pandemic as other institutions really did pivot and put things in place and able them to support online teaching with collections. The digital resources that were used, however, across the board generally tended to be from in house collections. And some teaching staff also used material from very well known collections so national museums national libraries, etc. But they tended to be people sticking with material they'd used in person pre pandemic, asking for that to be digitized and then using that in their teaching. So there was a change around. And this is my presumption the familiarity of using the same objects was was the sort of steadfast part that they could they could stick with. Even so, even within house collections, though, there were copyright and licensing complications that did raise issues that meant that not all material could be digitized or used in the way that people wanted to. So there was a change with skill sharing and collaborative relationships between teaching academic staff and library museum archive specialists that really tended to leave to more positive outcomes. And those relationships were quite long standing relationships that have been in place pre pandemic, and then could be pulled on to work together to solve some of the problems that the pandemic raised. So we also looked at what worked well with online teaching with collections and seems likely to continue. So definitely the awareness and visibility of digitized collections increased within HCI and the importance of digitization was recognized or reinforced where it had already been recognized as an important element of working with museum archive and library collections. In some cases operational barriers that had stood in place were removed. So for example, equipment might be brought in or staff delegated to help. And sometimes where this has been the case there's been continuing benefit going on from that which has been great. It's interesting to note that the materiality of objects still remains vital and when people could come back on campus people have returned to wanting to use physical objects. But online teaching certainly opened up new potential for bringing collections located in different areas together or for using collections across a wider range of subject areas. And for looking at what students get out of working with objects that isn't just about their materiality. What are the analytical skills that students can get the communication skills they can get from discussing objects. And the problem solving skills that you can work with as part of object based learning. Can you click on again please. And then there were of course some more challenging areas that we identified and the code should be reconsidered in the future. Hybrid delivery came across as very much more difficult than blended delivery. And to clarify what I mean by that hybrid is when people were teaching a group of students in person, but also online at the same time. While as blended was when students were being given some face to face sessions and some online sessions, but the two were delivered separately. With hybrid attended to take a lot more staff time to prepare as well as deliver the session, because of having to be attentive to students online in person and to the objects all at the same time. And I think that wasn't recognized necessarily before hybrid delivery started happening, potentially isn't recognized out with the sector how much effort needs to go into that just yet. New approaches for teaching have definitely been developed as the scope for working with digital technologies has been explored. But interestingly, assessment methods have not changed. And we've said on the slide yet, because we think that they probably will catch up. And again, a presumption is maybe they haven't changed because to change assessments is something that you have to get a lot of sign off for and he I and so it's not as easy to do as to change adapt your teaching methods. But yes, definitely approaches to teaching have developed and some of our respondents said that they would be sticking with those post pandemic. Although digitization resource and capacity expanded to address the pandemic as I've noted, it is still fragile in some organizations and future resilience, as well as staffing and funding is needed to ensure what's been developed has can be sustained, and also can be built upon. And then one of the things that came out of the research was the choices about tools and technologies and how resources were accessed online was really important. Because of the pandemic, a lot of things were done very quickly and problems could therefore come further along the line in regards to making things accessible from a search ability functionality from a technology software hardware broadband needed perspective from a digital communication perspective as well managing things going forward. So that is something that we've tried to identify a bit within the research and to look at what tools and technologies have been used successfully by different organizations. And so my final slide is really about what the next steps we think are and some recommendations for the galleries, libraries, archives and museum sector. So we grew into four areas from a skills perspective, both time and resources are of course needed to reflect on teaching practice what's happened, but I think the project highlighted the ability to have time to reflect on how collections support teaching in general was really helpful. And there also needs to be thought about how the skills that have been developed quite quickly and in quite an ad hoc way can be further developed and shared across the sector. People were really key to the success to the move to online teaching. And there are a lot of actually great collaborative partnerships. Relationships were very equitable. Some the input was equitable but the recognition maybe wasn't and consideration should really be given to have contributions and contributors are supported credited and recognized. There was a lot of hidden input and the prepared material to allow online teaching to take place that wasn't always surfaced from a resources point of view, and it would be beneficial to have greater clarity around licensing copyright. And what can and can't be done when it's a teaching facility that you're trying to promote rather than a more publicly dispersed collection improved discoverability will of course benefit the use of collections for teaching. And it would certainly enable more joined up use for them to be made across different collections as well as within institutions. And then we also feel that from a recognition point of view, greater visibility of how collections are used within HCI would be really beneficial. We looked at some of the modules that we discussed with participants. We looked at how modules were described on university websites and the use of collections was hardly mentioned at all. And we feel that not only from what we've seen the use of online collections is a key part of a lot of these courses has lots of learning benefits and of course a lot of input in there. And at the moment that isn't really being recognized and greater visibility would hopefully encourage further work in this area. And that's everything that I'm going to say today other than thank you for coming along. These are our contact details. So if you have any questions, please get in touch. Thank you so much, Susanna and Katie. That was fascinating. Our second presentation will move straight on to that now is by my colleague Chris Jones from the National Archives. So she's going to be talking on bridging the digital gap traineeships diversity and digital skills development. And she's the project manager for that traineeship program at the National Archives. Wonderful. So hello everybody, and thank you Pip. From 2018 to 2022, the bridging the digital gap program provided digital traineeships that brought people with much needed technological skills, but little to no experience of archives into the archive sector. Supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund's skills for the future scheme, the program was devised and managed by the National Archives. As shown here, the program had three aims to improve workforce diversity by recruiting trainees from targeted underrepresented groups to boost archive services digital capacity through training and digital archiving skills and to pilot a training model that would create a new entry level route into the sector. The National Archives employed 24 trainees in three cohorts of eight. They were each seconded to a host archive in England for a 15 month placement. In order to become a host for organizations had to join together and apply as a consortium and to consortia were chosen for each cohort, thus 24 hosts