Scottish Community Archive of the Year award

The Museum of Scottish Railways Archive has been named Scottish Community Archive of the Year 2024/25 by the Scottish Council on Archives (SCA).  The award recognises the archive’s outstanding work in preserving and sharing Scotland’s rail heritage through community engagement and archival excellence and highlights the role of community archives in preserving local identity and inspiring future generations.

The award was presented on Wednesday, 3 April 2025, at the Scottish Railway Museum in Bo’ness by Dr Kiara King of the Ballast Trust. 

The archive was selected as part of the SCA’s A Year in the Life of a Community Archive project with a dedicated online feature documenting the museum’s work in digitisation, volunteering, and
storytelling.  You can explore the full feature here: A Year in the Life of a Community Archive 2024.

A bespoke handcrafted award was commissioned by SCA from Make it Glasgow CIC, a not-for-profit social enterprise run by ceramic artists whose creative practice explores Scotland’s industrial pottery
heritage.  This will be proudly displayed in our museum entrance later this year.

MoSR archivists reflect on the project

“Involvement in the ‘Year in the Life’ project has helped us to share our experiences as a group more widely and make our own voices heard.  All of our volunteer archivists have been encouraged to contribute ideas, try new things, and find a meaningful place within the ‘Year in the Life’ project.  Some things have not gone to plan, but we have learned, challenged one another, and reflected together, sometimes with surprising outcomes. As a result, we have grown together as a team.

 

Looking back to the start of last year, we were only just beginning to recognise ourselves as a community archive.  As part of a large, working Museum, our paper collections had always been viewed as subordinate to our ‘big stuff’.  SCA’s openness, generosity, and boundless positivity, has empowered us to speak up for our work in a way that we would not have had the confidence to do in the past.  We have been invited to give case studies to peers in the archive sector, engage in knowledge exchange programmes, and attend conferences where we have been able to advocate for what we do and network usefully.  Furthermore, we have built lasting partnerships that have been essential in diversifying funding streams.

Enthusiasm is infectious!  Sharing the ups and downs in the MoSR over the past year has been a real learning experience and, we hope, reassuring for other organisations in a similar position to ourselves.  A project like this is undeniably great for everyone’s wellbeing!  It is a wonderful thing for us to read back the blog and see just how much we have achieved this year.

 

The pride, positivity, and commitment of the team that shines through on the project blog is an excellent way of evidencing just how much our community of volunteers and friends care about our work.  This has been helpful in engaging funders, both external and internal.  In 2025, thanks to support from stakeholders, we will be moving to a brand new premises in the heart of Bo’ness.  Our engines may still be the most visible thing about our organization, but there has been a real shift in priorities with the archive now getting recognition as the wonderful resource it most surely is.”