Children on the Move: Evacuation in Staffordshire Professor Maggie Andrews Professor of Cultural History University of Worcester Matthew Blake Participation and Engagement Officer Staffordshire Archive Service

Background to the Project Record Office had a range of inquires from family historians who wanted understand their relations experience of WW2 evacuation in Staffordshire Previously two smaller oral history projects by Staffordshire Archives and Museum Service to capture C20 histories before they were lost gave a project template which could be scaled up for this project Evacuation was covered on University curriculum, an and MA had written on in relation to history of Wis

Research Process / Activities HFL funded grant financed project officer who carried out 90 interviews – importance of high number of interviews to understand multiplicity of experiences of evacuation 10 local events to promote the project Students from Keele and Staffordshire Universities and local Schools extracted information from school log books, newspapers

Progress of Project Wider academic research Regular 3 monthly meetings between University, Archives, Museum Service, Project Officer share ideas and discuss emerging themes Website Production of a publication with input from University, Record Office and Museum Service

Positive impact on Communities and Individuals Asked interviewees to share their histories rather than take them to create our histories Positive impact on their lives - clear at the event held for them at NMA Books given to every participant every Staffordshire Library and Secondary School Travelling Exhibition Website and on-going scope to upload histories

A range of Outputs/ Impacts and Uses of Research For archives modern history telling a different stories - oral histories and transcripts - used for understanding experience of evacuation to Staffordshire 90 transcripts used in U/G assessments and dissertations Contributed to academic research, conference papers, journal articles and a book to be completed for Bloomsbury Academic 2014

Benefits to Academic Work Began to work across, even bridge, categories and boundaries; range of input in the planning, the discursive style of interviewing, the launch event and book resulted in a project which straddled : – boundaries of reminiscence work and academic work which interrogates memory and myths in oral history – categories of history written by, for or about ordinary peoples lives produced a version of peoples history in the best traditions of Raph Samuel and the original History Workshop Movement Moved from individual / solitary analysis of ‘documents’ subject to discursive approach – for example through the dialogue in project teams about themes and narrative tropes within the oral histories, something continued in U/G exploration of material

Build on your relationships The partnership for academics and local authority organisations can be a rewarding one Encourage undergraduate work on the project Develop the use of findings/collections by universities Develop community engagement George Cooke and Sydney Cox, reunited after 70 years

What we learnt The importance of informal and frequent dialogue in planning projects and running them That there is real scope to craft a research project which serves a number of different constituencies - for example we brought together academic research into oral history and reminiscence work That time invested in impact work with local archives can actually end up as very time efficient - in practical terms the work done by the project officer undertaking the interviews and work placement students has equated with having a research assistant for two years Academic and public sector targets can be met through good project working