in total, who represented a variety of types of archive services and a range of digital archiving capabilities. Through the on the job training at the hosts and the off the job training managed by the National Archives, the program aim to impart the skills and knowledge that trainees would need to become a digital archive assistant. So let's look at the diversity aim. This was a response to research by Syllip and the Archives and Records Association, the ARA, which found that the archive workforce was predominantly white middle class, highly educated women with backgrounds in history. So in response, reaching the digital gap at these six target groups, people who is identified as male, people from ethnically diverse backgrounds, people from a lower socioeconomic background, people educated only to RQF level three or four, people with demonstrable technological aptitude skills experience or qualifications and career changers. The application criteria were broad enough to allow people with humanities qualifications to apply if they could demonstrate technological aptitude. But we promised the funder to track the subject of applicants highest qualifications to ensure the program branched out beyond the humanities to bring in people with STEM qualifications. As it turned out, all trainees entered the program with technological skills and experience. These ranged from hardcore computer science to website design and user experience to the production of visual time based and digital media. So how did we do. We promised the heritage fund percentage targets for four groups. We exceeded our targets for people from ethnically diverse backgrounds at 29%, for men at 33% and for people with technological aptitude at 100%. We did, however, fall short of the percentage of people without degrees at 21%. In addition, 33% of the trainees were career changers having worked the previous 10 years in another field. It turned out that it was not possible to collect socioeconomic data using the civil service application process. When we look at another area of low diversity disability, the proportion of trainees with long term physical or mental health conditions, including neurodiversity, was higher than the proportion of adults with disability in the UK working population. In terms of trainees highest qualifications, these were equally split between STEM and humanities subjects. But I have been much more interested to see how many trainees came from visual time based and digital media backgrounds, for example photography filmmaking sound illustration digital communications design. I feel this gives a more useful picture than the STEM humanities dichotomy and points to a group of people who are already on the bridge spanning the humanities and technology. Now let's consider the training. In developing the program, it was determined that training would cover five broad areas, archival principles and practices, digital acquisition, digital preservation, digital access and digital engagement. Hosts were given free reign to create work plan that covered these five areas in keeping with their needs, their aims, their capabilities and the platforms they were using. In addition, consortia planned a program of workshops, initially on site just for their four trainees, but later with the move to online workshops because of COVID-19 for all eight trainees. And personally, I feel that this was an improvement to have eight different perspectives and eight voices in the room really catapulted it was much more powerful than doing it with a smaller group. In addition, two of the consortium consortia ran group projects and these were highly successful. Here's a small sample of the work that trainees carried out at their host archives. Impressive as this list is, it represents a compilation rather than an outline of what each trainee did in each of these categories. There was disparity across the on the job training, and some trainees reported being dissatisfied when they learned what others were doing. This points to the need for the for future programs to be more prescriptive, determining a list of core skills and activities that each host or each consortium must provide so that all trainees emerge with the same baseline skill set and level of experience. Among the many benefits to the host of having a digital trainee was their confidence in applying the technological tools at their fingertips and their confidence in seeking out and testing new tools. They brought fresh eyes and a level of frustration to existing workflows. There are many examples of trainees using coding to streamline and automate technical procedures. They also pitched ideas for digital engagement where they saw they could make improvements and enhancements. And there's a picture on the slide here of a walking tour app from East Riding Archives and the trainee pitched the idea of we've got oral histories that explain what it was like to work on the shipyard and she then incorporated the clips from the oral histories. So as you're standing there looking at an old photograph, you also then hear somebody who worked on the shipyard talking is again very powerful. In terms of the National Archives training provision, it consisted of an e-learning course of five modules, those five categories that I mentioned earlier, and each of these modules were launched by a live workshop. In addition, trainees had a personal training budget so that they could use that they could use on courses and conferences, events and workshops off their choosing. Looking back through the early paperwork, I can see that the original plan was to deliver training entirely via workshops. And with the benefit of hindsight, this might have been the best option rather than taking on the task of creating an e-learning course. It was perhaps not appreciated at the time how difficult it would be to deliver a high quality output given the time, the budget and the amount of content to be covered. As an example, halfway through the traineeship program in May 2020, the Digital Preservation Coalition launched its online course, novice to know how digital preservation for beginners. Created by archivists with digital preservation experience, which the Bridging the Digital course was not, novice to know had had twice the budget and production timetable and covered only two of the five modules in our program's course. In redeveloping our course for the final cohort of trainees, I was able to incorporate novice to know how. I reduced the time frame so the trainees completed the full course within the first three quarters of their traineeship. The original approach of spreading the course out over the entire 15 months failed to recognize that trainees would be regularly working through the complete cycle of processing archive collections and needed training across the whole workflow much earlier in the program. So the learning here is that an online course should be developmental, beginner, intermediate, advanced. But there was an important issue that I could not resolve in the short time frame I had for revisions. The course's reliance on text. Trainees with technological and visual media qualifications tend to gravitate to those formats because text is not their most comfortable medium. It would have improved the experience for all trainees if the course had been able to accommodate different learning styles and disabilities such as dyslexia. And this is another key learning, which I actually find hard to explain, but digital archiving falls at the intersection between archives and technology. And if we're going to offer archive courses to digital experts, if I can put it that way, we have to cross over that intersection, step out of our archive outlook and understand that landscape. Where are they coming from? How do they expect to be assessed? How do they best learn? Finally, two slides to go, I think. Oops, missed one. Oh, sorry, the qualification. Stay at the bottom of the slide. So as the qualification offered by the program, trainees applied for a foundation member of ARA status, which is the first year on ARA's professional registration scheme. Trainees had to demonstrate that they had attained six competencies across the 39 in ARA's competency framework. The application consisted of six 1000 word essays with the emphasis on two sections, learning and progression and reflection. Like the e-learning course, the text heavy application did not necessarily suit all trainees preferred means of expression. And in the end, I was concerned that rather than assess trainees actual technical expertise, the application tested their ability to write convincingly that they had developed a certain level of competency. The process was useful in thinking through evidence for job applications and interviews, but it must be acknowledged that ARA is a