Jo Bath
Oral History Archivist
Beamish Museum, Regional Resource Centre, Stanley, Co. Durham, DH9 0RG
Telno:
Email: jo.bath@ohs.org.uk

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Sheila Forster
Freelance oral historian
Co. Durham
Telno: 07986363219
Email: sheila.forster@ohs.org.uk

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Janette Hilton
Project Director
Living History (North East) Limited, The Regional Oral History Centre, The Old Donnison School, Church Walk, East End, Sunderland SR1 2BN
Telno: 0191 5654835
Email: janette.hilton@lhne.co.uk

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Kath Smith
Project Manager
Remembering the Past, Resourcing the Future Project, North Shields Library, Howard House, 54a Saville Street, North Shields NE30 1NT
Telno: 0191 6435281
Email: admin@memoriesnorthtyne.org.uk

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County Durham

Our Town is an intergenerational project that sets out to explore the heritage, cultural traditions and social roots of Newton Aycliffe in County Durham. Founded in 1947 under the New Towns Act of 1946, Newton Aycliffe is the oldest new town in the north of England. The project will look particularly at the industrial heritage of the town and the changes it has seen over the years.
The project will offer young people opportunities to research and discover how the community has changed over the decades. They will also be able to focus on how the town's industry influenced socio-economic factors and demographic changes over the last 64 years, and how these impacted on communities. Our Town will bring together young people, adults and the elderly, oral historians, archivists, and a local community film company to establish a living memory for future generations. 10 young people will achieve Bronze Arts Award Level 1 qualification on the NVQ framework for film-making as wells as receiving a reference and a certificate of attendance for their National Record of Achievement.
(Brian Wise – Project Manager)

Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM) 2010 saw the 150th anniversary of South Shields Museum & Art Gallery (built in 1860 as the South Shields Mechanics Institute, becoming the town’s first free public library and museum in the 1870s). To celebrate this milestone a major exhibition, History in the Making, was staged at the museum, celebrating the history behind the building over the last century and a half. Adam Bell, TWAM Assistant Keeper of Social History, interviewed library staff who had worked in the building prior to the library’s move into new premises in 1976, discovering what it was like to work in South Shields Public Library in the 1950s through to the 1970s and recording interviewees’ memories of other staff members, library users and working practices. Former curators and museum staff members from the post 1976 period were also interviewed, recording how the museum evolved up to the present day and, of course, the memories of the townsfolk of South Shields, who have used the building over the years, either in its days as a joint library and museum or latterly, as a dedicated museum & art gallery, were also captured. Excerpts from these oral history interviews were used in History in the Making via listening posts and as quotes on interpretation panels and object labels.

Other oral history interviews recently conducted at South Shields Museum include a number of interviews recording local people’s memories of working at and enjoying the products of ‘Wright’s Biscuits Ltd.’, once a prominent South Shields based employer. One interviewee, who had worked at Wright’s in the late 1930s and 1940s, described how the factory was run during the 2nd World War, when the ovens operated 24 hours a day, producing biscuits for the armed forces. They even kept going through air raids. For their commitment to productivity and the war effort, each employee received a £1 bonus on VE Day.

At Discovery Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne, oral history recordings recently collected include interviews with Nissan employees about their working life; an interview with Lauren Luke – a well known South Shields girl made famous for posting make-up tutorials on You Tube; and an interview with the designer of the ‘Tyne bike’ which was recently added to the TWAM collection. TWAM recently accepted a collection of oral history recordings from the Pakistan Cultural Society's Islamic Heritage project, and Sarah Cotton, TWAM Keeper of Contemporary Collecting, is hoping to do some oral histories as part of the forthcoming exhibition, Something Old, Something New, which takes a look at the history of weddings and wedding traditions.
adam.bell@twmuseums.org.uk , sarah.cotton@twmuseums.org.uk

Local Heroes Age UK County Durham continues its intergenerational work by funding oral history training for the Year 10 pupils of Parkside Sports College in Willington.  The pupils are planning to produce a book and an exhibition based on the oral history interviews conducted with local heroes who live in their school’s catchment area.  For information on Age UK intergenerational projects visit www.countydurham-ig-network.org.uk

The Denes Oral History Project Groundwork North-East has received £37,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to make a film of the memories of the six parks that make up ‘The Denes’. This project will compliment Darlington Council’s successful HLF bid to make huge improvements to the parks which stretch across two wards in the town from North Road to Cockerton.

Groundwork and the Friends of the Denes will record people’s memories and experiences of the Denes. Lisa Kwok, who is co-ordinating the project, said that it would create a variety of training opportunities and teach volunteers new skills. After oral history training the volunteers will visit care homes, community centres and schools to gather memories. From the oral history recordings they will create a touring exhibition of the Brinkburn Denes which will visit local libraries, schools as well as the Darlington Railway Museum. Children from local primary schools will be invited to re-enact the memories for a DVD and a book and online blog will also be available at the end of the project.

