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Your Name: |
Dr Milton Brown |
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Community Group Name |
Kirklees Local Television |
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Focus of Community Group |
Heritage, culture, diversity, inclusion, equality, equity, celebration, promotions and campaigns |
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Type of Records held |
Documentaries, Short Films and Written stories |
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Size of collections in GB |
5 to 6 thousand GB |
How did you get involved with your community group?
I got involved with our community groups through personal interest and outreach efforts. I am the founder of Kirklees Local TV (https://kirkleeslocaltv.com/) and established the grassroots media production company in 2012 to celebrate, commemorate and educate the broader communities, public, private and voluntary sector services of the rich heritage social-cultural capital that exists in grassroots communities. Our primary goal is representation, inculcation, raising the profile of marginalised communitas and creating equitable opportunities in minority and low socio-economic challenged communities.
Since 2012, we have involved over 700 volunteers in various projects. We now have over 4,500 videos and approximately 8,500 contributions to the website: blogs, articles, social media streams, podcasts, photographs and social media feeds.
How do you collect material for your collections?
Collecting material for our collections is an enjoyable, challenging and meticulous process. We employ several methods to gather relevant items:
Donations: We receive donations from community members and local organisations who wish to contribute to KLTV’s platform.
Fieldwork: Our volunteers engage in fieldwork, such as visiting historical sites or conducting interviews, to gather firsthand material for the website.
Training & Development: We develop our volunteers in photography, videography, editing, oral history techniques, journalism and media, archiving, and digital preservation.
What processes are in place to manage and process your collections?
Our process of collecting and managing our collection is threefold:
Acquisition: We first assess and acquire materials through the methods mentioned above. Each item is evaluated for relevance, condition, and authenticity before deciding how, who, and where we will store the new material.
Cataloguing: Once an item is recorded, documented, or collected, it is meticulously catalogued in the KLTV archive. The process involves documenting its origin, condition, and other relevant information. Each item is assigned a unique identifier to ensure it can be easily located and referenced by our Chief Editor and others in the company. KLTV’s current archive content is available for viewing directly from the website and encompasses various documentaries, videos, podcasts, articles and images (https://kirkleeslocaltv.com/).
Storage and Access: Finally, items are stored in a controlled environment to preserve their condition. We use specialised storage solutions tailored to the needs of different types of materials. We have a collection at the Heritage Quay Archive based at the University of Huddersfield (https://heritagequay.org/archives/WYA/?view=item) and with the Community Achieve Heritage Group (CAHG) as noted in their database as numbers 683 and 779. You can access the database here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WmJ3H-ixDFRk1PmI8DXDYEiPR3h49x8r.
The University of Huddersfield Heritage Quays has acid-free boxes for paper climate-controlled rooms for delicate artefacts. The university and CAHG provide access to our collection, which is managed through a digital database, allowing researchers to locate and request items for study.
How do you preserve your collections?
The Heritage Quay Archive based at the University of Huddersfield and the Community Achieve Heritage Group (CAHG) provide a range of guidance and support in the preservation of our collections. The Heritage Quay Archive support our digital preservation work. Additionally, since 2020, we have built a healthy relationship with the West Yorkshire Archive Service, based at the West Yorkshire History Centre in Wakefield. They continually advise us on good practices when developing and preserving community archives.