level of membership in a professional body. It is not an RQF related qualification and may not have recognition or impact beyond the archive sector. I must add though that finding a relevant RQF qualification for digital archiving traineeships is still an issue. Okay, final slide, I think. Two more slides. So let's look at subsequent employment. The cohort three has just finished, so there are a few of them who are not employed yet. But of those who are 52% are currently working in the archive library and museum sectors, and they are all representative of the program's target groups. There's a selection of job titles. You can see there's some rather wonderfully have the words digital archiving in their title. We have several who've gone into digital digitization as a specialist, and then others who have perhaps more traditional titles. But I just want to return to our percentages about the subject of highest qualifications. Here again, former trainees now working in the cultural heritage sectors are split equally between STEM and humanities. But here again, fine-tuning these figures to pull out those from visual, time-based and digital media backgrounds, we can see that they make up the largest group at 58%. This I would suggest is the group where future programs may want to focus their recruitment campaigns. The trainees interested in pure computing and pure website arenas have gone into those fields. My theory is that trainees who are used to producing and working with digital assets, be it video, audio, photographs, other sorts of imagery, may find heritage materials to be a new and interesting product or assets to which they are able to provide access through their digital work. Finally, it is clear from the trainees I have worked with in the second and third cohorts that working with heritage materials has to have some sort of goal. Trainees have to have a response to those materials. It's not just about working with technology. The materials need to draw them across the bridge to where they were into a career in archives. Thank you. Thank you so much, Chris. That was wonderful hearing about the Bridging the Digital Gap traineeship. And so on to our third and final presentation before, as I said, all the speakers will be invited back together to answer your questions and discuss amongst themselves. Just a reminder, if you do have questions, do keep popping them in the Q&A there. I can see many of you are already. So our final presentation then is on using digital technology and creativity to democratize Prone's archives. It's going to be Lindsay Gillespie presenting on behalf of work that she and her colleague Laura Aguiar both were part of. Laura can't be with us today. Through the creative projects making the future and collab archive, the public records office of Northern Ireland, so Prone, and the nerve center have pioneered a form of creative and digital engagement that puts the public at the heart of archives and helps to democratize them. So Dr Laura Aguiar and Lindsay Gillespie from Prone discuss how such projects harness digital technology of an ethical and participatory form of public engagement and change perceptions of Prone as an elitist place, making it more reflective of diverse society. So thank you very much Lindsay, I shall hand over to you. Okay, thank you very much. I just want to check. Well, I'll just hope that everybody can hear me okay and carry on. Great. And I'll share my screen so thank you very much for having me today and my colleague Laura does enter apologies for not being able to be here today. And just for anyone who needs it. I'm a white woman with mid length blonde hair. I'm in my early 30s. I speak a lot with my hands so if you hear a bit of a thump it's only because I've hit my microphone with my hands that happens a lot. And so I feel like I should warn everyone before I start. Okay, so I'm going to be talking today about two engagement programs that we have done here in the public record office of Northern Ireland or Prone just quickly for anyone who doesn't know Prone is the official archive for Northern Ireland. We are just about to be 100 years old. We're just a little bit younger than Northern Ireland as a state itself. And we are the official archive of Northern Ireland and that we do hold the records of the devolved administration here in Northern Ireland which essentially means the Northern Civil Service. And but we also do bring in private collections as well and this gives us lots of variety and scope to work with. And so I'm going to be talking about two engagement programs that we've undertaken over the last sort of four years. They've got similarities and differences, but largely the same aims. And they were to unlock Prone's Prone and Prone's archives to a wider and more diverse audiences through direct sustained and meaningful engagement and to use creativity and digital technology to bring our archives to life. And we also wanted to build in skills building for our participants, although I've learned a lot myself as someone employed on the project. And we're both externally funded projects. And what I will say before I get started is a key element to both of them for Prone has been partnership with the nerve center. And the nerve center is a creative learning center based here in Northern Ireland in both Belfast and Derry in the Northwest. And that partnership is being really key here in Prone we hold the collections and the nerve center bring that those creativity skills and the digital technology that we needed to truly be able to do this kind of engagement. And that's why the staff and was set up as it was and staffed by myself I worked here in Prone for a number of years, I understand the collections and how they relate to our communities and our people. And my colleague Laura comes from the nerve center and and she's a trained filmmaker and online content producer and together we've been able to have quite a lot of success through these engagement programs just having that partnership of skills coming together. So I'm actually just going to check as well before I go too far. My side is on that's okay. And because Laura left me on my own I have put a little video at the end so I only do you have to talk for half the time. And so I hope everyone can see everything here that's on my screen to the first project that I'm going to talk about and was them making the future project, and which ran from 2018 until 2021 so it was about three and a half years. And it was a cross border cultural program which empowered people to use museum collections and archives to explore the past and create a powerful vision for the future. This was a collaborative project between four partners here in Northern Ireland, it was led by the nerve center. And they brought together Prone as the official archive for Northern Ireland, National Museums Northern Ireland and the Linnahol library which is Belfast oldest library. And they brought us together as the institutions that hold the building blocks of our past, so that we could bring communities and people together to look at what we know about our past here in Northern Ireland. See how we got to where we are today and have to think about what we want our future to look like. And participants came from all different community cultural and religious backgrounds. And we wanted to give them all opportunities to really engage with our heritage collections here to have their voices heard to tell their own stories, be creative and gain new skills. And this project was funded under the European Union's piece for program. And again, and I'm not sure how much people would know about that but peace funding has been around from the European Union in Northern Ireland for more than 25 years and started with peace and then piece one piece to piece three under piece four. And despite Brexit we have one more round to go of piece plus, which is coming up so because it was piece funded as well there was a big focus on cross community engagement through making the future. And because that's the what the heart of peace funding is all white. And so the making the future project was a big project and it's probably a project that pony has never done on this kind of scale before. So, whenever Laura and I got to the program plans and we saw the targets, they seemed really high we initially have three years and with a target of more than 600 participants and across these three years and the funders had set us a lot of roles and they had to make that target so to consider someone engaged we had to engage with them for a minimum of 26 hours and they had to meet that 26 hours we couldn't count them against the totals. And across the three and a half years we did end up doing 30 programs with more than 600 participants aged youngest was it and the eldest was 93. And the