Happy Birthday NHS
The National Health Service was formed 75 years ago on 5 July 1948 and Gloucestershire Archives has been involved in local celebrations of this milestone birthday. Over the past few months we’ve been working with NHS staff to produce an exhibition about the development of the health service in Gloucestershire. As part of this process we have acquired some fantastic new photographs and promotional films for our collections, and some keen advocates for our service.
'Mash up' of old photographs of Cheltenham General Hospital, now added to our collections as NHS acc no 16402
Cheltenham School of Nursing, 1978, now added to our collections as NHS acc no 16402
The exhibition was formally opened at a special evensong service at Gloucester Cathedral and will be on display in the cloisters until September, alongside specially commissioned artwork.
We’ve also put a version of the exhibition 'In sickness and in health' online and have created a dedicated NHS75 page which signposts to other relevant resources. Particular thanks are due to volunteers Val and Gail whose research underpins the exhibition and has produced several fact sheets, now available online.
You can see the online exhibition here NHS75 - Gloucestershire Archives
You can see the NHS dedicated page here The NHS will be 75 on 5th July - Gloucestershire Archives
Take the 'Green Pledge'
We are thrilled to receive a major grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for our 'Green Pledge' project.
The award, which comes under the Heritage Fund’s Dynamic Collections programme, is just shy of £250K (£246,800 to be precise) and will help record the county’s environmental legacy and drive forward climate action.
Our two year project will aim to encourage further environmental action by exploring climate change and involving people in green heritage activities. The county’s unique environmental archives will be opened up and used for various events and activities involving the public, including:
- Public workshops with young people and environmental groups to help collect new environmental archives and oral histories, including from key environmentalists to fill gaps and provide a fuller record for future generations
- An online and travelling exhibition called ‘Green Gloucestershire – Our Past, Our Future’
- Events hosted at the Heritage Hub in Gloucester as well as inside libraries, schools, community venues and online, to help raise awareness of environmental sustainability
- Volunteer programme sorting and listing significant environmental map collections
- Cataloguing existing archived environmental records
- Training for new archives apprentice to produce guides and toolkits to unlock environmental archives for diverse audiences
- Environmental audit of Gloucestershire Heritage Hub to reduce its carbon footprint, by adding solar panels and reducing waste and consumption of gas and electricity
- Public pledge campaign with Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust to reduce carbon footprints
Councillor Lynden Stowe, the Gloucestershire County Council cabinet member with responsibility for Archives, said: “I’m delighted Gloucestershire Archives have received this award from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. This project will play an important role in helping us to understand and tackle climate change, as it will open up and expand our environmental archives and involve residents in a range of activities to raise greater awareness of this issue.”
Stuart McLeod, Director of England - London & South at The National Lottery Heritage Fund, said: “We are delighted to support this project, which thanks to money raised by National Lottery players, will open up the important environmental archives of Gloucestershire. It will enable the community to learn and connect with the unique natural heritage of the county. We know that projects like these offer an important opportunity to learn and adapt to reduce the impact of climate change for future generations.”
Opportunities to further enhance the community garden and to get involved with vast quantities of historic maps with environmental annotations! Here we have Friends of Gloucestershire Archives' volunteers enjoying a previous map project.