St Dunstan's College Archives
St Dunstan's College, London, 2017-2019
As the archivist for the school, Andrew set about to create a sustainable community of both student and adult volunteers who would be responsible for creating and maintaining a digital archive. This project relied on the six principles of andragogy developed by Malcolm Knowles especially the intrinsic motivations for participation and learning. Training lessons were derived first from understanding the experience of the volunteers involved, and they were built around practical problems to solve such as object fragility, a rapidly aging alumni population, and the conflict between traditional and modern sensibilities at the school. Training was self-paced and allowed for a wide range of specializations that generated not only a digital archive, but also a sizable contribution to a twice annual publication. As of April 2020, the physical archive was also turned over to the community of volunteers to manage. The latest addition to the digital archive was completed in December 2020 and included 5000 new scanned images of the school chronicle. This project was conceived and executed by those same volunteers Andrew trained as well as new volunteers that have joined since.
The archive can be found at this url: https://www.stdunstansdigitalarchives.org.uk/ and permission to access records from the archives can be requested by emailing: dunstonians@sdmail.org.uk
The image is of the London Highlanders battalion made up of alumni from St Dunstan's College. Those individuals whose names are written down died in the battle of Loos 1915. This image was a major feature for a Year 11 led project to teach WWI history to Year 7.
Photograph of the student production from the 1920s. Part of a series of theatrical photos which became the research interest of one volunteer.
More details on the metadata and the user interface for metadata entry designed by SDS Heritage
The image is of the London Highlanders battalion made up of alumni from St Dunstan's College. Those individuals whose names are written down died in the battle of Loos 1915. This image was a major feature for a Year 11 led project to teach WWI history to Year 7.