Rise and Fall of BlackBerry

In 1984, Mike Lazaridis, an engineering student at the University of Waterloo, and Douglas Fregin, an engineering student at the University of Windsor, founded an electronics and computer science consulting company called Research In Motion, or RIM. For years the company tinkered in obscurity, until it focused on a breakthrough technology: an easy, secure, and effective device that allowed workers to send and receive e-mails while away from the office. They called it the BlackBerry. Read full story and watch video interview here.

Audio storytelling

Siobhan McHugh discusses how audio storytelling is becoming more popular: 

In a cultural milieu dominated by long-form television dramas such as Breaking Bad and Madmen, how has the apparently simple activity of audio storytelling gained such clout? In the US, documentary radio programs such as RadioLab, This American Life and Radio Diaries enjoy sold-out stage shows telling real-life stories that combine serious journalism with compelling personal narratives, philosophical discourse and an irreverent but always engaging tone. Read Siobhan's full article here.

World AIDS Day Play

As a part of World AIDS Day, a new theatre work focusses on the experience of young gay men in the 1980s, revisiting the past without preaching to the present about the epidemic and its influence on Sydney’s gay community. “I’m trying to target two audiences,” The Death of Kings writer by Colette F Keen.  “The old guard and the younger community who have been lectured to and told ‘when I was young’ over and over again.”  Keen and Deusien previously collaborated on a verbatim piece telling the stories of the 9/11 first responders, but the origins of Death of Kings came about in a different way, when a friend of Keen’s made an off-the-cuff statement. “He’d been through the ‘80s in Sydney and he just said ‘I’m really frightened that 30 years on the people who survived are going to die and although we have oral history saved in libraries all we will hear are American stories.”  Built on interviews that took place between January and December 2012, the show tells the tales of a varied group of gay men.  For full story click here.

China’s Great Famine Genocide

Between 1958 and 1962, Mao Zedong embarked on a mad and brutal scheme to transform the Chinese economy through forced collectivization—the so-called Great Leap Forward. Historian Frank Dikötter called the ensuing disaster one of the “most deadly mass killings in human history,” estimating that over 45 million Chinese died as a result. And yet few people outside of China are aware of Mao’s greatest crime.  For his new book Forgotten Voices of Mao’s Great Famine (Yale University Press), historian Zhou Xun travelled through the Chinese countryside collecting first-hand accounts from the forgotten victims of a forgotten genocide. Read article which includes excerpts from book here.

Award for public art tour (USA)

Frankfort-based Joanna Hay of Joanna Hay Productions Inc. is the recipient of an award presented by the national Oral History Association. The 2013 OHA Award was presented to the independent producer for her Frankfort Public Art Tour project, sponsored in part by the Kentucky Historical Society.  The project was conceived and overseen by Hay and her associate, Judy Sizemore. It documents a representative sampling of public art treasures – including oral histories – found throughout Frankfort. The tour can be accessed online or from a smartphone here, where viewers will find a map showing the location of each item on the tour plus additional images, audio and other information. For full story click here.
Editor's note – this story may provide inspiration to our own communities and historical societies.

Defending oral history

Kaitlin Fontana reflects on the death of Studs Terkel and the place of oral history today:
Five years ago, literary icon Louis “Studs” Terkel died in his native, beloved, Chicago. He was 96, four years short of a milestone befitting the expansiveness with which he’d embraced the seldom-heard voices of his country — that is the working, the poor, the normal (in particular, that odd normalcy that is the American Midwest). For Studs Terkel not to make it to 100 seemed cruel, because his voice seems as old as America itself.
Read her full article here.

Oral history in India

History was crafted out of "facts", said the British historian E H Carr. Facts, which were like "fish on a fishmonger's slab". What is "official" history, whose history it documents and whose it skips, has been a concern for historians the world over for several decades now.  A bunch of Indian documentors, who believe there are other fish in the sea than official histories acknowledge, will gather in Bangalore on Monday and formally inaugurate the country's first Oral History Association of India (OHAI). From discussing how life was for Indian freedom fighters in Cellular Jail on the Andamans to looking at memories of 1984 riots and the Bhopal gas tragedy, the conference will be a broad palette for documentors and historians. For full story click here.

Drovers tell their stories

An oral history recording has been made using material and interviews with a number of early farming families from Bridgetown, Manjimup and Nannup.  The families were involved with droving stock along the stock routes as the seasons changed and feed for the cattle was needed for them to survive.  The Oral History project was the result of an alliance between Community Development Officers of three shires, Megan Richards (Bridgetown), Hsien Harper (Manjimup) and Louise Stokes (Nannup). It was made so the stories of the old timers who originally did the stock routes could tell their stories before they were lost forever. The project provided tape recordings, which are being burnt to a CD, as well as the transcript of the interviews.  For full story click here.

Teens interview successful men

Crossing Fences is a fresh twist on the ancient tradition of passing along a society's memories, history and values from one generation to the next through storytelling and oral history. It's a neighborhood-based oral history project that pairs teams of teenage and preteen African-American boys with successful men from their neighborhoods. The goal is to connect generations and guide youth by positive example and to help them visualize what they can become. The boys interviewed the older men and documented their stories with audio recordings.  For full story click here.

Students interviewing project (USA)

North York’s Crestwood Preparatory College is inviting everyone to visit its website showcasing its award-winning Oral History Project. The project features several initiatives that bring together students with veterans of the Second World War and Holocaust survivors, including interviews and digital copies of photos and mementoes.  To read the full story click here.  This is their website which has videoed interviews.