ORAL HISTORY AWARDS SHORTLIST
The shortlisted projects for the 2024 Victorian Community History Awards have been released. The winners will be announced at a VCHA ceremony on Monday 24 March.
Oral History Victoria warmly congratulates all of the projects listed below.
In The Footsteps (Melbourne Holocaust Museum, Lead Curator Jayne Josem, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HXXmxvSMXYjjTUaM4rBr_8bruI6pacsz/view)
Holocaust survivors created the Holocaust Museum in Melbourne and for decades they shared their stories as a living guide for visitors. Recognising that eventually all the survivors will pass, the Museum created In the Footsteps, drawing upon the Museum’s collection of 1300 oral history interviews, to ensure that survivor testimony is central to the new permanent exhibition that opened in 2023. At the entrance visitors collect a passport for one of six survivors, which they insert into one of five kiosks for each of the phases of the Holocaust: the world that was, rights removed, freedoms lost, life unworthy of living (murder of family) and survival and return to life. At each stage, the six virtual guides share their stories in riveting filmed interviews. The personal testimonies foster empathy and reflection and make an appalling, complex history feel personal and unforgettable.
The People’s Movement: The Birth of Selby Community House (Selby Community House, and commissioned creators: Filmmakers: Tadji Ulrich, Lia Hills; Podcast producer: Riley Jordan, https://www.selbyhouse.org.au/selby-history-project/)
In 1975 a group of young mothers in the isolated community of Selby, in the foothills of the Dandenongs, surveyed families about local resources for children and parents and set out to fill; the gap by creating a play group that evolved into one of Australia’s first neighbourhood houses: a centre for family support, local education and community involvement. Half a century on and still thriving, the Community House commissioned film maker Tadji Ulrich to create a documentary film about its history, and local musician Riley Jordan to create a series of podcasts sharing memories of the House over the years. The film draws on a wonderful archive of contemporary photographs and documents and makes especially beautiful use of interviews with several of the founding women – shot in close up that captures faces of experience, joy and emotion, and against beautiful bush and garden settings. The People’s Movement recalls a political moment during the Whitlam years that encouraged local participatory democracy and enabled women to use and share their extraordinary talents and imagination to create a place of profound community, and national, significance.
Remembering Ash Wednesday. An oral and visual archive of the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires in Aireys Inlet and its district (Alexander Watkins, https://ashwednesdayremembered.com.au/)
In February 1983, the Victorian coastline from Eastern View to Aireys Inlet and on to Anglesea was devastated by the ‘Ash Wednesday’ bushfires. Forty years on the Aireys Inlet and District Association (AIDA) commissioned Alex Watkins to compile and curate an oral and visual archive for the 40th anniversary as a ‘digital memorial’ to those who lived through the experience. The result is a wonderful archive of 26 powerful oral history interviews about the bush and beach community before, during and after the fires, and stunning photographs from 1983 and of each of the narrators forty years on. Shorter thematic clips, with the opening words transcribed, enable viewers to focus in on different aspects of the story. The project and web archive achieves the aim of both memorialising an important event in local and national history and sharing lessons about how to live with fire, deal with loss and recreate community.
Women, Conscription, War (Alexandra Pierce, https://www.womenconscriptionwar.com/)
This 15-episode podcast tells the story of the Melbourne women who opposed the Vietnam War and the National Service Act from 1965-1972. Each thematic episode weaves together narratives from fifty-eight oral history interviews conducted by Alexandra Pierce for her project, while also including (through the website) contemporary archival documents, photographs and protest ephemera and invaluable bibliographies of primary and secondary source material. This podcast is an inspiring example of the power of oral history to allow historical actors to make sense of their experiences, to bring us along with them on that journey of understanding, and to recreate and explain a momentous period of Victorian and Australian history – through the stories of women who made history in so many ways. Created as a response to a gap in the historical record, this podcast series fills that gap and then some. The podcast approach makes the women’s stories and the wider history accessible to a wide audience. The fact that this history podcast was produced by a solo oral historian without institutional support is truly inspirational.