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Collection of oral history projects. A living history of unique life experiences, people’s memories, experiences and opinions.
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Collection descriptions
- Making East London: Past and Present
From October 2017 to June 2019, UCL Special Collections worked with London Borough of Newham (libraries and archive) to explore the cultural heritage of East London. A collaborative exhibition was produced, combining both organisations’ collections, community workshops were run in the library spaces, and a new collection of oral history interviews was developed. The recordings have been transcribed by Special Collections volunteers, and are available for all to access.
This project was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and a UCL Beacon Bursary.
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- New Communities at UCL East
Oral history interviews conducted by MA Public History students undertaking the Special Collections Outreach project Archiving UCL East.
UCL East opened in 2022 and the MA Public History commenced the same year. Students on the course undertake a practical group project, and for the first two consecutive years of the course Special Collections Outreach staff have led a project titled Archiving UCL East. Aiming to document this landmark moment in UCL’s history, students have been tasked with capturing opinion and activity on campus, to discern whether there is a community at the new UCL East and to create an informal archive. One objective was to give voice to UCL students, who are currently underrepresented within UCL’s Records collection.
A key method of data collection for both iterations of the project was oral history interviews. The students were trained by Special Collections Outreach staff and loaned equipment from the Urban Room and Memory Workshop. The full set of interviews is available below, which includes a range of testimonials both positive and negative about initial experiences and perceptions of the new campus.
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- Student Lives at the IOE
The interviews were conducted as a project funded by the Friends of the Newsam Library and Archives, now defunct. The aim was to capture voices of people who studied at the IOE, an area which is lacking in our collection.
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- Slade Oral History Collection
A number of oral history interviews were recorded in the 1990s with former students and staff. The interviews were conducted by alumnus and former Slade Archivist Stephen Chaplin as part of his research into the history of the School. (See also Stephen Chaplin’s Archive Reader, UCL Special Collections MS ADD 400). In 2013, funds generously provided by the Andor Charitable Trust enabled us to digitise these recordings, and this work has formed the basis of an ongoing oral history programme.
Interview highlights are currently accessible. Full interviews are available, subject to access restrictions. For information about the oral history programme contact: slade.enquiries@ucl.ac.uk.
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- Writing Research Projects
During the 1960s and 1970s, James Britton, Nancy Martin and Harold Rosen of the Institute of Education, collaborated on multiple projects researching the development of writing across the curriculum and throughout a child’s time at secondary school. Their work involved the collection and systematic analysis of samples of writing from secondary school pupils as well as the practical and educational implications of that research. Their work culminated in the publication The Development of Writing Abilities 11-18 by James Britton, Tony Burgess, Nancy Martin, Alex McLeod and Harold Rosen (1975).
The archive comprises the data sets collected, as well as project administration and research outputs. It is fully catalogued and a list available on the archives online catalogue (RefNo WRI*).
In 2012, Georgina Brewis conducted interviews with Tony Burgess and Peter Medway both of whom had been involved in the projects.
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