Gloucestershire Archives
Gloucestershire landscapes photography competition, 2018
Do you take photographs? Would you like to see your photograph displayed in the new Heritage Hub at Gloucestershire Archives? If your answer is yes then read on…
We are currently transforming our building in Alvin Street Gloucester and are seeking high quality photographs to celebrate the beauty of the local landscape.
Three winning photos will form feature walls inside the new Heritage Hub buildings, where they will be seen by over 10,000 visitors each year.
The 3 winners and 9 runners-up will each receive four 2019 calendars featuring their photographs. All 12 winners will also be offered a tour of Gloucestershire Archives’ treasures.
Competition rules
- The closing date for entries is 12 noon on Friday 6th July 2018.
- The competition is open to all. Those under 16 need their parent’s or guardian’s permission.
- Entrants must have taken any photos entered and own the copyright.
- No more than 3 photographs per entrant.
We reserve the right to exclude any photographs we believe may have been edited excessively
- The competition will be judged by Professor John Ingledew, author and professional photographer who has curated many photographic exhibitions; County Councillor Ray Theodoulou; and Heather Forbes, County Archivist
Image criteria and specification
The image must show the landscape of Gloucestershire or South Gloucestershire.
- The image must be landscape format (not portrait) and uncropped.
- The image must be high quality resolution - a minimum of 300 dpi (dots per inch) and 6000 x 3500 pixels (due to the size of the walls: 4290mm x 2240mm; 6120mm x 2540mm; 4500mm x 2900mm).
- The image will show off the beauty of the local landscape and should not be gloomy or excessively dark. We aim to select well composed, quality images reflecting different areas of the historic county, such as forest, rolling hills, River Severn etc. that will appeal to the public.
- We ask that you send a printout or low resolution image initially. These will not be returned. If your image is short-listed, we will ask you to send your high resolution image. Please be sure to keep your original file/s.
How to enter
- EITHER - send an A4 print of your image, with your name, address, telephone number, email address to Gloucestershire Archives, Clarence Row, Alvin Street, Gloucester GL1 3DW. Please mark the envelope ‘Gloucestershire Heritage Hub photo competition’.
- OR - send a LOW resolution image (no more than 2MB) to archives@gloucestershire.gov.uk with ‘GHH photo competition’ in the subject line of your email.
Please submit a brief description (up to 60 words) of the photo, including its location. We will use these details, with the winners’ names, in the plaques for each photographic wall. Also in the calendar, social media and publicity to promote the winners.
GOOD LUCK. We look forward to hearing from you.
GENERAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS
Entries will not be returned so please remember to keep a copy. Unsuccessful entrants will not be contacted and we will not provide feedback on entries.
Entrants will retain copyright in the photographs that they submit. By entering the competition entrants grant to Gloucestershire County Council (Gloucestershire Archives) the right to publish and exhibit their photographs within the Heritage Hub building in Alvin Street, Gloucester and on the Gloucestershire Archives’ website in perpetuity. Also for use in calendar, social media and other publicity to promote the work of the winners.
Gloucestershire County Council (Gloucestershire Archives) will only use personal details supplied for the purposes of administering this competition. We will only keep your personal details for as long as is necessary to fulfil these purposes, then securely destroy/delete personal information provided. We will not pass on details to a third party other than the competition judges. The winners’ names will be displayed next to their photographic wall, within the calendar, and used in publicity to promote the winners.
Many thanks to Hugh Morrison for supplying the beautiful photographs at the top of this article (copyright: Hugh Morrison).
My name is Kate O’Keefe
I’m always writing little notes to myself as I increasingly find that things are liable to slip my mind.
Being based at Gloucestershire Archives is a daily reminder of the importance of preserving our shared history, and how the story of our family is the story of us.
I’ve been appointed to manage the EVOKE reminiscence project which is part of ‘For The Record’. EVOKE aims to help people living with memory loss and dementia, using a reminiscence-based approach which has been shown to ‘increase the confidence of carers, improve communication with those living with dementia, and provide resources to support people to live well with dementia’.
Reconnecting people with their past is something I was involved in when I worked at Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum: I was part of an education team which took ‘handling’ objects from the collections out into the community. I’ll never forget seeing a woman’s horrified expression on seeing a washing dolly, as she remembered the drudgery of wash days when she was newly married. Or a retired farmer who, cradling a set of long combination underwear, attributed his long life and good health to the fact that he had worn something very similar in his youth.
The EVOKE project aims to make a similar impact. It will use a computer ‘app’ called House of Memories to deliver reminiscence sessions which will be sparked by a specially created Gloucestershire package of photos and other memorabilia. House of Memories was developed by staff at Liverpool Museums. It’s won awards and plenty of evidence has been collected to show that it has a positive impact on people living with memory loss and dementia, generating a good feeling which lasts beyond the sessions.
