The project

With funding from the National Heritage Lottery Fund secured, we recruited six care homes for the project. The Meadowcroft, Nightingale House, Westwood House, Lyle House, Woodlands House and Beulah Vista care homes in south London formed partnerships with three groups of A-Level Drama students at two local secondary schools, Burntwood School in Wandsworth and The Norwood School in Lambeth. The students undertook oral history interview training and then recorded life story interviews with two residents at each care home. The twelve residents were invited to look back on their personal history and to talk about their experiences growing up, their families, careers, interests and their day-to-day lives, as well as more recent experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In addition to the drama workshops and performances, we produced a limited series of twelve 30-minute podcast episodes, each one an audio 'portrait' of one of our participating residents. The podcasts include the residents’ memories, history and reflections while creating a picture of their day-to-day lives and those who are important to them.

At the end of the project, the oral history interview audio files and transcripts will be deposited and stored in the Bishopsgate Institute’s oral history archive and the archive of the Wandsworth Heritage Service.

The oral history interviews were then transcribed, and over the course of a term the Drama students at each school learnt skills in verbatim theatre-making. Using the recordings and transcripts, the students have worked to create theatre pieces exploring themes and stories from the care home residents’ lives. These theatre pieces were performed at each school, to an invited audience of residents, friends, family, teachers and fellow students. Screenings of video recordings of the performances were also arranged at some of our participating homes.