Purpose of the Job
The Council is focused on becoming a borough which celebrates culture, heritage, and diversity. The heritage of the borough is central to the future development of the borough and the Borough Archivist needs to lead on ensuring the heritage narrative is present and influences the place making plans in Kingston. Kingston History Centre is an accredited archive service, free and open to all.
What the job requires
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Support the delivery of a vibrant, dynamic Culture & Heritage Service that has the preservation and interpretation of Kingston’s heritage and collections at its heart and ensure that heritage is present in placemaking discussions through building links with key stakeholders including colleagues in Planning, Regeneration and Economic Development.
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Lead the National Archives Archive Service re-accreditation process including preparation of documentation required maintaining this status, and ensuring that policies and procedures are embedded and updated.
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Work with the Outreach and Engagement Manager: Heritage and other colleagues across Culture & Heritage to engage with diverse audiences to add to the collection and make the service relevant to the community.
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Research the collection to answer public enquiries and to develop interpretation suchas display texts, online texts, and talks.
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Develop and manage the collection giving access wherever possible, including onsite and offsite records, by identifying records of value and ensuring its security conservation and preservation.
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Utilise digital systems including CALM and a digital preservation tool to maintain and give access to records.
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Work with the Heritage Supervisor to ensure the day-to-day operational running of the Heritage sites, planning the work of the Heritage Officer, Saturday Heritage Assistants and volunteers, ensuring that policies and procedures are followed, and a good quality training programme is in place.
About Us
The Council is focused on becoming a borough which celebrates culture, heritage and diversity with vibrant community events for local people, businesses and visitors to enjoy. It has been acknowledged that culture is critical to health and wellbeing, the local economy and regeneration projects.
Kingston Heritage Service is continually transforming. We are about to launch a digital preservation system in order to develop a digital archive. The History Centre and Kingston Museum are accredited services, free and open to all.
You will be part of the Culture & Heritage service which brings together libraries, heritage, arts, music and adult education with a shared vision to place the vibrant and rich culture and heritage of the Borough at the centre of its life.
We believe that everybody deserves to have access to a rich cultural life and that this will empower communities to collaborate together and be happier, healthier and more skilled.
Our transformation programme, Future Culture & Heritage, will bring together the specialist skills from across the team areas to develop an exciting programme which focuses on outreach into the communities to make the borough a destination place for culture and heritage. Working collaboratively with partners we wish to help engage, enable and empower our communities.
We are always looking at new ways of working, new technologies to help support our customers and deliver an excellent service.During Covid-19 we built on our digital offer which goes from strength to strength and we have a Heritage website.