August 2024 Group of the Month - Our Warwickshire

In 2024, we’re looking at our awards a little differently by spotlighting a group of the month each month from July 2024 to June 2025 and then selecting an overall group of the month at our 2025 conference.

As a result of the this, the Community Archives and Heritage Group Awards Committee are very excited to announce Our Warwickshire as the August winners of the new monthly award for 2024/2025.

About the group

The Our Warwickshire Community History website is run by Heritage & Culture Warwickshire, but at arm’s length – its focus is community involvement and engagement. The website is both an online archive (hosting a number of images from the County Record Office and museum, along with images submitted by the Warwickshire Community) but is also an online portal to connect people with similar interests and has worked in the community to improve peoples’ digital skills and sense of wellbeing. But it’s not all about what you see on the website...

The Our Warwickshire website homepage. Image courtesy of Our Warwickshire

We asked the group about the communities that work with and how they engage with them. The group told us:

We have worked with Orbit, a local social housing provider, to run a series of intergenerational workshops. These saw sixth formers from a local school talk to residents of retirement housing about their lives. It turned out they had a lot in common!

The sixth formers were fascinated by tales of dancing and courting and how they compared it to their own lives. This improved resident’s sense of wellbeing and made them realise their everyday was worth recording, and generated posts for the website. This has also engaged a younger audience in their local heritage and helped them see how it has relevance to them. It also got generations that might otherwise not have spoken to one another connected – they had a whale of a time and just loved the opportunity to share and be mutually inspired, along with getting their egos massaged and their confidences boosted.

We also upskilled volunteers with our #SilverTakeover where the X (formerly twitter) accounts were used by some of our more elderly volunteers to allow them to learn about social media and see the possibilities for their own groups. This helps their own local history groups with digital preservation and publicising what they offer, and also helps their work as volunteers.

Sounds amazing! Was there anyone in particular you feel needs to be acknowledge from this process?

Anne deserves special mention. She’s volunteered with the site since its beginning a decade ago, has spread the word via her talks to local history societies, has been prepared to throw herself into learning new digital skills, and is constantly researching and taking photographs to add to the site. She is a fabulous link between online and offline, and shows how it’s volunteers and community which are at the centre of the site’s work. She shows exactly how it’s a combination of online and offline engagement that allows the site to work – making digital less intimidating to those who aren’t familiar with it, yet also using digital for a connection when people have moved away from their area, are looking for family connections to their past, or simply want to know what like-minded people are doing elsewhere in the county. During Covid the website was a blessing as it offered people a connection with their locality that was soothing and calming, showed that the world was generally a stable place, and also showcased walks around the area and offered online jigsaws for a spot of heritage entertainment!

https://twitter.com/OurWarwickshire/status/1159043119175913472

How does your group contribute to the gathering and collecting of heritage that might otherwise have been lost?

What we have gained is a lot of material that would otherwise be lost, both in stories that people otherwise wouldn’t bother to record (and the history of place is made and coloured in by the everyday as much as the well-known), and also has seen people submit photographs that would otherwise be lost to the skip. The site has gathered this material, made it accessible to others and, through that, has then inspired people to look through what they have and contribute hitherto unseen views and histories to fill in the gaps. What it shows is preserving the past ensures it’s ever changing!

An arresting image contributed to the site from the community. Image courtesy of Our Warwickshire, Copyright Graham Richardson

We asked the group to try and describe what they thought makes them special and they told us:

Well, we like the quirky, the unusual, we’ve got an eye for the eccentric and we’re approachable. And because of that we show that history doesn’t have to be dull and stuffy, it can be about anybody really, and everybody has something to contribute and something to relate to. We revel in our geekiness but we don’t take everything so seriously so it’s like you’re popping along for a cup of coffee with a friend – we’re an online coffee shop without the coffee! What that does is give us incredibly good engagement (we reached 100,000+ page views a month during Covid) and generally praise from our users and participants.

And what we’re also good at is shining the light on others, so to say what we do well comes with its own challenges as the whole ethos is about bigging up others so how do we say we’re great? Hopefully this is how.

You can see why we wanted to acknowledge the wonderful work of Our Warwickshire Community history as our Group of the Month and you can find about more about them online: