We are currently recruiting for a new volunteer press officer and new volunteer core group members to join our team for the new year. You will receive training in heritage skills such as interviewing and recording oral histories, how to mount an exhibition and archive photo research. We also need people to help with finding out about historical hot spots in Dorset so we can link them to our Geocaching trail. You will also gain experience working in a fun inclusive team and if you wish help run workshops about our projects in Dorset Youth clubs. You can do all this or just a small bit, be out and about or work quietly in our office. It is a great opportunity to use or increase your skills if you are not in work at present. We do project work in the day time and after school hours. 
Your volunteer work can be accredited in a number of ways which is proven to help in job hunting and college applications. 


Contact Lorna Johnson lornajohnson@dorsetyouth.com or call 07788203003

What we got up to November to December 2011

20/12/11 Our Interview Conducted with Town Crier, Alistair Chisholm.

By Jack Welch

In the approaching days towards Christmas, Dorset Young Remembers (DYR) attracted another prominent guest to their proud catalogue of conducted interviews. Alistair Chisholm, town crier incumbent and Blue Badge tour guide for the past ten years regaled his thoughts to DYR Lead Volunteer, Jack Welch, about his thoughts in regards to young people in the town of Dorchester and beyond.


Discussing the importance of history in this town and preservation of its heritage and the young people, he stressed it was more vital than ever not to ‘isolate’ the young generation from the rich diversity and vibrancy which can be experienced from Dorchester’s past as it could help then gain perspective and inspire them. 

Mr. Chisholm quoted that in the difficult times young people faced that it was “important to be tenacious” and to try be “clear and certain” about their direction and to try and gain confidence. It was perhaps all the more comforting to know that Mr. Chisholm believes that unlike the discrimination young people faced in the past, there are no ‘boundaries’ in which young people, regardless of any background, can aim for. The great aspirations can be fulfilled.

Not underestimating the problems of today, he believes there are many opportunities available for young people in volunteering which could help them move forward even in these difficult times of unemployment. He was very keen that resources were available to ensure different activities be available to encourage young people’s diverse interests. Mr. Welch concluded the interview with final photographs due to Mr. Chisholm’s impending journey to London. Mr. Chisholm has welcomed the prospect of being invited for further interviews.

19/12/11Leslie Phillips MBE gives us an interview

Leslie Phillips MBE four times mayor of Dorchester and President of Dorchester youth club for 45 years, gave an impressive interview to three young volunteers of the Dorset Young Remembers project.

He gave us a dazzlingly history of this vibrant and popular youth club, the highlights will appear on this blog soon, as an audio file to listen to. (You can find out why he was making minature horse shoes!) He confirmed our emerging theme that music is a very popular activity at youth club today. Mr Phillips said "We're now even seeing grandchildren of members who started out. It is one of the finest youth clubs in this part of the region. These young people are so important to Dorchester.”

We are proud to have recorded the first interview with Mr Phillips to be saved for posterity in the Dorset County Archives. A man such as Mr Phillips who has changed the course of the town’s history by his voluntary work, and who tells stories so vividly, will now be preserved in his own words as part of the town’s heritage.

Left is a photo of Stuart Tyler an archivist at the Dorset History Centre, one of our partners in our Young Roots Heritage Lottery Project, giving us feedback on how our interview went. He also lent us the digital recorders. We will help youth clubs borrow the recorders and conduct their own interivews. We call it Gold digging, looking for the Gold (something precious) in the history of our clubs in Dorset.

13/12/11 The Dorset Men and the Chilli Monsters

The Dorset Men (a charity that promotes Dorset) met three members of the Dorset Young Remembers Team on the 13^th December. They were kindly presenting a donation to  Routes.

Edward the volunteer Geocache coordinator (shown below) Jenny the volunteer press officer and Miles the volunteer designer explained their roles to the charity's representatives.

