It’s a digital autumn: online workshops, networking and conferences
For obvious Covid-19 reasons this summer has proved something of an impasse and led to a massive shift to meeting digitally, at least for the time being.
Among the news here is re-arranging of Exeter’s planned spring workshops. As part of the ECFC Museum’s National Lottery Heritage funded outreach programme, the museum will be hosting an online workshop in collaboration with the Football Supporters Association, The Football & War Network, and The Great Save.
The aim of this workshop is to draw together people who are interested in community heritage in a sporting setting. Through a series of talks, some of those individuals and organisations will share their own aims, activities and achievements, whilst sharing their visions for the future. Tim Bland from the NLHF will also be on hand to provide some insight into funding opportunities, alongside a session aimed at generating and sharing ideas alongside tips on best practice.
The event will take place on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 4th via zoom, and full details will be available soon.
Should you wish to participate or have any questions about the event, then please contact Will Barrett at will.barrett@ecfc.co.uk
Meanwhile Sporting Heritage ran a series of webinars across the summer on topics including:
- Creating an inventory
- Making the most of your collections
- Collections at risk
which The Great Save found very helpful as a practical underpinning and full of useful contacts. Resources from the webinars are available at www.sportingheritage.org.uk.
And the Sporting Heritage annual conference has moved online to 22 and 23 October 2020, with places £20 for non-members. Justine Reilly writes: “We’re so fortunate to be able to continue to deliver our annual conference – only this year through a digital platform! Our conference is always incredibly popular and allows us to bring together key members from the heritage and sport sectors, along with sharing best practice case studies, providing hands on advice and guidance, and increasing the confidence and knowledge of those wishing to develop sporting heritage activity.
This year, our focus is on discussing the key issues and opportunities affecting the sector as a direct result of Covid-19, as well as more generally, and providing our delegates with practical support to take back to their activity. Places are just £20 for non-members and £10 for members for the full two-day conference. We also have a number of supported places to open access to those who would otherwise be unable to attend – to find out more, view the programme, and to book your place, please visit here “
Programmes, programmes, get (rid of) your programmes
To add to the sense of the coming digital world the Supporters Trust At Reading (STAR) has been taking in a steady trickle of now sadly unwanted programmes from the 1970s onwards over the summer as people use the lockdown period to clear out.
There’s a rather more positive take in this 4-minute clip from Bargain Hunt here on 3 July 2020. It talks of a strong market for football ephemera and for old and postponed match programmes – and includes a rare sight of the 1882 FA Cup Final sheet which fetched £35,000.
Saved from the skip – 1909 Watford documents
Sometimes history really is unearthed in skips.
Recently arrived at Watford Museum are a collection of documents that, many years ago, were earmarked for disposal by a previous Watford FC regime as part of an office clear-out. A sharp-eyed employee intervened to ensure their survival. Quite how these particular papers had been retained, when so many others no longer exist, we cannot know. But what treasure it is.
Many of them pertain to the setting up of Watford AFC as a limited company in 1909. Several are draft documents. Among them, rather brilliantly, is an annotated copy of Stockport County’s Articles of Association (1908) which was used as a template.
And returned from Milwaukee
On 9 October 1993 Exeter City filmed their home match against Reading for a ‘straight to VHS release’. It was a remarkable match, probably the only time in Football League history that FIVE players ended the game looking for a hat-trick goal – that’s five scorers of two each in a 4-6 away win.
Yet the only known copy of the tape had been lost (by a borrower at Reading FC!) and its existence was unrecalled at Exeter. An internet appeal via a message board generated a response from a Reading fan in the middle of the USA who kindly donated his tape by post; DVD copies were made and passed onto the Reading and Exeter supporters’ trusts and to the man who’d loaned out his VHS copy and never seen it again.
Football Art Digitally
As a great example of what can now be (and often has to be!) achieved digitally, why not take a look at this – the Art of Ayresome Park, Middlesbrough’s old ground – here
The exhibition includes work by nationally-recognised figures such as Stuart Roy Clarke and Mackenzie Thorpe, and ranges from architects’ drawings via photos and paintings to cartoons. It’s a wonderful collection that both preserves the past and inspires fresh memories and takes.
The ‘Maidstone – United in Football’ Exhibition
This much-acclaimed exhibition is featured in a forthcoming edition of ‘Backpass’ magazine, where its curator John Bunyard speculates on its future and holding the collection together. All is not lost – but neither is it resolved. Backpass is now available only by subscription here.
The wonderful book of the exhibition (and the finds that couldn’t be included in it) is available here
Club corner – The Falkirk Archive – Lucy MacIver (Project Archivist)
What’s the formal status of your heritage group and which groups are involved?
