Engaging members of the community in developing a digital archive of stories and memories in Lichfield and District.
Lichfield Time Capsule workshops:
Over two days 60 participants were interviewed as part of the Time-capsule project for Lichfield and District. As part of an ongoing art project entitled ‘A City as Sculpture’, memories, narratives and stories all related to the area were sought and captured in members of the public’s own words. Images and photographs were brought in by members of the local area to be scanned and archived which could be put into the digital time-capsule to be recorded for the next generations to view and hear. The project therefore relied on participants responses in order to build a collection and it was unknown and unexpected what the responses would be like. The participants responded to an advertisement in the local paper and via social media networks to know the date and time of the event. The participants could also fill in a postcard (either anonymously or not) to write their story if they wanted to. An array of narratives was collected. The depiction of Lichfield was different for everyone, some remembered their past childhoods growing up in the area and described what it was like, and others were visitors and described their experiences presently no matter how long or short their stay in the city.
Burntwood Time capsule workshops:
2 days at Burntwood library proved to open the doors for an exciting project. Time-capsule was all about collecting digitally memories and ideas and thoughts and responses from local people about local history and burying this for future generations to discover. During these sessions – 71 people were kind enough to record their thoughts with our social anthropologist Kathryn and another 101 memories were recorded on ‘Postcards from Burntwood’.
Interviewing members of the local community during the sessions.
We had over 700 people come and talk, look and engage with the research material over the 2 day project
below are examples of the postcards collected showing memories from the local community: