The Oral History Project
FOLAR started its Oral Histories project in 2018, with the aim of recording the rich heritage of the Landscape Institute’s elders, movers and shakers. This is a long term project which will capitalise on earlier historical research, link with the existing landscape archive at the MERL (and elsewhere), and use new formats and new/developing technology to move forward our knowledge and appreciation of great landscapes.
Oral history is defined by the Oral History Society as ‘the recording of people’s memories, experiences and opinions’. FOLAR aims to use Oral histories to help us to learn about significant individuals’ perspectives on a wide range of landscape questions, which may not be asked in any other way, and allow key landscape architects to tell their own stories in their own words. The recordings will be made by landscape professionals, talking to landscape professionals for the benefit of landscape professionals as well as other interested and related groups.
We will promote and disseminate the recordings to a wide audience, using this website, social media and our Telling Stories programme which will run in parallel with, and make extensive use of, oral histories old and new. The work will also inform our ongoing programme of visits and symposia.
To underpin the development of this project, we started by appointing researcher Marie Lagerwall to investigate and prepare a review of landscape related oral history work carried out in the UK. For the purposes of this project, we defined ‘landscape’ as relating to the work of landscape architect/landscape design professionals (who may or may not be members of the Landscape Institute) working in both urban/rural environments and in private and public space. Marie’s excellent and comprehensive report The FOLAR review of Landscape Oral Histories (2019) plus appendix and addenda can be accessed via the links below.
In November 2019, we trained our first team of oral history interviewers, consisting of both landscape professionals and landscape academics. Although the Corona virus has necessitated some changes in our timetable, this team is now starting an initial programme of interviews, including distanced interviewing as well as face to face sessions with willing subjects, and where we can remain in compliance with Covid 19 regulations and guidance.
We are enormously grateful to the Landscape Institute for grant funding this project from the very beginning.
We will report our progress on this web page, as and when appropriate.