In 2025, ARA decided to review the Archive Conservation Training Scheme to ensure it's survival in a changing environment of reduced staffing levels and financial pressures in the archive sector. This presentation will provide an overview of the outcomes, and also discuss some of the challenges faced by archive conservation in response to changes over the past 25 years.

Traditionally, the scheme has relied heavily on the goodwill of the archive conservation community, and a strong network of highly experienced instructors willing to hand down their knowledge and skills, alongside institutions with the capacity to take on trainees for placements of 1 to 8 weeks.

As experienced instructors have retired, and conservation roles have been cut, it has become increasingly difficult to find placments for trainees.

This presentation will look at some of the development challenges faced within the archive conservation community, and how the scheme aims to ensure standards are maintained, and that the next generation of archive conservators benefit from the skills, experience and knowledge gained by the previous generation.

The Carbon Literacy for Archives, Records and Special Collections Shareable Course, was launched at ARA 2024. Since then, The National Archives has been rolling out the training to archives across England with great success. We have been increasing the reach of the training by sharing the course materials with qualified members of the archive sector, in order for them to roll it out themselves to their organisations and networks.
As archive sector lead for archives in England, The National Archives developed this training with Lorraine Finch (LFCP) and input from ARA Environmental Sustainability Group and members, to address the growing need for support in the sector in environmentally sustainable archival and records management practice. The training provides a standardised level of knowledge and practical case studies that have been tailored to our sector and requires participants to pledge two new and unique actions that they will undertake to reduce their carbon emissions.
This motivational training is an opportunity to upskill the current and future workforce, empowering each individual and organisation to create impactful change in their contexts. In doing so, we are accelerating the sector’s transformation into the low carbon sector it needs to be in order to mitigate climate change and meet the UK’s legislated target of net zero emissions by 2050.
A year on from its launch, we evaluate the success of this training, highlight how you can access it, and announce our plans for further sector support in this area over the coming year.

Accessibility in the archival profession has been overlooked. Very little quantitative and qualitative research exists that examines the lived experience of disabled archivists, neurodivergent archivists, and archivists with a chronic illness. The inaccessibility of the field arguably begins in the classroom.

While there is much work to be done across the entire field, this particular conference presentation presents the findings of my 2024 PhD dissertation “No one said anything about driving in Film Preservation 101!”: The Lived Experience of Disability, Chronic Illness, and Neurodiversity in Moving Image Archival Education.

For the project I hosted semi-structured interviews with students, alumni, and faculty of George Eastman Museum’s L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation; NYU’s Moving Image Archiving Preservation program; UCLA’s former Moving Image Archive Studies program and current MLIS Media Archival Studies specialization; and the Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management program at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University).

Students and alumni self-identified as disabled, neurodivergent or as having a chronic illness and shared their experiences of their entire archival education from the application process until graduation. Students’ experiences were organized around three themes that include the educational institution, their specific programs, and the archival space.

Lastly, this conference presentation looks to open a collaborative dialogue between the UK, Ireland and North America about how to better implement accessibility strategies into our archival education programs to create a more accessible and equitable field.