Weighing up whether to attend the ARA Annual Conference at Wembley  
from 31 August to 2 September? You’ve no doubt seen some of the  
innovations this year, such as a fully-dedicated digital archives and  
preservation stream, plus the expanded information village, where we  
will be joined by representatives from sectoral bodies; all designed  
to fit the ‘Global Futures’ theme, as we face ever-increasing  
pressures to adapt to new financial and market realities. The  
Conference committee and its partners have again worked overtime to  
keep delegate costs as low as possible. Pound for pound (or Euro for  
Euro), the ARA Conference offers better value than all other  
comparable bodies in the sector. And we will again be subsidising the  
headline costs in 2016 through our conference sponsorship programmes.

This year, the Conference organising committee has also shifted the  
focus of its keynote speaker slots. In 2016 we have invited leaders in  
the front-line – or at the frontier - of tackling major challenges  
facing our sector, people whose experience and drive will inspire you  
and offer practical answers to problems that you may also be grappling  
with. These will be frank and - very likely - provocative talks. Don’t  
come expecting a string of feel-good clichés or platitudes.

Our keynote speaker on the opening day - 31 August - is Colin Prescod.  
Having worked in archives and heritage for around fifteen years, Colin  
is currently Chair of the Institute of Race Relations in the UK  
(www.irr.org.uk/about/management/). He has been involved for a long  
time with the Huntley Archives project at London Metropolitan Archives  
(one of LMA’s most significant collections from the African-Caribbean  
community). Colin will explore 'the global in the local', how the most  
local or smallest archive have disproportionate emotional impact and  
power in minority or displaced communities. He will take you out of  
your comfort zone and expose you to different ways of thinking about  
your collections and deposits, along with how you manage diversity and  
minority outreach.

On 1 September, our main speaker is Tina Staples. Tina is Global Head  
of Archives at banking giant HSBC Plc  
(www.hsbc.com/about-hsbc/company-history) and at the forefront of  
issues affecting archivists and records managers across the corporate  
sector, most notably data and digital preservation. She will discuss  
an issue that cuts across the public, private and voluntary sectors:  
‘Big Data in a Connected World: Friend or Foe?’ Now fifty years into  
the so-called Computer Age, we face unprecedented data volumes. We  
have created more data since 2014 than in all human history up to  
then. One trillion photographs alone were captured in 2015, with  
billions shared online. By 2020, 1.7 megabytes of new information will  
be created every second, for every person alive. Tina will explore if  
we – as a profession - are even close to keeping pace and our future  
role now that every global citizen is preserving a mind-boggling range  
of born-digital records, and disseminating data and assets to  
ever-growing global audiences. In her view, professional  
record-keepers are key to meeting the challenge, but we need to  
persuade senior managers of this and take the lead in shaping a new  
kind of records and archiving culture.

On 2 September, Anthea Case, CBE delivers our final keynote. Since  
2005, Anthea has been Principal Adviser to the Arcadia Fund, a  
UK-based grant-making foundation, which supports endangered nature and  
culture (www.arcadiafund.org.uk). Anthea currently chairs Arcadia’s  
International Panel, which advises its Endangered Archive Programme  
(run by the British Library). From 1995 to 2003, Anthea was CEO of the  
UK’s Heritage Lottery Fund and National Heritage Memorial Fund and,  
until 2010, Chair of the Heritage Alliance. She currently serves on  
the boards of a number of arts and heritage organisations. As well as  
updating us on the latest global view on grant-giving, Anthea will  
focus on front-line challenges facing the preservation and  
conservation community, notably the future of endangered cultural  
knowledge in non-western countries. As many members think about (or  
re-evaluate) their organisations’ strategy for engaging with funding  
bodies, this is an opportunity to hear (and learn) from one of the  
leading thinkers and practitioners.

Don’t delay, sign up now at:  
http://www.archives.org.uk/ara-in-action/the-ara-conference.html

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