Friday lunchtime CPD webinar: Inclusion Projects: Learning from a case study of a community collecting archive in Sweden

Originally held on: Friday 13th March 2026,

Speaker: Arif Naqvi, former project lead of the IFA project at the community collecting archive of Southwest Götaland

A community archive in Sweden had the opportunity to develop an outreach project to minority ethnic communities, which were underrepresented in the archive's collections. The goal was to increase the number of fonds from immigrant groups in the archives to give a fuller picture of local civil society and its history. Challenges included: gaining access to, information from, and trust with communities; anticipating and navigating hot-button ethical or "culture war" issues; and changing the processes and assumptions the archive had developed over its own history. This talk will look at how a shoestring one-year project, with one part-time staff member, was planned and delivered, the lessons learned, and issues that remained. You may be able to compare it with your own experiences of outreach to communities unfamiliar with archives. It will also be a chance to reflect on your own organisations' capabilities to meet similar challenges. About our presenter: Arif Naqvi worked at the community collecting archive of southwest Götaland (Föreningsarkivet I Sydvästra Götaland) in western Sweden for 8 years. Prior to this he worked in London where he was an outreach worker for a community associations and undertook similar work for an environmental charity. He has a degree in Archival and Information Science from Mid-Sweden University and is currently secretary of ARA’s Section for Archives and Technology.