This PowerPoint helps students to consider the concept of infinity.
Medley presentationv2
1. Sue Potts
Institute of Cultural Capital
Ian Bradley
Liverpool Screen School
www.our-day-out.co.uk
2. The objectives of the project:
• Engage communities, hold memory workshops with local older people’s groups
• Open up a photographic archive for discourse
• Create an online archive of memories/oral histories
• Create a series of personalised postcards
• Produce a short documentary about ‘our day out’.
• Engage 10 volunteers
• Train 35 people in new media skills
www.newbrightonpostcards.org.uk/index.php/card/32/30/10/ (1905)
3. A commercial and press photographer set up business in 1949 in
partnership with his colleague Bob Bird. In 1964 he became sole owner
of the business and continued working until his retirement in 1987.
Keith Medley
4. A large collection of photographic negatives, donated to Liverpool John Moores University by Keith Medley’s
family in 2009. The Our Day Out project sought to investigate local interest in the archive through the use of
this particular segment which documents day trippers to the seaside resort of New Brighton post 1964.
New Brighton Tower c1960s
5. • LJMU Special Collections
and Archives
• Popular culture:
music, theatre, fashion,
counterculture
• Support research and
teaching
• Civic engagement and
cultural partnerships
6. Google Maps
Developed as a resort during the 1860’s with a pier, promenade and fairground. Post Second World War
the resort declined as a holiday destination but remained popular right up to the 1970’s for a day out at the
seaside. Franks-Buckley, T (2012) New Brighton, Victorian Seaside Resort. Hidden Wirral Press
8. The project used a selection of Medley images taken at New Brighton of day-trippers during the 1960’s to
instigate and stimulate discussions within memory workshops with two older peoples’ groups. The aim of
the workshops was to add context and meaning to the images by bringing new and fresh knowledge about
New Brighton from individual memories.
Engaging the Community
9. ‘You didn’t have much money for the fair so you just walked around a bit on the beach picking up shells and turning
rocks over and getting crabs.’
‘We’d go to the Tower, go over on a boat of course, and have few drinks and go to the ballroom, girls over there, fellas over
here. When the music started up we’d go across and ask a girl to dance. If she didn’t like the look of you, she would tell you
to get lost.’
Some of our contributors
10. ‘You would go to a little shop to get a bucket and spade and windmills and sweets….They had everything in
that shop, they sold everything you could think of or wanted when you were a little girl or boy, I loved that
shop’
‘We’d get our jam butties and a bottle of water with lemonade powder in and we’d all trip off to
New Brighton’
13. www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/mol/events/
Kay Jones, Community Curator at the Museum of Liverpool
‘The Our Day Out exhibition is a great example of how shared memories and experiences can bring
different people together – creating and strengthening links in our local communities’
15. .
Val Stephenson Head of Special Collections and Archives, Liverpool John Moores University
‘Our Day Out has tested the water with the collection and demonstrated the potential of the archive if it is to be
preserved and digitised. The archive documents ordinary people and everyday routine which is of interest as a social
record’.
www.ljmu.ac.uk/about-us/special-collections
17. Bibliography
Corbin, A (1995) The Lure of the Sea. Penguin
Kuhn, A (2000) A Journey Through Memory. In Memory and Methodology. Oxford and New
York. Berg.
Walton, K & J Wood (2008) Reputation and Regeneration: History and the Heritage of the
Recent Past in the Re-Making of Blackpool. Leeds Metropolitan University
Notas del editor
Application to HLF to enable us to share the Keith Medley Archive with local communities, bring meaningful connections to the images through oral history and memory, whilst engaging older people’s groups in using digital technologies.
photographic business on King Street, Wallasey, in 1949 in partnership with his colleague Bob Bird. The business was very successful, including work on weddings, studio portraits, commercial work and press work for both local and national newspapers. In 1964 Keith became sole owner of the business and continued working until his retirement in 1987.
A large collection of photographic negatives was donated to Liverpool John Moores University by Keith Medley’s family in 2009. The Our Day Out project sought to investigate local interest in the archive through the use of this particular segment which documents day trippers to the seaside resort of New Brighton post 1964.
Donated in 2009 by Jon Medley (previously held in out building and basement by lady who ran local history society Consists of c. 30,000 (mainly) glass plate negatives
Very few prints, not physically arranged in any kind of order, needs repackaging and conservation in some cases, but we do have the registers
New Brighton is a seaside town on the Wirral coast and was a popular pre and post Second World War day trip destination for communities in surrounding areas. Mostly day trippers from Liverpool, due to the Ferry links. It was developed as a resort during the 1860’s with a pier, promenade, and the New Brighton Tower which opened in 1900 and was the tallest building in the country1. Post Second World War the resort declined as a holiday destination but remained popular right up to the 1970’s for a day out at the seaside. Very popular with local communities. Did see a dip in popularity and became quite faded, run down area, with social deprivation. However, is currently seeing a reprisal due to inward investment. Now very popular again with families.
· What is important about seaside heritage? Research claims that the British Seaside, originally marketed as a health and wellbeing resort was a significant cultural export which was adopted around the globe. The health benefits were marketed as a place for recuperation.
· This all changed with the introduction of the Pay Act in 1938 gave provision to one week’s paid holiday for the majority of Britain’s work force. This legislation made it easier for the working classes to take holidays at the seaside. This also brought about weeks taken on mass from particular cities or communities which lived around industries which decided to close for a ‘shut down’ week forcing everyone to take their holidays at once.
selected 47 pictures from 72 identified from the archive placed on Flickr. From this selection 10 images selected for memory packs
The use of photographs in reminiscence work in this project aimed to bring new context and meaning to the static collection by linking them with individual stories which may bring fresh and new knowledge about the resort at that point in time, as such using the Medley images to develop a social history.
· Ann Kuhn’s Journey through Memory defines processes similar to ours as (2000, p186)2 ‘an active practice of remembering which takes an inquiring attitude towards the past and the activity of its reconstruction through memory’. Furthermore, she describes the use of photographs to stimulate memory as a ‘conjectural’ method involving taking as a starting point instances or cases and then working outwards from them, developing at hand evidence which points to broader issues and workings of cultural memory.
· We found that using the photographs were an effective departure point for beginning discussions with our older peoples groups. On our first visits some were quite hesitant to talk, many stating that they couldn’t remember anything, or they wouldn’t be any help etc. But showing the photographs began that discussion, and the memories began to flow, both individually and also in group discussions. In these discussions the older people became very animated and it was evident that the reminiscence was taking them back to a happy place and time.
The filmed interviews form part of a short documentary film and are all accessible via the Our Day Out Website: http://www.our-day-out.co.uk/. The website has an interactive element which invites browsers to share their memories of the Merseyside seaside resorts by completing a ‘postcard’ which is archived via the site.
Content developed throughout the project is on display in context with a selection of Keith Medley Images in the Museum of Liverpool.
4 basic template designs 13 cards in total
October 2014 – September 2015 16 images from the collection + A4 postcards
