02 September 2022
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The winners of the ARA Excellence Awards were announced at the Gala Dinner of the Archives and Records Association Conference in Chester on the evening of Thursday 1st September.
The Archives and Records Association instituted the ARA Excellence Awards to recognise excellence and contributions by individuals and teams in the record keeping sector. The work of the sector is vital in supporting democracy and human rights and in preserving and sharing the heritage of the UK and Ireland.
To celebrate the achievements of record keeping professionals and their contribution to society, ARA has four special awards: Distinguished Service Award (DSA), Record Keeper of the Year, Record Keeping Service of the Year and New Professional of the Year Award.
In 2022 over 750 votes were cast by the public resulting in the following awards being made:
· Record keeping service of the Year – Barnsley Archives and Local Studies (Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council)
· Record keeper of the Year – Katie Proctor (for work at West Yorkshire Archives Service)
· New Professional of the Year – Gemma Evans (for work at Archives and Records Council Wales and National Library of Wales)
Andrew Nicoll, Chair of ARA’s Board said: “The ARA Excellence Awards are a wonderful opportunity to celebrate what is best about the record keeping sector and to encourage us all to strive for excellence. It is great to be able to make awards to people at the start of their careers and to those who have been working in the sector for five decades, demonstrating that what we are doing today, now, is where the good practice and excellence begin. In the case of those receiving the Distinguished Service Award for some of them the award is made because they have repeated that good practice, that excellence, that going-beyond throughout a long career within a single place, for others it is about a defining moment of bringing an important piece of work to fruition or making a specific contribution to a particular area. Both paths bring benefit to our sector and to the people who access our services and to the public in general whose history we keep safe and whose future we protect.”