programs took lots of different formats to get those 26 hours in so some of them were maybe just once a week for seven to 12 weeks. And then we were a couple of times a week for four weeks, and then we would do a thing that we called hot housing, particularly when we worked with kids during the school holidays, and where we would every day for a week to get those 26 hours in. And again we recruited people through this project, through lots of different ways we we designed programs and did open calls we went to community groups and design programs for them about what they wanted to do. And then we did some targeting direct recruitment to communities and grips that we know traditionally don't engage with Pronee in a meaningful way to see if we could get them in. And this is just a really really quick run three of all the different outputs that we created with the grips through making the future because it was our it was our first starting point and as I said we were just like a fast train go go go all the time. And you see there we had two exhibitions, a trail map that was a paper and an app, and a comic book, a recipe book, a collection of letters, posters, virtual and augmented reality films websites short films there was a play designed quilt was made. We buried a time capsule, and we did a couple of fab labs, which is a thing done in the nerve center which is a week long sort of, and sort of, I don't know what I don't know what else we call other than a fab lab but basically we would go in we would talk about something if it would be women's history, and they would use lots of different creative tech, and like laser print and 3d print and things like that to create something in response to what we'd like that. So making the future was big, and it was great for prony it was a real chance to do sustained and meaningful engagement in a way that we hadn't done it before. But there was a good few things that we learned from it to build and collab archive which came afterwards, and to make it even more meaningful and then to do that skills building in a better way we moved very quickly through making the future so we didn't get to do as much of the skills building as we wanted we did offer OCN qualifications, particularly through our filmmaking programs, and the people got, but we really wanted to do it in a more focused way. So then we went for collab archive with the nerve center again, and this one is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and it is to develop a sustained model of digital volunteering engagement. And with people so that's not only do they do an engagement program with us now but we have a sustained option after that to continue to volunteer with prony because we find that a lot of people wanted that at the end of making the future. And the program was over, they were like, what's next what can we get involved in. So collab archive allows for that sort of sustained engagement afterwards. And so it's all about connecting new volunteers with archives through creativity and technology. So collab archive is just run five programs over its one year, and to 50 volunteers of all ages and backgrounds, we have done three of them so far, and we have two still to go. And we looked at five themes that we pulled from are making the future, and that we really wanted to focus in on a little bit more so we wanted to look at women's history again migration disability citizenship and LGBTQ history here in Northern Ireland so those are the five that we've been looking at so far. And so the volunteers create creative outputs through an engagement program first. And, and that's just as a response to their engagement with our archives to make it engaging and keep them with us. And, and then through the volunteer and program after that they're helping us to make our collections more digitally accessible through digitization and transcription and things like that. These are pictures here on the screen of the three groups that we've had so far. And what I'm going to finish with with collab archive because my colleague Laura was meant to be here to talk about collab archive a little bit more. And it's best to hear it from itself. And another lesson we learned from making the future was to document what we were doing and document it well and properly so we have been getting videos made of all of our programs so far. I have very crudely cut them and smashed them together for this so I apologize it's not the best quality but I hope it gives you a sense of the club archive work and I hope that you can all hear it and that it works well and but I'll play this green eye. My name is Laura Aguiar and I'm the community engagement officer for the project called collab archive which is a partnership between Prone and the nerve center. Club archive is a new way of engaging new volunteers with archives and we're doing that through creative technology and digital technology. We are here to wrap up a project that explored the archives of Roberta Hewitt who is the wife of the writer John Hewitt. All of the material that we selected for this project has been scanned and properly digitized by our colleagues in Prone so the participants are having remote access to all of that material. We wanted to bring Roberta Hewitt's collection forward for a long time there's so much interesting information in there about who Roberta was as a person and separate to just being John Hewitt's wife and collab archive is the perfect vehicle for us to be able to do that. For over a month we had a group of volunteers engaging with her collections, they read her diaries, they read a selection of papers from her collection and today they're here to bring all their work, all their reading, transcription and research work together. It has been absolutely fascinating to learn about Roberta, to find out about her life and find out the woman that she was and that she was a really all round individual. Well I found it absolutely wonderful because I literally got lost in the archives. It is so interesting reading the diaries, looking at all sorts of documents and manuscripts and things, it really was a wonderful opportunity. My favourite part has been getting to know Roberta, she's a woman of her time, a woman before her time and I just feel even in the 21st century it's all very relevant. Real insight into the workings here at the public records office, people don't generally get to see which is fascinating. You could say we've made friends, it's been fun. The work of our participants in collab archive is going to bring new life and meaning into Roberta Hewitt's collections and all of our other collections here and they're also going to help us increase accessibility to our collections long term. This is the second collab archive project, collab archive is a partnership between the nerve centre and PRONY and we're looking at migration history. We've partnered with the Melon Centre for Migration Studies and the partnership has been absolutely wonderful. Together as part of the project we are looking at immigration letters that are held by PRONY. We got the participants to read those letters, see which letter resonated with them, pick up to three letters and create podcasts about those letters. Many of the records in PRONY reflect on historic migration and it's really nice to see this programme bring things full circle and take a look at more recent migration both in and out of Northern Ireland and try to collect those stories as well. I picked a gentleman called Thomas Horner who wrote in 1807 to his parents saying that it was hard work in America, he was in the Maryland. So it was really interesting looking at how their attitudes changed over the years but the theme that ran through them all was something similar. Be able to come back home, bring family out to be with them or they worried about their family at home because Ireland was still troubled all through those years. I wanted to have a look at what actually life was like in some of the cities that they went to because I'd read quite a lot before about the ones who had gone and moved on along the trails and I'd read quite a lot about the 50,000 that were sent back and what the hotels were like and what their accommodation was like, what the weather was like and what the fashion was like and that's what I had sort of more concentrated on than anything else. We are migrant from India and we get a chance to visit the centre, read the stories about others and also get a chance to write your own stories here. I actually met different people, different culture people. They created a small world here so actually I got to know different people and me. I also can share my story here, migration story so that is a good part for me. I'm absolutely delighted to be here today at the podcast and workshop to help facilitate the