Know Your Bristol: empowering community exploration and co-creation of local history and heritage
With the support of historians at the University of Bristol, diverse communities across the city have been able to create, explore, and preserve their local histories.
The Know Your Place project brought together Professors Robert Bickers, Josie McLellan and Tim Cole, as well as Knowledge Exchange Fellow Nathan Eisenstadt, from the University of Bristol’s Department of History. Their research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Developing the methodology
In 2012, Bristol City Council approached Bristol historian Professor Robert Bickers for assistance with its newly-launched online map tool, Know Your Place, which would allow locals to learn and share information about historic Bristol.
Bickers and his team have, since 2006, been developing the Historical Photographs of China archive, gathering over 20,000 images and making them publicly available using innovative digitisation techniques. Most importantly, the project involves crowd-sourcing materials from private collections, meaning members of the public are co-creators of the resource.
Engaging communities
Over 2013-2015, the Bristol team worked with Bristol City Council on diversifying engagement with Know Your Place, in particular by reaching out to communities of interest whose stories were underrepresented in local archives. Led by Knowledge Exchange Fellow Nathan Eisenstadt, the team drew on the insights of their earlier work (including the Historical Photographs of China project) to develop a distinctive methodology for helping groups and individuals engage creatively with local history and heritage.
‘Working with communities such as Hillfields and Lockleaze not only added content to the map, it also connected the work that we do to communities that sometimes feel peripheral and marginalised and helped us to tap into local knowledge and begin to understand these neighbourhoods better.’
Participating in local history
Not only does Know Your Place allow communities to engage with and take ownership of local history, but their contributions have material weight in local planning policies. All material uploaded to Know Your Place becomes part of Bristol’s Historic Environment Record. As such, it has been used by architects, developers, and planning consultants to inform development proposals and planning applications, including the regeneration strategy and redesign of Gainsborough Square in Lockleaze (2014) and a major residential redevelopment in Bedminster.
Gainsborough Square in Lockleaze (2014) Source: Bristol City Council
Gainsborough Square in Lockleaze (2014) Source: Bristol City Council
Gainsborough Square in Lockleaze (2014) Source: Bristol City Council
Gainsborough Square in Lockleaze (2014) Source: Bristol City Council
Source: Left image (maps.bristol.gov.uk) Right image (maps.bristol.gov.uk)
Source: Left image (maps.bristol.gov.uk) Right image (maps.bristol.gov.uk)
Putting marginalised histories on the map
As the project developed, the team was approached by a number of underrepresented community groups including Shalom Salaam (an interfaith arts organisation) and Single Parent Action Network. By contributing to the project, these communities have been able to permanently preserve their history and explore new ways to tell their stories.
One of the historians, Professor Josie McLellan, used her research on LGBT+ activism to inform a collaborative project with local LGBT+ history group, OutStories Bristol. The project allowed OutStories to create a mobile app and make their extensive oral history archive more widely available. In turn, Know Your Place gained a rich LGBT+ layer to its maps, with photographs, archival documents, and clips from oral history interviews plotted against places and events of significance to LGBT+ life.
“It has created a permanent online archive of our history and set it alongside the wider story of the city and region."
The team also collaborated with Openstorytellers, a charity based in Frome, run for and by storytellers with learning difficulties. Practical workshops and access to archival materials allowed Openstorytellers to explore the history of disability in the South West. This significantly impacted their artistic practice, in particular when it came to portraying the story of 18th-century Bristolian Fanny Fust, which prompted a move from straight storytelling to a dramatic approach including animation and performance.
“It felt really spectacular – it helped me understand what it was like in Bristol and Bath. It was brilliant to have my pictures animated, to see Fanny travelling.”
Since this partnership, Openstorytellers members have acquired new skills, gained confidence, and taken leading roles in the running of the company. The charity has also gained further funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Arts Council during a difficult period of transition.
Dr. Nicola Grove; Founder and Director, Openstorytellers
Dr. Nicola Grove; Founder and Director, Openstorytellers
Figures
Since beginning to work with the University in 2012, Know Your Place has grown exponentially: it now covers eight different local authority areas that between them attract about 15,000 page views per month. Collaboration with the research team has enabled the upload of hundreds of points of local information and oral histories: 3,000 early 20th-century postcards from the Bristol Record Office; over 600 photographic images taken in the 1970s and 1980s by BCC’s Urban Design team; 122 oral histories and documents in a dedicated LGBT+ Life layer. A team of volunteers based at Bristol Archives, originally brought together by this project, continue to add significant content to the map well beyond the lifetime of the collaboration (1,640 images and countingas of September 2020.
Expanding the project
The success of Bristol City Council’s collaboration with the University of Bristol research team has enabled them to think further afield, extending the reach of Know Your Place beyond the city. ‘Know Your Place West of England’ now brings together eight local authorities: Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, Devon, Gloucestershire, North Somerset, Somerset, South Gloucestershire, and Wiltshire, covering a total of 7,279 square miles, and attracting an average of 180 community uploads per month.
‘The great thing about it is that it breaks down the wall of archives… it brings the archives into your own home.’
Robert Bickers and Josie McLellan are Professors in the University of Bristol’s Department of History. Nathan Eisenstadt was Knowledge Exchange Fellow for the Know Your Place project and is now Senior Research Associate in the Domestic Violence Perpetrator Group Intervention at Bristol Medical School. The team’s research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
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