Centre – OCMCH Annual Report 2021/22

The Centre has published its Annual report for 2021-22 – an acknowledgement and celebration of our achievements over the past twelve months. OCMCH Director, Professor William Gibson, had the following to say about the Centre’s work over the last year,

2021-22 has been another productive year for the Centre. The Coronavirus Pandemic has continued to have an impact on our working practices; and on the types of outputs we are able to achieve. In spite of this, 2021-22 has also been an extremely successful year for the Centre. We have been able to host, organise, and attend both online and in-person events; return to primarily working on-campus; and engage with others as part of work with individuals and visiting groups. We have been able to welcome readers back to our Reading Room, and also to visit other archives and heritage sites as part of our wider work and research.

The Centre continues to work with an increasing number of external partners, ranging in involvement from The Methodist Church and The Westminster Society; to The Manchester Wesley Research Centre and Wesley House, Cambridge; and newer partnerships, such as with The Methodist Insurance Company, and Southlands College (University of Roehampton). We have continued to work with, and to support, our collection owners, working closely with the Avec Consultancy Trust regarding the development of their archive; with the Methodist Philatelic Society over the deposit of their collection, and financing of a new bursary; and, as ever, with the Wesley Historical Society, with a focus on the growth and development of their collections and space allocation, particularly at this time of transition for the Society.

Digitisation and online engagement continued to play an extensive, and growing, role in our work this past year – with almost 2,000 additional items now available online, and over 1 million views have now been achieved across our online collections.

This Report serves to illustrate much of the hard work completed by the Centre this past year, and also the impressive impact this is having – particularly in an increasingly digital field.

You can download a digital version of the full Annual Report, here.