group in learning how to put their stories together as an audio podcast and we're doing that all by Zoom. I think it's great that we had the Zoom sessions because it allows simply that everybody can take part at this time otherwise it would not have been possible for me and it's nice to have this face to face meetings. We're really excited to have these letters and podcasts created by the team come into PRONY for permanent preservation and it's so wonderful that we can create digital records this time around to reflect on people's lives and stories. This is the third collab archive project and this time we're looking at music history. We're working with a group with varying degrees of sight loss from R&B. We ran a couple of sessions through Zoom and also in person. We got the group to engage with a selection of clips from the UTV archives and we used the clips as an inspiration for the music stories that we wanted them to share with us but also we wanted them to look at how different interviews are conducted on camera. They were doing interviews with each other. We asked them to come up with just one question about music. It's been great and we can't wait to see the videos whenever they're ready. This is the second project that we have done with PRONY and the Nerve Centre. We got in to see part of the archives in public, dunked it into. We got into the sort of cut the vaults where all the film reels are. We also got to see the old machinery, how they cut and pasted and put the films together and edited them. Really fascinating. PRONY and the Nerve Centre are lovely to work with, very supportive, very understanding of what the needs of people with a sight impairment are. It's wonderful to see the folk out actually in front of the camera. They're doing stuff that they never ever thought that they would do in their lifetime and that would be on film. Trying to get people outside who maybe have lost the confidence because they've lost their sight and trying to get outside again to do things which the rest of us take for granted. It has been such a confidence builder for quite a lot of them. The film making in general was like, oh this is just class, this is just awesome. And when I actually came here to PRONY and looked through the archives to actually see how an interview was conducted and how films are made, it was just incredible. The participants in it says it better than I could have explained it. So if you want to find out more about our current collab archive project, the website is there. And I'll finish there. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Lindsay, for another fabulous, a third fabulous presentation, really inspirational. And thank you all you wonderful, wonderful speakers. You have left us plenty of time for questions and answers. So we're aiming to finish this session around quarter to five as advertised. I'm sorry, I thought I had clicked on the button and clearly clicked on the wrong one. There, my camera's on again now. So if I could invite you back as it were into the room or up on stage or to turn your cameras on, if you can work technology better than me, which you evidently can. Thank you. Thank you very much. Chris, are you able to turn your camera on? Yes, the Zoom was preventing me, but it's just now let me in. I am technological. Oh, no, we know that. We've heard your presentation. Yes, no, it's just me who failed to turn my camera on. We have lots of questions coming already in, which is fabulous. Thank you. Do keep them coming as I say we've got, we have quite a lot of time to get our teeth into these. We've got questions for everybody, so we will dot around the three presentations if we may. One question, which is for Katie and Susanna. And there's a lot of love for all of the work that you've done coming through here. And this person says they love the research that you undertook and wants to know if you have any plans to develop or expand it in a post COVID world or to publish the findings so far. I really appreciate everyone's feedback because we were doing this kind of for the whole sector. So one of the things we're hoping is that this develops into a bigger conversation. So we're going to do a report on the project which will be available for free from the University Museums in Scotland website. So we pitched this project to the HRC with an honest assessment of what the output should be. So we didn't say we'll do all these peer reviewed publications. We said the sector needs to have this insight earlier than that would be if we did peer reviewed publications. So there's going to be a report. We're going to make the data available. The case studies we've got four of them developing. They're going to be set out in the report and also a separate pieces. And then we'll see where it goes from there. We've got all sorts of ideas about where to go next. We also will have big day jobs. But I think that's the conversation for this project team and for other people who want to get involved. Because through doing this project, we found all kinds of really innovative, exciting practice. Susanna, do you want to add on the thing? No, we did. And as Katie says, there are lots of things that came up that we were like, wouldn't it be great to look into that a little bit more. For me in particular, what we wanted to do and we didn't do was actually get feedback from students from the actual users. That was partly timing because of the time of year we were actually gathering the data was over the summer when a lot of students went in contact with their host institutions very regularly. But also some barriers with actually being able to access that feedback, feedback that had been collected from the courses, didn't have the permissions to then share it with us at third party. So I think that would be interesting. I sort of looked at what worked with the pivot and what was successful and what wasn't in actually getting to deliver online teaching. But I think I would like to look a bit more into that pedagogy and what are the benefits. Because from what I can tell from talking to people across the sector, people are still going to be delivering online alongside going back to face to face. And there's a lot of discussion about, well, what do the two bring? And how do you judge what's best for what kind of learning experience you want to deliver? Thank you very much. And I suspect we will be returning to some of these themes later in this discussion session. But Chris, we have a question for you. And I think this is something of a gift. So what do you think about the idea of a programme such as bridging the digital gap, but in reverse so that archivists can learn digital expertise? I say yes, that's absolutely a good idea. I think it does if I can just also, yes, it could be that we all have to raise our game, but I think there is also, and I'm a good example of that, somebody who has some sort of affinity with technology that it's not scary, but also you're sort of enticed by the possibilities. So maybe if across the sector, we could encourage and boost everyone's confidence, but there are always going to be those individuals who take it and run with it. But yes, how would that, I mean, the National Archives did run something sadly before COVID called Digital Archives School, and that was just a pilot before COVID. It was my colleague Joe Pugh, and that I think just has a small cohort of 15, but that was very much starting with the archivists and working up their digital skills. And there's certainly mileage in doing more of that. Joe and I are talking about maybe micro-predentials or digital badges. What can we do to keep this going? I think the thing, as I mentioned, where the trainees came in is that they were just fearless. I had one trainee who just had A-levels, and he never spent any of his training budget because he was a digital native and he just knew how to find out everything online. Whatever he needed, he found it out. And so I mean, that's somebody who can only be a benefit as a member of the team. That's fabulous. Thank you very much. And Lindsay, one for you. Questions obviously came in throughout, but my goodness, they're all flooding in now, so plenty of questions for all of you. Lindsay, another question here. Loves your research and the program. And wants to know where they can get more information and also as the second part to the question, whether there's room for other online learning and collaboration programs. Yeah, I will. I'll put in the chat the web address for Collab Archive and for our previous Making the Future project as well, because they're both still there and they're a really great reflection of all the work that was done through them. And certainly we hope to, Collab Archive finishes at the end of 2022 and we hope to make an application to Peace Plus for next year