Forthcoming Events for 2015:

Festive Memories

Festive Memories…. ‘tis the season to be jolly.... the digital table looked great.. the company was wonderful…. the memories were warming…. Thank you.

 

Festive Memories

We had a great session with the help of the Friends of Dawley Town Hall. Thanks to all who came along or dropped by to view the photos on display and those who shared memories and information. The Hall looked fabulous and the new projector screen worked a treat. A big 'shout up' for Sue and Paul who brought along their own photos and led us through an enjoyable morning reminiscing... here's to the next one.

 

http://www.dawleytownhall.co.uk/index.php/about-us

Thank you big time to the ‘Friends of Dawley Town Hall’ who  have collaborated with us on this session. It was a really great morning – around 40 people popped by to see us on and off over the morning and many stayed for the whole session.

 

Some really wonderful memories and further  identification of some of the photos from the Dawley area which will be added to the digital table in due course. Thanks again and here's to another session in 2015 sometime.

http://www.dawleytownhall.co.uk/

November’s seen us reminiscing twice, around the table, as people have dropped into the Digital Discovery sessions.

People enjoy looking at different photos and remember different things - which is ace! The very best thing is just seeing people interact with the technology and loving it. They all want a table in their front rooms!

 

 

We’ve completed our Digital Drop –In in October and had our first Telford memories session. It’s really wonderful to see people talking about different subjects inspired by the photos on the table. Here’s just a few.  

 

 

Visited the Senior Citizen’s Forum to promote the project in October. There was a good response from the attendees with a number of people coming up afterwards who’d worked for the TDC in different departments. Really interesting to hear people's experiences and memories.

http://tandwseniors.org.uk/Forum/



More delving into the Corporation Archives! We were really excited on this visit because we started to uncovered slightly different material. Official opening documentation including a poster for Wonderland and the Maxell Garden; the MERC in Madeley and lots more which we can’t wait to have digitised and show to the world again. Thanks as ever to our fabulous volunteers for their help.

 

Spot the old logo!

Thanks to everyone who came and spoke to us on our stand at the Heritage Day on Saturday. Lots of sharing about community history matters and interest in TONT and seeing the digital table at Southwater.

We had a great time at the Sensory Garden launch on Saturday. Thanks to the Friends of the Town Park for inviting us.  Here’s our stand in the sunshine. We made some really good contacts with people who have some wonderful memories of the Park and beyond and look forward to getting some of these down on paper at our forthcoming events. The garden looks fab too!

 



The garden looks fab too! A lot of hard work has gone into its creation by the volunteers.

http://www.friendsoftelfordtownpark.org/wp-content/uploads/chelsea-garden2.jpg

 

Come along and visit our stall at the Sensory Garden launch.

Friends of the Telford Town Park launch the Sensory Garden on Saturday 13^th September.

‘Memories of Telford’
We’ve been trying to capture a few memories and comments from people enjoying the digital table the last week. Here’s a flavour - but we’re keen to have any other memories or snippets that are inspired by looking at the images.

Please do jot any of your memories down when you next visit us and look out for dates for our memory sessions on the next ‘What’s On’ – due out soon.
 

Last Friday we viewed a number of film clips archived at Media Archive Central England that are deposited with them but not digitised yet. The project will allow us to get them to digitise a further selection and it was really wonderful to actually see them. Don’t want to spoil the fun and give too much away (otherwise it won’t be a surprise!) But amongst other things featured a certain well-known Town Centre landmark being hoisted into position by the biggest crane in the country... various royal visits…leisure facilities and more. It will take a while to sort out but watch this space…

http://www.macearchive.org/

 

Thank you to David Wright for his piece in his “Working for You” column in the Telford Journal about encouraging people to visit Southwater. He thought that the “digital tables were fascinating features in the new library” and mentioned the HLF grant to create the Archive – so great stuff!

Southwater Library has been open for 3 weeks now and continues to be really busy with families and people visiting. Without doubt, one of the continuing stars has been the digital table with the TDC photos on.

 

Watch out for our memory sheets at the library near the table. Be sure to jot down any memories that you have when you’re looking at the photos. We’d really appreciate that.

The ‘Touch History’ digital table at Southwater Library has been a great hit! Everyone looking at it has enjoyed scrolling through the pictures reminiscing about places and developments. Someone even saw their house from afar on an aerial photo with their washing on the line from 40 years ago! So great that this project will be extending the number of images that we will be adding to it. If you haven’t seen it drop into the new library when you’re up at the Town Centre.

