Meet Our Networkers in South West England

Regional networker

Garry Tregidga

Regional networker

Marilyn Tucker

Special Interest Group Co-ordinator

Craig Fees

My oral history roots are in family, and I came by way of theatre and a 45 minute interview with a prominent Los Angeles actor where I forgot to take the recorder off pause, to Leeds and the Cotswolds as a PhD student in the Institute of Dialect and Folklife Studies where the local community of Chipping Campden sent me galloping on the lifelong road of learning about oral history I’m still engaged in. Oral history was central to the archive and study centre I was asked to establish and developed over thirty years, which was devoted to therapeutic, care and educational environments – schools, prisons, psychiatric units, children’s homes, communities – which shaped my practice, and understanding of oral history as a tool for building community, and sense of self, place, and belonging. I’m an Honorary Research Fellow in the History of Medicine at the University of Birmingham, course author and tutor in Oral History in the Centre for Archive and Information Studies at the University of Dundee, and within the OHS am a Trustee, with a special role working with and for Special Interest Groups, a Regional Networker, and a British Library National Sound Archive/Oral History Society trainer.

Trustee

Fiona Cosson

Regional Networker

John Burgess

On reflection my involvement with oral history began, albeit unwittingly, when I was given a reel to reel tape recorder as a present for my fourteenth birthday. I fondly remember my first ‘interview’ when I recorded my grandmother recalling her childhood memories in her beautiful soft Somerset voice. From an even earlier age I became fascinated with tape recording from watching on black and white T.V. how the BBC made radio programmes. This fired my childhood imagination and an old shoe box became my make believe tape recorder attached to a long piece of string tied to a stick which was my microphone. This early fascination with sound recording led eventually to me joining the BBC and many wonderful years in radio, working on both sides of the microphone. When I retired from the BBC and reluctant to ‘hang up the microphone’ I joined the OHS, immersed myself in oral history – and I love it! As an OHS regional networker in the south west I am privileged to be involved with numerous wonderful oral history projects – many over the years and I am delighted to offer my help, advice and training to anyone or any group embarking on oral history.