As part of our digital capacity building strategy, ‘Our Digital Century’, The National Archives is supporting a peer mentoring programme to facilitate digital skills transfer in the archives sector. We are seeking UK archive professionals who would like support to undertake a digital project in 2025.
This programme aims to use a peer mentoring model in order to:
- Build relationships between confident digital practitioners and professionals who have limited experience of digital work.
- Develop the digital skills and confidence of mentees.
- Build the influencing and negotiation skills of mentees.
- Enhance the coaching and mentoring skills of mentors.
- Create or support excellent digital projects.
We are seeking around 12-15 mentees who will receive support from mentors to formulate their projects and support them through their delivery between January to July 2025.
Mentees must be UK based and work in organisations with archive collections.
Each mentee will be expected to:
- Attend a launch event on Wednesday 29th January 2025 on MS Teams with the mentors to share knowledge of the planned projects and to build networks and relationships.
- Have fortnightly or monthly meetings with their mentor between January 2025 and July 2025 (1-2 hours per month). We expect most meetings to be undertaken on Zoom (or similar) or by telephone. In person meetings can also take place if it works for both the mentor and mentee.
- Work with their Mentor to formulate and deliver their project.
- Attend a mid-term event in April 2025 where mentees and mentors will share their reflections so far.
- Attend a concluding event in July 2025 where mentees and mentors will share their experiences and learning.
Penny Shapland-Chew will provide the training and support to both mentors and mentees. Penny is a coach, consultant, facilitator and a Fellow of the Institute of Leadership and Management with wide-ranging experience of leadership and management over twenty years in public libraries. She has experience of developing mentoring programmes and coaching. Penny will be supported by Kevin Bolton who has extensive archive experience. Penny will also be available to provide support to both mentors and mentees during the programme.
We will also provide comprehensive guidance documentation for mentors and mentees on how to get the best out of your mentoring relationship.
Please note that matching your project to a mentor is dependent on the availability of a mentor with relevant expertise.
The deadline for responses is 17:00 Thursday 14th November 2024
If you have questions about this programme, feel free to drop Caroline Catchpole an email at caroline.catchpole@nationalarchives.gov.uk
Your information will only be used for this project (see our privacy policy at https://nationalarchives.gov.uk/legal/privacy-policy/).