Award Win for Bellfoundry Archive Volunteers

Success for the bellfoundry’s archive volunteer team at the Leicestershire and Rutland Heritage Awards earlier this month

The awards featured projects completed in 2019 and 2020 and were open to all heritage related organisations in Leicestershire, Leicester, and Rutland. Hosted online by former BBC Radio Leicester broadcaster Dave Andrews, the event attracted a large Zoom crowd of representatives from across the county.

Around 20 museums and heritage sites entered the awards across 9 categories, and we are delighted to announce that our volunteer archive team were crowned the winners of the “Behind the Scenes” category for their project “Taylor’s of Loughborough, Digital Archive”. A mammoth undertaking, archive volunteers Chris Birkby, George Dawson and Chris Pickford have collectively scanned, indexed, and created meta-data for 70,000+ documents over the course of seven years. The judges commented on the high-level of professionalism shown by this team as well as the international importance of the Taylor’s archive.

Chair of the Leicestershire and Rutland Heritage Forum Dr Wendy Freer said of the event:

“Dave Andrews did a fantastic job as master of ceremonies for the evening.

I hope that the success of local organisations will encourage readers to seek out more museums and heritage sites in Leicestershire when they are able to open fully again, which hopefully will be very soon”.

Congratulations to everyone who received an award and to all the organisations who took part. While the awards could not be made in person this year, the archive team look forward to receiving their winner’s plaque in due course!