Memories Workshop

Last month we held a small in person workshop at the Working Class Movement Library with some of our oral history interviewees. We wanted to give them the opportunity to meet each other and to share, compare and contrast their memories of growing up and living in Salford from the 1960s onwards and the changes to the housing in Pendleton.

We started the session with everyone introducing themselves and they were given a marker to locate where they lived or grew up on an enlarged OS map of the area. By doing this exercise workshop participants discovered that they had experiences or memories of similar places – they may have grown up or lived round the corner from one another, and in some cases had mutual friends or acquaintances of which they hadn’t been previously aware.

The participants shared memories of the places and houses in which they lived; they recalled family members and characters of the local area; they recalled playing in the streets, derelict houses and the schools they attended. One participant recalled how Granada had wanted to use their house to film a funeral scene for a TV programme, but their mother refused because it would be bad luck to have a coffin in the house before a real life death had taken place.

Alongside a lively discussion and sharing of memories, a number of the participants brought in photographs to show and share. Many were street scenes with family members but they provide a snap shot of life at the time from the people who lived, worked and socialized in the area. We scanned some of the images and hope to use these in the final project exhibition next year. But it was also really important to hear the stories and memories behind these photos that unfortunately cannot be capture simply by scanning and digitizing them. This of course is where the oral history interviews play their part, as a way of capturing memories, experiences and stories that can help us understand past experience.

Below are a small selection of photographs shared by the workshop participants. Do you have photographs of Pendleton during the transition from terraced housing to modern housing blocks? If so please get in touch.