Gloucestershire Archives at the Gloucester History Festival – Voices Scriptorium Session: Sight Loss Then & Now
On Saturday 13th & Sunday 14th September, Voices Gloucester hosted Scriptorium Sessions at Blackfriars in partnership with the Gloucester History Festival. One of the sessions was entitled ‘Sight Loss: Then & Now’ and was a mini project that Gloucestershire Archives had worked on. It was the brainchild of Sarah Goddard, a sight-impaired mixed-media artist and writer who created a brilliant podcast series investigating experiences of sight loss in Gloucestershire in the 19th and 20th centuries through drama, discussion and lived experience. As part of this project, we found some examples of sight loss in the archives and Sarah selected one and created a short play based on it, which was subsequently recorded by Gloucester’s am-dram group, the Crown Players – plus a certain John Putley from the archives (face for radio, voice for TV!). The play was based on a letter of 20th October 1834, from James Waite (a blind innkeeper) to the Lord of the Manor and Freeholders of the parish of Horsley. The Scriptorium session was a chance for Sarah and John to share the challenges of blending historical fact with storytelling fiction and how it felt to be involved. This has subsequently tied into a series of forthcoming events at the archives called ‘Reading the Records’, where we will be working with the Sight Loss Council to open our service to people who are visually impaired.
The Scriptorium stage ready for Sight Loss: Then & Now