Call for Papers: Oral History @ Work: Recording Change in Working Lives

CfP: Work - Recording change in working lives The Oral History Society (in association with Llafur and Britain at Work) will be holding its  2019 annual conference at Swansea University  on the subject of 'Oral History @ Work: Recording Change in Working Lives'.  The conference will take place on 5-6 July 2019 at University of Swansea,Singleton Campus. We are currently seeking proposals for conference papers (closes on 14 December 2018). Note on proposals The deadline for submission of proposals is 14 December 2018.  Each proposal should include::  a title, an abstract of between 250-300 words,  your name (and the names of any co-presenters, panellists, etc),  your institution or organisation, your email address, and a note of any particular requirements.   Most importantly your abstract should demonstrate the use of oral history or personal testimony  and be  directly related to the conference theme.  Proposals that include audio playback are strongly encouraged.  Proposals should be emailed to the Oral History @ Work conference Administrator,  Polly Owen, at polly.owen@ohs.org.uk.  They will be assessed anonymously by the conference organisers,  and presenters will be contacted in January/February 2019. Further information on the conference can be found here:  http://www.ohs.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/OHSconf2019_CfP_web-1.pdf ReplyForward

Call for participants (Claimants' Union and other activists) to help a research project

A social policy lecturer at the University of Edinburgh has contacted us about a research project entitled ‘Bringing labour back in: class antagonism, labour agency and Britain’s active labour market reforms’.

He writes:

As part of the study I am conducting oral history interviews with people active in claimants unions/ advocacy and campaign groups/ Unemployed Workers Centres/ relevant trade unions during the 1980/90s.

The main aim is to recover a ‘bottom up’ story of people's response to the introduction of various social security and employment programme reforms of the last 30 years and how they and their organisations sought to shape them and were shaped by them.  

I’m especially interested in speaking with individuals who were active in initiatives around Restart/Job Training Scheme/YTS/ Stricter Benefit Regime in the 1980s and/or Project Work and JSA/ New Deals in the 1990s

(The research is supported by the Independent Social Research Foundation and more about the project can be found at http://isrf.org/about/fellows-and-projects/jay-wiggan/)

Dr Jay Wiggan

Lecturer in Social Policy

School of Social & Political Science, University of Edinburgh

15a George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LD

Tel: +44(0)131 650 3939

E-mail: j.wiggan@ed.ac.uk

Twitter

University of Edinburgh profile

MSc Policy Studies Programme  

(The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336)

He adds:

I’m hoping to complete most of the interviews between now and the end of June, prior to people's most likely holiday period. I am though more than happy to speak to people at any point during the summer.

I will of course come down to London to conduct interviews unless the person would prefer to speak over the telephone.

RaHN adds: 

Previously on this blog:-

Claimants and unemployed issues and struggles in the 1970s and 1980s (especially in Tottenham in the 1980s) - what can we learn from them?

Haringey Solidarity Group - some activities past and present [1990-2005]

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/

New Kid on the Blog: Another radical historian turns to self-publishing

Pete Grafton, author of YOU, YOU & YOU!  The People Out of Step with World War II (Pluto Press, 1981)  has recently started his own blog at <http://petegrafton.wordpress.com >. He intends to publish the original, longer version of the book online in late Spring, and to follow it with an interesting new project resulting from his work on letters written in the late 1940s to and from Glasgow, Cairo, and Porton Down.

YOU, YOU & YOU!  pioneered a type of historical method which is now much more generally accepted, even in mainstream academic circles, as both valid and important: encouraging non-famous, non-line-toeing people who were there to speak in their own words about what it was like. Among other writers who have referred to it, Alan Woodward used Pete’s interview cassette and transcripts in After Cable Street – Joe Jacobs 1940 to 1977 (Socialist Libertarians, 2011, reviewed on this blog*) as his main source along with Joe’s papers  for the section on Joe and the war.

L.W.

* By the way, Alan seemed pleased with this review and said it made valid points. He suggested that it should be published in Black Flag, as it has been.