Tom Willett, one of the newest members of the Environment and Climate Crisis SIG, and Rib Davis, Chair and one of the longest-standing members, had a chat.
RIB So Tom, before you joined, did you have any expectations of the SIG?
TOM No, I think I came in without any sort of thoughts about what it would be, but just with an interest in the environment and oral history. I guess I assumed it would be a place that people shared ideas about the environment and oral history, but I didn’t know what sort of format it’d take.
RIB Okay, could you talk a bit about what you’re interested in, in oral history, and also what you’re interested in, in the environment?
TOM So oral history, I’ve been interested in since I did my undergraduate dissertation, which was all about the children of Holocaust survivors and how traumatic historical experiences moved down through families. And then I also did an oral history project for my MA dissertation, which was about the Lewes Bonfire, which is the town I’m from. It’s all about the bonfire societies that sustained that event and that have sustained it for the past 150 years. I was sort of sliding into that territory, sort of a little bit of participant observation as well. And I did a project with St. Marylebone Parish Church. They got some lottery funding to redevelop the building, and part of that was an oral history project. I did some interviewing for that, and that actually ended up turning into a verbatim theatre which got put on at Marylebone Theatre. Then my interest in the environment, I’d say that’s quite tied into the PhD which I’ve just started. It’s all about how America has influenced the UK’s food system and culture since 1945. And to do that I’m looking at oral histories and trade literature in the British Library. Obviously the environment is key to that story. Anything to do with food is completely tied up with planetary health and trying to eat more sustainably, feeding everybody.
RIB Can you spell out a bit more that environmental link with food?
TOM So since 1945, you have the rise of mass scale farming. You have things like the invention of fertilizer a little bit earlier, which is able to massively boost yields and a sort of scientific revolution, which modifies the shape of wheat so it’s able to be collected by combined harvesters and that’s also part of that so-called green revolution – green as in food and being able to produce more of it, because actually, I think as people have been like reflecting on over the last probably 20 or 30 years, it’s not that green, farming like that. In terms of America’s role, there are the production processes, but also the ways in which brands cultivate desire around wanting certain product.
RIB Does that take you into the area of marketing and advertising?
TOM Yeah, I think that’s a key area, especially with the adoption of psychology into the marketing profession.
RIB You need to watch Mad Men.
TOM I’ve been told that. I will!
RIB So what’s your involvement with the SIG been like so far?
TOM I loved the presentation on the history of the environmental movement in the UK, from people involved in big campaigns, protests, to people who were involved on more of a local level in the development of cycle paths and things like that. It was really, really interesting.
RIB No, I thought it was a really good presentation as well. I don’t know whether you’ve got any thoughts on this at all, but what are the sorts of things that you’d like the SIG to do?
TOM From what I’ve seen so far, I like what the SIG is currently doing, showcasing people who are working in the area. And also, I’ve noticed that it seems to be a good sort of information sharing resource as well. And I’ve seen that more broadly as well in the oral history society in general. I think a space that like allows people to connect and to learn from each other is just like immensely valuable. And yeah, the events are great. But also, I think, yeah, workshop style events could be good as well, where maybe members have all looked at something beforehand and then go to a meeting.
RIB We haven’t tried that. That’s a really good idea. Yeah, I’ll look into that.
TOM Yeah, like read an article or watch a video or a podcast or…
RIB Good idea. Okay, I’ll put that to the SIG. That’s great.
TOM But could you just take me back to, if you were involved in the inception of the SIG and how it started?
RIB Yeah, I wasn’t. At least I don’t think I was. I’m not entirely sure. The SIG probably started seven or eight years ago. But then very little happened after a while. There was some activity to start with and then it just became moribund. I think it’s because the people who were running it moved on and nobody really took over. But then we held a series of workshops which were really well attended actually about what we wanted the SIG to do. And we came up with two main things. One was online seminars and the other was putting together some sort of map of environmental and climate change oral histories, which became a world map. Then we came up with this idea that we should perhaps do a project ourselves, and that became the international oral history of the transition movement, which we’ve now got a section on the website about. I would like there to be a group of people who are all very active in planning and doing these things, but at the moment there isn’t, and it’s sort of chicken and egg. The main people at the moment are Amy and myself, and it would be really nice to have a larger group. I mean, other people contribute and put in ideas – Padmini and Simona and others – but I think because we’re doing it and people are relatively happy with what we’re doing, they don’t feel the need to jump in and do stuff. But from a number of points of view, it would be much better to get groups of people involved. And maybe this workshop thing that you’re suggesting is a good way of doing that.
The SIGs are a relatively new thing. I mean I’ve been active in the OHS for 25 years, and active in oral history much longer than that. And for my first 15 years in the OHS, SIGs didn’t exist and it was a very top-down organisation. In a very nice way – the top was very accessible! It didn’t feel oppressive in any way but it didn’t really feel like a grassroots-up organisation. And SIGs have revolutionised that. A huge amount of activity in the OHS now is through all the various SIGs, which I think is great.
TOM How do you find speakers?