to continue this work. And it is something here in Proney that we are looking to our funding department in Northern Ireland is the Department for Communities to build this into more core work for Proney because it's only in the last few years that we've really been able to do it properly and see the value of it. But we're at the moment relying on external funding to do it all the time. So we'd like to find a way to build that properly into our public service here in Proney. But at the moment, we're just constantly looking out for these funding opportunities to keep it going. But I'll put the web address into the chat so that everyone can find them. Thank you very much. We have one question that was aimed at Katie and Susanna. And I suspect it came in while you were talking. In fact, I think it might be interesting to hit all your reflections on it. If you wouldn't mind. And this is about the funding application process. So the specific question for Katie and Susanna was who was the principal investigator. But I think the question, perhaps all of you, there's the second question there if you can see it. What recommendations can you offer to practitioner researchers about the funding process? So Katie, Susanna, over to you first. And then if Lindsay or Chris, you have comments on how to apply for funding and the process of it. I shall turn to you next. Well, I'm going to be a minute because she was. So I just want to say you were the driving force when Katie was is RPI and was the driving force at seeing the funding option when it came up and rallying us to apply. So over to you, Katie. Yeah, it was it was a nonstandard process to apply for the COVID emergency funding. So I have thoughts about the process and I'm sure colleagues from the HRC would agree that they were trying to sort of build a new kind of process at speed while delivering it. So it had its wrinkles. But we went from knowing the funding was opening up to having an idea to having it submitted. Susanna, was it six weeks or eight weeks? I feel like it might have been eight weeks, but that's really fast for a research funding application. But we sort of knew we needed to move quickly to catch this thing while it was happening. If you can believe it at that point we thought it might be over inside a year so we thought we might have to move quickly to get this in place. But more useful maybe is to think about the general picture here. So I was the principal investigator. Susanna at the point we applied was archivist at the Glasgow School of Art. The other two investigators one is the head of museums and special collections at Aberdeen. And the other is a joint appointment professor of digital culture heritage and appointment in the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow. So the team is a really practitioner led team. And we decided to be entirely unapologetic about it for a project like this which is really about learning from practice and action research and doing rigorous research around something while it's happening. We just decided we were the right people. I think it helped that I've had other UKRI funding and others in the group as well so we had some credibility there. I've also reviewed and moderated for the HRC so if any of you are looking at Arts and Humanities Research Council funding, I'd say the team at the HRC are great offering advice, but I think there is confident in that as a distinctive contribution to research and articulating that contribution. And I think reviewers see it and the peer review college has now been broadened out to bring in more practitioners which I think is a real positive. And then I think one last bit of advice, the best way to get good is to read other people's applications and to help and review and to see good and bad applications. So just just do it and help each other do it. We are great at this actually. So I'm a co-investigator on this project. I've been involved in a couple of other HRC projects prior to that as a technical advisor within my institution at the Glasgow School of Art. And I do think there's a difficulty for practitioners to be recognised for their research skills rather than their technical skills as it were. But I think I don't have a doctorate so I don't have that background, but working with colleagues who did have doctorates who were putting funding bids in, being involved in developing those bids, even in that technical advice capacity was really worthwhile and useful. And then this was an opportunity. And we were lucky because we were already working closely together at University of New Zealand and Scotland as a group. It was a good opportunity to take a different step for me personally and it's also been just a really great project to work on because of all the participants we've worked with as well. So I think it still is difficult and it is trying to find ways of joining up with people who are maybe further along the line and kind of will bring you with them. And you can learn from others as well. It's my experience. Thanks very much. And also, as Katie was saying a shout out to our colleagues at the Arsenal Humanities Research Council who, like the rest of us were faced with a pandemic. And this was their response that they did move so quickly, and are also changing the makeup of the reviewers called the peer review college to make sure there is more practitioner expertise on this so that practitioners are by the reviewers as well, who haven't accepted of having equal, obviously equal professional knowledge and expertise that they do have and that's very clear in the funding guidelines. Chris, I wonder, did you have anything you wanted to say about the practical application of applying for funding. That's covered it obviously bridging the digital gap went for ring fenced funding around training and heritage skills offered by the heritage authority so it is something completely different. Thank you. Thanks very much, Lindsay. Well, collab archive is funded actually under that same digital skills for heritage and from the National Lottery Heritage Fund. So again, you're quite specific with that. And then the piece funding is, you know, it's like a vehicle all on its own. And, you know, it has a very strict, you know, core that very much has to be about cross community and building here in Northern Ireland. And but we know here that heritage can really work for that, but the fact that we went collaboratively as partners into that really strengthened the application so for us certainly I think like partnership is the key to strong applications and to work with other people and, you know, being to put in a strong application as you can. Thank you very much. I have a specific one for Katie and Susanna now about the challenges of hybrid delivery so you noted the distinction between blended where the student experience is different forms of learning and hybrid when things are when a class is being taught simultaneously in person and remotely. Can you say a bit more about your approaches to, to this and whether any particular strategies that made this work better. So the approaches that came through during the project was the, as well as preparation beforehand like you would do for any session identify what materials to use etc. And what you needed to be able to handle and show them properly was that most sessions were delivered with two people. And that was partly so that you could focus on the class and and react to their needs, but also keep an eye on the screen and react to the chat or the students need on the screen, but also focus on the objects and how you were handling and showing them, and the it you know that the camera was on them in the right place. So there's those sort of four different elements that most people but certainly thinking what the research, most people did it with two people in the room at the same time. And to just help keep abreast of everything and keep things flowing in order. And there was a sense from some of the respondents that things got easier and they could really tell that they got much more confident with juggling everything. But as far as I'm aware, nobody moved it down to one person, they stuck with the two people. Katie, do you want to add anything. I'll only add that we got a couple of comments about people, especially academic colleagues for whom this isn't a kind of main job felt the responsibility for the objects very deeply and found it quite stressful when they were using new technology and responsible for the objects and really trying to make sure the students had a really excellent learning experience. So they found it exhausting. And they then found that they had to be quite careful about the energy levels so that they took appropriate care of students technology and objects. So we got a couple of comments like that as well that people