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Birmingham City Archives has been awarded a grant of £821,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund for a project called Connecting Histories. The project is focused around the City Archives’ large and rich culturally diverse archive holdings and builds on an established partnership between Birmingham City Archives, the Black Pasts, Birmingham Futures group, the School of Education at the University of Birmingham and the Sociology Department at the University of Warwick. Over a period of 30 months the project will undertake a series of linked activities which will significantly improve access, learning and community involvement in archives in the city. Connecting Histories will: 1. Catalogue and digitise culturally diverse archive collections including the Birmingham Hebrew Community Archive, the Vanley Burke Archive, the archive of the Ten:8 magazine photographic collective, and the records of organisations and individuals active in challenging racism including the Indian Workers Association, Banner Theatre, Charles Parker, Birmingham Sikh Council, Birmingham Anti-Apartheid Movement, Birmingham Trades Council, Trades Union Resource Centre, Paul Mackney and Avtar Jouhl. 2. Train two positive action trainees who will qualify as archivists at the end of the project. 3. Develop five e-learning packages on a series of linked themes including research skills, Black British History, migration and settlement, campaigning for social justice and challenging racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. The related website will feature a discussion board and information and advice for community groups on a range of archive, conservation and project planning issues. 4. Establish, train and support a network of archive user and volunteer groups who will help select material for the e-learning packages and website, participate in the cataloguing, presentation and interpretation of the collections and advise on archive policies and practices. The activities will be undertaken by a team of 10 staff comprising of a project manager, 3 archivists, 2 positive action trainee archivists, 2 learning and research officers, a community access officer and a digital technician. This team will be supported by Professor Ian Grosvenor of Birmingham University's School of Education, Dr Robert Carter from Warwick University's Department of Sociology and members of the Black Pasts, Birmingham Futures network. I would be very pleased to hear from any other archive services who are engaged in similar work around cultural diversity or workforce development as one of the intentions of the project is to develop a model of working for cultural diversity and positive action training in the archives sector which can then be disseminated regionally and nationally. Sian Roberts Head of Archives, Birmingham City Archives