RIB So they find us. How do I find people? Mainly through other people. But also I just scroll through the internet. I just look, put in words and see what turns up. But it’s quite time-consuming. Yeah. And just entering all the stuff onto the map is quite time-consuming.
TOM So the group at the moment doesn’t have an official structure?
RIB All we’ve got is the Chair and the Secretary that we voted for. Apart from that, no. So we don’t have any sort of committees or any of those sort of things I think some of the other SIGs do. Maybe that’s something we should think about. I know people tend to be turned off by the word committee. But whatever, working group.
TOM Yeah, there’s other ways around the word.
RIB At the moment, what we’ve got is these presentations – I think nearly all of them have been really great on hugely varied topics. Attendance has fluctuated a lot. So at our best, we’ve got over 20. At our worst, we’ve got four or five. There was a point a while back when I was thinking, I don’t know whether this is worth carrying on, but then the attendance picked up again. The expectation is it’s online, so everyone can attend. And there’s a huge plus to that, we get people from everywhere. But you lose something as well, about not being in the same room, having the coffee together, all of that stuff. So there’s still a bit of me that would like to hold some in-person events. But I’m not sure whether we’re going to make it happen.
TOM Could they be anchored around the conference, maybe take advantage of those times that people might be gathered anyway?
RIB That’s a very good idea. Probably not the festival as that’s only one day. But maybe the conference, it’s more feasible, maybe between the day and the evening as a social. You do miss that relationship forming in a different way.
TOM I’ve only just joined the group, but I’m looking forward to being involved. I think all the specialist groups have quite broad remits, but the environment is obviously really quite broad.
RIB It is. We haven’t tried to define it. I remember there was a presentation at the conference a couple of years back. And we were asked to get into pairs and answer, what do you mean by the term environment? And nobody agreed. One definition is: pretty much everything. But when you say, “Well, the environment is everything,” then the word ceases to have any meaning. So anyway, we haven’t tried to define it. I think we have a little bit of a problem, though, compared to some of the other SIGs. The Archives SIG, for example, there are people who work full-time as archivists. And all of those who are working with oral history would be silly not to sign up. So you’ve got that body of people who are committed. The LGBTQ+ group, that’s very much about their identity. And you’ve got scores of oral history projects around gay life, just within the UK. With our particular SIG, we don’t have that obvious source of membership. We’ve got people who are simply interested or concerned about the environment and climate change, and I’m one of those. And then you’ve got people who pass in and out of projects. They’re doing a project that’s about the environment now and then they’re doing something about Roman Catholicism next year, and so on, as I have done in the past. So I think it’s harder for us to hold consistent attention of membership than for some of the other groups.
TOM That’s interesting. Have you seen that then in the membership of the group?
RIB Yes. There were people who were very involved when I first became Chair, who now are not involved at all. And I think it’s understandable. I mean, that was their focus at that time, and now they’re focusing somewhere else. But it means that we’re having to continually attract new people in, which is good in a sense. You always want new people in, but it would be nice to have a body of people who aren’t going anywhere, because this is who they are, this is what they do, you know, and we don’t have many – we have some people like Leslie – but not that many who are totally, this is their life’s work, this is their life’s focus, not many.
TOM Is there anywhere that does similar things to the SIG, to what we’re doing?
RIB There are one-off seminars and events, but I’ve not come across anything that’s specifically holding regular events about oral history directly connected to environmental climate change. Other organisations do those things, but not in the concentrated, consistent way that we’re doing it. I’m not aware of anywhere. Which is why we get people coming to us.
TOM Interesting. In terms of oral history’s role within the climate crisis, or the role that it can play, do you have any sort of reflections?
RIB Yes. I gave this speech in September, and the main thrust of it is there’s an awful lot of data around climate change. And I reel off about the increase in hurricanes, the strength and frequency of hurricanes, the flooding, the drought, sea rise, temperature rise of changing sea currents and so on. There’s huge amounts of data about all of these things. And I think the problem is that the more of that data that we encounter, the more terrified we become, the more overwhelmed and the more we feel powerless. Whereas, when you listen to people talking about their own life experience of those very same things, it connects us –
TOM Science needs the arts to be able to punch the message home, hopefully.
RIB Yeah. That, like, these things are happening and having a huge effect on people’s lives and have been over a long period. And I think it would be great if we could include, consciously include, questions in life story interviews in general, questions that touch upon the environment and climate change when we’re talking to people about things that are not necessarily obviously to do with that.
TOM That’s really interesting, yeah. I hadn’t thought about that because I’m finding that with food, in that there’s certain collections of oral histories which are related to food and are all about food. But then there’s also life history interviews which all have quite large sections dealing with food. What food was like in your childhood, what your childhood at home was like, often those questions, the general questions about your life and your childhood revolve around, like, meal times and food. So I’m benefiting from the life history method quite majorly because food gets talked about a lot. Yeah. Yeah, if that could also happen with the environment, I guess to an extent it does, but if you could make that happen more, yeah, that would be really useful for then researchers using these interviews and other people.
RIB ‘We’re going to talk about the weather’…
TOM Yeah. Sneak the questions in. Yes. Sneak the vegetables in…
