Box supported project wins two national awards - The Box, Plymouth

By: Jo Clarke
Added: 10 July 2019

A community project that’s been supported by The Box has won two national awards.

‘Maker Memories’ has been collecting stories and memories to help preserve the social history of Maker Camp on the Rame Peninsula. It’s already engaged with more than 16,000 people through a series of events and displays and reached nearly 250,000 people online.

The project has just been announced as the overall winner of the ‘Best Community Archive and Heritage Group’, and the winner of the ‘Community Engagement’ category in this year’s Community Archives and Heritage Group (CAHG) awards.

‘Maker Memories’ is led by volunteers from the Maker and Rame Community Interest Company (CIC), in partnership with The Box, Plymouth. Dr. Lyvinia Elleschild, a member of the CIC is a Sociology Lecturer at the University of Plymouth and students from both the BSc (Hons) Sociology and BA (Hons) Media Arts degrees have also contributed to the project.

In reaching their decision, the CAHG judges said: “We were impressed by the range of diverse communities that ‘Maker Memories’ has engaged, including and empowering a number of inter-related yet distinct groups, such as young people, the (now) elderly who had once visited the camp, people engaged with the music scene, environmental issues and cultural preservation.

“The project leveraged close links with the excellent local authority archive in nearby Plymouth, from whose expertise it has drawn to ensure high standards in archiving processes, techniques and skills.

“‘Maker Memories’ is already a very important archive for counter-culture, given the emergence of Maker Camp in recent years as an important music festival. Such communities need to be documented and made part of history. ‘Maker Memories’ is leading the way.”

The project has focussed on collecting stories, social history information and artefacts about Maker Camp’s rich and diverse history.

It was originally a military base located in between the villages of Cremyll and Kingsand. From the 1920s to the early 1980s many people attended the camp thanks to a scheme established by the MP Nancy Astor and her Virginia House Settlement for ‘deprived city children’.

Oral history interviews have captured peoples’ memories of the camp, as well as more recent testimonies from the many musicians and festival-goers who have played, stayed and celebrated there.

Nicola Moyle, Head of Heritage, Art and Film at The Box, Plymouth said: “It’s been an honour for our team to support the ‘Maker Memories’ project and I know they’ve enjoyed meeting the many different people who have come forward to share their memories. It’s a project that spans different generations, experiences and interests and we’re thrilled it’s been recognised with these national awards which highlight just how important community archives are.”

You can find out more about the ‘Maker Memories’ project via www.makermemories.org