The Oral History Collection 2008

Recording local stories

By Georgia C

At the beginning of 2008 the Welcome Stories Project provided free training sessions in Oral History work and some of those who attended joined our team as volunteers.

Since that time we have interviewed around a hundred local people and have recorded their experiences of 'welcome' and belonging' in the local area.

We have recorded stories from people in every age group, from every social background, from different cultural heritages and identities.

Of the many people that we have interviewed, some can trace their families back for generations in the district, some came here many years ago to study or to work and or to be with the person they loved and some are more recently arrived.

Some of the people were interviewed by professional historians, others by volunteers and some of the interviews were carried out by young people in schools.

All of the recordings will be formally deposited at the North West Sound Archive but we will also be putting a lot of the material that we have collected on this website.

Over the next few weeks we hope that you will revisit the site as we add more and more stories and pictures. We hope too that you will want to contribute your own comments, stories and photographs.