Maritime Memories of Leith and Newhaven

I’ve been working with older people in Leith and Historic Scotland’s maritime museum Trinity House to create digital stories. A digital story is a two to three minute audio sound track with still images over the top. It’s a personal story in the story maker’s own voice. These stories were inspired by the collections at Trinity House.

This week we had our red carpet premiere at the beautiful old cinema building of Destiny Church Leith. It’s one of the three remaining plaster cinema screens in the UK.

We even rolled out a red carpet and over 70 people attended!

Having a fab time at red carpet launch of Memories of Maritime Leith. @auntyemily #livingmemories #digitalstories pic.twitter.com/A7au1rtrIS

— M Louise Kelly (@mllouisekelly) March 4, 2015

I introduced the digital stories at the event and thought that would be a good way to introduce you to the films now:

A Bow-Tow Remembers: Sophia Abrahamsen

Sophia is a Bow-Tow, that’s a person from Newhaven. She’s passionate about Newhaven History. On week two of the workshops Sophia read her first draft – it was so beautiful it was met by a spontaneous applause.  Who is Old Sherrag? Who lives in New Lane and why was Sophia abandoned as a child in Newhaven Harbour?

 

Watch the video on Youtube here.

From Lerwick to Leith: Stephen Hall

Stephen loved to talk about this family and that’s what this story is about. It’s also the first thing Stephen has written since school – I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s wonderful:

Watch the video on Youtube here.

Leith Docks: Ramsay Tubb

Ramsay began this story in school when he and two friends researched Leith Docks. Just what was it about the docks that captured his imagination?

Watch the video on Youtube here

All at Sea: Andrew Grant

Andrew is an amazing local historian. As well as bringing his local knowledge, Andrew helped digitise many of the images you see in these stories. Andrew had so many stories that his first read through was eight minutes instead of three. He had the challenge to shorten this and he chose one story – the story of his maritime training:

Watch the video on Youtube here.

How did the project begin?

I worked on a similar project facilitating digital story workshops with the Govan Reminiscence Group and Britain from Above. I’ll blog about that soon! I got chatting with Lucy at Trinity House and suggested digital stories would be a great way to engage people on their collections as well as capturing and sharing local history.

What did the project involve?

Firstly we ran a drop in recruitment session at the Living Memory Association venue in Leith’s Ocean Terminal.

We’re in @Ocean_Terminal @LivingMemoryA 2- 4pm. Come & find out more about Maritime Memories #Leith! @welovehistory pic.twitter.com/wbv4UGWZkd — Emily Dodd (@auntyemily) October 28, 2014

We told people more about the project, shared some memories as a group and gave people a chance to sign up.

Amazing session hearing maritime memories from #Leith folk. So many stories to share @LivingMemoryA @welovehistory pic.twitter.com/jEynAe48nA

— Emily Dodd (@auntyemily) October 28, 2014

Each participant came to six two hour workshops with homework in between too. We drank tea, ate cake and worked on the stories.

MT @auntyemily: Brilliant first maritime memories #Leith workshop @LivingMemoryA w/ HS. So many wonderful stories! pic.twitter.com/vKDWqOxmpy

— Historic Scotland (@welovehistory) December 3, 2014

The group gave feedback on each story – polishing a tweaking them and choosing the right images:

Suave! MT @auntyemily: Maritime Memories workshop today. Stephen’s Dad in the silky-shirted #Edinburgh Harmonica Band pic.twitter.com/b37juS3tHC — Historic Scotland (@welovehistory) December 10, 2014

Lucy Bull provided the expertise on Trinity House and their collections and I ran the storytelling exercises. It was amazing to see the participant’s stories grow and improve over the weeks and it was wonderful to get such a brilliant reaction to them at the premiere.

UPDATE:

I’m looking forward to seeing this in the Edinburgh Evening News any day now. You can read about this project on STV here.