Alnwick museum wants to hear residents' lockdown experiences for digital archive

Bailiffgate Museum & Gallery wants residents to use their smartphones or cameras to record short pieces of audio and video about their thoughts and experiences and send them in.

The team is looking for diverse and wide ranging material and voices from the area – funny, sad, serious or silly.

Examples include recording an audio interview with a member of the family; demonstrating a new or relearned skill or photographing or videoing a new or favourite walk and recording impressions.

Or people could write a poem or short story and record it; video a new or favourite recipe; video a new vegetable patch and talk about it; photograph or scan a drawing and talk about it; record a short video of an important object and explain why it is significant; or send in a digital photograph of a relative and talk about them.

Residents’ thoughts about lockdown and the future would also be accepted.

They will make a selection of the content and upload it to their website and their YouTube channel, Bailiffgate TV and social media.

All material submitted will be archived for future generations and form part of the Bailiffgate Collection.

The past three months have been an unprecedented time and this digital collection will give an understanding to future generations of how our Northumberland community experienced life under lockdown.

Jean Humphrys, chairman of the trustees, said: ‘We are delighted to be able to run this exciting project. I’m really looking forward to hearing people’s thoughts and experiences and am already working on my own contribution for our collection.”

Harry Henderson, leading on Heritage from Home, added: ‘We are very proud of our heritage in the North East and we’ve seen incredible creativity during lockdown and want to preserve and celebrate our voices for the future.”

Visit www.bailiffgatemuseum.co.uk for more details or email [email protected].

Closing date for submissions is Monday, August 31, 2020.

The project is funded funding by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of England.

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