App-reciating Brighton’s Historical Past
Longhill history students have been chosen to work with a production company to create a smartphone app that enables users to access Brighton’s diverse history during the 1940s, 50s and 60s and will be launched in next year’s Brighton festival.
The app which is a geolocative walking tour of Brighton allows users to travel back in time to listen to teenage testimonies of passions, fashions and music in this exciting period of change.
As part of the ‘Giddy’ oral history project our Year 10 historians will be interviewing the teenagers of yesteryear and recording their stories of love and romance, their interests and lifestyles in a free memory day event later this month. In preparation, our students have been busy developing their interviewing skills with oral historians from Sussex University, studying the archives of a changing world at Brighton Museum and The Keep and designing and the developing the app itself.
It truly has been an exciting few months for our fabulous historians as they discover and understand the similarities and differences of a shared history. But we would really love to invite the wider Longhill Community into the Giddy project, for pupil and parents to talk to their older relatives and friends about their teenage memories of post war Brighton and share them with us.
“We were delighted to welcome pupils from Longhill High School to visit the Mass Observation Archive at The Keep. They were really engaged throughout the session and their attitude to learning and behaviour throughout was positive and demonstrated real maturity, particularly in tackling the older documents. I am really looking forward to welcoming them back and working with them again. It was great to meet so many young people with a passion for History and a curiosity about the collections.” Suzanne Rose – Education & Outreach Officer, The Mass Observation Archive, The Keep.
“The Longhill year 10 students showed a level of historical insight that I would be impressed to see in university students. Their enthusiasm for finding out about the past and empathetic approach to oral history was a credit to their school. It was a pleasure to work with them.” Dr Rose Holmes.
So if you danced at The Regent in the 1940s, skated at the ice rink in the 1950s, rebelled as a mod or rocker in the 1960s or just have interesting stories to share we would love to record them and preserve them for future generations.
If you are 60+ and have a story or photograph to share come along to the project:
Date and time: Wednesday 16 December, between 10am-2pm
Venue: St John’s Day Centre, Palmeira Square, Hove BN3 2FJ
If you are unable to attend on that date and want to share a story or photograph you can drop me an email at school or contribute to the Giddy blog below.
Sean Humphries, Longhill History Department
http://giddynessbrighton.blogspot.co.uk
Return to previous page