Oral History Australia has adopted a statement outlining the value of oral history.
The Statement of Value is intended as an introduction to the many benefits of oral history, particularly for those considering developing their own oral history projects.
It is available on the ‘What is oral history?’ page of the OHA website and as a downloadable PDF.
Oral History NSW is committed to supporting oral history practitioners in sharing and promoting their work with the larger oral history community.
Two opportunities below - please refer to our Grants & Awards page for further information and we look forward to hearing more about your projects.
The Oral History NSW Conference Grant is available to presenters attending the Biennial Oral History Australia Conference. Two grants of $600 each will be offered. Applications for the OHA Conference in Launceston are open now and close on 31 August 2021.
The Oral History NSW Community History Award acknowledges the work of individuals or community groups who are recording the histories of their communities. The winner of the award receives $500. Applications are now open and close 31 August 2021.
The Oral History NSW Regional Engagement Grant aims to raise the profile of oral history in regional areas and extend its expertise and use throughout New South Wales. Awarded biennially, the grant is aimed at librarians, archivists, museum curators, artists, film-makers, independent oral historians or community groups based in regional areas in NSW who wish to develop an oral history project that illuminates some aspect of their regional area which is of significance or interest to others.
We are very pleased to announce The Bundanoon History Group (BHG) as the winner of the 2020 Oral History NSW Regional Engagement Grant.
The Bundanoon History Group (BHG) is a group of volunteers interested in preserving and promoting the history of Bundanoon in the NSW Southern Highlands.
Since its inception in the early 1980s, the BHG has acquired a volume of historical material in the form of print, photography, audio recordings and ephemera relating to Bundanoon.
The BHG has been recording oral histories of locals since 2010. Following the recent 2020 bushfires, it convened a special project to capture evidence and stories about the 2019/20 bushfires in Bundanoon to:
• document a significant event in Bundanoon’s history
• create an archive for future analysis
• capture lessons learned
• contribute to a more complete understanding of this unprecedented fire season.
Their project will focus on conducting oral history interviews with the many individuals impacted by the bushfires and to make the information available for academic research, formal presentation and general public interest.
Oral History NSW looks forward to hearing more about the project as it progresses and wish the Bundanoon History Group the best of luck on the forthcoming interviews.
Each year the Oral History NSW Community History Award acknowledges the work of individuals or community groups who are recording the histories of their communities.
This year we received a record number of submissions for the award, and were delighted to announce the Cowra Voices project as the winner.
At our AGM on 31 October, Masako Fukui accepted the award for Cowra Voices and delivered a presentation about the project.
Special Commendation went to Ann Howard for her submission “Eisteddfod to Stage: Ryde Eisteddfod 30 AMAZING YEARS 1988 to 2018” .
You can watch the recording of these two presentations by clicking on the OHNSW logo below:
Ann Howard: 01:42 - 12:53 / Masako Fukui - Cowra Voices 14:36 - 35:16
Thank you to everyone who attended our first online AGM. It was great to see everyone and celebrate the achievements of our members and look forward to the year ahead.
At the AGM we announced the winner of the OHNSW Community History Award, presented to Masako Fukui and the Cowra Voices project, as well as a Special Commendation Award for Ann Howard for “Eisteddfod to Stage: Ryde Eisteddfod 30 AMAZING YEARS 1988 to 2018” .
We will be posting their presentations from the AGM online shortly.
2021 - Oral History NSW Committee members (l-r: Kylie, Andrew, Maria, Gwyn, Scott, Shirleene, Minna, Alex)
The following were elected at the AGM on 31 October 2020:
President — Maria Savvidis
Vice-President — Scott McKinnon
Treasurer — Andrew Host
Secretary — Kylie Andrews
Public Officer — Minna Muhlen-Schulte
Committee Member — Gwyn McClelland
Committee Member — Alexandra Dellios
Committee Member — Shirleene Robinson
You can read the President’s Report here.
Oral History NSW recently welcomed a new editor for our regular oral history newsletter - Network News.
