Factory Voices – An Oral History of Factory Work in the North West

This project brings creative industry and heritage professionals together with the community through oral history, digital publishing and broadcasting. Oral history interviews will be carried out with former shirt factory workers in Buncrana to record the community memory of life at a time when textile factories employed thousands of people in the north west. The oral history interviews will take a life story approach, illustrating how people developed the skills necessary for factory work, how they made lifelong friendships with co-workers, and how the factories were a central part of life in the area generally. The interviews will be used to create a digital oral history archive that will be freely accessible on the Internet via a dedicated website

The project will also see the resulting oral histories used in creative ways. Multimedia workshops will allow secondary school students to engage with the oral histories, learning about the importance of local history and the skills and customs of previous generations. The students will take the oral histories and use them as source material to help create an audio documentary and Ebook with the support of a heritage professional and multimedia publishing experts. This process will see the students learn how to create narrative driven documentary art, and learn how to produce professionally designed books and other creative content.

Please note that the details of events listed above are provided by the relevant Local Authorities.