Rosie interviews Douglas about Saturday club 18 Jan 2012

Rosie used her Dorset History Centre interview training to operate the recorder to interview Douglas today about his experiences at Saturday club, a long running youth club in Dorchester for young people with additional needs at the Dorchester youth and community centre in Kings Street. He was 10 when he first went in 1994. Lorna the project worker and Liz adult volunteer helped with the questions.  We heard about camping trips, bumpy old mini buses, rock climbing to the top of the rock face even with jelly legs and lots of other activities. A highlight for Douglas was the Prince of Wales opening the Dorchester Youth club in it's new building in Kings Street. 

Mrs. Blake and her Wonderful Tales

Today, both Lorna, Project Worker, and Jack, Lead Volunteer, had an engaging interview with former South Street Methodist Youth Club leader, Susan Blake. Before closing in the early 70's Mrs. Blake recalled tales which involved over-excited volunteers jumping with joy watching the 1966 World Cup, camping trips, productions of original pantomimes with original music from a talented former member who became a gold disc musician, quiz wins and many young people she has had the pleasure of seeing progress and go on to live successful lives. Her husband, Phillip Blake, now deceased, was involved as preacher in the Dorchester Methodist circuit and appointed leader of the club. As the interview progressed, both interviewers were astounded by the depth and diligence in maintaining historical items which will certainly be welcomed by the Dorset History Centre and the Dorset Young Remembers Project who will assist Susan Blake in depositing this valuable collection into the County archive for posterity.

Susan - prior to running the club

Listening to 70's prog rock L.P. of former club member  Graham  Stansfield

Archiving with Susan Blake

Volunteer Jack Welch and Susan Blake

With so much exciting information and detail, both Lorna and Jack went back to meet Mrs. Blake for a second time to investigating further the archive she possesses. This was a very fruitful meeting and they will arrange for the whole group and Pippa from the Dorset County Museum to take a look, with the idea of including the material in our exhibition.

Dorset Young Remembers Geocaching app

As part of the Geocaching side of the Dorset Young Remembers project, I am currently creating a mobile app to allow people to find our geocaches more easily. Hopefully it will be available on iPhone, Android and BlackBerry smartphones. It will let people view up to date information about our geocaches, including co-ordinates, description and a hint. They will be able to get to them using a compass or map inside the app. Also there will be the feature to post a log of their visit with comments for other people to see.

Currently, I have the basic parts of the app working on an Android phone with the compass, as you can see in the photo. The next step is to add Google Maps into the app, which will show a way to the cache from the person's location.