Oral History Training With Lucie Connors
It's a little bit of a daunting prospect to tackle oral history that involves such a large history in terms of length of time and amount of people. The warehouse/ community shows could involve two hundred people each. One of the tasks for the oral history is to track down people who have been involved. Toby has been compiling a contacts list for each show and period.
From here the practicalities and logistics of actually taking the histories appear like the prospect of climbing the mountain looming invitingly in front of us, where the upper reaches are obscured by thick cloud. It's a heck of a hike! So to base camp training.
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| Oral History Training with Lucie Connors |
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| Jo, Marion and Catrin |
Marion est notre volontaire Française. Elle est sur un stage d'expérience de travail avec NoFit State via un programme international a Llangollen. Elle est avec le project d'archives les Lundis et Mardis, jours habituels de travail d'archive.
Marion is our French volunteer. She is on a work experience placement with NoFit State, via a LLangollen International programme. She is with the archive project on Mondays and Tuesdays, the archive's normal working days.
With the aim of teasing out stories, the role of interviewer is discussed:
- open yet calm, relaxed yet alert, listening closely yet thinking one question ahead, nodding and giving a natural response but not making noises - mmm, uhuh, yes, - that will make editing later trickier, concentrating on what the interviewee is saying and making sure you've set the recorder right with it turned on.
Using two sides of the brain at once, this oral history stuff ain't so simple as it looked! Have you tried the turning right foot clockwise and drawing a six with your right hand at the same time?! (QI L:5 Lenses) It felt a bit like that! A skill to acquire.
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| Razza and our collective meal! |
Multi-talented Raza, making a fantastic Kurdish stew, and he is also photographing the Oral History session - watch this space.
Everyone who attended the training was asked to bring a vegetable which all went into the pot, after Liz had helped chop them up. Recipe to follow!
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| Lucie interviewing Liz |
Lucie demonstrated oral history technique with Liz. Liz is very familiar with the way to take oral history having already completed a year carrying out oral history with the lovely-titled Trowbridge Song Project.
Questions Lucie asked Liz to illustrate good interview technique:
Position audio recorder and start recording, and double check it is recording, and then triple check!
"This is Lucie Connors interviewing Liz Lavender as part of the NoFit State 30th Anniversary archive project. The date is 24th March 2015, time is half past one and we are in the NoFit State building"
How did you first get involved with NoFit State?
What first attracted you to NoFit State?
Can you kind of describe what NoFit State was like at the time?
And you mentioned you were involved first of all in Dodo…
Can you tell us about it
And what, do you know what inspired the productions?
So how did it make you feel being a part of that community?
Did you have a key relationship with anyone in particular?
Thanks to all the volunteers, who are now the oral history volunteers, for the time and effort.
Thanks also to our 5 guinea pigs who allowed the volunteers to be let loose on them for practice time
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