A new project led by Fleetwood Museum starts this weekend – and we need your help!
We are collecting memories of Fleetwood Town Centre – visit our pop up workshops at the Mount Pavillion on Wednesday 29th and Thursday 30th September 14:00 – 17:00pm, and the Healthier Fleetwood unit at Affinity 12:00-14:00pm, to find out more and to pass on some memories to our volunteer memory collectors! You can also pin a memory to our digital map of Fleetwood town centre at https://www.visitfleetwood.info/about/memory-map-project/
Mapping Memories is an exciting new project to create an amazing archive of community memory. The project will collect people’s memories of places in Fleetwood town centre from the 1950’s up to the present day. The memories will form part of a new archive held at Fleetwood Museum.
Residents will be able to contribute by posting their memories on the digital map or by visiting pop up workshops in Fleetwood during September to November. Local volunteers acting as ‘memory collectors’ will collect memories in the pop up workshops, hosted at different Fleetwood venues.
Local lady Victoria Mitchell is the Mapping Memory Co-ordinator for the project:
“We are interested in all kinds of memories – from long ago to last week. Some of the themes include childhood, shopping, bingo and cinemas, going out, happy or sad memories, meeting loved ones, or memories of buildings that are no longer here such as the pier or train station. Looking back over lockdown too – it will be interesting to see what memories people have, for example in getting out and about in the town centre on walks. We will introduce and suggest different themes over the course of the project. All this will build up a picture of ‘sites of memory’ in the town centre – what places are special to people and why.”
The project is the first part of a 3 year programme on Fleetwood high street. A partnership of local arts and community groups led by Fleetwood Museum were awarded £100,000 earlier this year to deliver the programme, called From Nothing to Now: Fleetwood’s communities celebrate their people and place on the high street”. The grant is from Historic England as part of the Fleetwood High Streets Heritage Action Zone (HSHAZ). Fleetwood HSHAZ is one of more than 60 high streets to receive a share of £6 million for their cultural programme. Grants of up to £120,000 have been awarded to local arts organisations for cultural activity on each high street. This is part of the four-year-long High Streets Heritage Action Zones’ Cultural Programme, led by Historic England, in partnership with Arts Council England and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. The Cultural Programme aims to make our high streets more attractive, engaging and vibrant places for people to live, work and spend time.
Ben Whittaker – Manager, Fleetwood Museum – “Fleetwood is such a special place and residents are very passionate about the town – we want to capture some of that through people’s memories. Local people are already involved as volunteer memory collectors – now we want as many people as possible to make a contribution, whether it’s online, through one of our pop up sessions, or both!”.