Category: Uncategorized

Community Oral Histories

The program will take place at the Cloverdale Regional Library and will feature the Sonoma County nonprofit Listening for a Change and its unique method of using oral histories to bridge gaps. According to its website, Listening for a Change, “creates opportunities for students and community members to develop skills that foster authentically caring communities. Conducting oral history interviews offers a unique way for individuals to overcome societal barriers and explore different cultures through listening, sharing stories and discovering shared values. Our mission is to promote understanding and acceptance of human diversity through education, oral history and the arts. As our communities become increasingly diverse, it is imperative that we find meaningful ways to respect and understand the rich and complex cultures among us.”

This a good example of doing community oral histories.  There is a link to the website at the bottom of the article, click here to see more.

Past, Present, and Oral History

Author of paper, Anirudh Deshpande (anirudh62@gmail.com) teaches at the University of Delhi.

Oral history is an aid to movements for social justice across the world. It is particularly significant in countries like India where literacy levels are low and where memories of the oppressed are routinely erased from public memory. This article questions the presumed superiority of the written over the oral. It presents a critique of “establishment” historiography and suggests that historians should adopt a receptive and balanced approach to different forms of history. Oral history reorients the historian’s craft in interesting ways. The oral history method is crucial for capturing histories that flourish outside the dominant narratives of modern societies.  Read full paper, plus comments here.

New Zealand Oral History Awards

“This year 16 oral history projects have received a total of more than $96,000 in funding. The projects chosen will make a significant contribution to understanding New Zealand’s history and the experiences of our diverse communities.”  For full story, including a link to website showing all awards click here.

Bob Marley Oral History

Oral history ties the general icon to the specificity of the world. It does this by taking the abstract giant, a creature of an agreed-upon narrative that everyone knows, and sourcing that figure to many voices speaking from multiple perspectives. It’s history from the grassroots, and the grass knows everything.  Roger Steffens’ new book, So Much Things to Say, ties Bob Marley, the Jesus of Reggae, to the slums of Kingston, Jamaica. Steffens’ text reminds us of an icon’s embedded nature, enmeshed in tentacles of circumstance. In history, some figures stand out like tall trees. Popular wisdom usually has no explanation, except to say, “Isn’t it funny that happened?” But oral history shows the rootedness of such titans. If you know where one originated, you can trade belief in a single, miraculous figure for the certain knowledge that whatever conditions produced the miracle must have been miraculous as well.  For full story click here.

Great Strike of 1917

1917: The Great Strike is a commemorative exhibition featuring archival images, moving footage, oral history excerpts and commissioned artworks depicting this landmark struggle. It is a joint effort by Carriageworks and the City of Sydney, in partnership with the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) and will run until August 27.  For full story click here.

Manhattan Project

The Manhattan Project, the top-secret World War II effort to build an atomic bomb, had a profound impact on the communities of northern New Mexico. The Atomic Heritage Foundation (AHF), a nonprofit in Washington, DC, is dedicated to preserving and interpreting the Manhattan Project history. As part of these efforts, AHF has been collaborating with local partners to collect and publish interviews with residents of northern New Mexico about their experiences. For full story click here.

Gay Marriage Campaign

Republican Tyler Deaton has known he was attracted to men as far back as he can remember. When he was four or five, he would draw himself marrying another man. “I knew I was different in that way before I’d ever even been taught it was wrong,” he says.  Deaton was part of a conservative evangelical Christian family living in Georgia. He was taught to live by the Bible as the literal word of God. And he did, in a lot of ways. But he also knew that he was gay and that it wasn’t going to change. For full story click here.

Story For All Projects

At Story For All, our goal is to expose disenfranchised communities to the power of oral history for the purpose of healing, building skills, elevating an authentic narrative, and ultimately transforming communities and systems through policy reform. We do this by training community members in oral history methodology, then supporting them in recording, archiving, and reflecting on their own communities’ stories and wisdom through art, dialogue, policy recommendations, and public presentations. Our process was designed with the understanding that the sharing of stories through oral history has multiple beneficial impacts, especially for historically marginalized communities whose stories, values, and cultures have been subsumed by the often-negative narratives promoted by the dominant culture. As stories have been weaponized to use against such communities, our narrative change approach is literally a method for individuals and communities to take back their story, as well as their culture. Additionally, by supporting communities in documenting their own stories, we create a culture of storytellers, like the griots of West Africa. Instead of the stories and wisdom being extracted from the community, they reside within the hearts and minds of present and future community leaders.  For full story click here.

Nurses’ quarters at Forbes Hospital

On one of our regular walks up Hospital Hill recently we noticed the auction/for sale sign on Ford House the old nurses quarters and latterly part of the local health service.  I started to tell Ollie about Ken Ford, a family friend of my grandfather after whom the residence was named.  It also occurred to me that not many people would know of Ken Ford and indeed many of the others whose names have been gifted to other parks and places in Forbes. For full story click here.

Oral History of Dublin Food

The brief was to follow the journey of food from the Docklands, to the market, to the table – to gather stories, recipes, and oral histories.  Over nine months, the trio met with community groups, and fine-tuned the project with interviews and events.  The Docklands is synonymous with Dublin’s food heritage, said Declan Byrne, who worked as a docker from 1972 to 2000.  For full story click here.