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Memorandum submitted by Anne Rowe, Country Archivist, Cumbria Archive Service
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Cumbria Archive Service has recently worked with Creative Partnerships, Cumbria on an innovative, ambitious and stimulating project to promote access to the county's archival heritage to Cumbria's school children and teachers. The partnership project was judged by Cumbria County Council's Archive Service to have been most successful, supplying copies of The Abominable Traffic teachers' resource pack to every primary and secondary school in the county and engaging 50 schools with follow-up activities with creative practitioners and artists. As such Creative Partnerships, Cumbria engaged the county's children with learning opportunities directly relating to history, citizenship and diversity as well as supporting several outcomes on the Every Child Matters agenda.
1 CONTRIBUTOR 1.1 Anne Rowe is Cumbria County Council's Archive Services Manager leading a service that includes four archive offices in Cumbria that look after original historic documents of the county dating from the twelfth century to the present day, relating to all aspects of life in the county, and making them available for public use. 1.2 The historic documents in the Archive Service's custody are stimulating for all age groups and are relevant to many aspects of the National Curriculum, GCSE and A level studies and an increasing part of the service's work is encouraging such educational use, not only introducing students to the use of primary sources but providing a valuable local dimension to national events.
2 SUBMISSION
2.1 Since early 2006 Cumbria Archive Service has been working alongside Creative Partnerships, Cumbria on its 'Arts and Archives' project, an educational project based on the county's connections with the British slave trade running throughout the bicentenary year of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. This experience has been extremely positive, and the work of Creative Partnerships, Cumbria has been invaluable to our service, enabling historic documents to be taken for classroom use in a fresh and invigorating way through the use of creative practitioners and artists.
2.2 The expertise contributed by Creative Partnerships, Cumbria has enabled us to promote the use of archives tailored to curriculum needs in a manner we would not otherwise have had the resources or knowledge to do. The resource pack produced as part of the project, incorporating many archives from within the four Cumbria Record Offices, has strong links to the History and Citizenship curriculum at key stage 3. It has also been used to teach the subject of the slave trade in support of local history study units at key stage 2, and link in with Citizenship at key stage 4. Furthermore, the involvement of the creative practionioners has allowed the extension of the project to support learning associated with Music, Drama, and Art and Design and the promotion of archive sources and their valuable, locally relevant content in ways not possible by Archive Service staff.
2.3 In conclusion, the 'Arts and Archives' project has allowed teachers to teach issues relating to slavery, local history, and citizenship in an imaginative way and to encourage engagement and learning from pupils with a wide range of learning preferences. Without the support, project leadership skills, curriculum knowledge, links to creative artists, and funding streams available from Creative Partnerships in Cumbria this important work would not have been possible and similar groundbreaking projects in the county would not be possible in the future.
July 2007
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