At an Awards ceremony on 26 October, 2017, the four shortlisted applicants presented their projects, all of which are fine examples of innovative projects that are working with memories to make histories with contemporary relevance. Here are the two winners and the two other shortlisted projects.
Winner, Community Innovation Award
Stephanie Arnold (in collaboration with Dr Robert Davidson, and interviewees)
Across the Water
Across the Water is a distinctive and original oral history production that combines refugee oral history interviews with classical cello, using speech melody to compose a piece of music based on the sound, mood and content of each interview.
Stephanie’s performance is striking and provocative, and her reflections on the process and effects of combining music and interview audio are insightful and challenging.
Winner, Education Innovation Award
Way Back When Consulting Historians, History Detectives
Mornington Peninsula Oral History Intergenerational Project
History Detectives is an exemplary collaboration between professional historians and schools on the Mornington Peninsula. Project members trained primary school students to conduct interviews with local older people, and produced four engaging short films about schooling based on the interviews, as well as a filmed guide to oral history in schools for teachers. The pleasure and excitement evident in the films attests to the quality of this intergenerational collaboration.
Highly Commended
Fitzroy History Society
The Life and Times of Fitzroy from 1960s
The Fitzroy History Society has drawn upon extensive local contacts and collaborations to generate a series of impressive oral history interviews about the past half century of life and times in Fitzroy, with a particular emphasis on local involvement in urban development issues. Unusually for a community project, the online archive makes the full audio and transcript of each interview fully accessible, and each online interview is complemented by superb personal photography.
Martin Richardson, Paynesville Neighbourhood Centre
Paynesville Memories
This participatory community project in the Gippsland coastal town of Paynesville makes highly effective use of a Facebook campaign and local fundraising and draws on the skills of a professional historian to generate invaluable interviews and photographs about the town’s twentieth century history. An active Facebook site ensures ongoing comment and participation by a wide range of present and former Paynesville residents and visitors.