Our project also got some great feed back from an official Geocacher who found Edwards first cache “We did your cache this am and may I say I salute what you are doing. It has long been my belief that Geocaching represents a significant resource to promote historical awareness. I wholeheartedly support what you are doing. Please send me more info and if there is anything I can do to help, let me know Rod Hughes(ChilliMonsters)Sent from iPhone

13/12/11 Rock Solid  Bridport                                  

The Rock Solid youth club impressed the Dorset Young Remembers volunteers on the 13^th December for working so well as a team. They picked up the idea of the project really quickly and with Rosie’s help got trained up and conducted their first interview with Valerie Payne their retired leader. They were the first group to invent tag interviewing, they organised the questions and took it in turn to ask them. Rosie was struck by the connection of the group telling their story and a diary she had recently read by Anne Frank.

Valerie’s story was interesting and the group found out that the younger PALS group were so naughty once they had to close the club for a couple of weeks! Valerie said, in she worked so hard for young people for so many years “because it was so much fun”

The group definitely want to Geocache and may use it as they are a church group to pick out faith historical spots around Bridport. Then the group wanted to record one of the old games they play. It is characteristic of the group that up to recently met in their leader’s cottage dining room. It worked well with the video camera. Rosie enjoyed helping them and is quite experienced with video. We will put it up on the blog as soon as we have the releases signed. Can’t wait to see you again Rock Solid.

7/12/11 The Reef - Wimborne Senior Youth club Workshop

Charlton, Carl and Jordan tried out the grave game led by Issy. They are getting ready to lead the Wimborne Juniors in a workshop after Christmas. It is a really busy popular club operating out of the small care-takers bungalow until they get their new youth club built. They absolutely loved the real Roman artefacts the museum lent us especially the replica Roman helmet which they took in turns to wear and did not take off the whole night!

LOVING THE ROMAN HELMET

They want to find one to buy. Issy led really well “We connected because we are all cadets; I am in the RAF cadets they are in the army.” Two youth leaders Terry who runs the Wimborne advice centre/drop in called the Planet and Mel Ogden DCC youth worker at Wimborne shared really interesting stories about the clubs past and we are going to have to get good at interviewing as we have 6 Wimborne youth leaders past and present who would like to be interviewed tracing the clubs beginning as a Methodist youth club in the 70’s through to present day.

An interesting theme is emerging; competitive sports and games are really popular now and in the past. As we left the club there were a groups of young people in the woodland opposite, the young people are allowed to play outside. What do youth members do in the woods? The boys sing a cappella (in a group with out being accompanied by music) it sounded great. Issy said there is allot of singing these day amongst young people encouraged my musicals and TV competitions, at school at the dinner table they play games where one starts a song and the next person has to carry it on.


6/12/11 Jenny Palmer Volunteer Press Officer Writes About Her Interview with Ray Seymour

Jenny interviewed Ray Seymour, the Vice President of the Dorset Youth Association, about his 60 years experience working with youth clubs. He spoke about many remarkable memories of his involvement with Bere Regis youth club starting with a sponsored walk to Salisbury to raise the money to buy the old Women’s Institute hut that would house the youth club. To our surprise, we learnt that the Dorset Association of Youth Clubs was originally the National Association of Girls Clubs which then became the National Association of Boys and Girls Clubs until Youth Clubs UK was established.

He told us that the activity he most enjoyed running at the youth club was swimming but the members would also enjoy playing table tennis and competing in five-a-side football. One of his biggest adventures with the youth club was going to Baggator in Dartmoor, which he says was a ‘marvellous exercise for young people because it taught them independence and self survival’. We are very grateful to Ray for coming in and sharing his inspirational work with us. He has made such a positive impact on the lives of many young people. We will have the pleasure of speaking to Ray again soon about the history of DYA and his experiences as the network’s Vice President. Ray Seymour is in the below picture far right with some of the Dorset Young Remembers Team.

5/12/11 Loder's Junior youth club workshop – vinyl records are history!

Jenny and Lee led nearly 30 eight to ten year olds in a youth club workshop. They helped the young people understand our time line and where they fitted into it and got them thinking about their club’s story. Loder’s youth club first opened its doors in 1975. It was a bit daunting when we arrived as the youngsters were like agitated atoms darting about the hall playing a very lively game! But they quickly settled when the leader called them and worked hard and proved to be a very knowledgeable, delightful group.

