David Almond Archive online
The archive was acquired with FNL support and selected parts are now digitised and freely accessible.
In December 2018, Seven Stories was awarded a grant of £3,200 by the FNL to digitise key elements of the David Almond archive (acquired with FNL support in 2017) and to provide online access to key items from Almond’s archive. As a result of our grant we have been able to digitise a substantial portion of the Almond archive, create a new online resource for researchers and enable new educational projects using digitised material from the Almond collection.
In all, over 2,000 pages of archives including notes, correspondence and original manuscripts for some of Almond’s most significant novels such as Skellig and Song for Ella Grey.
Once the digitisation was complete, a selection of material was made and uploaded to a new David Almond highlights page on the Seven Stories Collection web page. The page also features a specially created ‘Introduction to David Almond’ downloadable pdf and selected archive videos of interviews with David and illustrator Polly Dunbar.
Access to the newly digitised David Almond collection has helped Seven Stories staff develop and deliver new projects around the collection. For example, digitised material was used in a Creative Writing workshop delivered in Spring 2019 for teachers in primary and secondary schools in Newcastle. Teachers were provided with an extensive teacher’s resource pack ‘The Real Writer’s Process’ that included digitised material from the Almond archive to support exploration of the creative writing process in the classroom. David’s work will be used to support a schools transition project in 2020.
Image: David Almond at an exhibition of items from his archive. Courtesy of Seven Stories.
