Changes to work patterns in the 21st Century
- To explore and celebrate personal histories, heritages, traditions, memories, values, hopes, and life lessons passed from generation to generation, and encourage closer relationships between generations.
- To explore current issues in a distinct and personal way that will reach ordinary individuals.
- To instruct senior citizens on the technicalities of audio recording, including interviewing techniques for oral history.
- The oral histories will be a valuable resource recording how the area has changed and people’s work patterns have changed. The participants will learn how to record this local history.
- To coach senior citizens on using photography effectively.
- To increase the communication between the younger and the older parts of the community.
Working with a group of 12 senior citizens from Poole and Parkstone, Poole museum local history centre and a local oral history worker, we will investigate the difference in working practices from when members of the group of senior citizens started work in the 1940/50s and now. We will seek out local peoples memories of Parkstone, along with memories of the range of work on offer and the type of employment people undertaken over the last sixty years.
Along with conducting audio interviews of people who work in factories/workplaces in Parkstone, we will take their portraits and photograph their workplaces. We will look to re-photograph the Parkstone landscape (factories, shops, industrial units, churches, road systems, etc).
Participants will learn how to use new technology and taught how to conduct audio interviews; digital photography; how to upload photos to a website, alongside keeping a blog and producing a podcast. They will also be introduced to Poole Museum local history archive and how to search its extensive collection. Participants will be encouraged to take full ownership of this project, arranging interviews, trips to see factories and other workplaces, and keeping the website (blog and podcasts) up-to-date.
Along with this website featuring our new resources, the end result will be an exhibition at Poole Museum, supported by a 24pg A4 book which will include a selection of the interviews on audio CD. This body of work will also serve as a rich historical archive, which will be added to Poole local history centre. David Watkins, Services and Operations Manager at Poole Museum says “I am very keen to add a contemporary collection such as this to our archives.”
To help publicise this exhibition and to engage with the local population we propose to hold the final presentation as a number of guided tours of the Parkstone area we have investigated. We would arrange a number of bus tours as if you were a tourist, but we would tour the workplaces featured in the book. One of the participants will conduct audio commentary tours to parts of Parkstone not normally covered by the tourists buses. Their commentary will be interspersed with some of the interviews we have recorded. This will make the history of the place come alive as people will be surrounded by the now of Parkstone but with the use of the audio dialogue, the memories of the past will be brought to life in front of their eyes. This would open up our heritage resources and sites to the widest possible audiences and increase opportunities for the local population to learn about their heritage.