It has been a busy few months at EMOHA as the Sounds for the Future project has been progressing with its work to preserve better EMOHA’s collections. If you want to know more about the project, there will be detailed posts on the University of Leicester’s blog site that describe the work we are doing.

As part of Sounds for the Future we have taken on loan around 500 oral histories from Northampton Central Library. These date back to the 1980s (yes, some of it from the Manpower Services Commission days), and cover a range of topics to do with both the town and the county. We will digitise these and add them to the EMOHA catalogue.

As well as Sounds for the Future, EMOHA has delivered training for a variety of groups across the East Midlands: Bradgate Park (Leics) will be recording people’s memories of, and reactions to, the glories of the park; Mansfield’s Townscape Heritage Project (Notts) has been working with school children to record thoughts on the new work in the town; Mrs Smith’s Cottage (Lincs) will be recording memories of people who knew Mrs Smith and her remarkable home; Silverstone racing circuit’s Interactive Museum (Northants) are continuing their work of collecting oral histories about the circuit and the surrounding area.

We have had a new collection deposited with us, 60 Miles by Road or Rail. This project looks at two ‘New Towns’ – Northampton and Corby.  Through intergenerational arts, heritage and community activity across multiple strands, the project champions the largely untold New Town stories, exploring their legacy on lives today as Northants once again faces great transformation and uncertainty.

‘AIDS: the Unheard Tapes‘ is a current BBC television series that is gaining deserved acclaim. This blog from the British Library explains the context behind the oral history recordings on which the series is based.