Julia Letts
The projects listed below are ones that I’ve had major involvement with during 2025.
Willow Court Farmhouse Oral History Project – Worcestershire Building Preservation Trust
The oral histories are part of a wider project to restore a derelict medieval farmhouse on the Westlands estate in Droitwich and turn it into six flats for social housing tenants. I’ve managed, trained and mentored a small team of volunteers who’ve been collecting and sharing people’s experiences of both the farmhouse and the earliest days of the estate, created as ‘overspill’ for Birmingham in the 1960s. Highlights of the project include two successful community events leading to 20 interviews, working with architect Chris Hamil to digitally recreate the farmhouse using oral histories, historic documents and images, and helping Year 12 Geography students at Droitwich High School with their A’ level Local Place study.
Worcester Life Stories Oral History Portal – Worcester City Council
This is a work-in-progress but also the culmination of many months’ work to share Worcester City’s oral histories more widely. Working with the WLS team, I’ve helped create a website which will (in time) host oral histories from local projects undertaken over the past two decades. At the moment the portal contains two collections, The Workers’ Story (Museum of Royal Worcester) and Worcester Life Stories (Worcester City Council). Our next step will be to upload recordings from the George Marshall Medical Museum, Northwick Community Project and oral histories of the Commandery. We have also uploaded oral history extracts onto an interactive map.
Sansome Walk Project – Explore the Past, Worcester
I’ve been supporting the Worcester Archives and Archaeology team in the collection of recordings and oral histories about the city’s Sansome Walk swimming baths, built in the 1850s and closed in 2016 for redevelopment into flats. Many Worcester residents remember the baths, learning to swim in the outdoor pool, visiting the ‘Turkish’ or going to the ‘new’ pool opened in 1972. We were lucky enough to find a 95-year-old member of the family who owned and ran the baths from 1890. I created 2 oral history podcast episodes now on Spotify under Stories of Worcester Sansome Walk Baths.
As an RA, I’ve also supported, advised, trained or done interviews for various local projects in Worcestershire, Herefordshire, South Wales and the Black Country. I’d particularly like to mention Kempsey Oral History Project and Walsall Windrush Sisters.
Siobhán Stevenson
This year I provided advice to several heritage projects, but worked substantially on 4 of those providing training, collecting new oral histories and re-working existing archive interviews to use as educational resources and demonstrate their potential as creative outputs.
In January, I continued to work part-time with Birmingham Museums Trust on the Voices of the City project, making 4 oral history collections publicly available through their image and sound website. The project now has 2 collections available (Vibes: A History of Urban Music and Childhood) and I have been working with University and College students, community groups and volunteers to transcribe the interviews for release with the interviews, source keywords for searching and use the interviews as educational and creative resources. The work continues until November 2026.
In March, I worked with a group of deaf volunteers who are collecting oral histories for a project called 100 years of Deaf Heritage in Walsall. Using BSL interpreters, I was able to train them in interviewing techniques, show them examples of other oral histories that had been collected by deaf groups and advise on dissemination of the interviews for deaf and hearing audiences. I learnt a lot myself during this training, specifically that captions for deaf people need to move at a slower pace. The project continues until 2027.
In April, I consulted on a project called Unlocking the Vaults for the University of Birmingham, suggesting how they could engage potential interviewees and providing training for their volunteers. I also suggested associated events they could host and themes for their display of interviews.
In July, I worked with Birmingham Music Archive and B:Music to train and co-ordinate volunteers working on a project called Amplify Town Hall. The project aims to create a digital archive and a physical display of crowdsourced memorabilia in Birmingham’s Town Hall. Following the training, I worked with the volunteers to host drop-in sessions where the public could share their memorabilia and stories. We collected short audio memories and contacts for those who wanted to record longer oral histories. I also collected key interviews for the project, shot video clips with volunteers for social media and cleaned up and converted the audio for inclusion in the archive. The project continues until 2028.
I also took over the role of Regional Coordinator this year from Padmini Broomfield and have been working for the past two months on securing a location for the annual event to be held in Birmingham in 2026.
Maggie Tohill, Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service
We have been assisting one of the researchers involved in a University of Edinburgh project looking at concepts of national identity and the extent to which it shifted as people moved across the Empire at war. The researcher has been using a range of World War II oral history interviews we have identified from our collection to examine individual narratives of British personnel who served in the overseas empire.
Much of my year has again been focussed on managing externally funded archive cataloguing projects which has meant that oral history work in general has been quieter for me.
We have not received any new oral history collections on deposit this year but have continued to identify collections amongst our current holdings which may include oral history/sound recordings, so that they can be noted in our digital asset register for preservation and where necessary migration to digital format.
Our outreach and learning team have been undertaking some oral history work for a project relating to the former Sansome Walk swimming pool in Worcester City. The site is being redeveloped and as part of the archaeological work on the site approximately 15 oral history interviews of local memories of the pool and the earlier Turkish baths have been recorded. We expect the output of the project to be deposited with us shortly.
