The Special Collections & Archives team have had a blast running the Archives stall for Student at the Heart conference 2023, and we were proud to take a spot in the Bicentenary Room alongside historic graduation gowns, the 200 ‘Humans of LJMU’, and 200 very delicious cupcakes.

Certain audiences are often prejudiced against the archival, and being able to showcase the past in novel ways like this really highlights how valuable heritage can be for people, institutions, memories, and legacy. One attendee made sure to thank me for making Archives ‘less boring,’ but the reality is that they were never as boring as people imagine them to be to begin with!

To celebrate 200 years of history at LJMU, we were able to showcase a large variety of archive reproductions, and make them available for taking away.

This included five varieties of reproduction archival recipe cards ranging from 1888 to 1976 originally published by one of our founding Colleges, F L Calder College of Domestic Science. With transcriptions and context on the back, we hope those who took the recipes away to make (or marvel at) will learn something and connect to their institutions’ memory.

Inspired by one of our showcase recipes, the famous Economical War Cake written by Fanny Louisa Calder at the onset of WW1 in 1914, 1st year Graphics Design student Hannah Jones produced a brilliant graphic visualisation of the recipe in A3 and A4 poster format.

Once you’ve made your War Cake, possibly skipping the dripping in favour of butter, you can wrap it up in an A3 poster and give to a friend. Anne Foulkes, our Digitisation Technician, demonstrates how to do so!

To showcase the amazing visual variety in our collections, I mocked up a photograph album featuring photos from all of the historic Colleges which make up LJMU as we know it today. The album even included some original captions from albums donated to us. It was particularly amazing how many attendees emotionally connected with the album – some who remembered the more recent history, reminisced over the past, and those who were really excited by the large number of Global Majority students who’ve attended our historic Colleges from the 1950s onwards following Windrush.

Anne produced three photo stand-ins for attendees to pretend to be students from the 1930s School of Art, or 1970s F L Calder College, which made for some great photos throughout the conference.

We also had free history books available, brilliant window vinyls of some of our images, and a mock-up of some of LJMU’s historic logos and coats of arms (we’ve since discovered more than these represented here).

Creative Writing students also manned the stall to promote the 200 Words project to get 200 participants (students, staff, and alumni!) to write 200 words inspired by 200 years of history at LJMU. Drop-in workshops for the project are happening 12-5PM on the 22nd, 27th, 28th, and 29th of June in Seminar Room 1 of Aldham Robarts. If you’d like to access the archives to imagine what life might’ve been like for a student or staff member of the past, do come along!

During the conference, Emily presented at two talks, and I at one with her, and we were also pleased to have been visited by LJMU’s Artist in Residence Julia Midgley. We already have quite a number of her watercolours in our collection, and some on display across LJMU’s buildings, and will be very excited to see her renditions of our stall amongst them in the future.

We’re always so proud of each other and the work we’re able to achieve within such a small, close-knit team. Many thanks to everyone who visited and everyone who helped make the Archives stall such a success.

Christopher Olive, LJMU Bicentenary Project Archivist 2023