Our monthly round-up of oral history happenings

The Silent Archive: spoken testimonies of menopause

The project has continued apace over the winter months. Here’s a little infographic on what we’ve achieved to date.

Women’s Things: an anthology of writing from mid-life and menopause

Exciting news! Next week sees the publication of Women’s Things an anthology of creative writing from mid-life and menopause. The anthology, being published by EMOHA, features poetry and prose from 20 East Midlands writers who came along to our series of Let’s Write About Menopause workshops delivered as part of the Silent Archive project in partnership with Writing East Midlands, the literary development agency for the region. Sparked by archive oral histories from the EMOHA , the workshops ‘gave participants the chance to explore thoughts and feelings about menopause through metaphor and memoir and is described as ‘an act of solidarity, defiance and support’. It is hoped that the writing will help women experiencing menopause realise that they are not alone. Read more about this upcoming publication, including how you can get hold of a copy.

Index of Evidence

Extracts from EMOHA’s project The Silent Archive: Spoken Testimonies of Menopause, appear in a piece created for an online research project about the nature of evidence.

The University of Exeter and the Wellcome Centre’s Index of Evidence, considers ‘how established notions of fact and evidence are changing in the so-called post-truth era, when it seems we have more information at our fingertips than ever before, but also more misinformation, disinformation, lies and fakery.’

EMOHA’s piece brings first-hand accounts into the mix, with written extract and audio clips from facilitated conversations and audio diaries to show how lived experience can add a subjective visceral truth to more scientific and medicalised accounts of menopause. Read more.

Oral History Society Trustees

The Oral History Society are seeking three new Trustees to help support their work. Read more.

Asquith Primary School’s Queen of the Mic

Late last year, EMOHA worked with a group of primary school children at Asquith Primary School in Mansfield to help them to develop their oral history skills. The aim of the online session was to prepare the children so that they could carry out interviews with their parents and grandparents for the Mansfield Townscape Heritage project, collecting stories about this Nottinghamshire town within living memory.

One of the children, nine-year-old Lydia Kirk, sat down with her grandad over the Christmas holidays and asked him to share a memory of Mansfield. Their conversation took him back to 1977 when the Queen visited the town – a time of flared trousers, platform shoes and glam rock! Lydia then went a step further and recorded herself reading the transcript of the interview. Read more and listen to Lydia reading her interview.

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