4.5. Training for Project Team Members
The project was designed as a kind of full-time living/learning training, with regular and open discussions of experiences and issues among the team as a foundation on which more formalised trainings took place. On the intra-team level, project archivist Frances Meredith conducted group and individual trainings with other members of the team on the new cataloguing database; project oral historian Gemma Geldart conducted training sessions in oral history with admin support/transcriptionist Chris Long, to enable her to carry out project recordings; and among the wider team, Trustee John Moorhouse carried out several web-site trainings with the project director and the project oral historian. On a more formal level, project team members organised and took a full part in the Assessment, Training and Advisory Events described in 4.2. They also took part in the trainings for volunteers, including web-site design, and each of the three Digital Story trainings conducted by professional film-maker and trainer Chris Bradley during Archive "Weekends". To these were added a number of other occasions and opportunities:
4.5.1 Data Protection Act Training Day. Toddington. May 6th, 2010
Project Management Group member Sîan Roberts arranged for her Birmingham Archives colleague Rachel MacGregor to facilitate a Data Protection Act training for the project team, to highlight the issues and to ensure that each member of the project team was up to date with current issues and practice. Their knowledge could in turn be passed on to volunteers. The training was held at the Archive and Study Centre on May 6th, joined by Sarah Pymer and Gudrun Limbrick, the archivist and oral historian, respectively, for Birmingham Archive's Birmingham Children's Home Oral History Project. The Birmingham Children's Home project was also supported by the HLF, and there were a number of convergent issues on a variety of levels. This is encouraging communication between the two projects at a variety of levels. The training was the first of a number of occasions bringing members of the two teams together to share views and experiences.
4.5.2 CPD: "Child Care Records: Use and Access". Warwick University, June 10, 2010
The project director was part of the organising group for a conference on June 10 on "Child Care Records: Use and Access", held at the Wolfson Research Exchange at the University of Warwick. The conference was organised jointly by the Child Care History Network, the Centre for the History of Medicine at the University of Warwick, and the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick. Gudrun Limbrick and Sarah Pymer of the Birmingham Children's Home project were among the speakers. The conference brought together a wide range of heritage professionals, practitioners, service users, and lawyers to examine the spectrum of issues around historic and present child care records. Both the project director and the project archivist attended the conference as part of their Continuing Professional Development within the "Therapeutic Living With Other People's Children" project. The conference talks and PowerPoint presentations were then made available by the project director on the Child Care History Network website.
4.5.3 CPD: "From Coalface to Facebook?" CCHN Conference, November 11, 2010
As with the earlier Child Care History Network Conference "Child Care Records: Access and Use" (4.5.2), the project director was a member of the organising group, and the themes of "From Coalface to Facebook? Using new social media and technology to record, remember and share child care experience" reflected wider interests and concerns as well as those of the project. Hosting the event in the Trust's Conference Centre made it possible to bring more people into contact with the project, and enabled both the whole project team and a number of volunteers to join as delegates, and gain valuable insights and experiences (see also 4.0.7.b)
4.5.4 "Transcript to Script" training, November 2010
Project administrative support/transcriptionist Chris Long took part in the Oral History Society/British Library “Transcript to Script” training conducted by trainer Rib Davis, to enable her to better support the production of digital stories and to help Archive "Weekend" participants to tell their stories.
4.5.5 "Lives in Focus" training, November 2010
Project oral historian Gemma Geldart took part in the new "Lives in Focus: Recording oral history interviews on video" course put together by the Oral History Society and the Museum of London, held at the Museum, concentrating on video as a medium for oral history, and designed to "explore and reflect upon the uses, benefits, challenges and implications of digital video technologies for oral history."
4.5.6 "Reflective Space" meetings, January 2011 on
Following discussions after several Project Management Group and Trustee meetings, Trustee Rosemary Lilley agreed to conduct regularly scheduled meetings of the project team designed, without agendas or themes set in advance, to allow team members a protected reflective space in which to raise and explore together any emotional, practical, or other issues which might arise. Arranged to take place about every six weeks, the first took place on January 28th. With the focus of Rosemary Lilley as a reflective facilitator, the meetings took on the stimulating and positive character of an intra-team Assessment, Training and Advisory Event: Themes, ideas, directions and discoveries were made and shared, drawing individual experiences and pieces of information encountered as archivist, transcriptionist, oral historian and director into the team as a whole.
4.5.7 "History and nature of therapeutic communities" training, March 28, 2011
At the request of project team members, Project Management Group Chair and Executive Director of Transition Richard Rollinson conducted a training and discussion on the history and nature of therapeutic communities, exploring the distinctive features of therapeutic communities and therapeutic environments, especially those for children. The whole of the P.E.T.T. team was invited to take part, generating a lively and useful event which was of benefit to the wider as well as the project team.