The Family Archive: Exploring Family Identities, Memories and Stories Through Curated Personal Possessions

Many families possess a 'family archive'; documents, photographs, heirlooms, scrapbooks, recipes and a whole range of other items that reveal insights into past generations and preserve family stories for future ones. They may never have thought of their collections as 'archives', but by retaining and preserving possessions kept in shoeboxes, under beds, on top of wardrobes and in garages, people use these items to mould a sense of family identity.

This project explores the concept of the family archive through time, considering what, how and why families have archived personal items for private purposes. Making use of both historical case studies and contemporary focus groups, the project team will investigate how the family unit makes conscious use of curated possessions - including documents, images, objects and other materials - in order to develop a familial identity based on past and present generations, and how this is transmitted to future family members. The project will ask: what stories and memories do older family members pass to future generations through family possessions? How has this changed over time? How does this impact upon a family's collective identity? And how do families relate their own histories and memories to wider national and international historical events? In addressing these questions, we will explore the past, present and future of the 'family archive'.

Impact is integral to the design of this project. The research has important implications for archival practice and user engagement with archives and other heritage organisations. In particular, investigating how and what individual families collect privately, and how they use family archives and intergenerational stories to connect to wider narratives of change, will strengthen understandings of the meaning and importance of heritage among a variety of social groups. The project will specifically benefit the following groups of people:

1. Our partner organisations will benefit from this research. These organisations are Your Back Yard (Leeds), Barnsley Museum and Archives Service, Sampad (Birmingham) and The National Archives. These organisations will benefit from the project's findings, as well as being able to inform elements of the research from the beginning of the project (for instance through joint discussion regarding questions to be asked of focus group participants), which will in turn enable them to develop and enhance their own research agendas connected to this project. The research will help these organisations to, firstly, engage with the communities they serve and, secondly, better understand those communities, their interests in heritage and family history, and their personal archival/curatorial practices. The organisations will increase their networks through participation in the project (e.g. by attending the workshop at the end of the project), which will allow them to establish new working relationships and projects. Finally, involvement in the project will also increase the research capacity of these organisations, particularly the smaller ones such as Your Back Yard, who have not previously partnered a RCUK-funded project.

2. By extension, professionals beyond the partner organisations will also benefit. The project's findings will give professionals in the wider archives, museums and heritage sectors a better understanding of both what individual families collect and how they imbue meaning in such materials; these conclusions will have important implications for local archival and curatorial practice. The findings will also help professionals to consider how private archiving affects the memories held and created by institutions, through examining decisions about what families do and do not keep, and how this affects what reaches institutions later in the archival process. This will also inform conversations about the developing notion of 'citizen curators' (currently particularly popular in the US e.g. used by the US National Archives), and the recognition of where expertise lies outside of the profession. The research findings will help archivists and heritage experts to better adapt to the needs of user groups and develop outreach strategies to new sections of the population.

3. The project will have significant impact for members of the public, both the focus group participants and the general public. It will raise awareness of the issues of private archival practice amongst the public, empowering people who may not consider themselves possessors of specialist knowledge and encouraging them to apply the concepts of 'curation' and 'archiving' to their own practice. Participants at the focus groups will have the opportunity to engage directly with staff from local organisations, and to learn from their expertise. The public will also benefit through the partner organisations' enhanced ability to support family historians in their local area, and engage new individuals in their work.