  

At the end of our games and activities Tina Cornish (above left) their leader showed them a LP record and tape cassette from 1975 when the club first began, allot of the young people had never seen a vinyl LP before. She also showed them an old large 10p coin which is how much subs were back then. The group got thinking about their history and want to help us do more digging about the history and value of their club. Tina Cornish youth Leader of 30 years plus and MBE said to us “Thank you all so much for coming & motivating. Excellent feedback.”

5/12/11 Our Interview with Wally Gundry

The volunteer Dorset Young Remember journalists used their Dorset History Centre training to interview a veteran youth club volunteer Wally Gundry with 50 years service, sometimes putting in a 40 hour week helping the DYA network of youth clubs. He started in the 1950’s and still helps as vice president of Dorset Youth Association today.  Through his job as a builder he borrowed a digger in the mid 1960’s, and with a small team of volunteers, built the DYA HQ building from a prefab kit! We still use it today!

The volunteer journalists also discovered that there used to be a Dorset Youth Association interclub competition called Quick Silver which set tasks and the youth clubs won points for completing them. A trophy was awarded for the top number of points collected. This kept clubs together during the summer break. Challenges were for example pushing your leader up the high street in a bed! Or sourcing a Russian underground ticket! (bear in mind this was pre internet days) The project manager at Dorset youth Association Tony Armstrong said maybe he could use this model for a project he is setting up today and Dave Thompson our Director thinks it might be good thing to add to his list of summer activities.

We wondered if we could show the interview to a local radio station to get some mentoring in editing it. Maybe they would they would like to play it on the radio it has got some great stuff in it!

2/12/11 Our first Youth Club Workshop

We did it! Issy and Rosie supported by Lorna and Liz delivered a great workshop to the senior Loders youth club. We drove to the Loder’s village hall on top of a hill in the heart of the West Dorset countryside on a dark, wet and windy night. The group of 5 young members and 3 adult volunteers all joined in and gave us great feed back on the project. They played our games led by Issy and Rosie and really want to try out the Geocaching and the Gold digging workshop we offered as follow up sessions. They want to interview their parents and grandparents and themselves about what youth club means to them. Their idea is to hold an intergenerational games night, playing games like skittles that are as old as their 37 year old club.

The only games they don’t still play are snooker and whist. The snooker stopped because the snooker table got too old and now has a metal top and is used to serve tea on in the kitchen! The whist games they might try and revive, “They love anything competitive” said Colin a volunteer at the club and the group certainly fought hard in the chew duel, the girls eventually winning! Tina Cornish is the youth leader, having once been a member herself and has got an MBE for her help for over 30 years. She has lots of photos and stories to tell in the next workshop.

29/11/11 Workshop Trial 

The group tried out the youth club workshop. We think we have achieved our aim of creating a time line and three games that will really help young people get a sense of the passage of time and relating it to them selves and their youth club. The museum staff told us young people find getting a perspective on history really hard, the proof will be in the pudding when they try the games at youth club. Lee did a great job leading the group and now several people feel able to lead the sessions. We have a few glitches to iron out and the group suggest making some boards to explain the project visually, including archive photos and then we think we are ready to go!

We will scan some of the archive photos the photo team. Watch this Space! The objects group nearly finished labelling the real artefacts we are taking to our youth club workshops for the grave games. Our first major one is now booked -Loders with 40 young members is going to be.....exciting/scary/brilliant!

29/11/11 A Report From Edward our new Geocache CoordinatorToday we placed the first Geocache in the Dorset Young Remembers trail. We looked around the area to find a suitable location for the cache and used the handheld GPS to take a reading of the location. We then used the GPS to locate the cache again to check the co-ordinates were correct. I uploaded the cache to www.geocaching.com with the co-ordinates and a description. This has helped me better understand the process of uploading a cache so we can do it again for the rest of the caches in the Dorset Young Remembers History Trail.

2/11/11 How to Make a Museum Concept Document

Our Dorset County Museum training was brainstorming our exhibition on the History of youth clubs in Dorset. We got some first class mentoring from graphic design professional Nick Morris and Dorset County Museum staff Pippa Brindly (education manager) and James Murden the Museum Director.

With some focused work the aims of the exhibition were identified and we were taught an important heritage process – putting together an exhibition concept document. It was a valuable, exciting experience to volunteers who are hoping to work in the media, heritage, design and marketing industries.

