Stories about Loughborough from people who know it.
When asked to put together this project about local culture and heritage, our first question was, ‘Who are we to tell people what heritage means to them?’ We didn’t want to ask questions that would pre-define the topics people thought about and the kinds of story they decided to share with us.
So, we framed our story-collecting with the question, ‘What kinds of heritage might we see in the stories that locals choose to tell?’, and asked our workshop participants, ‘What’s your story of Loughborough? What story would you add to our memory box?’
As a result, over our four workshops we collected very different stories of what it means to live and work in Loughborough.
Alongside those stories, we hope to establish a better understanding of what the heritage and culture of a place is and can be when it truly reflects the experiences of those who live and work in it.
Method: drawings and digital storytelling
For this project, we used two methods to bring out people’s stories: drawing and digital storytelling.
Stories
Take a look below and listen to the stories we’ve collected: each drawn, told or produced by a local resident. Alternatively, scroll below to see a compilation of all the stories.
guided tour of all the stories
Prefer to listen to all the stories at once? We’ll take you on a guided tour of the stories below.
stories made by the participants
Following our group workshops, a number of participants came back together to create their own individual digital stories. Take a look at the films below, made entirely by our participants.
Podcast
Finally, we sat down to share our experiences of running participatory community workshops like ours. We talked about what went well and identified the things we’d learned are helpful for hosting successful workshops in the community.
Have a listen if you’re interested in running community workshops like this yourself!
Alternatively, contact us via the link below if we can help you run workshops in your community.
Loughborough's Lemonade Stand 