Fun & Friendship with Our Neighbours

By Jack Welch, Volunteer press Officer

From left: Phillipa Dowdeswell, Edward Trist,
Katherine-Anne Crabb and Amy Davy
surveying the fruits of their labour.

As the compilation of the final museum display boards takes place with volunteers collapsing on sofas with exhaustion and an encroaching deadline, the team here at DYR were thankful for the additional group adrenaline, courtesy of the Dorset County Museum. Under the superb guidance of our Geocaching Co-ordinator and Graphics Designer, Edward Trist, three young members came in to support the largest presentation of a scrapbook yet! The Fun & Friendship/Activities board was the task. Katherine-Anne Crabb, Amy Davy, who is currently undertaking an MA in Museum Studies, and Phillipa Dowdeswell gave a refreshing boost in checking the content of the board, whilst keeping in check some of our group's excessive 'creative energies'. Their expertise on what works in a museum environment ensured we edited down the photographs and words to a number manageable for a museum visitor.

Not only that, but the girls who attended also learned a lot about the new system adopted for our Mac computer, known as 'Comic Life'. As they twisted, teased and scaled images to suit the template we are working with, they too learned the necessary technical skills, which up till now they had only reviewed. As they left to return to the museum, the group were very pleased with the efforts made by our young volunteers and are very excited to introduce the innovative and colourful display to the general public soon.

Our latest geocache is live!

By Edward Trist, volunteer geocaching co-ordinator

Our latest geocache at the Keep Military Museum was published yesterday. This is the second of five geocaches to be placed in our Dorchester trail of historic hotspots. Our first, along the River Frome, has attracted over 60 geocachers since it was placed in November!

Recently, we introduced our new mascot Sid (the oldest spider in the world!) to our geocaches, along with new historical information cards in which Sid tells you all about each location's history. We hope this will encourage young people to learn about the history of their local area through geocaching.

Our new geocache has already had some great feedback from geocachers who found it within hours of it being put online!

We also had some great support from Colin Parr at the Keep Military Museum, who generously gave us his assistance placing the geocache.

Try it for yourself at http://coord.info/GC3MGNF and watch this space for our next geocache!

Raincoats and Brollies...These are a few of our favourite things!

Open For Business!

By Jack Welch, Volunteer Press Officer

With the gathering momentum of the upcoming exhibition this July, DYR took their publicity campaign one step further into Dorchester Borough Gardens to drum up excitement  during the the final day of Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee. With a barrel-load of goody bags and armed with a shop supply of crisps and coke, the enthusiastic group were ready to sell a range of treats in a vintage Tuck Shop, dressed in a variety of clothes in the Queen's decades gone by. However, little did we suspect when the clouds decided to unleash an unremitting downpour of showers as the event got underway! Thankfully, the group were not to be deterred by such circumstances and bravely stepped outside to set-up the stall for an afternoon of entertainment. As the author G.K. Chesterton once quoted, "And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow."

New Dorchester Mayor, Andy Canning, poses for
a photograph to mark the occasion.

Time to Boogie!

As the afternoon got into full swing, volunteers Charlotte, Lee and Jenny ventured into the crowd to sell the tuck shop wares and hand out leaflets about our exhibition, whilst getting incredibly damp in the meantime. A live band played to liven up the spirits of those visitors who made an effort to visit the garden and partake in some of the day's festivities. At one point the female singer praised Jenny's sensational gold boots as she was one of  the first to step outside and dance. By interacting with public figures such as the town Mayor and the event organisers of the day, the group felt they had a great success despite the mitigating factors. The group raised a surprising sum of over £21.00.  Project Worker Lorna Johnson praised the very cold and tired volunteers for their resilience and the effort that they made on such a dismal day. It was all in a day's work to ensure that as many members of the public know about the exhibition celebrating local youth clubs coming soon.

Meet Sid...Your new local, neighbourhood History Spider



Our young volunteers with their recent creations. Coming to
a Geocache near you!



Is there a certain spider crawling up your long-forgotten memories in the attic? Has it crawled its way into new discoveries you thought long forgotten? In that case, it may just be Dorset Young Rememeber's eight-legged Geocache mascot, proudly named Sid by our young volunteer, Edward. As part of our diverse opportunities for this project, Geocaching is just one feature where people of all ages can engage with history within the local Dorset community. But, just so you may be warned now, if any of you decide to undertake our upcoming historic trails, you may not be alone when you find the capsule to log in your efforts. Who knows - he may just spring up when you least expect it...



"Nice to meet you." Sid happily posing for his close-up at
Routes.



Farmers of the Future

We visited an intriguing farmers group in Beaminster. Beaminster Young Farmers started in 1935 under the umbrella of the Dorset County Federation of Young Farmers Clubs, only recently came into association with Dorset Youth Association as dropping numbers of older young people led to a switch to welcoming those from 10 and up in 2006. Since then they have celebrated a 75 year anniversary in 2010 and a proud success of winning the Upton Oil Cup of various competitions and sports. So what has made this unusual youth club so successful for so long and why have so many young people joined in the club's diverse activities? Lorna Johnson, along with fellow DYR members Elizabeth and Rosie Silk, went to find out.

