Events

Conference & AGM

2026 Conference

The Business Archives Council of Scotland and the Business Archives Council are pleased to share that our 2026 conference will be held in Edinburgh. The conference hosted by Diageo will take place on Thursday 12th November 2026 at their Johnnie Walker Experience with online attendance also available.

Our call for papers is now live and we look forward to receiving your proposals on the theme of The Perfect Blend: celebrating partnerships and collaborations in Business Archives. This conference theme will explore how good partnerships and collaborations can help transform our business archive collections. This might be through the use of new technologies or volunteering projects to assist with cataloguing and digitisation projects. Or research based collaborations that can unlock collections and engage new audiences with our material.

Key dates:

• 15th June – call for papers deadline
• August – bookings will open
• 30th September – bursary deadline (bursaries will open once bookings are live)
• 12th November – conference

Conference Bursaries

The Business Archives Council of Scotland and the Business Archives Council make up to four bursaries available to attend their joint conference every year. These bursaries are open to members and non-members of the BAC and BACS. Applicants for the bursaries needed to meet one of the following criteria:

• Be a student or
• Be a recent graduate (in the last 3 years ie graduated by July 2023) or
• Be a qualified archivist, currently out-of-employment (this excludes consultants and freelancers) or
• Be retired from the archives profession or retired with an interest in business history

The bursary covers full conference attendance, including up to £150 for travel & accommodation expenses (receipts will be required ahead of reimbursement.) The following should also be noted:

• Applicants must confirm that any costs they claim will not be paid by their employer, and that their employer has not already registered them as a delegate at the Conferences.
• Successful applicants will be asked to provide a short report on their experience at the conference to be used in various BAC & BACS communications and encouraged to contribute to the reporting of the conference through social media while the conference is taking place.

Business Bites

Since 2023, the Business Archives Council of Scotland and the Business Archives Council have presented a joint programme of regular online webinars on subjects related to Business Archives.

Business Bites is the name of this initiative to encourage conversations, bringing together the small community of business archivists and custodians of business archives across the UK, many of whom work alone, to share our experiences.

A Business Archive Grants Case Study

Our third Business Bites session of 2026 is will take place on Wednesday 24th April. Book your spot here.

Theme: Business Archive Grants – a case study
Where: Online – via Zoom
When: 24th June 2026, 12.30 – 13.30

Kirsten Forrest, Curatorial & Interpretation Manager from the Alexandra Park & Palace Charitable Trust will be talking about their experience of applying for the Business Archive Council Cataloguing Grant.

Kirsten will cover their application journey, what the grant has enabled them to do and what outcomes they have achieved since. This year’s grant will be promoted and a new small grants fund will be launched by the Business Archives Council Scotland.

If you are interested in applying for BAC or BACS grants (or indeed any other funding pots) in the future, this session will provide you with a range of hints and tips to use in your own applications.

Book your free place to attend here.

Business Bites

In 2023, the Business Archives Council of Scotland and the Business Archives Council joined forces to present a joint programme of regular online webinars on subjects related to Business Archives. Business Bites is the name of this initiative to encourage conversations, bringing together the small community of business archivists and custodians of business archives across the UK, many of whom work alone, to share our experiences.

These will continue throughout 2026 and we will hold a Business Bites event every two months with the first event in February on Strengthening Data Protection in Cultural Collections: The London Library’s Audit with Naomi Korn Associates. The full programme will be shared below once confirmed. All Business Bites sessions are held on the last Wednesday of the month.

This new partnership means that our online events will be a mixture of member only events with at least 50% of events still open to all. Normally our regular in-person events are for BACS members who are business archivists or custodians of business archive collections. Not a BACS member already? Come along to see what BACS has to offer and become a member! (Annual membership starts from £10 for an Individual Member, £20 for Organisational Membership, £50 for Corporate Membership).

Corporate Connections‌

Corporate Connections was an initiative launched by BACS in 2017 (and which ran to 2023) to encourage face to face conversations, bringing together the small community of business archivists and custodians of business archives in Scotland, many of whom work alone to share our experiences. Regular social meet ups were held twice a year, with a rotating theme to kick start conversations and let you meet your peers. Anything and everything business archives was openly discussed among friends. From 2020, due to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, our Corporate Connections events moved online. The BACS team invited those with an interest in business archives to these informal online talks where current challenges, successes and ideas were shared over virtual tea and biscuits (to be provided by the attendees!)