In February 2020 Northumberland Archives was awarded a grant of £5000 from The Collaborate and Innovate: Archives Testbed Fund. The funding together with a contribution from Northumberland Archives will allow us to work collaboratively with colleagues from Northumberland County Council’s Digital Inclusion Team to develop a new interactive cross-curricular educational platform for schools and lifelong learners. The platform will provide access to a range of digitised archival sources relating to three subject areas – Crime and Punishment, Medicine and Health and World War I.
The sources will have related contextual material and suggested educational activities. In the pilot, we will be focussing on content for Key Stage 2 and 3 and will be working with nine schools across Northumberland. The schools will test the content for us and be co-creators of educational resources. We plan to run the project across three half terms. The content preparation and activity development will be undertaken by Megan Wilson, a Digital Cultures & Education researcher. Megan will be supported by Northumberland Archives staff. As the name suggests the purpose of the Testbed Fund is to allow archive repositories to test new ideas. Our pilot project has huge potential to allow digital delivery of content to a range of audiences.
For more details about the Testbed Fund see https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives-sector/finding-funding/collaborate-and-innovate/archive-testbed-fund/