Engaging new audiences

Over the years,West Glamorgan Archives has worked with other institutional partners on a number of innovative projects. The Archive Service continues to play its part in some creative and thought-provoking projects and several of our collaborations are featured here.

As reported last year, the Family History Centre in Swansea will be the locationfor a ‘Clip Corner’ or access point for the archives of severalWelsh television companies (BBCWales, S4C and HTVWales) via the lead partner National Library of Wales, which holds the original tapes.

It is anticipated that this facility will open in summer 2023 as one of the first batch of ClipCorners to be opened across Wales by the NLW.

Hosted by Swansea Council through its Cultural Services department, sponsored and supported by a range of city partners and participating schools, The World Reimagined was an innovative arts project which ran in late summer and autumn of 2022. It saw a set of artist-commissioned globes placed along a trail running through central Swansea, each one linked to a theme connecting us to the historic transatlantic slave trade, to past stories of colonialism and their echoes in the present.

Alongside other of the city’s cultural and heritage institutions, the Archives was proud to be a part of this partnership project and in particular to help the project team in the creation of the linking historical narrative.

Numbers using the archives in Swansea and Neath have continued to recover but are nowhere near the 4,957 recorded in 2019/20 just before the pandemic. However the 2022/3 figure is almost triple last year’s figure of 679. In 2020/1 only 98 visits were recorded.

Totalmembersofthepublic visitingtheArchiveService during2022-2023:1,962

42 enquiriesbypost

127 new reader’s ticketswereissued

505 pupilsandteachers attendedsessions forschools

2,251 enquiriesbyemail

6,189 followersonsocial media

6,604 documentswere consultedinour SwanseaandNeath searchroom

83,150 hitsonour catalogueentries onthe Archives

Hubwebsite

251,442 recordsinour onlinecatalogue

452,638 viewsweremadeof our digitised recordsonthe Ancestryfamily historywebsite

In late 2022, the Archives once again took part in the Survey of Visitors to UK Archives, although the results are not yet available. This is a qualitative survey of British archives, recording the user experience and customer satisfaction.

With the demise of the annual CIPFA statistical survey, quantitative comparison of WGAS with others is nigh-on impossible.

Anecdotally, all services across the UK are facing the same challenges of loss of at least some of their established user base.