In June, ORCA’s Dan Lee and Gareth Talbot announced the start of the first phase of an innovative new project to develop an Energy Heritage Strategy for Orkney – funded by the UHI’s Energy Innovation hub and with in-kind support from Aquatera Ltd and EMEC.
The first phase has been completed and the report available to view at UHI’s Challenge Fund Case Studies.
This first phase of work involved initial scoping to give the project a clear steer towards developing the strategy, including:
- A high-level audit of the types of energy related material that exists (such as devices, facilities, documents, digital data, spoken and written histories).
- Identifying energy sites across Orkney.
- Looking at industry aspirations and priorities for collecting and disseminating material and how this might be done.
- Exploring the collection policies of museums and research strategies.
- Presenting an action plan for the development of the next phases of the strategy.
We have been delighted with the responses to phase one and look forward to working on the next phase.
This will involve:
- Stakeholder consultation and workshops.
- The production of more detailed archive audits.
- Identifying where there are gaps in our knowledge.
- Setting out a list of priorities and the writing of the strategy itself.
We are currently exploring funding streams for this work, and once secured work will get under way.