did it really well had to quite take quite good care of themselves outside the session in order to be able to feel that they were doing a good job in it. That's this case normally but it was even more so doing hybrid learning. Thank you. That's fascinating that you've got then four groups of things to be concerned about the technology the object and students remotely and students in person. Gosh, even more impressive and doing all this in the face of a pandemic. So, Chris, another question for you. More love for the scheme. They think the idea behind the TNA project of bridging the digital gap is excellent and definitely filling a gap. Knowing what you do now from the scheme. Could you name one particular digital hard skill that you suggest new archive professionals learn or is needed by the sector to further aid bridging this gap. One, oh boy, this is really putting me on the spot. Well, the first thing that springs to mind is is to learn Python. It's programming is not as scary as it looks and there is something very satisfying and getting it all right and seeing the workflow. You know, actually happened before your very eyes. So, I know that's maybe, you know, a step or two further than some people would want to go but actually, it's about your time. And if you can that's why I said, you know, the trainees jumped in because of the level of frustration of how long the manual tasks were and, you know, data is malleable technology is malleable. And so gaining a tool that can can do it for you. So there we go. That's my one. That's brilliant. Thank you very much, Lindsay, one for you on digital volunteers. So how were they recruited for collab archive and a follow up question around the digital literacy requirements or technical limitations they say to participation, particularly given the demographic of traditional volunteers is often older and sometimes has less digital literacy. Yeah, so we got the, the participants in the volunteers that we've had from club archive so far in lots of different ways. So the program that we did about Roberta Hewitt and was done by an open call so we just designed that program it was something that we got briefly through making the future and wanted to look at more and we got them through an open call and the migration strand was a mix of participants we already had a relationship with through an organization, a couple of organizations here that support the Indian community in Northern Ireland, and then we also did an open call but again we were looking specifically for people who have migrated to Northern Ireland or had spent time living away and come home again. And then for the disability strand we worked just with R and I be which is the Royal National Institute for the blind. And again we've worked with them before. But we knew that there was so much more we could do if we actually had a bit more time and weren't trying to get through so many people at the same time so we got them all that way and I think certainly and there's a mix of with when you get people like that to have an idea of what you're going to get with their previous knowledge or skills for what you're asking them to do and and very much we go with a blended approach with collab archive so the making the future project started completely all in person because we never imagined we'd have to do anything else and then COVID came in a little bit and it went all online and then by the end we were doing that blended rather than hybrid so sometimes we're all together or we're completely online but not that some people in the room some people at home there's too much for everyone and so collab archive does the same things we do some sessions on zoom and some in person and and for we learned a lot of lessons during making the future to so we do a lot of one on one sessions with people who maybe aren't sure about the technology that we're trying to use and it takes a lot of patience and understanding of when people hit their limits so we have things that we want people to do and then we have an amount of people we want to engage with and then a different amount of people that we want to volunteer with us long term so the engagement side of things their skills were very varied when they came some people really wanted to gain skills and other people did a little bit and then we just handed off to us and you can see when someone reaches their limit and they just can't go any further and you have to step in and do something for them to get them to the end and that that's okay and we'll do that and then there's certain amount of people who skills had a better skill set to start with or learn the skills better through the engagement program have continued to volunteer with us but again that still takes a lot of patience a lot of quality assurance of the work that we're getting them to do and things like that but you know we wanted it to be open to absolutely everyone's we didn't set limits on what we were asking people to know how to do before they came to engage with us and certainly for Laura and I it's just being willing to step in and say okay I'll take it from here if you reached your limit and you don't want to do any more that's fine and with the RNIB group when we do film make it with them some people do everything from you know they're sort of they storyboard it out they get all the content they shoot it they want to edit it other people don't want to do the editing at all they just want to do the shooting and that's fine we'll we'll go with what they want to and we'll pick up where they drop Thanks that's great and to follow up on that there's a question around the 26 hours that you noted for someone to be counted as engaged did you find it to be a barrier or a standard that you rose to achieve and you got more sustained and deeper engagement at this start certainly when Laura and I were told that when we started what like what's on earth and 26 sounded like a really long time but in reality it doesn't end up feeling as long as it sounds and we certainly did feel like it taught us the value of that proper sustained engagement and making it meaningful it gave us enough of a chance to build relationships with participants for the peace funding we needed to give them enough chance to build relationships with one another and it gave them long enough to pick up skills if that is what they were looking for you know traditionally outreach in prony might have been you made a grip once for a couple of hours and then that's it over so to meet with them again and again and again a lot of them left feeling quite a personal relationship to prony to myself and Laura to each other and so in the end we felt like it was needed and sometimes it didn't even feel like long enough it didn't feel like long enough for me and Nora it didn't feel like long enough for them they were saying like is it over like what can we do what else can we do is can we volunteer is there something we can get involved with so and at the beginning it sounded like a barrier and we thought we're never going to hit the targets of people in three years if everybody has to do 26 hours but it does work that sort of real sustained engagement with people. Thank you. And Chris also thinking about recruitment we have a question here on what we can learn from recruitment in general from the program from bridging the digital gap to increase diversity in our professions. I knew there was going to be a question on this. I don't I don't have a very clear answer for this. And I think actually it was technology, the fact that it was a technological program was actually what enabled a wide a diverse range of people to feel that it was for them. And so while we did do some targeted recruitment the for instance that we did an add on not going to uni in order to get the people without degrees and strangely enough that was the category where we didn't do as as well. So, I don't. Yeah, I did. There's not a clear. There's not a clear picture. The one thing I would say that I think worked was that we had to do a range of what I would call the broader outlets. Facebook ads indeed.com picked up the ads but then you also had to sweep across to maybe some, some of the more sector specific or subject specific because if people had a vague idea that they were kind of interested in working for a museum. You know, so actually having a broad range of, of outlets, I think, would help so we did, you know, technology, you know, it jobs forward or something, but then also these, these broader ones because of people had just typed in, I'm going to go into Facebook and type in or not Facebook but Google and type in something that those. So my, my main, sorry, I'm filing here but my main takeaway is you have to make sure that your ads have the juicy words that will be picked up in keyword searches again think