Falkirk Archive is the official Public Local Authority Archive and is part of Falkirk Community Trust. Thus we are part of the Heritage and Museum department of the Trust which also manages sport and heritage facilities and venues within the wider Falkirk Area; and we also work with Falkirk Council.
The archive itself sits in the beautiful ‘stately home turned museum’ venue of Callendar House, in Falkirk. It houses the records of Falkirk Council, local churches, schools, organisations, families and businesses spanning centuries. Being the repository for council materials puts Falkirk Archive in the fortunate position of having an assured future.
How did you get started?
Our football story started in 2018, when the “Falkirk FC: A Fan’s View” exhibition was held in Callendar House. This was a collaborative project and exhibition between Falkirk Museums and a museum volunteer who was also involved with Falkirk FC, from whom he borrowed a number of museum objects for the exhibition. During conversations with club officials and Falkirk Museums, the archival items of the collection were also brought to the attention of Falkirk’s archivist.
The club was initially reticent to give away its heritage collection even to a local public archive. However, they were eventually convinced by the Falkirk’s archivist to donate the collection, in large part thanks to his intentions to apply for a Business Archives Council (BAC) cataloguing grant. That enabled the club to know that the material would be thoroughly cared for, catalogued, and made available and accessible to fans. Falkirk Archive was awarded the BAC grant and in summer 2019 everything started moving.
How much stuff have you got?
The Falkirk FC collection makes up just over 200 items, with the majority of these being photographs and drawings. However, as is to be expected with a football collection, a great number of these photographs have been previously framed and presumably hung in the stadium so they are very large items. As well as photographs, the collection contains minute books from the club’s board meetings, as well as some more sparse financial, legal, and premises records.
How do you store your stuff?
The collection, along with all the materials the archive houses, are stored in acid-proof archive boxes, in secure storerooms at Callendar House, with constant control and monitoring of factors such as light, humidity and pests, following industry best practice.
The full effect of not controlling these environmental influences was made very apparent by the state the collection was in before we rehoused it. Without environmental controls, stored in a dark and humid storage room the collection had become a perfect breeding ground for pests and mould. In fact, it had to undergo months of conservation work before it could be moved into the main collections of Falkirk Archives to prevent it from contaminating our other collections!
How do you make it available for public view?
Falkirk Archive is preparing to re-open to the public following a closure of several months due to Covid-19.
However, thanks to the BAC grant, this full collection has been comprehensively catalogued and made available to search on the new Falkirk Community Trust collection browser, here .While this does not yet include digitised images of the large photographs there are plans to make this a priority project so that fans can view images online.
When we allowed to re-open the public will be able to book an appointment to view the items at their leisure. This will be full, free, public access four days a week.
What’s the best / most unusual memorabilia find?
I think the best item in the collection, and certainly the documentation which will be of most interest to researchers, is the series of minute books in which the club’s directors recorded the main points of their weekly or monthly meetings and AGMs. This includes player signings, premises matters, organising foreign tours, and day-to-day club management. These handwritten, originally leather-bound, volumes are invaluable artefacts for any club researcher not just because they hold the most informational value but also because of how comprehensive they are. The timespan of minute books covers the club administration from 1924-1978 with only a few gaps. It is particularly significant in that it covers the entirety of WWII, with one minute book from the 1930s containing an entry for a meeting discussing the prospect of the outbreak of WWII and FFC / Scottish Professional League dismissing all players at the onset of the war.
What piece of advice would you offer people trying to manage a collection like yours?
I was a football novice prior to beginning my cataloguing work of this collection, so my best advice would be to find the super-fans who can answer questions about items. For me this was easy as the museum had already met with volunteers, fans and past directors for the exhibition in 2018, but even then I had to search for / crowdfund answers from Twitter, fanzines and other fan publications.
I would also speak to archive and/or museum professionals about the best way to store items to avoid any pests!
Interested in trying out the Sporting Heritage Toolkit?
Another opportunity from Sporting Heritage, who say:
For other individuals or groups looking to get started…We’re well underway with the development of our digital toolkit, part of our Sport England programme of activity. We’re looking for pilot organisations to test out the toolkit and ensure it is absolutely fit for purpose. The aim of the toolkit is to support those with sporting collections to have easy access to advice and guidance about collecting, looking after, protecting, and sharing their collections. Everything from the first steps of setting up an inventory of what’s held in your collection and governance models, to working out how to draw in funding to deliver exhibitions to share the stories held and what to do if your collection is at risk.
If you would like to take part in this pilot stage, please email katie.cav@gmx.com with the subject line Digital Toolkit.
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