Welcome to the Spring 2025 edition of the Heritage Hub e-newsletter.
During 2024, lots of ‘firsts’ were achieved at the Heritage Hub. Most prominently, the innovative Green Pledge Project started in late Spring 2024 and the team held several green inspired events throughout the year, showcasing relevant records within archive collections and transforming our community garden. A separate article on green cataloguing achievements has been written by our first ever ‘green’ archivist, Jenny Rutland. This initiative continues to influence our ways of working, day to day business within the facility, future collecting policy and engagement. Indeed, the year ended on a green theme, with the installation of solar panels on the Heritage Hub roof.
However, we also held our first ever on-site family history fair, our first ‘Meet the Author’ event, our first Christmas party with a choir and raffle and even had our colleague, John Putley, dressed up in a prisoner for the first time...at least, he said it was a costume and his first offence!
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Also, the community led programme, Voices Gloucester, held a series of successful and thought-provoking events at the Cathedral, Oxstalls and elsewhere, inspired by and featuring the 18th century Bajan slave song held at Gloucestershire Archives. An associated statue, ‘Song of the Enslaved’ by artist Deborah Harrison was also on display at the Heritage Hub, another first for our Service.
At the start of this new year, we remain as keen as ever to give everyone access to our Service, seeking ways to educate, empower and entertain. We have 12 monthly Saturday events planned for on-site engagement plus 12 monthly Secrets Revealed online talks in the wings. Themes include rivers and flooding, maps, reminiscence involving sound recordings, food and restoring the natural balance, road transport, emergency services, international travel, black history, historical approaches to health and disability, industrial heritage and we‘ve decided to repeat the hugely popular family history fair in September 2025.
And there will be more ‘firsts’ in 2025. The first ever ‘Russell Howes’ Memorial Lecture will be held in May. Russell, who died in 2023, was a keen local historian, lecturer and dedicated user of Gloucestershire Archives for several decades. We are also hoping to have a Summer picnic, making full use of our beautiful community garden and in the spirit of all things spooky, an evening of horrors is being planned for late October. Attend, if you dare! Spoiler alert – this may involve John Putley dressing up again!
Details of all our upcoming events will be advertised on the Heritage Hub website here as soon as they are open for bookings. We look forward to seeing you soon, whether you’re a first-time visitor, undertaking research in Gloucestershire Archives' public searchroom or a regular attendee.