Yorkshire Regional Network
North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire
Clare Jenkins
17 Crimicar Lane, Sheffield, S10 4FA
Telno:
Email: c.jenkins@hud.ac.uk
John Tanner
Project Manager, Barnsley Museums Service
Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council, Town Hall, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2TA
Telno: 07738 475394
Email: johntanner@barnsley.gov.uk
Van Wilson
York Oral History Society
Telno: 01904 630970 (after 6 pm)
Email: vann@vanalexinamay.freeserve.co.uk
Michelle Winslow
Research Fellow
Academic Unit of Supportive Care, University of Sheffield, Sykes House, Little Common Lane, Sheffield S11 9NE
Telno: 0114 2620174 ext 28
Email: m.winslow@sheffield.ac.uk
South Yorkshire
The South Yorkshire network held a successful 10th regional meeting on 27 June at Sheffield Hallam University. Much stimulating discussion arose from three fascinating presentations. Julie Beresford introduced the ‘Women in South Yorkshire Industry’ project, which is mapping existing collections and creating a new archive of twenty interviews. Carrie Ford gave insight into volunteers’ experiences on the project. Emily Uren, Doncaster Gate Hospital Heritage Project, explored the benefits and challenges of interlocking oral history with a wider community-focused project. The project poses interesting questions about interviewees’ identification with institutions such as hospitals. Interviewees have recalled experiences that are transient at the time, but life-changing in their impact.
Jayne Dowle spoke about supporting groups and individuals wanting to publish community oral history in Barnsley. Discussion ranged from the practicalities of what can be a difficult process to complex questions raised by editing transcripts into a publishable and accessible form. During the course of the day, participants reported on developments across the region, including the Centre for Oral History Research at Huddersfield University, which is going from strength to strength, and the launch of the project to create the new Barnsley People’s Museum and Archives Centre (opening 2012).
Opportunities for future development of the OHS network in the region were identified, for example, support for new projects, a means to identify opportunities for volunteers and interviewees when a project ends, and working with archives to support the digitisation, documentation and depositing of existing and new oral history collections.
We can also report on a number of projects in the region. ‘Time on My Hands’, Withernsea Lighthouse Museum is a project based in Holderness that is recording memories of life from the turn of the last century until the late 1970s. The stories are video recorded and illustrated with contemporary images to produce DVDs by Lyz Turner, Project Officer (email lyzt@msn.com). The films are screened in the area and archived at museums in Withernsea, Hornsea and Hedon, and the Treasure House in Beverley. Lyz is also developing audio content for the ‘Walking with Wilberforce’ tour in Hull, which will be downloadable from the website early in the new year at http://www.wilberforcetrail.co.uk/. Additionally, for her MA at Huddersfield University, Lyz is researching Prisoner of War camps in Holderness, interviewing people who remember the camps as well as surviving prisoners who chose to remain in the area.
During 2009-10, the Heritage Lottery-funded South Yorkshire Transport Museum Oral History Project aims to create an archive by recording and transcribing memories of around 30 former South Yorkshire based transport employees. With volunteer interviewers and a project transcriber, Sam Smith, it is recording and presenting the stories of individuals at all levels of employment. Between them, they represent many forms of transport - tram, bus, coach, rail, road haulage, and waterways. The recordings will be used with photos and artefacts from the museum collection to create displays and interpretation material for the museum. There are plans to develop an interactive website and make recordings available on CD. The project is still in its early stages and would be very pleased to hear from anyone in the South Yorkshire region who has an interesting transport story to tell. If you would like to know more, please contact the project manager, Liz Smith, email lizsmit@gmail.com or visit the website at www.sytm.co.uk.
‘Wortley Heritage’, with Jenny Marchant, involves workers and volunteers from Heeley City Farm, Sheffield, in the collection of memories about Wortley village. The farm brought the walled gardens at Wortley Hall back into production in 2004 and Heritage Lottery funding has since allowed them to explore the history of the site. The oral history project aims to gather information about village life, Wortley Hall, the hall’s walled gardens, and the American Servicemen who were stationed at the Hall during the Second World War. Selected clips of recordings are available on the project’s website, with more to follow. For more information visit www.wortleyheritage.org.uk.
The South Yorkshire Women's Development Trust have completed an intensive project that has mapped existing collections relating to women's role in South Yorkshire Industry and created a new collection of interviews carried out by volunteers. The completion of the project has been marked by a touring exhibition, public oral history workshops across the region and a website that is being completed at the present time. See http://sywdt.org/pages/home.htm.
The Doncaster Gate Heritage Project, recently completed, has explored the history of the former Doncaster Gate Hospital in Rotherham through oral history, research and creative activities with a host of schools, colleges and community groups. See the website at www.doncastergateheritage.org.uk.
Rotherham United Football Club have been awarded a Heritage Lottery grant to run an oral history project exploring the fascinating links in the borough between the coal industry and football in the 1940s and 1950s. This was a time of considerable change in the area and the project promises to produce exciting results. Information at this link.
An award of almost £3 million has been given by the Heritage Lottery Fund to transform the distinctive Barnsley Town Hall into the first-ever Barnsley Museum. It will have an integrated archives centre and will be preceded by a major community engagement campaign over three years to create new collections. A key focus is on facilitating multi-voiced interpretations of the collections and exhibitions through community-led oral history. This includes a new ‘Barnsley: Past and Present’ Sound Archive, including the full digitisation of existing holdings, which is already taking place in line with new policies and procedures for the depositing of digital collections.
