Oral History Project: memories of Centerprise

Information from  The Oral History Noticeboard: via Hackney Radical History blog 

A Hackney Autobiography will be launched on Saturday 24 January 2015 at a relaxed gathering with refreshments and poetry. This free public event will bring people together to discuss Centerprise and share memories of the time. All are welcome.

Please RSVP to On the Record, info@on-the-record.org.uk .

2–5 p.m. at Bishopsgate Institute,

230 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 4QH. (station: Liverpool Street)

Venue is wheelchair accessible.

For all those who remember Centerprise, a community centre, bookshop and publisher that hosted ground-breaking work in oral history, literacy, community history, life story writing and much more. Bring photographs, publications, documents from the time and your memories.

Oral history organisation On the Record  has received funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund for A Hackney Autobiography: Remembering Centerprise. On the Record are looking for people who remember Centerprise – or who want to help with the project – to join the project steering group, be interviewed or volunteer.

For more information about volunteer opportunities visit: 

http://on-the-record.org.uk/volunteers-needed-centerprise-project/

Centerprise was open from 1971 to 2012. It hosted a bookshop, publishing project, reading centre, café, youth club, crèche and more all under one roof in Dalston. It not only sold books, it made it possible for local people to write and publish their own works of poetry, autobiography and history. It conducted oral history interviews and published the books created by oral and local history group and Workers Educational Association class the ‘People’s Autobiography of Hackney’, including their two-volume chronicle of working life in twentieth century Hackney: Working Lives.

The project will not only reflect upon Centerprise and Hackney’s past, it will work with young people and adults living in Hackney today to set this history in the context of the borough’s rapidly changing landscape.

A Hackney Autobiography is running from December 2014 to July 2016. It will remember Centerprise, in particular its work in the 1970s and 1980s, through oral history, gathering a public archive at Bishopsgate Institute and by running free workshops and events. A Hackney Autobiography will culminate by curating a digital map showcasing some of the material collected and publishing an in-depth history of Centerprise.

<< On the Record Community Interest Company is a not-for-profit cooperative, established in May 2012. Our mission is to create and improve opportunities for a broader range of people to discover and participate in heritage and cultural activities. Previous projects run by On the Record include an oral history of Speakers’ Corner [http://soundsfromthepark.org.uk] and a volunteer research project about the arms trade and the First World War [http://armingallsides.org.uk] 

Read more here: http://on-the-record.org.uk >>  

For further information please contact info@on-the-record.org.uk

For details of a similar sort of project in South Tottenham, see http://www.bridgerenewaltrust.org.uk/