On Wednesday 1 May, WCIA are inviting Temple Friends, volunteers, and students to join in an action packed afternoon as we launch a new heritage project and ‘Archiveathon Challenge’ for summer 2023 – helping explore and digitise materials from the Temple of Peace Archives for future posterity – alongside a range of other volunteering projects under the banner of ‘Temple Friends’.

Find out more and register for…

The Peace Archives digitisation project is part of the UK-wide initiative ‘Our Heritage Our Stories‘, which is seeking to integrate local archives with national collections for future generations. WCIA are grateful to OHOS for contributing seed funding to enable this series of Archiveathons to take place over May-June 2024, enabling WCIA volunteers to take significant strides forward with yet unexplored and undigitising collections, whilst ensuring many thousands of peace heritage resources and hidden histories curated over the last decade, will be available 50-100 years hence as websites and digital technologies move on (as well as institutional knowledge and staff).

This event will see the launch of an exciting range of onsite Temple Volunteering projects, coming under the Umbrella of ‘Temple Friends‘ – the burgeoning network of people and organisations who consider themselves ‘Friends of Wales’ Temple of Peace’: existing partner organisations; ex-volunteers, staff, trustees and ‘alumni’; communities with memorials in the Peace Garden; researchers, educationalists and academics keen to explore the Temple’s rich archives and collections; or individuals with a passion for peace building and who would love to play their part in safeguarding and shaping the future of this iconic building. The Friends are likely to play a key consultative role in the event of any development proposals coming forward affecting future usage of the Temple of Peace & Health, acting alongside WCIA as guardians of the Temple’s founding mission and purpose, as a public space gifted in 1934 to the people of Wales (for 999 years).

Who’s this for?

This will be a open afternon with 3 components, the core session being the participatory workshop for all from 14.00-16.30 (below); with the options to also join a Temple Tour beforehand, and / or the ‘Temple Friends‘ discussion afterwards. We hope this bring together, be of interest and enjoyment to:

• Students starting work experience ‘Insights’ placement projects through Cardiff University over May-June, for which this will be ‘induction day’.
• Supporters of the ‘Temple Friends’ Network keen to be help, shape and be involved in delivery of onsite activities and improvements to the Temple and Peace Garden
• General volunteer and research enquiries, who would like to use the archives or pop in on a more casual basis to help when they can with week to week tasks.

We hope you can join us for Mayday! For more information on the indivdiual parts of the day, please scroll down or visit the individual event pages, from which you can register

---

Mayday Events in More Detail

12.30-14.00 Lunchtime Temple Tour

to include the National Garden of Peace (not usually included in lunchtime tours, this will be an experimental ‘trial tour’ integrating the newly-developed peace garden memorials trail). Temple Tours homeage here

14.00-16.30 Mayday ‘Temple Friends’ Placement Projects & Volunteering Workshop

Supported and enabled by OHOS, Our Heritage, Our Stories – will include a talk on the ‘big ambition’ to integrate local archives into National Collections through harnessing power of AI and communities (the sort of professional knowledge insights you won’t get through Youtube!) 

An induction briefing and 121 / group planning session for all individuals who have expressed an interest in volunteering, undertaking archives research, heritage or other onsite projects at the Temple of Peace, this will include:

• Peace Archives: An introduction and overview of the Temple Library, archives and collections, hidden histories recently uncovered – and new histories yet unexplored.
• Towards A ‘National Collection’: short talk from ‘Our Heritage, Our Stories’, who are funding WCIA’s volunteer archiveathons over May to July 2023, to hear about their project’s ‘big aim’ – to integrate local digitised archives into national (Wales and UK) online collections for future generations, 50-100 years hence, through harnessing the power of artificial intelligence – and local communities.
• ‘Archiveathon’: introduction to new digitisation projects on Temple Archives & Collections, that volunteers and Temple Friends can help with over May-July 2024. Participants can have a go straight away, at digitising as yet unexplored materials.
• Project Planning 121s: For Temple Friends, volunteers and student placements interested in leading work on specific volunteering projects over May-June 2023, there will be the opportunity for individual 121 planning and mentoring discussions with WCIA Heritage and Volunteering staff, to finalise detailed plans for following weeks.

Explore WCIA’s Temple Heritage, Archives and Onsite volunteering opportunities, blogs / testimonials from previous placements, and examples of the work they have produced.

17.00-18.00 Temple Friends Meeting

Room 39, Temple of Peace with option to join remotely via Zoom / Teams TBC

Following on from WCIA’s Mayday Volunteering Workshop & Archiveathon (from 14.-16.30) and lunchtime Temple Tour (12.30-13.45) – to which Temple Friends are invited to fully participate – this meeting will give the opportunity to talk through in more detail the development of the ‘Temple Friends’ Network into a new phase of activity.

Discussion

• to what degree various Temple volunteering projects can come together under the banner of Temple Friends
• how individual (or prospective Temple Friends can help, eg through becoming project leaders guiding and mentoring younger volunteers in piecing together contrubutions to wider projects (such as on  the Peace Garden and particular Archives & Collections such as SGI UK or International Volunteering)
• upcoming Events of interest
• communications tools and preferences (eg transitioning to Google Group).

Facilitated by Dr Emma West, this discussion is open to any who see themself as a friend and would like to join in an open discussion – whether having attended a previous meeting or not (including attendees from the earlier Mayday Volunteering Projects session).