Everyone attending really enjoyed both training sessions with Eastside Community Heritage about how to conduct oral history interviews.

During the first session, in July 2016, Judith Garfield guided us through an interactive and practical session, which covered everything from using the recording equipment to how to nod and smile during an interview. Everyone especially enjoyed little one minute talks about themselves and it was very interesting to see what people chose to reveal about themselves within a minute. We had people presenting themselves as ‘observers of life’ and ‘football fans’.

The second oral history session was as popular and useful in November 2016 about the art of listening yet being able to gather and document necessary information and relevant stories. One of the exercises was about leading questions and it was very interesting to explore and understand how our questions should be as neutral as possible.

The second part of the session – interviewing each other in pairs was excellent, especially one of the volunteers, Anahid Cahill came well prepared with incredible stories and photographs of her family and we loved listening to her.

We hope now the volunteers are armed with all the necessary stories to go out and hunt and record every family story relevant to this project!