Thank you all for coming this afternoon/evening to see this exhibition about the Photocentre Collection and the Blyth to the Future Project. My particular thanks go to Councillor Catherine Seymour, the Civic Head of Northumberland County Council, and to Cllr Jeff Watson, Cabinet member and Portfolio Holder for Healthy Lives whose wife, June, a regular researcher in the archives, is also with us. Thank you also to those members and supporters of the Northumberland Archives Trust who have been able to join us.  You are all most welcome. My aim is to take just a few minutes of your time to tell you about the work of the Trust and what you can do to help it.

Not many good things came out of lockdown during the Covid pandemic, but the Northumberland Archives Trust was one of the few good things that did, as the Trustees held their first meeting (online, of course) in May 2020. As you all know, Northumberland is a county with a rich history. Some of that history is reflected in the castles, churches, great houses, abandoned mines and very active harbours that are such features of our landscape. But a lot more of that history is to be found in the maps, deeds, photographs, and documents which are stored by the County’s Archives Service. Together these archives tell the many stories which bring our county’s varied and colourful history to life.

The aim of the Northumberland Archives Trust is simple. It is to help the Archives Service to collect, preserve, catalogue and in many instances digitise the county’s archival material. We do that by helping to raise money to enable the Service to capture this material and to make it available, not just for our benefit but for that of future generations.

Although we have been going for barely 3 years (half of that during Covid), we have already raised over £70,000 (net of our very modest expenses) towards that work.

Morpeth Exhibition – The work done by the Service in relation to the PhotoCentre Collection is just one example of how we help. The Collection itself contains over a million photographic negatives which together document all aspects of life in North Northumberland and the Scottish Borders between 1951 and 2012. With funding generously provided by the Lough Fund through the Community Foundation, Tyne and Wear and Northumberland – who are represented here today by Andrew Ayre of the Northern Angel Fund –  Cameron Robertson, from whom we will hear shortly, is engaged in painstakingly cataloguing the collection and creating digital copies of its contents so that they can become accessible to everyone. On behalf of all of us, I want to thank the Lough Fund and the Foundation very warmly for their support of this vital work.

The exhibition you have seen is one of several which Cameron has curated at different venues in the county. His work has attracted widespread interest, through social media and in other ways. It’s my great pleasure therefore now to invite Cameron to speak to us about the PhotoCentre collection and his work on it.]

Blyth Exhibition – The work you have seen displayed here this evening is just part of all that Jo March (archivist), Megan Wilson (project officer) and their small team of helpers have done. Their exhibition at Project Space Blyth, which ran for over 2 months earlier this year, attracted over 2,000 visitors. Over 200 children at 4 different schools have been deeply involved in the project, learning more about the story of their hometown and acquiring new skills – such as a knowledge of computer-assisted design – in the process. Drawing on archival material and talking to older generations about their knowledge and recollections of the town, they have sought to re-imagine the town’s future as part of the current efforts to regenerate it. To quote just one tribute from a participating teacher: ‘The students were enthralled by all of the activities and the experience widened their future aspirations beyond measure’.

On behalf of the Trust, I particularly want to thank the Platten family and the Community Foundation, Tyne and Wear and Northumberland (represented here this evening by Ross Wilson), for providing, through the Trust, the funding which has made all this possible. So thank you to them, to Jo and her colleagues, to the schools, teachers and children involved, and to all of you for supporting them in this project.]

If you are inspired by what you have seen and will hear shortly to learn more about the work of the Archives Service and the Trust, then please pick up a leaflet or look on our website – www.northumberlandarchivestrust.org – to find out how you can help further. Of course, a donation to help fund one of our many projects will be much appreciated but offering your time and skills to assist the work of the Service or the Trust is just as important. Whatever you do, do join us in helping the county’s Archives Service to preserve our past for the sake of the future of us all.