27/09/2022
Good Morning,
After a couple of days off I just wanted to send out some thank yous to everyone who has been part of and helped the Eyewitnesses Say Project over the past few months. It's been a fantastic journey, from the early days of research into Bury Archives & Local History archives and Facebook conversations, to the delivery of the final showcase for Prestwich Arts Festival.
I'd firstly like to thank the staff and colleagues at Bury Archives & Libraries. Adam, Wendy & Ian have been a source of knowledge and support from start to finish. Etta and the team at Prestwich Library have been nothing but brilliant for all their help with the interviews and the delivery of the final project at the festival.
https://buryculture.wordpress.com/2022/09/20/eyewitnesses-say-project/
Prestwich Arts Festival gave us the platform for showing all of our work (archives with a little arts thrown in) to a community which the project wouldn't exist without. So thank you to Jane, the PAF team and all the volunteers and artists who made the weekend so very good and memorable.
https://www.prestwichartsfestival.co.uk
To all the community of Prestwich, Whitefield and the surrounding areas, thank you for turning up and engaging with project over the weekend of the festival. And a special mention to Ian, Martin, Nigel, Carole, Shaun, Lisa, Trevor, Lee & Peter for doing the interviews and bringing your stamp to this project. Speaking with you about your passions was probably my favourite part of the whole thing.
Thank yous as well to Eve & Mark who ran the illustration workshops over the weekend whilst I talked the ears off anyone who would listen.
And finally I need to say thank you to The National Archives for supporting the project through their Test Bed Fund. The fund supports archive services by enabling them to experiment with the way they examine and promote their archives in the hope of attracting more people to use the archives service and get involved with their history. I can confidently say that the project has delivered on this and would encourage anyone who has followed the project to go and discover your history at Bury Archives - you won't be disappointed.
The overall comments from the public and community who have been in touch on Facebook and who I spoke to at the weekend has been that they wish the Prestwich & Whitefield Guide was still around today, and from doing Eyewitnesses Say Project over the past few months, I can understand those sentiments and agree with them whole-heartedly!
There are no more archive posts on here, so I won't be checking in on this as much as I have been over the past few months - but do please keep in touch with me at [email protected] - I'm happy to keep conversations going and hopefully we can get some more funding for future community archive projects that have the same positive impact.
Thank you for the support,
Bob Nutts Jr.
