{"id":8138,"date":"2021-08-12T10:18:58","date_gmt":"2021-08-12T10:18:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/connected\/?p=8138"},"modified":"2021-08-12T10:21:23","modified_gmt":"2021-08-12T10:21:23","slug":"digitising-local-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.reading.ac.uk\/connected\/2021\/08\/12\/digitising-local-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Digitising Local History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CONNECTED speaks to Dennis Wood and Ian Burn \u2013 Trustees of The Friends of the University of Reading \u2013 to discover what inspired them to keep local history accessible during lockdown.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Friends<\/a> was formed as an association in 1927 \u2013 the year after the University was awarded its Royal Charter \u2013 and in 2017 it became a charity. Its aims are to foster contact between the University and those interested in its educational goals, its history, its current activities and its future development. Comprised of people who are current and past members of University staff, those interested in the University, the local community and alumni, it brings together like-minded people with a common interest.<\/p>\n

Dennis and Ian have been members of The Friends for 19 years and 10 years respectively. Ian worked in the University Library for 30 years, while Dennis\u2019 father-in-law worked at the University for 40 years after the war. Both, inspired by their connections to Reading, joined The Friends to further their shared passion for local history and heritage.<\/p>\n

CONNECTED finds out what motivated Dennis and Ian to move into the realm of video production to tell the story of the University of Reading\u2019s history, and to discover more about the work The Friends do.<\/p>\n

Making history accessible<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\"\"One of the key objectives of The Friends is outreach work in the local community, and with lockdown preventing their usual activities, Dennis and Ian turned to the digital medium.<\/p>\n

Ian explained: \u201cWe have been running heritage events for the past ten years, which allow the public to see parts of the University that are not generally accessible. On the last one we introduced heritage trails \u2013 tours around the Whiteknights and London Road campuses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dennis added:\u00a0\u201cWe had six organised tours booked with groups in 2020 and they all had to be postponed.<\/p>\n

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“We had hoped to repeat them this year, but with COVID-19 restrictions this won\u2019t be possible, so we decided to adapt our tours to continue to connect people with campus during lockdown.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Friends had already produced heritage leaflets for the planned tours \u2013 and inspired by videos Dennis, Ian and two others worked on to celebrate the 20th<\/sup> anniversary of the Whiteknights Studio Trail \u2013 they decided to create a video called \u2018A Historical Tour around the University\u2019s London Road Campus\u2019.<\/p>\n

Ian said: \u201cAnother Friend, John, and I had done quite a lot of research at the University of Reading Special Collections archives and the Museum of English Rural Life [MERL] for the leaflets, so we used this as a starting point. Dennis put together a script, which he recorded, and I used this as a guide to position the accompanying photos or videos.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe whole process of producing the video through to the promotion of it has been a steep learning curve for us, and hopefully when we do the next one we will have learnt even more.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Friends are sharing the video far and wide, promoting it amongst their members, local history societies, and museums to make this piece of history available to as many people as possible \u2013 it has even gone as far as Australia and Japan and has received over 1,250 views.<\/p>\n

Watch \u2018A Historical Tour of the University\u2019s London Road Campus\u2019 video:<\/p>\n