By Martina Schmuecker – Brandrams Wharf Housing Co-operative
Since the opening of our co-operative in 1987, we stored the history of how our building became a co-operative in boxes in an old church pew in our common room. Other parts of our papers were kept in our office, together with the ever-increasing folders of minutes and paperwork, gradually filling up more and more of the limited space available. In the summer of 2021, we finally began looking through the files we had stored for such a long time in the church pew.
It was overwhelming: Was anything of this still relevant to us? How would we ever find anything, let alone organise any of it? After consulting friends, and discussions amongst ourselves, we got the tip to ask the Bishopsgate Archive for help – a place that collects London’s history from the perspective of people living in London, and so maybe would be interested in helping us order our chaotic collection?
We approached the Bishopsgate Institute and invited Stef Dickers, the archivist at Bishopsgate, to the co-operative to introduce the Institute and explain in detail how the archiving process would work for our co-op at a general meeting. We also organised a visit to the Bishopsgate Institute so that members could see the facility and understand how our archive would be kept. The co-operative then decided to entrust our documents to the Bishopsgate Institute for archiving.
The material from the pew—about 20 boxes of historic folders dating from 1977 to 2000—was deposited at Bishopsgate in November 2021. Bishopsgate holds our materials in trust, meaning we can ask for them back if we want to. (which we probably won’t – there is other stuff in the pew now…)
By February 2022, the Bishopsgate had completed the cataloguing of our archive, and the catalogue was provided to us. Parts of our archive are now accessible to the public for research purposes, ensuring our history can benefit others interested in housing co-operatives. Other parts are ‘closed’, that means they are open for members of the co-operative, but not for the public.
Our archive is a “living” archive: that means we are adding new materials from time to time – often finding hidden treasures when someone clears out their cupboards!
We are also starting to add our more recent history, so that the archive will hold a full record of the co-operative.
If you are interested in archiving your own co-operative’s history, we highly recommend working with the Bishopsgate Institute. Their archives are accessible, inclusive and welcoming, and their people are dedicated to the preservation of the people’s history. With our archive, we hope that we have made a small contribution to making co-operative housing history more publicly known.
The Bishopsgate Institute
Bishopsgate Institute is a cultural, charitable foundation, founded in 1895, and home to huge collections of archives and printed material on the history of London, radical politics and activism, the co-operative movement and women’s and feminist history. They are also the largest LGBTQ+ Archive in the UK.
The Institute are already honoured to provide a home to the archives of Brandram’s Wharf Housing Co-operative, Some Friends Housing Co-operative, London Fields Housing Co-operative and Matrix Housing Co-operative.
The Institute would love to provide a home to the archives of your housing co-operative. There is no fee for this, and they can collect material. They also catalogue all of the material for you. The ownership and copyright on the archive will stay with your co-operative, and you decide what can be made available to the public (i.e. there may be records that you wish closed for Data Protection or confidentiality reasons). If you want to visit the Institute for a tour and to discuss further, they would love to see you.
Contact:
https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/
020 7392 9200