Does the archives sector have the skillset it needs to perform to the best of its ability? What can archivists learn from other sectors and from non-professionals? In times of upheaval or disaster especially, can archive staff cope without help from outside the sector?

The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) suffered a devastating fire in its celebrated Mackintosh Building in 2014 which affected both the building and GSA's Archives and Collections. A recovery project which seeks to stabilise and rebuild GSA’s holdings through conservation, documentation, digitisation and collections management has been underway since March 2015. Though professional archive skills rightly underpin every aspect of the recovery project, the Archives and Collections team are discovering that a workforce with a diverse range of skills is essential not only to ensure the success of the recovery project, but also to aid the general running of the service, and as such are drawing on non-traditional archive skills - and non-professional staff - to undertake many of the tasks related to this work.

This paper will examine how recent HLF-funded Skills for the Future traineeships and a work placement programme including collaborations between GSA and The University of Glasgow, The University of Edinburgh and the University of the West of Scotland have benefited GSA’s Archives and Collections service, as well as how non-professional archive staff and volunteers with unique and diverse skills have significantly aided the fire recovery project in areas such as IT, photography and image editing, conservation, repackaging, archaeology and project management.