Published: 27/3/17

The three researchers were part of a cohort of 12 students who participated in the Hear here: listening in to community sound archives programme in February 2017. Participants were given the opportunity to apply to be a researcher in residence with a range of carefully selected community archive projects, resulting in three successful matches.

“We’re thrilled that these researchers will get to share and build on their skills with these collections and gain further experience of public engagement.” - Amy McDonald, Connecting Scotland’s Sounds

Jamie Lawson, a practice-led sonic arts researcher at the University of Aberdeen, will be in residence with Vanishing Scotland in Dumfries & Galloway during May. The collection contains seven oral history interviews of shepherds, covering shepherding as a theme but also land use, occupations and land management. Jamie will work with the recordings to do appraisal, cataloguing, transcribing, and digitising (where required) and will write a workflow guidelines document. The project will culminate in a multimedia exhibition using local community arts facilities.

Also in May, Lorna Barton (University of Strathclyde) will join The Rockfield Centre oral history project Memories Matter: A Time To Tell Our Stories, which recorded former pupils who were at school during the post-war period 1945-1955. During the residency with Oban Communities Trust in Argyll, Lorna will use her oral history expertise to begin the process of tagging and cataloguing the archive, advising and guiding volunteers in best practice to continue the task, including training to increase the confidence of volunteers to go out and be successful oral history collectors. The residency will finish with an exhibition and the trust hopes to link up their collection with any wider research in Scotland.

Naomi Harvey, who is undertaking a collaborative PhD with Heriot-Watt University and the National Library of Scotland, will work with The Story Box (Alyth’s community-led oral history project) and Culture Perth and Kinross (CPK) for a month in June. The Story Box has a collection of life histories from around fifty older rural Perth and Kinross residents, recorded between 1985 and 1987. Naomi will transcribe the interviews and create an updated catalogue for the collection. She will also help curate the CPK Rural Life Exhibition (AK Bell Library, June – Sept 2017) and plan an event associated with the launch of the Story Box project.

Further information and links

http://scotlands-sounds.nls.uk/

http://www.obancommunitiestrust.org.uk/heritage-projects/oral-history/

http://commonculture.org.uk/the-story-box-project-in-the-news-151114/

First published: 27 March 2017