The Story, Durham: What’s The Story? Case Study Archive Volunteering Award 2026
The Story, Durham: What’s The Story? Archive Podcast in partnership with Screenboo Productions and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund
The project started in August 2025 and is ongoing. You can find the podcast here.
What’s The Story is a podcast produced and presented by The Story’s team of five young volunteers aged 14-18 and based in County Durham. All research is undertaken entirely by the young volunteers, who present their research to camera in an engaging and confident manner, exploring the history of Durham from gifts to ghosts, mining to mysteries and much more.
Youth volunteering is an area recognised as a particular need in our locality by Durham Community Action, our County Volunteer Centre. Securing suitable long-term opportunities for volunteering is a struggle for under 18s, and our podcasting project enables The Story to support young volunteers and to recruit new ones. The group provides an opportunity for young people to develop a wide range of skills including historical research and digital production and has a far reaching and positive impact on their communication and social skills.
Our young volunteers recognise that archives are often viewed as boring and irrelevant, especially by their peers, and want to change this perception by releasing podcasts highlighting interesting themes from The Story’s archive to introduce new audiences to a history that is lived, local and shared.
Our process:
An expression of interest call out was made to our Teacher Advisory Group, Durham Youth Council, Home Education Network, local schools/colleges as well as on our website and social media.
Pilot sessions took place in summer 2025 to consult with interested young people; the process developed, and we planned the first term of the programme.
Work has been evaluated throughout- feedback from the group and producer following each episode which informs the next. We have also undertaken formal evaluation with The Story’s external evaluators.
Young volunteers have each had the opportunity to lead on a podcast episode, directing the research and delegating roles to other young volunteers.
The group meet fortnightly on a Thursday evening and follow a regular structure of a research session, followed by a podcast recording session.
Resources:
Staff time, archive material- digital and physical, podcast production equipment (provided by Screenboo Productions) Handling collection.
The group delves into stories that represent our young volunteers’ own identities and neighbourhoods and exploring themes which resonate with their lived experience in County Durham today. The group is innovative and unique- we have not found evidence of a comparable group.
Achievements:
The podcast episodes released to date have had an average of 105 views each, with viewings of the first two episodes released continuing to increase as new episodes are added.
Impact on Volunteers
Increased confidence and cultural connection among our young participants.
The podcast group promotes civic engagement and provides a platform for belonging for our young volunteers, allowing them to interpret, question and retell stories from our archives in their own voices and to build relationships with likeminded people.
Impact on service
Volunteering offer diversified- the young people are aged between 14 and 17 years, and attend from right across the region. The group is diverse and inclusive- mixed gender, some neurodiversity, school/college attendees and home educated young people.
Youth Voice for our collections- young people’s voices are included in how our history is told.
Stories and themes of interest relevant to young people are highlighted to our Collections’ Team which may inform future research projects.
Wider impact
The podcast introduces new audiences to The Story and our archive.
Learning from this project to be shared at relevant sector conferences and as a case study within our networks.
The podcast enables stories from our archive to be shared and accessed world worldwide.
Evaluation:
Below are a few comments from three of our participants about the project:
“I am passionate about history, and the podcast has been the perfect way for me to talk about it…[and] to get close up to different historical materials which would have been behind glass or in storage”
“As someone who has always struggled with teamwork, it allows me to practice and improve upon those skills with a team of very lovely people.”
“It has been incredible to have the opportunity to be recorded, explore archive material and learn more about the county I live in…the archive is full of stories waiting to be discovered.”
It is clear from these comments that the podcasting project has had a demonstrable positive impact on our young volunteers, allowing them to express themselves in new ways, meet likeminded people and develop their passions.
Working with ScreenBoo Productions has been an invaluable experience; their expertise provided volunteers and staff with vital insights that we will carry into our upcoming in-house production phase.
The podcast has seen strong engagement, averaging over 100 views per episode. Social media activity peaked during November 2025’s ‘Kids in Museums Takeover Day,’ where youth-led posts earned 133 likes and over 100 shares on Facebook.
Beyond digital reach, the project has been a catalyst for career development. Several young volunteers have been inspired by their experience to pursue interesting opportunities, including applying for a production internship with filmmaker Carl Joyce, completing Gold Arts Award, and securing placements in The Story’s competitive summer 2026 work experience programme.
Our recommendations for starting a similar project are as follows:
Ensure that young people are a part of the planning, research and delivery stages so that they feel fully integrated and have ownership of the group.
Do not underestimate the time it takes to conduct archival research with young volunteers. Allowing time at the end of a recording session to have a preliminary topic search of the online catalogue has been a valuable addition to our schedule, allowing the designated research week to focus on original material in the Collections’ Room.
Agree on a director/producer for each episode and allow this young person to take the lead on the planning/delegation of research tasks and presenting segments.
Allow opportunities for young volunteers to meet staff with a variety of different roles; our participants have found it inspiring to hear about the work that conservators, archivists, digitisation specialists and engagement staff are part of at The Story.
Future Developments:
We plan to upskill staff and young volunteers in podcast production so that content can be recorded and edited in house to ensure long term sustainability for the project without the need to rely on external funding.
Funding opportunities being sought to fund the purchase of equipment and editing software as well as staff training.
Recruiting further young volunteers as some of our existing group will be moving away to higher education in the 2026-27 academic year.
Explore opportunities for young volunteers to be involved in other aspects of The Story’s work, for example helping to plan and deliver events and supporting with website content and accessibility as well as social media content.