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Seminari: Creating an activist archive of the UK environmental movement

  • April 12nd, 2024
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CICLE. “Les veus de l’ecologisme”

Dijous 18 d’abril de 20214 a les 16:30 h, saló d’actes, Palau Cerveró

Seminari: Creating an activist archive of the UK environmental movement

Dr Toby Butler, Royal Holloway, University of London

Presenta: Ximo Guillem, director de l’Institut Interuniversitari López Piñero

Streaming. https://links.uv.es/iilp/seminaris

Resum:

In this talk Toby will discuss his experience of devising an ambitious oral history project on the Environmental Movement in the UK in partnership with a national archive at the British Library. The project involves the creation of 100 publicly accessible life-story interviews spanning 50 years of activism, and a seven-strong research team which includes representatives from the environmental movement itself. How was the methodology devised? Is it possible to select interviewees from a representatively on such a scale? What insights can recording whole-life story interviews give, compared to conventional archives? Toby will discuss the research from the perspective of a project leader, currently in the interviewing phase of the project, and play some excerpts from the interviews to illustrate some early findings.

Dr Toby Butler is a public historian with a wide-ranging skill set developed in higher education, the third sector and the media industry. He has devised collaborative oral history projects in India, the USA, Wales and England. He has created oral history trails along the River Thames with the Museum of London and several London parks for local authorities. He was project director for the 'Ports of Call' project at the Royal Docks in East London to map and historically interpret the working history of the area. Toby is also a Director of LivingMaps Network, an editor of History Workshop Journal and recently worked on the Mapping Museums project at Birkbeck, University of London, to map of all the museums in the UK from 1960-present featuring interviews with 57 museum founders that featured Stories from Small Museums. Currently he is Reader in Geography at Royal Holloway University where he is a leading a project on the Oral History of the Environmental Movement in the UK from 1970-2020 in partnership with National Life Stories at the British Library.