If you know about a group or a setting which you think might enjoy an informal session with House of Memories, or if you would like to get involved with the project, please get in touch with me.
Kate O’Keefe, Engagement Manager for Older People
01452 425447 Katherine.o'keefe@gloucestershire.gov.uk
The House of Memories app is a starting point for relaxed conversations based on familiar things.
Exciting new ‘World War I’ layer launched on Know Your Place
A new resource layer highlighted with eye-catching poppy symbols went live on the Know Your Place website in March (see http://www.kypwest.org.uk).
For the past few months Cheltenham Local History Society volunteers at Gloucestershire Archives have been helping to create this resource from local historian David Drinkwater’s personal World War I project.
Over the years David has amassed well over 7,000 images of servicemen and women published in the wartime issues of the Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Graphic, also producing a spreadsheet to index them. When David and I met up during a KYP event at last year’s Gloucester History Festival, we realised that KYP might be a great way of sharing this collection with the wider world.
We decided to test it out with Cheltenham images. Some detective work was needed to be able to pin the images to the exact locations on the KYP map. This is where the local knowledge of our Cheltenham volunteers was invaluable. After an introductory training session and with some additional research material provided by David (copies of directories and electoral rolls, and also James Hodsdon’s invaluable Historical Gazetteer of Cheltenham), the team set to work finding precise addresses for the Cheltenham entries and pinning the images and associated information. All the entries created so far have been uploaded to the new KYP information layer titled ‘World War I’.
The screenshots that follow show you what you can find there.
1. I entered ‘Cheltenham’ in the address box (top left of screen) and ticked to select the World War I layer in the right hand menu to limit my view to the new layer. As you can see, Cheltenham is full of poppies! (KYP automatically opens up with the first edition OS map on the left half of the screen and the modern map on the right – you can drag the vertical bar to reveal more or less of each map or select different maps from the Basemaps menu)
2. You can then either zoom in to browse entries by location on the map, or use the Search tool on the menu to look for a specific name or keyword. I typed in ‘wounded’ and got 274 results. The first 3 are shown on the screenshot (you would just scroll down to see all the results). Each result has a hyperlink which takes you directly to the location on the map. Here I clicked on the first entry, for Roy Sindley, and the thumbnail record popped up:
3. The description attached to the KYP entry is a summary of the original newspaper article. Just click on the thumbnail image to see the scanned image of the full article, as in the next screenshot. Roy’s photo and the details of his injury would have been sent into the newspaper by his parents:
At the moment there are 3 information layers for KYP Gloucestershire – a Community layer created by submissions from local heritage organisations and individuals, an Industrial Archaeology layer created as a pilot for KYP by the Gloucestershire Society for Industrial Archaeology and the World War I layer.
The WWI layer will eventually extend well beyond Cheltenham. The Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Graphic circulated widely across Gloucestershire including parts of present day South Gloucestershire. We’re looking for additional volunteers to help complete this task – it can be done via internet access at home or at the Archives. Please contact me if you are interested in getting involved.
Julie Courtenay, Collections Leader, Gloucestershire Archives julie.courtenay@gloucestershire.gov.uk
Humans like to make their mark
Not many people know this; there is a little time capsule, of sorts, secreted in the new Heritage Hub. It is on a wall, once a doorway, which has been bricked up by the builders. Each of the bricks has been signed and dated by staff at Gloucestershire Archives, as well as by several volunteers and partners. Some have embellished their signatures with little line drawings, others have written a message as to how long they have worked here. Another simply says, “Welcome!”, and underneath each name is the person’s job title or role.
The bricked-up doorway is unlikely to be revealed until major renovations take place again – in 100 years? 200 years? Who knows, but there is a little piece of our shared team history within that doorway; it was fun to do, we made our mark, and we recorded ourselves in the most basic way people have been recording themselves for centuries. I think just about everyone participated; each day a new signature appeared and everyone crowded round the redundant doorway to see. It was rather like an interactive art installation. Maybe in 200 years it will be seen as just another bit of graffiti in a public building!
Humans like to make their mark, and Gloucestershire Archives at the Heritage Hub is full of records that reveal people making their mark. Sometimes it is literally that – a simple “X” on a deed or indenture. Today, lots of people use social media to make their mark (the new Heritage Hub has its own Face Book page, and Twitter feed), and we must be mindful of all things digital, like the inspirational “Know Your Place” web-based mapping tool.