The Cooper Gallery in Barnsley has also been awarded a Heritage Lottery grant to re-interpret their collections, a focus of which will be volunteer-led oral history with staff and visitors involved with the gallery over its 90 year history, allowing multiple voices to interpret both the site and its collections. University Campus Barnsley has also submitted a bid to the HLF to support a project exploring its history, which goes back to the early 1930s when it was established as one of the first technical colleges in the country.
Sheffield Archives has accepted a large oral history collection created by Sheffield historian Bill Moore, who died recently. Bill was widely recognised for his work over many decades after graduating from Cambridge in the 1930s. This is an excellent collection charting the history of the labour movement and a fascinating array of social movements throughout the 20th century, with interviews ranging from suffragettes and peace campaigners to leading trade unionists and political activists. OHS Regional Networker John Tanner and Janette Martin from the University of Leeds and Society for the Study of Labour History are working with Bill's family and Sheffield archivists to document and provide contextual interpretation for the collection, and hope to mark its completion with an exhibition and publication in early 2011.
Museums Sheffield and Barnsley Museum and Heritage Service are two of the partners delivering 'Precious Cargo', Yorkshire's contribution to 'Stories of the World', a major constituent of London 2012's Cultural Olympiad. Over forthcoming years, a host of activities and projects will be taking place, focusing on intergenerational activity to explore museum and archival collections in the region, with oral history playing a key role.
The oral history service of Sheffield Macmillan Unit for Palliative Care is in its third year of working with people with life-threatening conditions. We now have Karen Hitchlock, Freelance Photographer, on the team and can therefore offer audio recordings and photographs to people who, due to their disease condition, may find it difficult to communicate their individuality. For information please contact Michelle Winslow, email m.winslow@sheffield.ac.uk.
Michelle Winslow and John Tanner
West Yorkshire
The MA in Oral History at the University of Huddersfield has just finished its first year with six part-time students who will now be going into their final year. The Friends of Beaumont Park, Huddersfield has just received a £17,000 development grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund in order to take it forward for a larger submission for £200,000. The project is primarily based around reconstructing Beaumont Park’s old bandstand but there is a small oral history element attached to the bid. The group have received some training and are about to embark on conducting twenty or so oral history interviews which will be uploaded onto their website. See http://www.fobp.co.uk.
The three year ‘Up and Under’ Rugby League project finished on 30 September 2009. It is anticipated that the website will be uploaded onto the Rugby Football League’s main website and that it will be maintained by the RFL. More than 100 interviews have been carried out and most of these have been uploaded onto the project’s main website (http://www.rugbyleagueoralhistory.co.uk/). Many of these interviews have also been transcribed and a book of the interviews will be published early next year. This has been a highly successful project that has attracted viewers and comment from all over the world. It is also anticipated that the transcripts and original interviews will be archived at the University of Huddersfield. A conference on oral history and sport was held earlier this year at the university. The success of the project is largely down to Project Manager, Dr Rob Light.
‘Two Minutes Silence’, an MLA-funded ‘Their Past, Your Future’ project, was set up to mark the 90th anniversary this November of the Remembrance Day two-minute silence. The team, based at Huddersfield University’s Centre for Oral History Research, have worked with pupils at two schools within the town, university students, college students at the Imperial War Museum North, and one group of elderly people, to produce interview clips, photographs and poems about conflict and peace. To date, there are over 20 edited interviews on the website – www.thetwominutesilence.co.uk – with more awaiting uploading. Some of these were with refugees and asylum seekers, including a woman from Iraq who has first-hand experience of war. One member of the team is now making a Radio 4 programme on the silence, whilst another put together an appropriately two-minute PhotoStory about the project which is now on the My Yorkshire website at http://www.myyorkshire.org/, together with some audio clips, transcripts and photographs.
Asian Voices is now in the second year of a two year HLF funded project collating memories of the first Asian immigrants into Huddersfield. The website (http://www.asianvoices.org.uk/) is continuing to expand with more than thirty interviews and many more ready for uploading. The website also has a successful blog written by Project Manager Nafhesa Ali which is currently receiving 10,000 hits per month! Nafhesa has been working with various schools in Huddersfield and is planning to produce an educational pack as one of the outcomes of the project. Barnsley College has put in a bid for Young Roots funding from the HLF to carry out an oral history of the former Mining and Technical College. It is anticipated that a decision will be know by November.
Stephen Kelly & Clare Jenkins
Regional Network Meeting, South Yorkshire
Venue: SheffieldDay of event: 24th April 2010
Email: m.winslow@sheffield.ac.uk
10.00am - 4.00pm
The 11th annual event of the South Yorkshire Regional Network, Oral History Society
This free event at a venue in Sheffield city centre is an opportunity for oral historians in the region to meet and share experiences. The day is informal with project presentations and discussion.
For more information and to book a place, please contact Michelle Winslow: m.winslow@sheffield.ac.uk
Programme
10.00 Arrive - coffee/tea
10.15 Introductions
10.45 Katharine Boardman (Heritage Lottery Fund) ‘Applying for HLF Small Grants’
11.15 Questions and discussion
11.45 Break
12.00 Sam Smith (Rotherham Archives) ‘Songs of Steel’
12.30 Questions and discussion
13.00 Lunch (not provided)
14.00 Oral history news update
14.15 John Tanner. Barnsley Museum and Archives Centre update
14.30 Anne Bradley (National Coal Mining Museum) ‘Memories of the Coal Queens’
15.00 Questions and discussion
15.30 Round up
16.00 Close