This is the story of how a few passionate people in a small Worcestershire village made an oral history project happen.
Featured image: Our volunteer interviewer Michelle recording an oral history with Kempsey resident Jane Jones.
Most great ideas start life in a pub. This one started in a farmhouse kitchen when a simple request for 86-year-old farmer Fred Stratton to pay his Parish Magazine annual subscription opened up a first-hand account of G.I.’s belting south for D-Day, and the Bowler Hat Brigade teaching farmers how to farm.
We think of bread having a shelf life, and groceries having ‘best before’ emblazoned on the packaging, but eyewitness accounts have a very distinct and unpredictable time limit and this gave impetus to the need to do something and quickly.
The first port of call was The Oral History Society online to find some experience and advice. From there it was possible to identify where material had been gathered in our part of the world (Worcestershire,) and start seeking some named individuals who might be able and willing to help.
What else did we need? A project team, some training, some equipment, an angel who could bring a degree of professionalism to the venture, and some luck. A bit like the 1960’s Robin Hood calling “a band of archers to a tavern on the green”, a disparate group of Kempsey worthies sat around the table of Kempsey’s octogenarian rabble rouser and talked through what an Oral History Project might look like for Kempsey. We even did some Critical Path Analysis, ending up with our ducks in a row.
You need friends – we approached our local District and County Representatives for some funding, and after a minimum of bureaucracy were granted enough to purchase a portable professional recording device and think about obtaining some training. This is when we first encountered the Oral History Society’s local Guru – Julia Letts. We could afford a single day’s introductory training but needed a venue. You definitely need friends, in this case the local Tesco store, who gave us free use of their own training room and unlimited access to the staff self-service canteen.
Meanwhile an advertisement on the OHS’s website had borne fruit; a young working mum who just happened to have a Master’s Degree and was interested in getting involved with the project. And yes, Michelle was much more professional, and better at interviewing than the rest of us.
The tentative steps of this project started in 2022 and gradually took shape in 2023. One significant topic of discussion has been ‘end product.’ Because the life expectancy of the raw resource was literally an unknown quantity, we managed to agree that gathering material was the main imperative, and with luck, an end product would crystalise, and it might even be someone else’s vision. ‘Travel in hope’ was our adopted strategy.
But from 2023 to the time of writing (autumn 2025) the gradual development of the project, and the function of the team, took on lives of their own. We had been pointed towards employing a professional Project Manager, but because our thinking was basically a bit fuzzy, it was difficult to generate a sound job description or project definition, and then there was the question of how to fund such an appointment.
But in a corner of the Project Team, it turned out that we had an asset whose enquiring mind was working away to push the boundaries and see how technology could be harnessed to pull together at least one tangible, informative and entertaining end product. And hence our nascent website which manages to combine text with audio clips and some imagery. It is work in progress but testament to what can be achieved when a team is allowed to grow at its own pace.
Next steps? We need to do some housekeeping to tidy up our small but growing archive, we need to carry on gathering material and we need to reach out to broaden the involvement of our local community.
You can see what we have managed so far here.