Over the next few months, we will be welcoming customers and visitors to the new Heritage Hub – Phase 1 opened on 27th March 2018, with Phase 2 being due for completion by the end of the summer. They will, in different ways, make their mark on the Hub. We hope to welcome many more community groups, for example; we plan to offer a range of training sessions showing groups how to gather, keep and share their documented heritage; we will have more volunteers doing a wider range of tasks and we will be engaging with different audiences through our project work and outreach.
These are exciting times, as we see everyone’s hard work coming to fruition. The new Heritage Hub is finally open and it is time to welcome new and old alike – customers, partners, volunteers, visitors, neighbours and friends. Please come and visit, and see how you can make your mark!
Visit to Liverpool Museum
I love museums, and I love Liverpool, so the opportunity to combine both for work seemed almost too good to be true. I went there to have some training on the House of Memories app which was developed by the education team there, and which is going to be the basis of reminiscence sessions I am planning over the coming weeks in community settings around the county.
The training was promoted as being for ‘Family and Friends’ of people with dementia and there were about 15 of us there, including one or two who had recently been diagnosed with the illness. The session was funny, moving and most of all very practical – showing people how they could use objects and images from the museum (or in our case, from the archives) to provoke memories, stories and feelings of wellbeing in people with memory problems. The atmosphere at the end of the training was one I would be thrilled if I could replicate when I am ‘in the hot-seat’ , delivering sessions myself: people left feeling inspired, cheered and looking forward to seeing what else they could do with the app.
Kate O'Keefe
Collections Care training
Collections Care staff have recently run several training sessions. These training sessions piloted some of our new Heritage Hub training modules.
Training on the 5 February was titled ‘Keeping: Safe Use – Handling and preparation for digitisation’
Training on the 8 March was titled ‘Keeping: Collection care and protection’ and was for volunteers from Painswick.
Both sessions included –
With the 5 February session also including -
- How do we prevent damage? This included a look at the 10 agents of deterioration and handling guidelines.
- How do we prepare items for digitisation? Here we looked at materials and formats and their impact on image capture, condition checking and if it needs the attention of a conservator, and preparation of documents for imaging.
And the 8 March session included –
- How do we prevent damage? We touched on risk assessment and the prioritisation of actions.
- How do we store and protect items? This focused on storage furniture, understanding and sourcing archival quality materials, and using protective enclosures.
Each session took place over a day with participants able to buy their lunch at Roots, the lovely community café just around the corner from Archives, in Alvin Street.
‘Carole Maxwell (Gloucestershire Local History Association) said how much they enjoyed and appreciated the training you delivered recently. She said it had really inspired them, and they had gone straight back and said to the Town Clerk that they know exactly what they needed.’
Artist Activity at the Heritage Hub
Mosaic making sessions
Lynda and Angela, the two artists who are TomatoJack Arts, recently spent two days at the Archives running mosaic drop-in sessions. Everyone was welcome to come along and meet the artists, find out what’s involved in making the mosaic panels destined for the community garden, see the artwork in progress and have a go at mosaicing.
Visitors, volunteers and staff helped to complete the ‘Notable People’ mosaic by sticking vitreous glass tiles to the panel.
Lynda and Angela also ran two workshops for young people involved in the Aston Project. The Aston project seeks to engage young people in positive community activity and is run by Gloucestershire constabulary. The young people, as well as helping to make the panel, also made a coaster to take home and had a guided tour of the Archives. During the tour Collections Care introduced them to the resident rat (or his bones at least!).
The completed industry panel
There will be five panels each one focusing on a different aspect of Gloucestershire life and heritage and are due for completion the end of May
Illustration sessions
Imogen Harvey-Lewis, the illustrator, has been working with young people from Kingsholm Primary School. Imogen encouraged the young people to use where they live and their own family history as inspiration for stories and drawings . Imogen will use the young people's ideas as part of her design for the mural on the Bridge House wall.
Imogen will be on site later in the year and you can drop in and watch her as she prepares and completes the mural.
Kim Kenny, For the Record Project Officer kim.kenny2@gloucestershire.gov.uk
Did you know?
Gloucestershire Heritage Hub is virtual – as well as physical?
We have a website at www.heritagehub.org.uk, as well as social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter – look for @GlosHeritageHub. There have been lots of fabulous items posted, but my favourite so far has to be PI day complete with Gloucestershire’s most glorious Royal Lamprey Pie…
We’re using Twitter and Facebook to share fascinating facts, notices, events or other information that we think will be of interest in an informal, immediate way. We want to provoke discussion and memories, and facilitate conversations between our followers.
If you’d like to participate follow or like us on Twitter and/or Facebook. If you are a particularly keen social media user why not volunteer with us like, re-tweet and share our posts with your own networks.
