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.