HERITAGE PROJECTS
Voices of Blackwell Parish
Collecting locals residents’ oral histories
Local resident’s oral histories come to life
Voices of Blackwell Parish is all about preserving our local heritage. It’s a oral history project, where residents were interviewed and shared their tales of life in the parish.
For this project we and external community workers that we contracted, consulted with the community to find out what histories they wanted to preserve. One of the key findings in this consultation was that residents who had lived here through the ex-industrial heydays felt that all of the local history was invisible and would soon be lost. The pit wheels in the parish were the only reminders (as well as the falling down social clubs). So, we wanted to do something positive to preserve the stories so started the oral history project.
Andrew Dobb, a local podcast host worked with the Greater Creative team to deliver some much needed development workshops to support our learning on how to do interviews and use the recording kit.
After this training, armed with a nostalgia biscuit box to entice storytelling and some old tuffies, we went out to gather some local tales!
Four of these tales we edited into short 60 second clips and commissioned the fabulous Kino Bino Animation Studios based in Leicester to bring these stories to life visually these animations called: Welfare; The Miners Song; Locomotive Life; and Canaries Down the Pit can be viewed below:
To mark the celebration of the Queens Jubilee celebrations in 2022 these animations got their premier at Blackwell’s Outdoor Cinema Event.
