Widening participation in collecting and managing BAME heritage

Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic heritage are currently underrepresented in museums and archives in the UK. The Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre, a library specializing in the study of race, migration and social history is currently working on a Heritage Lottery Funded project to increase the visibility of BAME heritage in Greater Manchester. As part of this project, the Centre is developing a yearly program of training events that aims to widen participation in collecting and managing heritage.

In October, the Centre launched its first training event at Manchester Central Library, which provided practical workshops for managing digital images, sound and paper records. The training event welcomed heritage professionals from local museums and archives, as well as participants from community organizations. It also provided a platform for speakers, Professor Hakim Adi and Abira Hussein to discuss the importance of collecting BAME heritage and innovative ways to engage wider audiences with it.

The main impact of the training day was providing skills and knowledge training that has given our participants a basic understanding of how to collect and manage sound, images and paper records. In the long-term, these skills will aid our participants to consider strategies that produce the best quality outputs for their heritage projects, as well as help to make BAME heritage more visible.