Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
The Hamilton Commission into improving representation of Black people in UK motorsport
In June 2020, Lewis Hamilton announced his partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineering to launch The Hamilton Commission, a standalone piece of research that will aim to improve the representation of Black people in UK motorsport.
Lewis Hamilton started his racing career in Formula One 14 years ago, and was the first driver of colour in the sport. Today, he remains the only Black driver. More importantly, Lewis recognises the lack of diversity in Formula One, from its drivers to those in the garage and the engineers in the factories. This issue of diversity in motorsport is something Lewis has been vocal about for many years.
However, after winning his Sixth World Championship in December 2019, he saw each team’s ‘end of season’ photo and saw yet again there were few people of colour in them and he decided he needed to do more.
Lewis feels strongly that in order to understand how to make positive change within the sport, it’s imperative to understand the barriers to its lack of diversity. As a result, Lewis formed The Hamilton Commission to identify the key barriers to recruitment and progression of Black people in UK motorsport, and to provide actionable recommendations to overcome them.
Motorsport is a unique sport in the range of roles and responsibilities on a team, particularly for individuals specialising in STEM subjects. The Hamilton Commission will present an opportunity to simultaneously address the under-representation of Black people in UK motorsport and the STEM sector. Improving diversity and inclusion across all engineering and technology sectors is a key priority of the Royal Academy of Engineering and as an Honorary Fellow, Lewis has partnered with the Academy to undertake this research.
The Hamilton Commission has been in development since December 2019 but publicly launched to coincide with the heightened media and public interest in the Black Lives Matter movement, and greater scrutiny of race inequality in society.
“Despite my success in the sport, the institutional barriers that have kept F1 highly exclusive persist. It is not enough to point to me, or to a single new black hire, as a meaningful example of progress. Thousands of people are employed across this industry and that group needs to be more representative of society.”
- Lewis Hamilton, MBE
