Projects and partners
Their Past Your Future 2
This joint project between Shropshire Archives and Shropshire Regimental Museum aims to enable children to explore how life in Shropshire was changed by World War 1 or World War 2.
Children and young people from a primary and secondary school will be able to hear the first hand experiences of veterans and study photographs, letters and news reports of the period from the archive and museum collections. They will then have the opportunity to work with a poet to produce pieces of creative writing around the themes of conflict and memory.
Documents from the archive and museum collections, as well as oral history and examples of the pupils work, will then be used to create an Education Pack. This digital resource on CD Rom will be available for use in schools across Shropshire.
Telford Culture Zone
Over the last year, we have created period gardens, cooked traditional foods of the Romans, managed under WWII rationing and found some wonderful documents from the Tudor and Stuart periods which have helped to bring history to life.
Children from 5 to 15 were involved together in crime stories from the 1850’s; searching for evidence with an 1850’s policeman, and acting as real characters and judge & jury. This was all part of a cross curricular project for which we also created models of the Crystal Palace, the first Inclined Plane at Ketley, and large scale contour models of the landscape – all to help understand a little about how our world has changed and why.
At the end of June around 500 children, parents and friends enjoyed a celebration of music and art at Wroxeter Roman city and then our final ‘Sense-ational’ event brought an opportunity to taste and feel theatre and dance performances, hear fantastic creepy stories, create music and noisy sculpture, and take home a scent of lavender.
The first three years of this pilot education project have now come to an end, but there is a ten year plan to extend Culture Zone to all Telford Schools. Working with cultural partners to deliver aspects of the curriculum in innovative ways has been exciting and rewarding and there will be some opportunities to pursue new ideas as some funding has been agreed by Telford & Wrekin Council with Arts Council West Midlands to support Telford Schools. Shropshire Archives will continue as a core partner with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), Birmingham Rep, DanceXchange, Ironbridge Gorge Museum and Telford and Wrekin Libraries. Next term we will be working alongside schools in Telford, developing projects on the Tudors and World War II which were trialed in the pilot, and brand new Dance and Sculpture projects.
More about the projects we have been taking to schools can be found on our website www.archivezone.org.uk along with teaching resources and images from our collections. News of the future of Telford Culture Zone and the projects we hope to continue to offer can be found at http://www.telfordculturezone.com
Acton Scott Heritage Project
This is a two year, “Your Heritage” funded, community project run by the Archaeology Service of Shropshire County Council. Community volunteers will be given opportunities to take part in a range of archaeological and historical techniques including surveying, field walking, excavation, historical research and interpretation.
One of the main foci of the study will be the site of a Roman villa partially excavated in 1844, but the project is also exploring the parish's medieval and later past.
For more information, please follow the link to the Acton Scott Heritage Project.
Discover Shropshire Project
This is a new project that aims to encourage people to find out more about their families and the history of their communities.
As part of this project, a local history centre has now opened in Bridgnorth Library, with an aim of establishing a similar centre at Oswestry Library. Copies of resources at Shropshire Archives will be made available in these centres. Project officers have also uncovered a wealth of material in the libraries themselves, which will be catalogued and, in some cases, digitised. Select the link for more details.
Shropshire Family History Society at Shropshire Archives
Volunteers from the Shropshire Family History Society provide a help desk at Shropshire Archives from 10am-1pm on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Friday and Saturdays. The Shropshire Family History Society was winner of the Shropshire County Council Community Services Directorate OSCA (Outstanding Contribution Award) for members' work helping visitors to Shropshire Archives over the past year.
Completed projects based at Shropshire Archives:
The Records and Memories of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry (KSLI) Project
As part of this project, staff recorded over twenty interviews with veterans of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry (KSLI). Men from all ranks have come forward with memories of their military service, from active service in the Second World War to peace time exercises with the Territorial Army. The oral history recordings are also being transcribed to provide an accurate printed record of the audio tapes.
Another vital part of the project was improving the existing catalogue. This work has brought many hidden treasures to the forefront for digitisation. The collection includes war diaries, personal diaries, letters, scrapbooks, trench maps, pamphlets and pay books. There are also many photograph albums within the collection and staff have digitised the most important photographs, thereby preserving them for the future, and also allowing greater access to many previously hidden photographs.
For more information please visit the Shropshire Regimental Museum pages on the Discovering Shropshire’s History website http://shropshireregiments.org.uk/. There is a link on this page.
Lilleshall Project
Shropshire Archives was awarded £349,500 by the Heritage Lottery Fund for work on the records of the Lilleshall estate. The Lilleshall estate was part of the Duke of Sutherland’s English estates and the records form one of Shropshire’s most significant medieval archive collections. The records currently held by Shropshire Archives fill 250 boxes and include material from the 12th to the 20th centuries.
You can search the basic Lilleshall Catalogue (Collection Reference 972) through the Shropshire Archives’ Online Catalogue.
Discovering Shropshire’s History
The website created by the Discovering Shropshire’s History project www.discovershropshire.org.uk is now live - click on the link to find out more.
One of the larger projects the team has undertaken is an interactive map of Shrewsbury dated approximately 1630. The map is an original artwork created by local artist Phil Kenning. It is an academically accurate reconstruction with input from Hugh Hannaford, Bill Champion, James Lawson and Nigel Baker. The image is also available as a poster through the Shropshire Archives' online shop.
Pay and Power Cataloguing Project
The Pay and Power project was a regional Lottery-funded project aiming to catalogue thirteen archive collections from local record offices across the West Midlands which illustrate the theme of work and politics.
The project started in April 2005, with a roving staff of archivists who spent an average of six months in each repository cataloguing significant unlisted collections. The resulting catalogues are on the Access to Archives (A2A) database on the internet www.a2a.org.uk - a link is provided on this page.
Routes to Roots
The Shropshire Routes to Roots project was based at Shropshire Archives and Oswestry Library, with the aim of digitising local history and archive material for use by teachers, school children and lifelong learners. The resulting website www.shropshireroots.org.uk includes six major learning packages which present aspects of the history of Shropshire in an interesting, fun and unique way.
You can decide whether John Mapp was guilty of murdering Catherine Lewis, uncover the history of Park Hall camp near Oswestry, or discover what it was like the day the canals came to Market Drayton. The site includes images, background information, timelines, quizzes and Teacher's Resources.
Secret Shropshire
The Secret Shropshire project was supported by the Lottery under the New Opportunities Fund ‘Digitise Programme’.
Why not search the website www.secretshropshire.org.uk and explore the county's local history, natural environment and archaeological treasures?