of that person on the other side, but then go all the way to some of the more sector specific or subject specific ones as well and then you'll, you'll catch, but it was really I think it was really it was the technology draw that. That's really helpful thank you very much. Susanna, this is a huge question and I'm going to give you about 30 seconds to answer it. I mentioned that one of the issues with teaching the digitized collections was about their discoverability and how joined up they were. Can you say a bit about this and give one example I shall interpret given the time and add the context in which this was an issue and what would, what would be an ideal. There were vast differences between what organizations had in place already and for those that didn't already have a collection management system or an image management system in place where you could put your images and add metadata, make them searchable and hopefully in time people had to come up with their own solutions to a lot of people like would share a folder of images, potentially bio virtual learning environment, so their students could access those images and browse them, but they couldn't search them they couldn't search those images with other collections and they weren't available more broadly online. So although material was digitized and digitized quickly and served the job. There's a sort of second phase of work that's needed now to add the metadata to make it more accessible to check what standards for use to digitize the images. I think some academics had to do their own digitization so they didn't necessarily have the level of equipment that would be desirable to get the quality that you want long time for an image. Thank you so digitize everything and metadata is excellent and conforms to standards just just that Katie. I'm going to add one more thing very quickly bringing bringing bad news from our academic colleagues which is they don't know where our online collection databases are they don't know which ones to look in for which kinds of things. So they tended to go with what they knew and stick quite close to home if home was the National Gallery because they were used to that they would stick to that. So we've got a bit of work to do as a sector. They don't know how to look for us. Well we like a challenge as a sector. Thank you. So we have this wonderful question that I'd love to get to is it's aimed at Lindsay and Chris but I'm going to ask it to all of you. The question is about your reflections from working with the participants, whoever they were trainees for example or community members or lecturers and students on their first close encounter with archives and with collections more broadly. Can you say maybe one thing that really struck you about something that that one of them reported and my follow up question. So that we bring this to a close is that all of you have talked really passionately and with such expertise about working in partnership what collaborating with with different people within your own sector and organizations with people across the sector and beyond that to different professions, different professional backgrounds, different skill sets and so on. And so I wonder if we could have one reporting of an impression that was made on the people that you've been working with, be the community members or trainees or what have you, and then one on your reflections on on partnership so I should go around you in the order in which you spoke, which means Katie, you first please. I suppose I've always been struck by the moment you put something into somebody's hand and say that is whatever it is something old precious, and you ask them to turn it over and really look at it. It's an absolute incredible moment. And that means I'm really torn about the digital potential because I am a massive nerd and can see huge potential here, but that moment is still a really magical one that we need to hold on to. And then on on partnership, I think it's very, very clear that we couldn't have done the project we just did the speed we did it without, without that, and without building those relationships before we knew we needed to lean on them. So there's real value in that so that you have really strong connections when you need them, not just cynically in case but because it's a really good thing as a sector to do. Thank you, Casey. Yes, similar to Katie and I actually think about the question we talked about how people use material that's close to home. But I think from my personal experience there is an added excitement that we have this stuff. And you know it's very nearby and we can access it whenever we want. So I think the kind of relationship feeling that it's something that relates to where you work or where you live is really important. And from a collaborative point of view working in HCI, I think talking to people from different disciplines brings lots of different viewpoints. In my last job I worked in the art school and worked with a lot of creative practitioners that bring some of the skills that both Chris and Lindsay have talked about the visual skills the digital skills, looking at things in a new light so that was great. But on this project work with people from language courses that had worked with business courses, science, archeology. So just seeing what different people get out of objects and how they work with them makes you rethink how you present them and work with them as a professional that works with collections all the time. So that's really useful when you collaborate. Thank you, Chris. Well, I think I have a different perspective on this because I started in the first national lockdown and the third cohort started in the whatever it was the January 2021 lockdown and so actually get that it's a harder question to answer because so much of it had to be done online with digital assets. And so I absolutely I mean I absolutely agree about the magic of the real physical thing, but you know it was almost like a leap of imagination for us all to you know to keep going until they could finally get into the archive and see some of those. Now, 21st century, many things are created born digital and so we have to somehow also find whatever that is that excitement about born digital archives so I can't I can't. Yeah, I can't give you one thing. But I think I would I want to highlight that that's there there's something magical about the physical and and exactly how do you transfer that to an online screen and I think we're getting better at doing that quite frankly in terms of partners we could not have done it without all of the wonderful host archives. You know, not only did they take on the responsibility of day to day managing and training up the trainee but also I worked entirely my one cohort that I worked entirely was the last one and those those came up with the most amazing program of workshops. And, you know, everybody giving their expertise. I mean it was wonderful and it really made it. I would say probably for our participants, the thing that stood out for them that then stood out to me was their shock what an archival document actually can be because we're the official archive and sometimes in Northern Ireland that's all people think we are. And they come in through the door and they can hold on to someone's diary or a letter and they're, oh you take this as well and particularly when they're not super old or they're not from someone that they've heard of before. You know, it's just a collection that we got of immigrant letters or somebody's diary from that's a mix of like the troubles and car insurance. They're so shocked that that can be considered to be an archival document and I think it helps them see their own part of history which is a big thing for us that you actually can be leaving things behind that would be useful for archives so I think. Sometimes their shock at what we actually hold and how we use it was key for me and I think that would go for both physical and later like born digital just what we actually take in to tell our own stories. And on the partnership I would say it's definitely skills building Laura and I have learned a lot from each other. You know we brought different things to the project but we've worked together so long now that you know I mean my filmmaking skills have like, you know, I mean I'm still not that good at it but I'm much better than before I would have started with Laura. And then somebody asked me to record a piece of audio and I know what to do I know where to go in my house and have we bits and pieces of tech and I didn't know any of that before. You know, equally she's like a lot about Prone and a lot about archives that she didn't know before she started this job so I think the skills that we've been able to share and give to each other has been really important.