Martin Astell
Sound Archivist
Essex Sound and Video Archive, Essex Record Office, Wharf Road, Chelmsford, Essex, CM2 6YT
Telno: 01245 244624
Email: martin.astell@essexcc.gov.uk

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Julia Drake

Address not provided
Telno:
Email: j.e.drake@talk21.com

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Jonathan Draper
Archivist, Norfolk Sound Archive
The Archive Centre, Martineau Lane, Norwich, NR1 2DQ
Telno: 01603 222692
Email: jonathan.draper@norfolk.gov.uk

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Dien Luu
Luton Voices Co-ordinator
Museums Luton, Luton Cultural Services Trust, Wardown Park, Old Bedford Road, Luton, LU2 7HA
Telno: 01582 548486
Email: dien.luu@luton.gov.uk

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Carmela Semeraro
Sands of Time Project Officer (P/T)
The Green Sand Trust, The White House, Suite 5, Hockliffe Street, Leighton Buzzard, LU7 1HD
Telno: 01525 378101
Email: Carmela.semeraro@greensandtrust.org

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Juliana Vandegrift
Freelance oral historian
Ipswich
Telno:
Email: Juliana.vandegrift@btinternet.com

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Bedfordshire

Since April 2008 I have been working at the Greensand Trust on a very special project, ‘Sands of Time’. This is an oral history based project to collect interviews, artefacts and photographs from residents of the Leighton Buzzard area. The aim is to celebrate and make known the contribution to the economy and local heritage that the sand industry has made over 100 years. I have done most of the interviews and collection of material, and I am now working on the second stage of the project: the selection, preparation and collation of all the material for dissemination. This will happen in a variety of ways to maximise access to the material locally and internationally:

• Virtual Museum holding the bulk of audio/visual material collected. Part of this will be a Sound Trail available to download.
• deliver all material collected in print & CDs to Leighton Buzzard Library, and deposit all material collected in print & CDs to Bedfordshire & Luton Archives; and service and facilitate international access by inclusion in their website catalogue
• deliver education resource packs to schools to enable teachers to utilise material collected in line with the National Curriculum
• permanent sand trail marks and plaques to include interpretation and art work
• installation of plaques and art work to provide further knowledge of the sand heritage to people who might not gain information in other ways
• have a massive launch party before I leave the Greensand Trust!

Since September 2008 I have also been working part-time as a Community Historian at Bedford Museum. After the initial stage of meeting, getting to know and form partnerships, I have been working with a lot of groups and individuals on various projects in the community part of the Audience Development Project. The oral history interviews I am doing at the moment are going to be part of the Museum Archive, and next year some extracts will be used in a major exhibition on ‘Working in Bedford’. Watch this space…

Carmela Semeraro

Essex

This year saw the launch of a CD called How to Speak Essex. It was created by the Essex Sound and Video Archive at the Essex Record Office, and contains examples of Essex accents and dialect from all over the county. When the CD was launched it achieved widespread media coverage in East Anglia, in London and in a number of national newspapers. The initial run of the CD sold out within four months, demonstrating a widespread interest in accents, dialect and the voices of ordinary people. The Record Office is planning a reissue.
The Essex Sound and Video Archive has received recordings from two major oral history projects: the ‘Circles Memories Project’ and the ‘Castle Street Project’. The ‘Circles Memories Project’ gathered memories of residents of the Woodgrange Drive Estate in Southend-on-Sea. This estate was built on the site of the former Kursaal pleasure park, so memories were also gathered relating to its former life. The project was funded by the housing association which runs the estate, employing a project leader to carry out most of the interviews and marshal a group of volunteers. It involved a number of group sessions where people could share memories, and resulted in an exhibition at the estate’s community centre.
The ‘Castle Street Project’ has been carried out entirely by volunteers in Saffron Walden. Its aim has been to document the history of every house and shop in one of the town’s most interesting streets. Castle Street has recently become somewhat gentrified, but within living memory was one of the poorest areas of the town. According to much of the testimony collected, the street had a self-contained community and a particular character within the town. In addition to the recordings themselves we have also received two very nicely bound volumes containing transcripts of each interview.
An oral history project gathering memories of Witham Town Park is continuing. This project is being carried out by Braintree District Council with funding provided by Essex County Council. The Chelmsford and Essex Museum has recently launched new popular culture galleries housed in a newly-built extension. These galleries include oral history and other recordings collected by the museum staff relating to popular music, youth culture, and other forms of entertainment in Chelmsford.
The Essex Sound and Video Archive has also received a treasured recording from the University of Essex. It is an open reel tape recording of a lecture given at the university in October 1972 by George Ewart Evans. The author of Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay – whose centenary was celebrated in Blaxhall this year – delivered the 8th Burrows Lecture on the subject of ‘Oral Tradition and History’ including a number of recordings he had made as part of his research.

Martin Astell

Suffolk

In the last year I have been contacted by various oral history projects for advice about interviewing techniques, budget proposals for oral history projects and recording equipment. Oral history seems to become more and more popular each year, which is good news! These projects include ‘Lap of Honour’, which is a Suffolk Artlink project supported by Suffolk County Council, English Heritage, Suffolk Coastal District Council, Mid Suffolk District Council, Babergh District Council and Colchester and Ipswich Museum Service.
‘Lap of Honour’ celebrates Suffolk’s Olympic and Paralympic heritage from 1948 - 2012. In the county of Suffolk there are many people who have either taken part in past Olympics or who are hoping to compete in the 2012 Games. The project is recording and preserving these athletes’ stories, as part of a wider project. You will be able to hear and see these interviews through TV and radio broadcasts, websites, pod casts and a touring exhibition. The team is also developing an education package for children in Suffolk.
I have worked on four main projects as an oral history consultant in the past twelve months. The first was ‘Holding Back the Tide’, which captured oral history recordings of coastal communities in East Anglia on behalf of an environmental charity called CoastNet. A touring exhibition was put together using the material and has been exhibited in towns such as Great Yarmouth, Colchester and Aldeburgh.
Two of the other projects have involved working with Bishops Park College in Jaywick, to produce two short films inspired by the heritage of Jaywick as a holiday resort and coastal flood area. I taught the students interviewing techniques and helped them to conduct historical research and oral history interviews which were filmed. A media person was hired to teach the students filming skills and sound recording. Both films (Jaywick: Living on the Edge and Lost Treasure in Jaywick) were ‘premiered’ at the historical Electric Palace Cinema in Harwich, which the students really enjoyed.
A fourth project was with Eastern Angles Theatre Company as an oral history interviewer for a play called Getting Here. The play was inspired by true stories of members of Ipswich’s Portuguese, Polish and Afro-Caribbean communities. Getting Here is a promenade performance lasting just over an hour, and was premiered at the Ip-Art Festival in June/July 2009. The play is based on ten oral history interviews from each of the three communities and the idea is a pilot play for potentially a similar one in Peterborough later in the year.
Finally, 2009 is the centenary of the birth of George Ewart Evans and the Blaxhall Archive Group held a weekend of celebratory events including a programme of talks from key oral historians, workshops, folk music and dancing, films, plays and exhibitions celebrating Suffolk local history.

Juliana Vandegrift