Cynthia Brown
Vaughan College, University of Leicester, St Nicholas Circle, Leicester, LE1 4LB
Telno:
Email: cib2@le.ac.uk

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Fiona Cosson
Freelance oral historian
Northampton
Telno: 07941 126 354
Email: fionacosson@hotmail.com

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Colin Hyde
Researcher/Outreach
East Midlands Oral History Archive, Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH
Telno: 0116 2525065
Email: ch38@le.ac.uk

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Christina Raven-Conn
Team Librarian
Local Studies Library, Nottingham Central Library, Angel Row, Nottingham NG1 6HP
Telno: 0115 9152873
Email: Christina.Raven-Conn@nottinghamcity.gov.uk

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Leicestershire & Rutland

A major development this year has been the relocation of the British Library Theatre Archive Project to De Montfort University in Leicester. The project’s physical archive has been transferred from the University of Sheffield to a new dedicated area in the University’s Kimberlin Library, giving scope to expand the collection and eventually make some of it available for public access. The project now aims to explore historical and contemporary theatre in Leicester, building on links between the University and Leicester’s Curve theatre. This strand is being developed by Gary Day, in the University’s Department of English and Creative Writing. See the website at  www.bl.uk/theatrearchive for more information.

Colin Hyde at the East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA) continues to be involved in a number of projects in Leicestershire and Rutland, as well as more widely around the region. One example of the latter is ‘Migration Stories: making a home in the East Midlands’, which enables a wide variety of groups and communities who have moved into the East Midlands since the end of the Second World War to record their stories of settling in the East Midlands and add them to a website and exhibitions. This is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Renaissance East Midlands and Igniting Ambition, and is providing recording equipment and training in how to use it and carry out interviews. Groups involved in the project include the Nottingham Chinese Welfare Association, and the Friends of Thringstone, a former mining village in Leicestershire, who have recorded interviews with coal miners who moved there  from Scotland and the North East of England in the 1960s. The project will continue until 2012.

EMOHA is also involved in a new digital collection of local history resources relating to Leicestershire. The ‘My Leicestershire’ Digital Archive has been funded by JISC (a committee of the higher education funding councils) to create a digital collection of local history resources relating to Leicestershire including oral history interviews, historical films, rare books, historical directories and photographs. The project is a collaborative effort between the University Library, the East Midlands Oral History Archive, the Media Archive for Central England and a number of local history organisations. Recent additions include a film showing Leicestershire framework knitter Martin Green at work in his workshop. Martin is probably the last framework knitter still working commercially in Leicestershire, making and selling shawls and wraps. A new ‘Villages Voices’ project on accent and dialect in Leicestershire and Rutland villages has also been launched recently, bringing together EMOHA, the University of Leicester and the Heritage Warden scheme operated by Leicestershire County Council. The project will run from June 2011 to January 2012, and aims to answer such questions as ‘how important is the local/regional accent and dialect to village inhabitants today?’. Using word lists and a given text, the project will collect audio samples of accents and dialect from different generations, as well as investigating residents’ own perceptions of these. The results will be showcased in 2012 and ultimately form part of a corpus of East Midlands English to be created at the University of Leicester.

Two county museums have recently completed new work on their oral history collections. Harborough Museum has produced an audio guide to the museum to supplement its displays, using extracts from the 200 hours of interviews in its collections. Most of these recorded memories cover the period from the early 1900s, but some stretch back into the 19th century. They include a number of women who worked in the former Symington corset factory in whose building the museum is housed, and part of an interview with Fred Tufts, a First World War veteran, about his experiences on the western front. The oral history collection is available for listening at Harborough Museum by appointment (01858 821085, email HarboroughMuseum@leics.gov.uk). Oral history interviews from the Melton Carnegie Museum’s ‘Taking Part’ project on amateur and professional sport in the Borough of Melton are also available now for listening by appointment at the museum (01664 569946, email meltonmuseum@leics.gov.uk). These include interviews with the secretary of Asfordby Amateurs Ladies & Girls Football Club, members of table tennis, indoor bowls and fencing clubs, the Chairman of Melton Hunt Club, and Robin Bailey, a conker player who has competed at the World Championship. More interviews will be added in the lead up to the 2012 Olympics.

July saw EMOHA host an enjoyable oral history day on the subject of 'Interviewing'. Projects completed recently include the Leicester Oral History Trail and the My Leicestershire website, which features over 100 interviews from the Leicester Oral History Archive and 100 programmes from the Radio Leicester collection. Ongoing projects at EMOHA include an oral history of Leicester's LGBT communities, Migration Stories, and a project with the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland to celebrate 90 years of the British Legion. Future projects include a British Academy funded project which will use EMOHA's collections to investigate local dialect and a project with Leicestershire County Council which will record new examples of local dialect. Also, we have completed digitising recordings from the family of Leicester playwright Joe Orton and have, in the process, found a few interviews about Tony Hancock with people who knew him, such as Kenneth Williams.
(Cynthia Brown & Colin Hyde)

Northamptonshire

Over the past year I have been involved in work mainly beyond the borders of Northamptonshire and the East Midlands. As a network representative, I have provided my thoughts and guidance to queries from a range of people and places, including Grimbsy Town Football Club, Irish Arts Foundation in Leeds, and The Federation of Stadium Communities.

Earlier this year, I finished work on Between the Locks, a two-year intergenerational oral history project which recorded the experiences and memories of people who lived and worked on the upper tidal Thames. Between 2009 and 2010, eleven students from Christ’s School in Richmond recorded the memories of this 'river community' between Richmond and Teddington. As well as recording the testimonies of those working on the River, the students were trained in oral history interview technique and ‘river skills’ such as rowing, boat-building, lock-keeping and willow-spiling.  The recorded testimonies were brought alive through a travelling exhibition and accompanying film. A selection of interview clips is now on YouTube; just search for between the locks.
In April 2011, I set up The Oral History Noticeboard: A noticeboard for Oral History in the UK (http://oralhistorynoticeboard.wordpress.com ). It’s a blog-style noticeboard for oral history news and views. The Noticeboard is for anyone working with, or with an interest in, oral history in the UK. It covers items and issues in both community/local level oral history and oral history in an academic setting. The idea of this blog is that it is open to everyone to post their oral history stuff, like a noticeboard. If you have something to post and share, you can simply be added as a user and you can post your stuff whenever you like; otherwise, we can post on your behalf. You can now find the Noticeboard linked from the Oral History Society’s web homepage and the blogposts on the Society’s Facebook page.

This summer I helped to convene The Oral History Workshop, an oral history speaker seminar and discussion forum which meets at Bishopsgate Institute, London. In August, we enjoyed talks from Owen Collins (University of East London) on ‘George Ewart Evans and the roots of oral history in Britain’ and Hilary Young (Museum of London) on ‘Old Guard v New Recruits: The Open University Oral History Project’. We hope to hold another Workshop during the winter, so watch this space!
I’m currently acting as Project Evaluator for Clarets Creative, ‘a community organisation being creative about preserving stories and memories of Burnley Football Club’ (see http://www.claretscreative.com/ ), whilst also completing my PhD at the University of Northampton, where I am undertaking research into the history of a ‘sense of community using oral testimony.

From October 2011, I will be moving to Lancashire and I look forward to continuing as a Network Representative for the North West!
(Fiona Cosson)

Nottinghamshire

The Local Studies section of Nottingham Central Library continues to support local projects, mainly with advice. We are also happy to receive copies of oral history from local Nottingham and Nottinghamshire projects for archiving and copies for the library’s collection where possible.

Upper Broughton project: Where do we Think we Live?
The Upper Broughton History Group has been running successfully for 8 years, mainly providing stimulating historical entertainment in the form of talks and guided visits, but also publicising other local history events and encouraging involvement.
Recently we have become aware that over 80% of the households in the village have moved in over the last 25 years and have little knowledge of significant events in the earlier life of Upper Broughton, many of these families remain outside the more active village community. We are also aware of a need to capture the changes in village life before they are lost to new generations.  The project we have designed, and which has been awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund Grant of £14.900, hopes to enthuse some of these newer families about history that touches their own houses or past generations of neighbours and aims to encourage them to feel a greater involvement with and understanding of the community.

We plan to provide training for volunteers, from the East Midlands Oral History Archive, in the techniques of oral history and then to interview as many people as we can find who have memories of the village in the first part of the 20th Century. We are structuring our interviews around the themes of; The War, Farming, School, Trades and Crafts and Enjoying Yourself and will be using images from an existing archive of photographs as triggers for discussion.

The theme of The War will also be explored through a Question and Answer session at the local Primary School between their pupils and some of our older residents, material from this will be developed into an Education Resource for the school to keep.
When we have processed the recordings we will use them alongside the photographs in an Exhibition in the Village Hall which we hope all villagers will support, and which will of course also be open to visitors.
Later we plan to set up a History Group Website so that extracts from the recordings can be made available to a world-wide audience.

Lastly we will use the information and views gained from the oral history recordings about three of our themes as starting points from which we will extend research back through the centuries. We aim to produce a deeper picture of Farming, Crafts and Trades and Enjoying Yourself as they were understood by people living in Upper Broughton as far back as the archives will allow.
Information provided by Catherine Jones, Project Leader

‘On the Flats’ Hyson Green history project: (www.hysongreenhistory.org)
The On the Flats’ project is being run by the Partnership Council, a community charity based in Radford.  The Hyson Green flats were built in 1965 and demolished in 1988 to make way for new housing and the Asda supermarket that now stand on the site. They were a well-known landmark in their day and from talking to former residents, the project volunteers have found that many people really enjoyed living there. For example, several ex-residents have told us that the flats were home to a great deal of community spirit.  The project has recently had a series of articles in the local newspaper The Nottingham Post.

Currently there are a few local projects which are awaiting results of their bids to the HLF; they are as follows:-

The History of Radio in the East Midlands:
This project hopes to investigate the history of radio broadcasting in the East Midlands with the help of interested youngsters aged between 13-19 years. They hope to end up with an event/exhibition and oral history recordings, copies of which will be deposited with the local studies library for reference and for loan. They will learn how a broadcast is made and gain practical experience in a studio.
It is to be coordinated by the Notts WMCA.

The history of the Family First at The Croft, Nottingham in the 1960s and 1970s:
Now Heritage is a Community Interest company formed to carry out oral history projects by Barbara Reed, based in Nottingham and her daughter Emma Golby Kirk, who lives in Bristol and has previous experience in media and oral history work. They are putting in a bid to HLF to fund an oral history project about the history of the Family First, particularly at The Croft, Nottingham from 1966 to 1975in the 1960s and 1970s. This large house in Alexandra Park could house eight women and their small children at any one time.
The project aims to interview the early members of staff of the Family First at the Croft.  If successful with their bid and the project goes ahead they have asked to deposit the results of the project, particularly oral history recordings with the Local Studies library.
(Christina Raven-Conn)