Context
Communities only exist when people feel or agree they are part of one. The Living Story Project helped the residents of Rodbourne Swindon, to use a wide range of archive sources to explore the history of their locality and create an enhanced sense of place and community identity.
Participants were supported to set up a community archive, undertake oral history recording and gain skills in the creative and technical aspects of making a film.
Partners
The National Monuments Record worked with St Augustine's Church and Rodbourne Methodist Church to make initial contacts with local residents. Both Churches continue to support the project.
Swindon Local Studies Library, Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office and STEAM - Museum of the Great Western Railway Company, made accessible their archive resources to the project and supported open-days at the local Community Centre
Aims
- Develop a methodology which excites people about using archives to enjoy and learn from their own historic environment and creates an enhanced sense of place and community identity.
- Create a learning resource which links formal archives (from the NMR and locally held) to informal archives belonging to the community and supports a series of activities designed around an investigative problem-solving approach.
Who Took Part
Rodbourne is a late-Victorian suburb of Swindon, developed out of a demand for housing for workers of the Great Western Railway Company.
Over 220 people registered an interest in the project and contributed either by attending events, loaning photographs or sharing memories. The main interest came from people currently living in Rodbourne but some were ex-residents from as far afield as Spain and Australia.
A smaller group of 22 people became ' Street Detectives' to investigate in detail the history of their local area. The majority of participants were in the age range 60 plus and 36% were over 70 years of age.
When the results were shared with the wider community, typically over 600 people attended each of the open days.