Meeting long-time associative of the club 'Uncle' Evered Way and his great niece, Helen Waybridge, they discussed just some of their fond memories when members of the youth club. Talking about their famous annual harvest suppers and competitions, in which it was always an important event for any member of the club, Uncle Evered said that people always dressed smartly and men turning out in suits and ties! Other competitions such as tractor ploughing, sheep shearing and bull rearing activities were designed to help young people in their future lives as farmers.  Evered, who helped raised and rear animal stock such as bull to sell at later farming markets, admitted that when the time came to sell his efforts to other buyers "it is a sort of a friend, isn't it." For women, dressmaking, fashion shows and jam making were more the order back in those days although women did take on ploughing etc.. The young farmers group also has the distinction of the title of a being a 'marriage bureau' in which members as young as 16 would meet their potential life partners and be married to other members of the club. Evered, who was the first in a long line of a generation of the group, met his wife at the club and has since descended from, eventually  Evered's sister giving birth to the father of Helen and she giving birth to a son when she was 23. With visits from Holland to New York to test out the latest tractor designs, this club doesn't just stay fixed in its one location and there are ongoing competitions to test young members' skills in debating, proving that this club has a wide range of activities.

Finally ending the interview, Beaminster Young Farmers turned out to be a great place to have fun and try fun activities.

Brenda Hobbs and her husband Ellis Hobbs remember Harman’s Cross Youth Club

Brenda and Ellis came and spoke to us about the history of Harman's Cross Youth Club. Harman's Cross Youth Club was run by Brenda's mum, Mrs Mitchell, from the early 1950's until 1968. It was run seven days a week, more or less as they held two club nights, entertainment evenings, Panto rehearsals and at the weekend Mr Mitchell would drive them down to Baggator Adventure Centre. The club would also go abroad once a year.

Ellis told us that Mrs Mitchell ran the youth club because 'she got a lot of enjoyment from the young people and felt that she was doing something really worthwhile.' A youngster in trouble would come to her door because they knew they could talk to her. Brenda said 'they all called her mum so I used to call her Mrs Mitchell if I needed attention.' She added that 'people came to youth club because they wanted to, it wasn't like school.'

The volunteer leaders and young people did everything themselves, they organised events and competitions. Brenda said 'we took on fundraising very enthusiastically by taking part in 50 mile sponsored walks and things.' 'It was the youth clubs hey day in the 50's and 60's because people didn't have TVs, the entertainment was at the club.'

Each club hosted a harvest supper with entertainment and the Director would come to judge and award certificates. The supper was cooked at home and bought in, which usually consisted of salads and cold meat.

The club was all about having fun, they would have rounders tournaments with four boys and four girls on a team and 'the boys would flirt with the girls to put them off and it worked.'

Craft work was of a high standard, taught by Mrs Mitchell and involved weaving baskets and making lobster pots good enough for fishing.

Brenda and Ellis Hobbs with two young volunteers

The project work for the exhibition is progressing rapidly and we have been very busy collecting archive material from the different decades to match our themes of Fun and Friendship, Activities, Sport and Leaders. We are in the process of creating comic book pages with fun speech bubbles and photos of activities as panels for the exhibition. We will also be making slide shows with music of any additional youth club photos to display on a screen in the exhibition.

An Interview with Three Heroines

On Wednesday 4^th April, volunteer Jack Welch and Project Worker, Lorna Johnson, had the great privilege of interviewing the two first young women awarded a Duke of Edinburgh Gold award by Dorset County Council in 1965.  Jean Slade (now Coulter) had intrigued many young volunteers from the Dorset Young Remembers project because of numerous newspaper stories during her time at Dorset Youth Association  (DYA) in the

From left: Anna Mayckock, Jean Coulter and Mary Shaw

early 1960s. Jean was joined by fellow DofE recipient, Mary Shaw and Anna Maycock. Jean has not seen her one-time friend Mary in over forty years and the celebration continued as long-standing DYA trustee, Wally Gundry, joined in the informal chat over many cups of tea, delectable slices of coffee cake and a plentiful supply of biscuits. The event was also followed by journalists from local radio station, Wessex FM and local newspaper, Dorset Echo. All three women happily reflected on the past and present of the scheme which they all participated in and talked about many of the benefits that joining the DofE award can have for young people across the country. Mary reflected at one point that “I think you get a lot of insight into different things otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity to.” All of those present were briefly interviewed by the Wessex FM representative, who despite being a young work experience figure, managed to overcome many of the technological mishaps caused by her digital recorder. Anna enjoyed viewing and took receipt of photos and clippings and the Gold certificate so that the project can display them at the upcoming Dorset County Museum exhibition. She was especially enthusiastic and willingly borrowed many priceless possessions of her elders, in order to show some of those at youth clubs she worked for, the continuing value of youth service and boundless possibility when taking part in the activities offered. She commented that “it’s amazing to meet them and to see their pictures and what they did for their skills and physical recreations as well.”

Jean and Mary interviewed by Wessex FM

After some hours of nostalgic discussions of what the women remembered of their time in participating in the DofE, Jack and Lorna were able to get down to the main event of the afternoon and, for the first time in archival history, questioned Jean on her fondest memories of her youth and the later life she led abroad with her husband as far as remote islands such as Papa New Guinea. Talking about one particularly unconventional memory of her mother during the war, she recalled “the women who were trained to do first aid were given guns with bullets”, fortunately unused. Both interviewers were inspired by her many stories including her extraordinary adventures in Poland, where she was one of the few volunteers chosen to visit climb the Tartra mountains with John Hunt’s National Youth Association party and visit the Auschwitz Concentration Camp museum. Thinking about what young people could gain from following experiences such as hers, she suggested “you need common sense rather than just relying on technology.” After the end of a long, but satisfying day, Lorna and Jack thanked Jean for her travelling in coming to speak to Dorset Young Remembers and were happy now that one piece of important archival history will now be available for future generations to come.