Dr Gwyn McClelland is a Lecturer in Japanese at the University of New England. An oral historian, he conducts research engaging with religious discourses in memory and history. Gwyn’s book was published this year entitled, ‘Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki: Prayers, Protests and Catholic Survivor Narratives’, based on his oral history project discussing with Catholic survivors their interpretations of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
Welcome Gwyn!
You can subscribe to Network News and read previous editions here.
Oral History NSW Treasurer Andrew Host reflects on a recent training workshop he co-presented in regional NSW . If you are interested in receiving oral history training for a group and can provide a suitable venue, please get in touch with Oral History NSW.
Earlier in September Pauline Curby and I had the pleasure of presenting Oral History NSW’s Capturing Memories workshop at Gilgandra, hosted by the local Country Women’s Association.
Thirteen enthusiastic participants attended this practical workshop to learn all about the practicalities of recording the experiences of family, friends, local communities, history of museum items or any other project incorporating memories of the past.
The morning was spent with Pauline leading them through all the ins and outs of good oral history, including valuable time performing and reviewing practice interviews. My job in the afternoon was to teach them as much as possible in the short time available to us about the technical aspects of recording oral history.
There was a great impetus for participants wanting to start their oral history projects sooner rather than later. Especially realising how important it is to record the history of the region before all the people who know the history are gone.
The CWA were more than generous hosts, and we had the good fortune after the workshop of being guests at the CWA International night, the theme of which was Ecuador, and so we were treated to delicious Ecuadorian cuisine.
We greatly enjoyed presenting the workshop and everyone’s positive responses, not to mention being out in the clean clear country air with such kind and generous country folk.
Andrew Host has been a member of Oral History NSW since 2012, and has been on the executive committee since 2013 where he now serves as Treasurer.
He regularly presents training courses for Oral History NSW where he shares his knowledge and expertise from over 40 years working in audio preservation and recording.
The 2021 issue of the Oral History Australia journal Studies In Oral History will be based on the theme 'Oral history, place and environment'.
Congratulations also to Oral History NSW committee member Alexandra Dellios who will be taking over from Francesco Ricatti as chair of the journal's Editorial Board, as of the 2021 issue.
Humans are profoundly emplaced beings. We become attached to places – be they homes, cities or natural environments—so that when we are separated from them, we become homesick. Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan referred to this love of place or sense of place as ‘topophilia’, and it can also be connected to cultural belonging or family identity. Hence our place memories can be deeply felt and intensely personal. Moreover, place memories can retain a special resonance in the mind over time,associated as they are with sensory experiences, emotional associations and social inflections. Place matters, as oral historians have shown across a range of settings.
Place can be specific and localised, but it can also be extrapolated to the physical environments we inhabit more broadly. Increasingly, the fields of oral history and environmental history are finding productive intersections. Oral history offers attention to the ways in which humans remember and narrate their relationships to environments. Environmental history insists upon close attention to the more-than-human world, and the relationships between nature and culture, people and place. As environmental catastrophes with anthropogenic causes become more common in the twenty-first century, understanding human interrelationships with specific places and the environment is arguably more critical—and more urgent—than ever before.
This special issue of Studies in Oral History (formerly Oral History Australia Journal) invites reflections upon the ways in which oral history can illuminate and expand our understandings of place and environment. We invite broad and varied interpretations of this theme, which may include (but are not limited to):
Childhood memories of place
Connections to home, town, region or nation
Indigenous connections to country
Urban place memories
Regional and rural place memories
Place attachment and migration
Family history and meanings of ‘home’
Intergenerational knowledge of and attachment to place
‘Natural’ disasters
Environmental activism
Histories of environmental degradation
Environmental regulation
Environmental protection and rejuvenation.
To be considered for peer review, articles should be between 5,000 and 8,000 words (excluding references) and are due 30 November 2020. Publication of the special issue is anticipated in late 2021.
