Earlier Experiences Of Oral History Projects

The experience within the organisation in the use of oral history techniques is something that has only recently come to light within Head Office. Over the years several oral history projects have been carried out by local teams. As part of the organisation’s Millennium celebrations, for example, the Grantham team carried out an oral history project that resulted in the publication of the booklet – The Sands of Time – which documents the history of the Natural Nature Reserve in Lincolnshire which they part-own and help to manage. Fifty-one local people were interviewed as part of this project to gain insights into the history of the area and the relationship between people and the reserve, going back over a period of forty years.

From a knowledge management perspective key insights have been gained from this oral history project, for example:

Over this forty-year timeframe two, very similar, engineering projects had been carried out on the reserve, each with the same aim i.e. to straighten out a meandering stretch of the river, and each of these projects had been equally unsuccessful as the tide washed their efforts away. This ‘repeated mistake’ only came to light as a result of this oral history project.

An earlier oral history project involved gathering staff’s thoughts about the restructuring of the Nature Conservancy Council. This piece of research focused on questions such as: How did staff feel about the re-structure? What were their favourable memories of working for the NCC? What had prompted them to follow a career in conservation? How do they see the role of English Nature? Unfortunately this very readable and culture packed information, gathered from this piece of research, was never published due to political sensitivities at the time. Thus the insights gained from this piece of work are not widely known within the organisation.