Bringing back voices of the past – and recording voices for the future.
Coalville based community arts organisation, Mantle Arts, has launched a new project bringing people’s memories of the past to life and collecting new oral histories of the region for the future.
N. W. Leicestershire Voices is an 18-month project, supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund with a £65k grant, to digitise and preserve a collection of 1980’s recordings of local peoples’ memories stretching back to before the First World War..
Along with preserving the recordings via digitisation, the project will use them in a range of projects to make this archive of local history more accessible to the community. This will include four exhibits, installations and displays, a range of CDs, a podcast series, and educational resources for schools.
The project will also be looking for members of the community who would like to share their memories and experiences of life in North West Leicestershire, in order to create a new series of oral history recordings for future generations.
Matthew Pegg, Project Director at Mantle Arts said, “Its fascinating to hear people talking about what happened to them in the Edwardian period and during the First World War. Some of the people on the original recordings were born as early as the 19th century. We want to make this compelling archive of local history available to more people. And we want to record some new oral histories to preserve people’s memories of North West Leicestershire in the second half of the 20th century.”.
Snippets of the recordings along with videos and images will be released via Mantle’s social media channels over the coming weeks but here’s a sneak peek of some of the memories shared:
To find out more about the project, or if you, or someone you know, would like to record their memories of Coalville and the surrounding area, email us on matthew@mantlearts.org.uk or leave a message on 01530830811, and include a contact phone number or email address.
Notes to editors
For more information, interviews or images please email enquiries@mantlearts.org.uk / Linzi_allan@hotmail.com
Visit our website – www.mantlearts.org.uk
Follow the team on Facebook and Twitter @MantleArts
About Mantle Arts
Our work is about Tales and Transformations.
Tales: We deal in stories, the stories of people and of places.
Transformations: We transform places, showing them in a new light and uncovering their history. We transform people by bringing them together, inspiring them to be creative, helping them to discover new skills and building confidence by feeding a sense of achievement.
Our work is participatory and involves collaboration. We began in 1985 as a community arts organisation and have worked with and on behalf of a wide range of partner organisations and artists to create tailor made experiences: festivals, events, installations, publications, performances, workshops, digital and on-line content and public art.
Since 2014 Mantle Arts has developed a range of creative writing projects, supporting aspiring and emerging writers.
Mantle Lane Press is our publishing arm, specialising in fiction and factual/historical books.
About The National Lottery Heritage Fund
Using money raised by the National Lottery, we inspire, lead and resource the UK’s heritage to create positive change for people and communities, now and in the future. www.heritagefund.org.uk #NationalLotteryHeritageFund
The Heritage Emergency Fund is now closed for applications. Extra advice and support and longer-term skills and capacity building initiatives has also been made available for the heritage sector. Read more about The National Lottery Heritage Fund’s response to the Covid-19 emergency
About the National Lottery
Since The National Lottery’s first draw took place on 19 November 1994, more than £40 billion has been raised for good causes in the areas of arts, sport, heritage and community.
National Lottery players contribute around £30 million to good causes every week.
The National Lottery has made more than 5,500 millionaires but its primary purpose is giving to good causes – over 565,000 individual grants have been awarded across the UK, that’s the equivalent of 200 life-changing projects in every UK postcode district.