FOLAR Oral History Project – Talking Matters

Our Oral History Project got off to a flying start with the appointment of researcher Marie Lagerwall to seek out and assess previous oral history work connected with UK based landscape professionals working in the British Isles and abroad.We know that some landscape related oral histories have been deposited with institutions such as the British Library and the Museum of English Rural Life (the MERL) but other oral history interviews may be held in less obvious places.

Marie writes: ‘Should you have participated in or know of oral history exercises relevant to this review, please feel free to contact: Marie Lagerwall, Freelance Researcher, FOLAR Oral History Project - marie_lagerwall@hotmail.com.”

Please get in touch with Marie if you think you can help with sourcing existing material.

Oral History Phase II is now underway as well.With the help of the MERL, who are custodians of the Landscape Institute archive, we have scoped the equipment and training we need to get started on creating new oral histories.Pilot interviews, as part of the training, will take place this summer.

Our ‘Telling Stories’ project will run in parallel with and use the oral history material, to tell landscape’s most exciting, memorable, seminal and world changing projects to the widest audience possible.

You can help in so many ways: do you want to hold a conversation with the UK’s most significant landscape practitioners?Then volunteer with FOLAR

Do you want to learn new skills in oral history – recording, editing, creating stories?Volunteer with FOLAR.

Good at the backroom stuff – cataloguing, transcribing, organising?Volunteer with FOLAR.

Contact Helen Neve, Oral History Project Lead (helen@landmanagementservices.co.uk) for further information and details of how to get involved.