Future of the Braund Society Meeting

We would like to thank all those who attended our recent ‘future of the Braund Society’ Zoom meeting, or who sent in thoughts and suggestions. It was lovely to have support and especially pleasing to have three overseas countries represented (plus one more by advance email).  Although some additional help, as outlined in the June journal, would be very welcome now, nothing is critical in the very short term and there are no plans for immediate changes. We do however need to be much more proactive about future-proofing and resilience, as previous and repeated attempts at this haven’t worked. As we make plans for the future we do need to be aware of our resources, particularly our human resources.

We identified two key issues:-

1.       The need for younger people to shadow current post holders in order to be ready to take up the baton and move the society into the 2030s – not necessarily in its current form.

2.      The need to preserve our archive for the future.

Even if we, or our successors, are unable to maintain an active Braund Society in some form, ensuring the preservation of our archive, for want of a better word, so that it is accessible is critical. Almost all the raw records are publicly available and copyright but the synthesis of those records in the form of family trees and more importantly, the stories, is what is ‘ours’ and needs preserving. We also have a large collection of Braund related artefacts in our ‘Museum’, which represent Braunds worldwide. The disparity of our collection would make it impossible to find a single home for the objects with another organisation and any hand over of other material would need to be digital.

Several suggestions were made, many of which would be wonderful to implement but require human resources that we don’t have and would not necessarily address the problem of our ageing volunteer force. There are things that we can and will try and we urge all those with an interest in the Braund family heritage to make a contribution and to promote the society in whatever way they can.  

We will revisit this again – probably in October/November and maybe at a different time of day to give others a chance to attend and perhaps just focussing on one particular issue.