We picked up some great design tips to share - watch out for them as a separate doc on this blog. We got some good feedback, volunteer Miles Martin’s artwork received praise.

8/11/11 Our Three Games

The museum training group met tonight and are well on the way to completing the youth club workshop. They have devised three games that they hope will help youth club members’ heads around time lines and their clubs place in history.

The first is a game involving graves from the iron-age to present day, with real objects to place in the right ones. We get them talking about geocaching and what history spots they know around their club so that we can place as caches in the spring and summer.




We then get the youth clubs to guess where there clubs come in the time line between 2^nd World War and the present day. Then we place out mats from the 1940s to the present day and the youth club members and leaders stand on the mat of the decade they were born and when their club was started.

Finally we also have a game dancing through the decades and a high energy quiz that involves getting the right object (a tuck shop curly wurly) or picture of a ration book onto the right decade mat or your team forfeits chews! What decade would you style your hair into a quiff for club? What decade were crisps first sold in tuck shops? What decade would you wear a Nirvana t shirt to youth club are some of the games.

Nov 5th - 2nd Group Get Archive and Interview Training

The second group complete their interview and archive training at Dorset History Centre with Stuart Tyler and are ready to go. Tony Armstrong project manager said it was a fantastic group. "Liz Silk really helped the group imagine youth clubs from the past as she shared some memories." Douglas, Rosie Isabella and Ria worked hard and are ready to use their training. Stuart Tyler was a great trainer telling stories and demonstrating what historical gems he has in the depths of the Dorset County archive and helped the Dorset Young Remember volunteers get ready to record their own stories for posterity. Issy, Amy and Charlotter from Group 1 came in and had lunch with group 2 and shared their very first interview which Stuart said was skillfully done.

We love Geocaching in the rain!

We got so wet especially Amy and Jack Lundberg who “don’t do coats.” Ashley as you can see below was dry and happy. But we did the Wheaton’s Sun Dorchester Geocache trail and found it! We have sussed how the new jazzy Geocaching hand held device works. There was a tense 10 minutes at the beginning as it did not seem to be working, the volunteers checked the project worker Lorna had down loaded the trail. Yes she had this time! But once we knew we needed to hit the zoom in button to see the GPS map we could start following the arrow. It was a good trail as it led us by some historical hot spots we knew and we can use them when we make our own trails. The hint section was really good allowing a running commentary as you do the treasure hunt definitely worth the up grade. Amy signed the log book for us and we re-hid the cache watching out muggles (non Geocachers) did not see us and we went back to Routes (the café advice centre connected to DYA and below our Dorset Young Remembers Office 5 North Square Dorchester) to dry out and drink hot chocolate.

Oct - Archive and Interview Training - Group 1

We had a great session in October at the Dorset History Centre. We learnt about the contents of the Dorset County archive. They literally have history in drawers; we saw the town charter and an Anglo Saxon legal document that included a curse if you broke the terms of the contract! The DYA archive and all our audio stories and photos will be stored here soon. In hundreds of years time researchers will be able to look back and learn about Dorset youth clubs and the young people who went to them and the people who helped run them 1943 - 2012.

We learnt about recording audio stories the right way. We will use WAVE files and not mpegs. Waveform Audio File Format or WAVE or more commonly know as WAV due it’s file extension is an uncompressed audio file so its larger and of better quality than an a MPEG file and the standard for recording interviews for archive. We can squash it into an MPEG file if we want to but it will be stored as the larger WAVE file because fashions change and the mpeg might go out of fashion like a cassette tape or compact disc.  Archivists in training (like us!) need to think about these things!

We also learnt how to ask the right questions, how to make the interview not all about us! Plus we learned how to operate the digital oral history recorders which we can now borrow. We practised some interviews. Issy and Amy even interviewed Stuart Tyler who gave us the training. They have designed a questionnaire to measure attitudes of people working in the heritage industry towards that strange exotic species - young people! Stuart was great he is familiar with the species and likes working with them very much!

