Rye Heritage Centre has been successful in bidding for a National Lottery Grant for Heritage to host an oral history project, HerStory of Rye. This project will build on the 2022 calendar produced by Susan Benn celebrating women working in Rye in the 2020s. Fifty plus women will be interviewed over a one year period to create a more extensive picture of women’s work in the area, both past and present, and perhaps how their work may change in the future.
The grant will be used to build an interactive website which will be made available to the public. The website will contain photographs and relevant summaries of the interviews, and will provide a permanent record of the women’s stories. The grant also includes money for training volunteers in interviewing techniques, for a photographic exhibition at Rye Heritage Centre and celebratory Photo Album picnic.
In addition to producing a long-term resource for the town and celebrating women’s work in Rye, we hope the project will lead to further collaborative events and projects in the future.
The project will start in June and run for one year. HerStory will be run and organised by Susan Benn and me, Bronwen Griffiths, both of whom have extensive experience in this kind of work, together with Simon Parsons, manager of Rye Heritage Centre. We intend to recruit volunteers to help on the project and will be working with Rye College and other community groups in Rye.
Please contact either Susan Benn or me if you are interested in becoming a volunteer recording oral histories. We also welcome suggestions for women working locally now, or who have memories of past work in the area, who would like to be interviewed.
Susan Benn: 07824 636933
Bronwen Griffiths: 01797 458021; bronwengriff@aol.com
We would like to thank the National Lottery for the funding. Thanks also to everyone else who has helped us put the bid together and given their support.
Image Credits: Nick Forman , HERStory .
Very well done
Great news. I had an interesting time about 40 years ago recording an oral history of an 85 years old woman and her journey from Wales and eventuality having a career running her own flower shop outside South Kensington tube station. Later retiring to Fulham. What a life, she enjoyed telling the history as much as I enjoyed listening.