In late 2017 the Ballast Trust secured funding from Renfrewshire Council to establish a 6 month graduate trainee role as an Archives Assistant. I was appointed in January and have now been with the Ballast Trust for just over 2 months so it seems like an appropriate time to say hello and begin to update on some of the projects and tasks I have been getting up to!

So far I have been working through box listing Rankin Shipbuilding material. In these two boxes I found over 200 negatives and glass negatives which I then began to scan using a flatbed scanner. Through this process I have gained a more secured understanding in handling both negatives and glass plate negatives and the process of setting up the scanner. These negatives corresponded to a book which detailed what the image was. From this we discovered the negatives were images of repair work which had been carried out in yard. 

I have also started regularly writing for our blog with monthly favourites and weekly ‘Friday photo’ posts, alongside content on women working in industry, with focus on female tracers who worked in both engineering firms and in later years the ship yards. As 2018 is the Year of Young People, this weekly series on the blog is a welcomed addition and will hopefully give readers an insight into the work carried out at the Trust and my role as a trainee. I'll also be updating our twitter under the #BallastTrainee hashtag.

This year also marks 30 years since the beginning of the Trust's operations in 1988 and as part of our 30th anniversary celebrations we will be carrying out a twitter campaign #Ballast30 where every day we will be sharing facts on the Trust from our favourite Bill Lind quote to a typical day at the Trust! Keep an eye out for this starting 1st June!

~ Jennifer Brunton