Oct 2011 - Checking out other exhibitions at Bridport Museum

Lorna, Tony, Ashley and Mike went to Bridport museum to check out the Spinning Yarns exhibition that uses portraits, audio and video like our exhibition might. Plus it has a timeline running around the whole museum. We were impressed. But it looks expensive!

The film on a TV stuck into the wall was triggered to play when you sat down on a bench by an overhead sound devise that looked like a lamp shade!  They had artefacts displayed in numbered glass boxes with audio stories relating to each one that you could listen to on a metal telephone device. We could display the history of youth club tuckshops with people reminiscing about their favourite Refresher experience!

And we impressed them. Ashley caused a stir arriving in his skull joker sweatshirt but impressed the volunteer staff with his knowledge of the Romans and that he is a student forge worker. They told us to get in touch with the Bridport archive staff and they could help us. Go and check out Bridport Museum when it reopens in the spring. It is free and there is an amazing cake shop up the road! http://www.bridportmuseum.co.uk/

October and November - Dorset County Museum training

We are the only ones in the museum for our sessions on a Tuesday 4.30 to 6.30 and it is great. An exercise we did in the training led us through some surprising discoveries by looking at old pictures of child criminals. Pippa Brindly and Jackie from the education department are helping us devise a workshop to inspire youth clubs to investigate the history of their clubs and get their heads around time lines and where they stand in history. It was hard work but think we think we have got two activities hammered out and the outline for the youth club workshops, It was good to get input from people in the group who volunteer in youth clubs. We think they will inspire the clubs to get involved but we are ready to adapt it if we need to.

October and November - Dorset County Museum Trainings

Our “Nights in the Museum” with Pippa Brindly and Jackie from the education department are amazing. We saw the new Pharaohs exhibition through the glass doors. http://www.dorsetcountymuseum.org/pharaohThe Director gave us an exclusive insight into the nuts and bolts of exhibition mounting and making a concept document and has promised to help us do one. Ideas are flying about for our displays on the History of Dorset Youth clubs: silent disco, timelines that run up walls and along floors,  a scout tent with archive films of scouting, portraits that trigger bar code audio stories, portraits and a real

tuck shop.

Oct 2011 - We are going to be on the Telly - but it's a secret!

We have been filmed Geocaching and getting some top interview tips off a pretty famous TV interviewer as Dorset Young Remember volunteers interviewed Wally Gundry and Ray Seymour who have helped youth clubs in the Dorset Youth Association network for 110 years between them! We got to film in the library of Dorset County Museum where we will soon get some training. It is a pretty amazing place, like Hogwarts someone said, you can go up ladders and on to balconies to look at books that stretch up to the ceiling. There are more than 20 volunteers in the core group of volunteers now and we are all getting free passes into the museum and the library to do research for when we put on our exhibition in July 2012. We think we could get comfortable reading history in the big leather armchairs.

But we are not allowed to announce what the program is yet. Just to say they loved our project and they we will be on national telly talking about it in February of next year on one of the big channels. Shhhh!

October 2011 Lady Digby helps us with our research

Three volunteers interviewed Lady Digby about her involvement with the Dorset Youth Association network of youth clubs from the 1960s onwards. Settled in a beautiful bay window looking over the lawns of Minterne the volunteers Megan Jones, Rosie Silk and Lee Burnett wanted to know why had Lady Digby worked so long and hard raising money and visiting youth clubs. She explained she loved young people’s enthusiasm and get up and go and that she was built the same way and for the simple reason it was such good fun. She visited all the youth clubs and loved the leaders. They would meet at her country house at Minterne Magna and sit around the large table. Youth club leaders sometimes talked quite allot she said and if necessary Lady Digby would stall them by handing them a big bag of peppermints and inviting them to try one.

Lady Digby shared how they were all inspired by Frank Gwatkin the director of DYA who was a real “Pied Piper” and they would all have done anything for him. It was his inspiration to start Dorset’s first Adventure Centre on Dartmoor in response to leaders requests for activities for their clubs. Lady Digby did what she could to back him. The youth club members did all the work to make the derelict farmhouse habitable so they felt like they owned it. The opening was amazing with Lord Hunt who had climbed Everest. Frank had found the only Scotsman in the county who could play bagpipes and at the opening there was this mist and the sound of pipes getting closer and closer and as the procession arrived as the mist lifted and the piper arrived with all the young people and folks to support them. The centre was eventually closed many years later when DYA could not pay for the renovations needed to fulfil the health and safety regulations.