Any queries about this special issue can be directed to Joint Editors Skye Krichauff skye.krichauff@adelaide.edu.au and Carla Pascoe Leahy Carla.pascoeleahy@unimelb.edu.au.
Contributions can be emailed to the Editorial Board Chair Alexandra Dellios: alexandra.dellios@anu.edu.au.
The following were elected at the AGM on 26 October 2019:
President — Maria Savvidis
Vice-President — Scott McKinnon
Treasurer — Andrew Host
Secretary — Kylie Andrews
Public Officer — Isobelle Barrett Meyering
Committee Member — Minna Muhlen-Schulte
Committee Member — Alexandra Dellios
Committee Member — Shirleene Robinson
Current and former Presidents of Oral History NSW: Maria Savvidis and Shirleene Robinson
We asked Rhonda Povey, recipient of the Oral History NSW conference bursary to tell us about her experience attending the Biennial Oral History Australia Conference held in Brisbane last month.
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The 2019 Biennial Conference of Oral History Australia was held between 10-13 October on Yuggera Country at the State Library of Queensland, with a theme of ‘Intimate Stores, Challenging Histories’. I was fortunate enough to receive a bursary funded by the NSW OHA to attend the conference, presenting my work on proper-way research, that is research using ethical research methods and methodologies in a remote Aboriginal community. The conference ran in 3 strands across 2 days; I was privileged to attend several thought-provoking presentations interrogating intimate stories and challenging histories.
The opening plenary presented by Katrina Srigley set the tone by speaking about relational storytelling and story listening; an unlearning and learning journey with Nipissing First Nation of the shorelines of Lake Ontario. Perspectives about true listening, ‘listening with the heart’ and interpretation permeated the conference as presenters and attendees considered the means in which oral history can speak back and assume its rightful place in mainstream history.
Awareness of the ongoing attempts at colonial erasure of Indigenous experiences and perceptions in history held a prominent place in presentations, provoking consideration of the impact of silencing and silences in oral historiography. For example Skye Kirchauff asked us to consider the perceived silence about Aboriginal people in public and private spaces of her hometown in South Australia. The notion of silencing also presents in the realm of memorialisation; specifically in the ways frontier violence and Aboriginal massacres in Australia became part of our colonial forgetting. Through discussion based on two public monuments in the East Kimberly Cameo Dalley, Ashely Barnwell and Sana Nakata explored the ways contemporary Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities think about each other in terms of how wars are commemorated.
Sites of attempted silencing in history reach into the disability narrative and Penny Harrison suggests oral history has a significant role to play in developing a more intimate and inclusive understanding of disability, challenging the established narrative of marginalisation. Diasporic stories from Cambodia, presented by Naomi Frost, reminds us that in the transmission of family narratives silence may not be forgetting, but rather deeply nuanced by personal, temporal and spatial distances.
Several presentations focussed on the ethics of research in making Aboriginal history, be it in Aboriginal Art (McHugh, Neale and McLean), proper-way research in remote communities (Rhonda Povey) Aboriginal stories about ‘The Reserve’ in Broome (Elaine Rabbitt), or Gaja Kerry Charlton yarning about life on Benarrawa. The plenary ‘Indigenous Oral History: challenges and opportunities’ was a fitting close to the conference. Panel members Lorina Barker, Gaja Kerry Charlton, Sadie Heckenberg and Katrina Srigley raised questions such as how do we navigate the inquiry space so as to ensure custodianship of stories? How do we as historians decolonise ourselves and historiography? And how do we overcome the invisibility of the obvious? What does reciprocity truly mean? Katrina Srigley asked “How do we do this with love?” Speaking from the standpoint of a Yuggera woman, Gaja Kerry Charlton reminded the audience the challenges to opportunity involve “precariously stepping over the edge into our world”.
Many thanks to all those involved in organising the conference. I know I don’t speak only for myself in saying many wonderful stories were shared, both in presentations and amongst the conference attendees!
-Rhonda Povey
Oral History NSW acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands on which we live and work.
We pay our respects to Elders past and present, and extend this respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.