Laura Balderstone
I joined RAN in September and have not yet received any direct questions or queries. In the new year, I will be contacting organisations like the ‘Heritage fund’ (north) as well as the National Trust, to let them know I’m available to help with local oral history queries.
Having recently left academia, the last few months have been spent working on a plan to immerse myself in the local community with a view to promoting oral history amongst local schools and voluntary organisations. In the new year, my aim is to contact schools and local clubs and societies on the Wirral to gauge interest in talks on oral history. In local schools, these might be workshops for either students or staff on how to use/engage with oral history in an educational setting. For local clubs and societies, talks might be more general, perhaps emphasising how oral history could be used as a way of recording the organisation’s history. Talks/workshops would also provide an opportunity to promote the Oral History Society, encouraging interested participants to visit the OHS website/become members.
David Govier
Piccadilly Radio Archive
Throughout 2025 the Greater Manchester County Record Office hosted a 12-month £103k project to digitise and transform access to the Piccadilly Radio Archive thanks to support from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Manchester Libraries Trust. The project made over 1,800 independent radio shows (the equivalent of over five weeks of non-stop audio) available at Central Library. Over 25,000 visitors enjoyed the six-month Piccadilly Radio Archive exhibition at Central Library. Project partners including the Greater Manchester Hip Hop Archive, ALL FM and the Manchester Digital Music Archive ran workshops and skilled up 53 volunteers to spend over 800 hours help digitising, indexing and curating the archive. Over 1,000 archive tapes were saved from 25 attics around the country and added to the Central Library strong rooms, 10 oral history interviews with Piccadilly Radio staff were conducted by Sam Smith and 15 new radio and podcast pieces have been created to introduce the collection to a new generation.
Oral History in Manchester
In 2025 the Greater Manchester County Record Office (GMCRO) received several significant oral history collections: Lipservice Theatre Company (41 interviews, OHS training), Protest! LGBTQ+ heritage project (20 interviews, trained by David Govier) and Andrew Davies’s oral history interviews on everyday life in Salford and Manchester before the Second World War. These and other collections such as the North West Jazz gig collection and the LGBT Foundation oral history collection have been added to Central Library’s Sound + Vision pods.
Several large digitisation jobs for clients including National Museums Liverpool, the International Anthony Burgess Museum and the University of Manchester Rylands Research Institute have raised income and demonstrate the value of GMCRO to the heritage sector. The sound archive kiosk, featuring oral history and radio clips from around Greater Manchester, has continued its journey around Greater Manchester, finishing at Stockport in November. GMCRO has continued its sound archives support role for the NW region by giving advice and making training visits to Preston, Liverpool and Carlisle.
Stephen Kelly
In September 2025 I gave a talk at the Chorlton Literary Festival, in Manchester entitled ‘How the Beatles Rocked the World’ which drew on my book of the same name and which included a number of oral history interviews.
I helped initiate and gave support throughout the year to the establishment of an Oral History Society Special Interest Group – Press and Journalism. I also supplied contact details for a number of former local journalists in Manchester and Liverpool.
I have answered a variety of queries from academics, journalists, television producers and other interested parties relating to my Granadaland Oral History Project. One example is screenings of four films by North Edinburgh Art that were made by the Granada Producer, Peter Carr in 1983 – The Films of Peter Carr.
I have prepared my personal archive, which includes many oral history interviews, for submission to the British Pop Archive at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester. As well as assisting in the acquisition of the corporate archive of Granada Television, which is currently being catalogued, I have also previously submitted my working materials from my employment at Granada Television. Both can be seen here.
I have mentored and supported a BA History final year undergraduate at the University of Liverpool who was writing her dissertation on the leisure activities of young women in Liverpool in the 1960s.Through my existing networks and previously published material, I was able to assist her in identifying prospective interviewees, preparatory research and possible interview questions.
I have conducted initial interviews for my forthcoming book on a social history of football in the 1950s.
I have supported new Advisers in my area and have been a regular participant in the RAN monthly meetings, including leading the discussion at one of these meetings on ‘Life Stories’. I also attended the RAN annual meeting in Nottingham.
I have offered ongoing support to the ‘Supportability at 70’ project, having previously delivered two days’ training to project volunteers in late 2024. The project culminated in an exhibition in November 2025.
I met with representatives from the Bradford Police Museum to advise them regarding oral history including how it could be integrated into their current exhibits and the feasibility of a more extensive oral history project.
Rosalyn Livshin
I have been involved in training the following projects in the North-West:
The Oral History Trail Acorn Bank
This project is a community engagement project, linked with the removal of the weir at Acorn Bank. The oral history project gathered generational memories, stories and feelings towards the local river and its natural environment. Visitors to Acorn Bank can listen to these voices, on 9 ‘listening posts’ and an ‘Audio Bench’ and they can use a virtual reality headset to experience the scenery around Crowdundle Beck, whilst listening to the oral history accounts we have collected. Full versions of the interviews and the audio bench are available on the Acorn Bank website.
The Fusilier Museum in Bury
The Fusilier Museum is home to the collections of the XX Lancashire Fusiliers and the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, covering 300 years of history. Last year the museum collected oral histories from veterans of the Kosovo campaigns for an exhibition marking the 25th anniversary of the conflict. It is aimed to conduct more oral histories with past and present Fusiliers as part of the redevelopment of the Royal regiment of Fusiliers gallery.
Museum of North Craven Life
The Museum, housed in The Folly, tells the story of North Craven and its people from the earliest times. The museum has been collecting oral histories since the 1990s and has a collection of over 100 recordings with local people. The collection of oral histories to reflect the diverse voices that have contributed to the region is ongoing.
James Baldwin and Britain
This project explores the American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin’s complicated relationship to Britain. It examines the extent of his influence on British-based artists, intellectuals, and activists through the collection of their testimonies. The project is in the process of putting up the oral history interviews on the project website.
When the project has finished editing the interviews and finalising the transcripts, they will appear on the website, and here.
The Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Centre and Education Trust
I have trained members of the Trust which has continued to support global majority community groups in Manchester in the running of Heritage and Oral History projects. Recent projects include: When musical traditions meet and inspire, Black History in Stockport, The Storytelling project ’Ustaarabu Yetu’, recording the culture and history of refugee and asylum seekers. and Amani Creatives; Fumbo African naming project.
