From 2009 to 2011, we worked closely with AIA to create an archives and display space in their historic Stubb’s Road HQ. This involved doing a survey of artifacts in offices in Shanghai, Bangkok, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, as well as coordinating input from regional offices such as Korea, Vietnam, Australia and Indonesia.
The vision was to preserve AIA’s long and unique culture in order to demonstrate AIA’s deep roots in the Asia Pacific markets and the role it plays in the insurance industry. And, the end goal of the project was for select AIA staff throughout the region to have easy access to a collection of meaningful materials — for use in marketing campaigns, employee engagement communications, and exhibits/publications created for various external audiences.
We did this by creating a devolved network of information and research resources of historical materials, both hard copy and digital, about AIA and its subsidiaries, centrally monitored by the in Hong Kong.
A series of processes and policy documents were established to coordinate the collection, cataloguing and preservation of local archive items, assist the local market in setting up the local archive according to the AIA Archive Centre guidelines, enter and update the information of items identified into the e-Archive Catalog system and act as the contact point for each market to handle matters related to the local archive.
