Sally Middleton is retiring
Sally joined Gloucestershire Archives in October 2016 as part of the ‘For the Record’ archives transformation project. She has certainly helped us transform our partnerships, learning and outreach offer. We will particularly miss her positive approach, management and coaching skills, and her fresh perspective arising from her background in social work and libraries, but will do our best to build on her legacy.
Sally led the Archives in achieving the Archives and Records Association Volunteering Award in 2019. During her time our volunteer base has grown significantly and she has worked hard to break down barriers to participation. She has been particularly supportive in her coaching approach with young and disadvantaged volunteers. She was especially delighted when one of the volunteers she had supported was offered a place at Cambridge University to study history.
Her commitment to Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) has led to some great results including the use of the Dunrossil Centre for English as a second language classes for local parents- leading to a Nigerian asylum seeker to become an archives volunteer.
Other highlights include her collaborative work on mental health records resulting in the Never Better project which featured at Gloucester History Festival and gave opportunities to several folk with lived mental health experience. Various other health projects are currently in preparation to build on these helpful relationships.
She has also demonstrated tremendous commitment to young people as demonstrated by the growing relationship with Kingsholm Primary School through the ‘we love KingsHOME’ days, child ‘take over’ days, and oral history training for a small group of their year 6 pupils as part of their ‘university’ module. She asked a large class of 7 year olds ‘do you want to have fun?’ ‘Yes, I can’t hear you, do you want to have fun?’ ‘YESSSS! (at the tops of their voices). Only Sally could do that convincingly. Sadly we’ve not been able to find funding for her hoped-for ‘young people’s archivist’ but will keep trying. Her cameo appearance as a cook in the passport to the past session for children based on our county estate archives will be remembered by colleagues for a long time. If you missed this, you can see this by clicking on this link!
Sally as Mrs Bullas, the cook in Passport to the Past: Stories from the Big House
Sally is a great collaborator as demonstrated by her work with Gloucester Heritage Forum, health contacts, community groups and so on. As such, the covid lockdowns were unhelpful in delivering her day job. But she led her team to deliver a new programme of learning and outreach, making the challenging shift to online delivery.
When asked to sum up Sally, the following phrases come to mind: ebullient, full of enthusiasm and positive energy, optimistic, forward-looking, egalitarian, very supportive, generous with praise, strategic, able to be direct, and as one colleague said, she has a relish for things – she can make a cup of coffee sound the most alluring thing! Her catch-phrase was ‘treat each day as an adventure’ which is a very good motto for living a fulfilling life. I hope you will take your own advice Sally when enjoying a happy and fulfilling retirement.
Heather Forbes and Kate Maisey