As we work towards our oral history exhibition in autumn 2004, we have been trying to find ways in which to give the public more opportunities to experience the wealth of memories contained within the collection. Saddened though we were by the death of our secretary, Dr Sam forester, last June we wanted people in our community to share some of the best interviews Sam made, and held our first open evening in October.




We were quite overwhelmed at the numbers who came to listen to a special presentation we called “Remembering Sam.” The hall filled to capacity and over a hundred people attended. We hope to repeat this soon.

In November we gave a tea party to thank those who have contributed taped memories to the collection. Over 50 elderly people came, and enjoyed renewing old friendships among themselves while the group members served tea. They were delighted to hear that, thanks to LHI, there are now two places in Ambleside where their memories are accessible free to the public.

Giving talks and presentations is one way to give people greater access to the memories of their grandparents – or even great grandparents. This coming summer we have more bookings than ever before to give talks about the Lake District based entirely on oral history and to tell people about our work. In preparation for this, we held a “Listening Evening” in January to train members in presenting oral history to audiences.

New oral history projects sometimes contact our group for advice, and we were delighted to meet a group from near Whitehaven and spend a couple of hours helping them to plan their LHI project, recording local industrial history and the lives of those employed in quarries, making steel and on an MOD site. We talked about interviewing techniques and the production of a written transcript and were able to demonstrate the use of ISYS software on our new LHI computer, which can locate specific material anywhere in our large collection within seconds. This computer has the entire collection of over 350 interview transcripts available for use by the public who visit the Armitt Museum in Ambleside. The Group is also in correspondence with Bampton Local History Society and will be meeting members in February to offer ideas for the Burnbanks Project.

The digitisation of the collection is ongoing, involving much archival work, which also encourages members to re-visit our earliest work over 25 years ago, when most tapes included memories dating back to the 1890s and the First World War.