CAHG Conference 2019: Conference report

The 13th Annual Community Archives and Heritage Group Conference was held on 10 July at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.

Theme of migration

The theme of this year’s conference was migration in community archives, under the banner ‘moving memories’. Delegates were treated to an excellent range of talks from speakers representing the breadth of community archives across the UK and Ireland. The keynote speaker, Omar Shaikh, founder of Colourful Heritage, set the tone for the day with his inspiring and celebratory talk on his organisation’s successful attempt to preserve and celebrate the South Asian and Muslim heritage of Scotland. Colourful Heritage is now home to the UK’s largest collection of recorded histories of South Asian migrants. It is a fantastic resource and captures the many experiences of the first and second generation migrants. The theme of migration continued with thoughtful talks on Ukranian women in Great Britain, Scotland’s Jews, Armenian heritage in north west England, the Irish diaspora, Kurdish cultural heritage and the LGBT+ community. There was also practical support and advice, including a session on TNA’s ‘manage your collections’ resource which can be used by community archives. There was also a strong and engaging call to action from the Scottish Community Heritage Alliance.

CAHG awards

The day also included the CAHG awards, which was an excellent opportunity to showcase some of the inspiring work being done across the field of community archives. The day culminated with ‘one minute mayhem’, in which those involved in community archives had the opportunity to pitch their various projects and ideas to the room. It was surprising how much information could be shared in just one minute! All in all, it was a thoroughly interesting and enjoyable day, featuring an impressive array of representatives from community archives.