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Fishbourne Book Project Events
School Involvement
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scanning day
Memories day
Slides Evenings
Extracts from ‘The Fishbourne Book’
The Fishbourne Book Projects as of July 2006
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The Fishbourne Book Projects as of July 2006
Location: West Sussex
EVENTS
On Friday May 5th 2006, we held the fourth of our village ‘Memory Lane’ events – a Slides Evening, with commentary, of 70 photographs selected from the Project Photo Archive. An all ticket affair, it was fully booked long before, as was the previous Slides Evening on March 24th.
THE FISHBOURNE BOOK
We have received over 260,000 words copy, now edited down to about 235,000. We have conducted some 70 interviews and many more people have written in with their own memories, donated papers and letters for use in the book, conducted small scale research and written from their own knowledge and expertise. The contributions divide into four sections in the book – Village Life, Village People, Groups and Gatherings and Heritage and History in 21 chapters.
Contributions have come in from as far afield as Vancouver and Western Australia. Our oldest contributor, the engineer in charge of the water-main gang who unearthed the Roman Palace, is 104. David Rudkin, Director of the Roman Palace, is a contributor and the Foreword is by Kate Mosse, international best selling author of ‘Labyrinth’. The book will also contain approximately 250 photographs from the Project Photo Archive.
The book will be published on November 11th and launched at Fishbourne Club as a village event.
THE PHOTO ARCHIVE AND THE INTERVIEWS ARCHIVE
These will be held at the West Sussex Record Office, Chichester. We have collected approximately 700 photographs and other artefacts relating to Fishbourne and its people since 1900. WRSO hopes to have them on line in 2007.
We have about 60 tapes of interviews and these form the Interviews Archive, also to be held at WSRO and available for research.
THE SCHOOL MATERIALS
The Walks - The Project has conducted two village walks – Old Fishbourne 28th September 2005, and New Fishbourne 29th March 2006 – with the teaching staff of Fishbourne CE Primary School. The routes, maps and information about the village, buildings and history have been produced as two laminated books for use with the children in future years.
Year 6 children have conducted ‘Memory Lane’ interviews with elderly residents and have written their own memories for publication in The Fishbourne Book.
Research Packs - After consultation with the teachers, packs of resources and teaching materials arising from the Project are being prepared for use in the school. They include: Village Maps; The Village Then and Now – early 20th century photographs compared with the same scenes taken today; The Village in World War II; Victorian Mills and Trade; and The Romans at the Palace.
THE PROJECT
The Project Team of six, expanded to nine, have met once a month since the project began in January 2005. We have organised a Scanning Day (May 2005), a Memories Day (October 2005), two Slides Evenings (March 2006 and May 2006), and the Launch of The Fishbourne Book (November 2006). We have set up two websites, one with the LHI and the other as part of the Fishbourne parish website, produced a project Christmas card to greet all contributors and volunteers, and kept in touch with the local community through monthly bulletins in the Parish Magazine and quarterly ones in Village Voice, the Fishbourne Parish Council magazine. We maintain a database of contributors and a database of volunteers and helpers.
The Project will run for some time yet. At the time of writing, the book is with the printers, the Photo and Interview Archives have still to be set up formally, and the school packs have still to be finished and replicated, but by the launch of the book in November 2006 the Project should be nearly there – one year and eleven months after we received news of the LHI funding which set it in motion and made it all possible.
Volunteers – Apart from the nine of the Project Group, little would have been achieved without the army of volunteers who have given their time expertise and support – transcribing and typing up the interviews, running the web-sites, publicising events, taking photographs and preparing them for publication, giving advice, proof reading and so many tasks too numerous to mention.
Has it been worth it? Readers of The Fishbourne Book and users of the Archive and School Materials must decide for themselves. For us, though, in the Project Group – working together, developing skills, supported by so many willing volunteers, sharing the delighted greetings of friends ‘reunited’ at the events, being privileged to share so many memories, seeing all the photos and artefacts at first hand, finding out so much about the village and meeting so many wonderful and interesting people – what do you think? The answer has to be a resounding “Yes”.
Mary Hand – Book Editor
12 July 2006
www.fishbournebook.org.uk
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