Lady Digby remembers Inter club competitions and quizzes and debates being popular and enjoying visiting Kay Hickmott's popular club. She was a wren during the war and was very smart and loved music. Lady Digby said she used to take her guitar down to her club but sang to it rather than played very well! But they had great fun. When the group have had their interview training Lady Digby kindly agreed to a taped interview so her memories could be recorded for the exhibition at the Dorset County museum in July 2012 and be preserved in the Dorset County archive.

Sept 2011 Jack's research sessions are throwing up some great stories

Frank Mitchell, the “mad axeman” of the 1960s, escaped Dartmoor Prison and used the Dorset Youth Association Adventure Centre Baggator as his drinking hideout for a short period. Wally a DYA field worker bumped into him at a local pub and said he seemed like a nice fella! Frank met his fate and was shot and drowned in suspicious circumstances in the East End.

Jean Slade attended a Dorchester youth club and was a 20-year old volunteer press officer for DYA in the 60's. In 1964-65 she conquered the tallest mountain in Poland, stood at the Iron Curtain and saw Auschwitz only 20 years after liberation. Speaking of Auschwitz, she said “I don’t think I should like to visit the place again.” Jean and Mary Swan were the first two women in Dorset to get a Duke of Edinburgh Gold. They both achieved it at Wally's Dorchester DYA affiliated youth club. We would love to find out more about them both if anyone has any details please contact Lorna at lornajohnson@dorsetyouth.com

22nd August 2011 - We get a logo

Andrew Dzedzej worked with Robert Blair in photo shop and they came up with the design ideas that became our logo after the rest of the group signed off on it. (see above!). The font came from dafont.com a free font design web site Miles Martin (a past project worker and designer) put us on to. Andrew has volunteered to be a designer and digital producer on this project even though he will be off to Southampton to study physics (he just heard he got into Uni too). Robert and Andrew will sign on to the v inspired web site where they can log their own volunteering hours and then get the project to sign off on it. The idea is to get a v50 for 50 hours service. It is proof that will help with jobs and college. Jack Welch has begun his CVQ folder that will be worth 50 UCAS points that he won’t need now he is in! But it will still help with jobs. 

12th August 11  Jack gets our archive 1943 - 2011 organised into boxes.

 



 The boxes are a mixture of Dorset Youth Association club photos, press clippings, a rather sensational diary from Baggator adventure centre! slides, documents, committee minutes, budgets, annual reports, cheque book stubs and floppy discs. Jack decided on a method and sorted the material into different categories and labelled the boxes.We will learn more about archive methods as we are booked in for some training with the Dorset County archivist Stuart Tyler. Jack is familiar with primary source material like photos and diaries as he is studying history. He'll use his research skills when he gets to Winchester University to study journalism and creative writing. He just heard he got in (Yay!)

Jack’s next step is to carry out a rough survey of the archive to draw up a time line and locate some great stories and ID potential people to interview to help tell the story of Dorset youth clubs.

9th August 2011 The Project Begins at Last

At last after biting our nails about fundraising the Heritage Lottery fund came through and the project begins 9/8/2011. Thank you Heritage Lottery Fund! Jack Welch a lead volunteer in the conception of the project and Dorset Youth Association fundraiser Aimee Malcolm collaborate on the Heritage Lottery fund press release. Jack, “It’s been more or less getting stuck in after all our planning.”

She also told us about a Neil Cummings organic time line she saw at the Arnolfini gallery Bristol thinking it might inspire our Dorset youth club time line that will feature in our exhibition next July 2012 in Dorset County Museum. 

I followed it up. I’m the project worker Lorna Johnson who helped create the project with the six original volunteers and will be assisting the group of volunteers, now about 18 of them, deliver the project. I went to see it and shared it with the group who thought it was interesting too. Check it out, it has different colour coded threads running through it, helping the history of the gallery be linked to key changes and ideas in the world and developments in the city it grew up in, allowing surprising connections to be made. http://www.neilcummings.com/content/self-portrait-1-installation