We have been been reviewing our work experience placement offer for young people aged 15 to 18. It is a topic very close to my heart because I completed my first work experience placement with the service way back in 2001! That week was incredibly important in shaping my future career plans, helping me gain specialist skills that I still use today and boosting my confidence through my first real workplace experience.

Whilst we don’t expect every young person that undertakes a placement with us to return to the service two decades later, we do want to give them all the most useful and valuable workplace experience that we can.

Recently Ava & Amelia have tested out a new work experience model for us. During a week long placement they moved around all areas of the service to complete tasks and shadow different staff members. Below they share a reflective review of their recent placements.

Amelia tackles some tricky handwriting in a new collection of documents with help from one of our collections officer. We were all impressed with Amelia’s palaeography skills.

This week I have taken part in a work experience placement with the Staffordshire Archives and Heritage team working in venues such as Eastgate House, the Museum Collection store and Staffordshire Place Offices. I have enjoyed a variety of tasks that have helped to give me an insight into careers in this area and have learnt first hand what it’s like to work in an office environment with a team of colleagues.

On Monday I was given a tour of the building upon arrival and shown how to sign in before meeting the learning officer and being given chance to help create resources for the upcoming Archive Animals project for children in the summer.

Learning resources created by Amelia for use during the summer holidays at our outreach events.

Tuesday took me to Unit G (the museum collection stores) where I was shown some of the objects and had the privilege to work with some of the collection boxes in checking them against their lists and amending object locations on the calm system.

On Wednesday morning, the lead conservator shared a breadth of knowledge about the importance of conservation and how it is an ever adapting profession before I took part in cleaning a map and experiencing a crash course in how to make boxes to store items in the collection – the archival knot was a tough one to tie. After lunch I joined some of the History Centre assistants in retrieving and putting back documents requests from the strongroom.

Thursday morning had me trying my hand at palaeography as I transcribed documents from the new Tollet collection before moving over to Staffordshire Place in the afternoon to help set up ‘A Sense of Place’ exhibition in the foyer. Finally, Friday saw me researching understanding about epilepsy in the 19^th Century to aid information needed for a blog to be posted as part of the ‘Case for the Ordinary’ project.

A case from the A Sense of Place pop-up exhibition that Amelia helped to install in the foyer of One Staffordshire Place.

I am immensely grateful to all of the staff who have contributed to given me such a wonderful weeks’ work experience. They were all very accommodating, friendly and shared a vast amount of technical knowledge which I can now carry with me into my future.

Amelia – Year 10

A document that Ava helped to clean under the guidance of our conservator Lisa.

During my week doing my placement for Staffordshire Archives and Heritage, I feel like I have learned an incredible amount about what it would be like to work here, and learned so many skills that I am certain will be very useful for me in the future, such as researching, handling objects, palaeography, and more:

On Monday, I spent time researching different educational activities available for schools, to try and help find a suitable price for any educational activities that may be held by the Staffordshire Archives and Heritage in the future. In the afternoon, I found out about conservation and preservation, and the various processes involved with cleaning and preserving damaged documents. I found this fascinating, since I never realized how much thought went into cleaning the documents and keeping them safe.

On Tuesday, I went to the museum collection stores, where I learned where the collections were, and about how they were stored and sorted. I was amazed by the variety of items there and I even got to handle a few myself while I was sorting some of the items and adding some labels. I loved seeing how many items were stored there, and hope to be able to visit again soon.

On Wednesday, I did more research in the morning and was taught about digitization and online resources, such as Past Track. I found the task given to me very fun and informative. In the afternoon, I visited the strongrooms where I learned about how things were stored, the numbering system, and the processes of taking items out and returning them. The stores were incredible and I feel like I learned so much about what goes on in this part of the archives.

A document that Ava looked at. She spotted an unusal horn of plenty watermark design.

On Thursday morning, I was taught some palaeography- I got to read some old reports and got an insight into the time period. We occasionally saw some of the watermarks used in the process of making paper at the time, which was incredible. I found palaeography really challenging, fun, and engaging, and was very pleased with what the impact of my work could be. In the afternoon, I went to visit the ‘A Sense of Place’ workshop in Stafford Library, where I could see in person the programme put on by the Archives and Heritage team and Staffordshire Libraries. It made me very happy to see how much people were positively impacted by this project, and I found it quite inspiring.

Mini gardens, a notebook and a video from the A Sense of Place celebration event at Stafford Library.

On Friday, I continued with my task from Wednesday and I once again enjoyed looking on past track at the various photos available. Later, I put some of the skills I had learned into practice, and got to look at some more documents. This task I found very challenging, but I was once again proud of all I was able to achieve when I looked back at it.

Overall, I have enjoyed the placement very much. Everybody here was incredibly welcoming and friendly, and were very helpful and knowledgeable when showing me what to do and teaching me skills and showing me how everything worked. I feel like this placement also helped boost my confidence a lot which I am very pleased about. I would do this placement all over again if I could, and would recommend doing work placements here to everyone!

Ava – Year 12

We are incredibly grateful to Ava & Amelia for their hard work and enthusiasm during their placement weeks. Their feedback and reflection will help us to improve and grow our work experience offer ready for the opening of the Staffordshire History Centre where we will be able to support more young people with their career goals.

Sarah English – Engagement & Access Manager