Clare Jenkins – South Yorkshire Regional Advisor
This year has been predominantly spent on my own freelance oral history projects. In June, Bradt Travel Guides published Teatime at Peggy’s: A Glimpse of Anglo-India – the result of 15 years of recording the fast-dwindling Anglo-Indian community in the Indian railway town of Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh. https://www.bradtguides.com/product/teatime-at-peggys/
A travel narrative-cum-social history co-written with my travel writer husband Stephen McClarence, it began as a half-hour BBC Radio 4 programme before being expanded into book form during lockdown. – https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05tpwc7
Anglo-Indians are one of the country’s smallest communities, numbering between 100,000 and 150,000. Teatime at Peggy’s attempts to capture something of their history and culture before it’s too late. One reviewer called it ‘both a delight to read, and a compelling example of oral history’ (Chowkidar, the journal of the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia). Articles about the book have appeared in, among others, National Geographic magazine and newspapers as far apart as The Times of India and The Yorkshire Post.
I have also embarked on an oral history of local journalism. As the industry’s decline continues, with local newspapers closing every week, I have interviewed 25 journalists, past and present, from Sheffield’s two newspapers, The Star and Sheffield Telegraph. With ages ranging from 23 to 90, their experiences differ widely. Older interviewees recall a world of busy, noisy, smoke-filled newsrooms with clattering typewriters, lunchtime drinking, street newspaper sellers, police calls, coverage of weddings and funerals, city and county council meetings, court reports and contacts books.
Younger journalists are now multimedia experts, often working from home, whose daily tasks involve trawling social media sites for potential stories and cut-and-paste quotes, data journalism, the creation of TikTok videos and possibly podcasts.
Once the interviews have been transcribed, they will (hopefully) be stored at Sheffield Archives, unless funding can also be found to produce a book or website. In the meantime, I’ve written about this research for the British Journalism Review and the OHS journal, and given talks, including for Sheffield’s annual Festival of the Mind.
I have recently began to interview a group of Roman Catholic women – my former classmates – to discover how their beliefs and attitudes towards Catholicism have changed over the past 35 years. In that time, the Church itself has changed so much and I am interested in documenting how these changes have affected them and how their own life experiences may have changed their attitudes towards their birth religion.
Michelle Winslow and Sam Smith – South Yorkshire Regional Advisors
It has been a quiet year for oral history activities that Regional Advisers have been involved with in South Yorkshire. However, Sam Smith delivered two training sessions for young people on the Root to Table project at Element Society in Sheffield, which explores migrant heritage through food culture and storytelling. One of the major outputs is to create a heritage cookbook to distribute to community organisations.
Sam also continued working on the Hope Valley train line project, after being awarded a DYCP grant from the Arts Council. He presented the project at the last RAN annual meeting and at a creative OHS SIG meeting. He has now interviewed 14 people and recorded most of the music and field recordings, and is in the process of compiling it all. Recent highlights have been visiting the signal box at Edale Station and recording the sounds of the levers and bells of the old fashioned ‘absolute block’ signalling system there. These systems are now being phased out across the country so it felt an invaluable opportunity. He also interviewed a signalperson and train driver on the route. The final output for the project is still to be decided but could take the form of a spatial audio piece with multiple speakers. Sam is currently researching additional funding to achieve this. He is being mentored by two sound artists, one based at the University of Greenwich Centre for Sound and Image.
Barnsley Museums completed the project, Building Bridges and Forging Ahead, supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Barnsley Museums and Heritage Trust. Michelle Winslow delivered training to the group and witnessed their remarkable end of project celebration that included a digital bridge projection onto one of the buildings at Elsecar Heritage Centre. Over the course of the project the team researched and learned about the history of two bridges cast at the Milton Ironworks, designed by Marc Brunel and transported to a French Island in the Indian Ocean called La Reunion. The evening was an opportunity to celebrate all parts of the project, which included the work of volunteers, the development of the People’s Archive and the 1980 Elsecar Main digital video. Recordings are archived with the Barnsley Museums and Archives service.
