Over the past few month the University archives have been working collaboratively with Alumni and Development on a project aimed at capturing the history of Battersea Polytechnic from alumni, through a programme of Oral Histories, encouraging items to be deposited into the archives and volunteering in the archives.  Please do look through the alumni pages to get a better understanding of the project

It’s safe to say that this project has exceeded all expectations in its popularity and the impact this has had on the archives.  To date we have received deposits from well over 30 alumni from Battersea Polytechnic.  The material deposited has been a real mix – in a good way!  Ranging from student publications and photographs, to football shirts, ties scarves and tankards

                 

 

We have also been pleasantly surprised with the responses from our call for volunteers.  We specifically set out to recruit two types of alumni volunteers, ‘regular volunteers’ for those who live locally and have the time to come and volunteer on a more regular occurrence, and ‘occasional volunteers’ for those who are not able to commit to volunteer on a regular basis but still want to help out.

The idea of the occasional volunteering was to have set days once every semester for these alumni to come and work within the archives on various projects.  We held our first volunteer day on 23 September and it was a complete success.  We had a group of around 8 alumni from Battersea Polytechnic from a variety of subjects and years of graduation working on our student publication project, aimed at making our collection of student publications more accessible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We also have inducted a group of alumni who are interested in volunteering with us on a more regular basis and some are very keen to start working on a project as soon as possible.

We are truly thankful for all the help and support in the various projects that the alumni have provided for us, the information that they are gleaning from our archives is invaluable as are the interesting stories and anecdotes that they are telling us about their time studying at Battersea Polytechnic.

Are you an Alumni from Battersea Polytechnic or University of Surrey or are you simply interested in the archives ?

If so then we would love to hear from you.

We are constantly on the lookout for volunteers to help support the archives to help us bring our archives to life.  You can help us by signing up to join one of our volunteer days or sign up and become a regular volunteer – you’ll be amazed about how many interesting facts about the University of Surrey that you just didn’t know, and just how much knowledge and information you have to help bring our collections alive!

Contact us for more information, we look forward to hearing from you