Archiving Assistance

As many of you know, we had a very successful Centenary year from 2021 to 2022.  During that time we amassed an amazing amount of historical items, some dating back to 1921.  Having identified how important these items are to us, and to the wider community of Renfrew, we’re delighted to have been awarded a grant of £4,500 from the Local Partnership Fund which will allows us to create, secure and store all our historical items.  If you’d like to volunteer for the Archiving Project, please fill in the form above (after submitting the form you will receive a confirmation on this page) and we’ll be in touch.  If you’d like more information please call Susan on 07880 484267.

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Our vast archive is extremely important to us, not only for our Group, but for Renfrew town.  Why is that?  It’s because we discovered all sorts of items which reinforce 2nd Renfrew’s connection with our town – old hand drawn maps, tracer hand drawn maps of Renfrew town during the war (with specific war related items identified) and so the list goes on.

How are we dealing with our archive?

We’re looking after it properly and as professionally as we can.

How are we doing that? 

We have been in contact with two extremely helpful Curators at Glasgow Museum Service who advised us on how to preserve the different types of items we have.  It’s a lot more technical than we realised, but it’s a huge learning curve and as learning is never wasted it’s a great exercise which will be of enormous benefit to us.

What are we doing to preserve everything? 

With enormous thanks to the Renfrew Local Partnership Fund we were awarded a Grant which has let us buy all the storage equipment we need to ensure the preservation of our archive, the equipment including specialist and different types of tissue paper, boxes, tapes, labels, box inserts, small storage pockets for badges (we have 100’s of badges/flashes/patrol flashes, some dating back to the early 1930’s), special boxes to store the pockets and so the list goes on.  The Partnership Fund Grant is an enormous benefit as we were able to purchase everything we needed.  Add to that the advice from our Glasgow ladies, and we now know how to safely wrap, fold, store, protect and preserve all we have.

What’s next?

We’ll now need to sort everything.  There’s so much to sort we can’t list it all here.  After the sorting, it will be wrapping and recording every item, labelling them where appropriate (with uniforms having details as to who owned the item), keeping a record on our database, not only of the item, but its identification number and the number of the box it is in.  A lot of work, but very worthwhile.

Being 2nd Renfrew we didn’t want the archive work to wait until we had financial support, so since the Scout Troop’s Centenary year we have been doing other work, so please read on.

What was the first task?    Answer:  Photo Identification

On Sunday, 26 February 2022, twelve of our former ‘senior’ members (sorry about the senior reference, gents) got together for an afternoon to identify those in some of the photographs.  They were asked to review scanned and printed photographs so that names could be handwritten, then typed and retained with the pictures.  The pictures were also available on a large screen, which was very helpful to enlarge for finer details.  To help with the identification, the pictures were grouped by decade and/or subject.  That way the appropriate decade could be reviewed by the correct participants.

Were there lots of photographs?  

Yes, that day alone there were loads – 172 to be precise (and that’s a small fraction of all the pictures we have).  172 is a lot of photos and, despite everyone’s best efforts, we didn’t manage to get through them all, plus some were just too old to be identified.

The group rose to the challenge by working hard through the majority of the pictures, but it should be borne in mind that the 172 reviewed on 26 February are the tip of the iceberg, so there will be more identification afternoons to get through those we didn’t manage, all accompanied of course by tea/coffee and cake.   After that, there will be events for younger generations to identify their photos.

The afternoon was interesting, not only in identifying those in the photographs, but it brought back lots of memories and plenty chat about everyone’s time in the Cubs, Scouts and Rover/Venture Scouts.  Although it was a great afternoon to help our archive it also let the attendees catch-up.  All this was done with assistance of tea/coffee, cakes, scones and some sweet treats, so don’t let anyone tell you it was all hard graft!  Here are some of the gents,  hard at work:

Why take this approach? 

It’s because what we do now is for our current and future members, families and all website visitors, so that they have the benefit of knowing the full story of 2nd Renfrew.

We send our sincere thanks to all who attended on 26 February 2023, not only for giving up their time, but in ensuring the memories of those in the photographs live on.

The next task was for …

Former Lady Cub Leaders

Not to be outdone by the gents, we organised an afternoon tea for our current and former Lady Cub Leaders as we realised there had not been this type of event before.  Apart from getting everyone together in a relaxed setting, we wanted to obtain as much information as possible.

Who attended and what format did the event take?

We were delighted that almost everyone we invited to the afternoon tea on Sunday, 6 March 2023 was able to come along, and particularly pleased to track down a former leader who was Assistant Cub Mistress from 1952 to 1959.  The ages of those present ranged from mid-40s to over 90, but ages made no difference, as everyone chatted, drank tea, ate sandwiches and cake and continued to chat.  What was especially pleasing was that when the afternoon started some former leaders didn’t know the others, but we can safely say that by the end of the afternoon everyone was well acquainted.  (When you read this, you’ll realise that cake plays a very large part of archiving and reminiscing in 2nd Renfrew!).

It was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon, in good company, with everyone having Cubs in common.

As mentioned before, the purpose of the afternoon was to allow everyone to get together in a relaxed setting and share stories for the archive.  We certainly managed the relaxed setting, but such was the chatter and hilarity, we didn’t build up as much archive material as we were looking for.  “Not a problem” said all the attendees “we’ll happily do this afternoon all over again, providing more for the archive, and we hope there will be more cake!”.

As we often noted in our Centenary reporting we’re delighted with the support we received over the Centenary year (and since).  In the case of this update, it was especially pleasing to see senior former members sharing their stories and beavering away over photographs.  For the ladies, their afternoon had a different format and, although they did reminisce, an occasion where former lady Cub leaders were together at one event was unique.  Here are some pictures of the day:

	Our Lady Cub Leaders from 1951 to 2023