Laundry on show

Hung out to dry: Space, memory and domestic laundry practices, a new exhibition at The University of Queensland Art Museum, is more than a homage to the backyard rotary hoist.  Part oral history project, part artistic response, the exhibition is presented in collaboration with The University of Queensland’s Centre for Architecture Theory Criticism History.  Read the full article here.

African American stories

Who are your people?  It’s a question that dogged Juleanna Richardson ever since an elementary school teacher in Newark, Ohio asked her class to tell where their families had come from.  Richardson listened as her white classmates shared stories of their European origins, then offered a half-hearted answer that betrayed her own lack of knowledge of her family history. For full story click here.

Girls’ Safety (USA)

This very interesting article is an interview with author Jennifer Helgren who wrote  'A “Very Innocent Time”: Oral History Narratives, Nostalgia and Girls’ Safety in the 1950s and 1960s'.  She has interviewed women who tell stories about the safety message learned from their parents.  Read the full article, including a link to Helgren's paper, click here.

NFSA Interviews

The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) has launched an online showcase of its Oral History interviews.  The release of the series of interviews with actors, musicians, filmmakers, broadcasters and technical experts means audiences can now listen to the stories behind Australia's favourite films, television programs and songs as told by those who created them. For full story click here.

Community Project in Monterey

As author John W. Gardner put it, “History never looks like history when you are living through it.” But the stories of ordinary people and how they lived their lives is vital to understanding our collective past.  That’s one reason the oral history movement has taken off in such a huge way during the past few decades: It’s a way of capturing community members’ memories for posterity.  For full story click here.

StoryCorps Goes Global

It's a big check for a big idea: $1 million, the annual TED prize awarded to a proposal that could change the world. The idea that won Dave Isay the TED grant was a phone app that puts his original big idea, StoryCorps, in the hands of anyone with a smartphone. For full story including an interview with Dave Isay, click here.