National Lottery Grants for Heritage – £10,000 to £250,000
Thanks to a £79,400 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Worcester Life Stories has digitised their archive of 35,000 rarely seen historic photographs and maps.
The project also invited members of the public to online workshops, to contribute their own photos and memories of Worcester to the platform.
Sheena Payne-Lunn, Worcester City Council’s Historic Environment Record Officer, said: “It’s been fantastic to see so many people re-connecting with one another and taking pleasure from their shared memories.”
The project launched during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, with over 600 people tuning in to their YouTube live stream launch in June 2020 with afternoon tea and live music from the 1950s and 1960s.
Throughout the project they used online events to engage local people with the history of their area. Their ‘How well do you remember Worcester in the 1970s?’ quiz had over 5,300 participants. The weekly quizzes are available on their website.
The project created three websites:
- the Worcester Life Stories project website, recording the progress of the project.
- Life Stories Herefordshire & Worcestershire, where people can upload photographs and memories to create their own personalised life story. People can also download Life Packs containing information to help them reminisce.
- Know Your Place Worcester, a digital map which hosts the thousands of historic records, photographs and maps held by the Worcester City Historic Environment Record. People can contribute their own knowledge and images here too.
In 2021 the project also published a book collating material uncovered through the project, 'Worcester Life Stories – in the words of local people'.
The organisers of the project put together a podcast reflecting on some of the highlights of the project.