Leadgate Through Time This was a project carried out with Year 1 pupils (age 5 and 6 years) of Leadgate Infants School, Leadgate History Group and Redwell Hills residential home.  The children took part in supervised walks around the village of Leadgate, County Durham, comparing the appearance and uses of a number of buildings over three periods of time: the earliest for which records could be found; the 1960’s; and the present day.

The children then explored the history of the buildings – and other memories of growing up in the area, with older people. The original idea had been to work with residents of Redwell Hills Care Home, but snow and severe weather conditions resulted in a change of plan. Instead grandparents, great-grandparents and other family members were invited into the school to discuss and explore changes over the years with the children.

The highlight of this charming intergenerational project was the interaction between the children and the older people. After some simple training in recording the children used special child-friendly microphones to record interviews about living and growing up in Leadgate with their parents, grand-parents and with other members of their school year. The main impact of the project was that children and adults alike learnt new things about the history and heritage of their area and that the children were able to make connections between their own lives and those of their grandparents. The project also helped to strengthen links between the school and the local community. http://www.durhamintime.org.uk/3G/index.htm

Culture Shock! has become one of the largest digital storytelling projects in the world and has engaged with nearly 600 participants, who have created their own digital stories inspired by museum and gallery collections.  All these digital stories have been accessioned into the museum collections as part of our contemporary collecting policy.
The digital stories are short, personal pieces of audio visual that people have made for themselves using photographs, sound, moving image or animation and each one usually lasts for about 2-3 minutes. 
Whilst digital storytelling is distinct from oral history this project has built on and complements important oral history work undertaken by the project partners and other museums in the region.      
For more information about the project and to see all the stories made you can visit our website - www.cultureshock.org.uk

The Middlesbrough 86 Project documents the history of Middlesbrough Football Club through oral recordings and the collection of people’s memorabilia. The project examines the history of the club from its conception in 1886 to the present day, with a focused interest in the year of 1986 when the football club was saved from liquidation by a consortium of business owners, including now Chairman and local self-made business man Steve Gibson.
People also have the opportunity to contribute audio, video and photographic memories, along with memorabilia, in order to establish a full sociological and historical picture. This will be hosted on a project website to be shared with the world and hard copies preserved for the future in Teesside Archives.
(Sheila Forster)

Beamish Museum

North East Labour History society are undertaking, in conjuction with the WEA, a heritage lottery funded project "Mapping Popular Politics". This has an archival strand, with volunteers searching archives and cataloging material, and also an oral history strand. Around 15 volunteers so far have been trained in interview technique and have begun to interview on popular politics in its widest sense, with early recordings coming from the history of the Co-op movement.
(Jo Bath)

Tyne & Wear

Living History (North East) Regional Oral History Centre

The 2011 Oral History Society Annual Conference, Creation, Destruction, and Memory: Oral History and Regeneration took place at The University of Sunderland. This was the conference’s fist outing to the region and consequently a significant milestone for Living History (North East). Living History (North East) intend to build on this development and strengthen the regional network with a new programme of activities and meetings in the coming year. The conference raised the profile of oral history for the region.

A number of organisations have received HLF funding for projects and asked LHNE to support training and development of projects. These include;

Groundwork North East, which supports people and organisations to make changes to create better neighbourhoods, working with many projects in communities. One such project is Doxford Park; this project is based around a small park area in the west of the city. To compliment any restoration, memories are being collected through past gardeners and local people.

North East Civic Trust received training for staff to support project development across the region.

1960’s Reminiscence Project. This project worked with young teenagers from an organisation known in the region as ESPA (Educational Services for People with Autism) and young people form Whitley Bay High School and older volunteers from Living History (North East). The project worked as an intergenerational project recording and developing memories from older volunteers of the 1960’s. These memories were then developed by the students into a piece of reminiscence theatre that took place in a 1960’s Home; re assembled in a grade I listed redundant church.

Oral History and Community History: An Outreach Project. This project has been funded through the Sunderland Local authority to support the development of oral history networks within the city. This was a response to the International conference of 2011. Funding was secured for the East and North sides of the city to work with 6 other groups to develop skills and resources for local communities. In addition a new loan system for equipment would be established to support recording oral histories at a local level. Living History (North East) is leading this project and hope to extend it to the West and the south of the city.

Seaburn and Roker.  Sunderland City Council supported the development of a number of oral history recordings to support environmental developments and marketing of the areas of the seafront in Sunderland known as Seaburn  and Roker.

DIG. I.T. Sunderland Heritage Forum. This HLF project was completed in August 2011.. The process, development and oral histories are compiled onto an edited DVD. Archive recordings were used to accompany the findings made on the archaeological dig, as an intact street was unearthed and was identified as an earlier street from a thriving community.

Remembering the Past Resourcing The Future. The latest theme that we are collecting material for is 'shops and shopping'. Currently we are working with the members of the Live at Home Scheme in Hawkey's Lane Methodist Church to put together a picture of the shopping experience in North Shields in years gone by.
(Janette Hilton)