 

 Meanwhile keep up to date with Southwater happenings http://www.telford.gov.uk/southwaterone

and pictures

https://www.flickr.com/photos/telford-wrekin/

The doors to Southwater have opened and all are welcome! Lots of information on services here http://www.telford.gov.uk/southwaterone and on the facebook site loads of wonderful pictures of the library: https://www.facebook.com/SouthwaterTelford

It’s great to get out and talk to people about the project and the other night was Wrekin Local Studies Forum meeting where we were able to pass on what we’ve been doing. This umbrella group draws together family and local history groups in the area and works collaboratively to promote heritage in the area. Most have varied and full programmes of talks and visits which you’ll find on their website.

http://www.wlsf.org.uk/

 

Had a great day at Dawley Day today promoting the library service and the project. Spoke to a number of people who were really interested to hear about it and may have pictures and certainly have lots of memories that we can collect in the future. Thanks for inviting us Great Dawley Parish Council.

http://www.greatdawley.org/

Yesterday we had a good look through our own Telford Development Corporation boxes at the Community History Centre at Wellington. A tiny, tiny fraction of what is at the Archives, but thanks to all who helped today.  We found some interesting  promotional leaflets and articles in ‘Telford New Town News’ – a newspaper that the Corporation produced; maps that help to pin point places for people; and arts and leisure activities information.

Okay - so biccies were needed to keep us going!

Everyone engrossed in their search for interesting items to digitize

 

Yesterday we were at the Archives for our third visit looking at Brookside, Stirchley, and Woodside photos. Our willing volunteers found some really great stuff and even though we say ourselves – they really enjoyed themselves.

Over these 3 visits we have taken 18 people – 12 of whom have never visited an archive before. It feels really great to have introduced people to heritage in this way.
 

Getting ready for action!

Intriguing stuff

Terrific teamwork

 

Really excited to find photos people will be interested to see

 

We remember these areas

Our second visit to the Archives, today, saw 6 of us exploring the photo folders for Dawley, Hollinswood and Randlay. A mixture of photos from different periods; early 60’s-80’s. Some really interesting photographs - particularly of the Randlay Brick works, reclamation work in Dawley, Dark Lane, and some fantastic arty shots of the pools in the park. We were all really excited and wanted to show each other what we’d found! This bodes well for sharing our discoveries with general public in the future.

 

 

Thanks to the Madeley History Group for letting me attend their meeting to tell them about the project and for their suggestions of material to look out for. Such as – “we know that all streets on Sutton Hill began with an “S” and on Woodside with a “W” but there is no indication as to how individual street names were selected.” We’ll keep our eyes peeled when looking through material but in the meantime – if anyone reading this knows the answer – please do get in touch. They have  a great website.

http://www.madeleylocalhistory.org/

Yesterday saw our first trip to Shropshire Archives to start looking at the folders of the Telford Development Corporation (TDC) images. We concentrated on Malinslee, the Town Park and the Town Centre. Thanks to all our "fellow detectives" seen below.

It was a real pleasure to have some of the Telford Town Park Volunteers come along with us. They have a wealth of knowledge about the Park and it was brilliant to see them start to reminisce over some of the photos. Just what we hope people will do when they see some of the photos on the digital table at Southwater.
 

They are currently doing some research around the Chelsea Gardens so good that they were able to combine some of their own research. They have a fabulous website - not to be missed a video showing the Town Park from the air! http://www.friendsoftelfordtownpark.org/

Hot off the press! Our advert in the Senior Citizens Forum Newsletter for June is out today. The Newsletter is always full of interesting articles and seen by a large of people in the Borough. Here's hoping a few people may like to volunteer with us and enjoy discovering local heritage.


Senior Citizen's Newsletter June 2014
http://tandwseniors.org.uk/Forum/

Part of the project has been to look at digitising the Dawley Observer which became the Telford Journal and we have been given permission by the  Shropshire Star to do this. We have chosen Worcestershire Archive & Archaeology Service at the The Hive to do this as we’ve seen examples of their work and it’s of excellent quality. They came to collect the bound volumes from Madeley Library and they were carefully and “lovingly” wrapped up for their journey down to the dark room. Next time we see the papers it'll be electronically.
 

http://www.worcestershire.gov.uk/cms/archive-and-archaeology/commercial-services/digitisation-and-microfilming.aspx

We have permission to start the new project which is Heritage Lottery Funded - so all very exciting. A real chance to draw together some of the resources that tell the story of Telford's development.