West Midlands: The Corner Shop Project
English Heritage worked with Black Country Touring, Foursight Theatre and Sandwell Local Authority’s Community History and Archives Service and Museum Service on this project in 2008/09. Using oral history and photography, we are working with the community to chart how corner shops have changed across the Black Country over the past 60 years. One of the first uses of the research has been to create a site-specific theatre production bringing to life key themes and stories. We are also keen to share and celebrate this aspect of social history much more widely through the creation of an archive, a web presence and through a multi-media touring exhibition. There has also been a schools project.
Initially 15 volunteers from the community were trained in oral history interviewing and recording techniques and inducted to the project. These researchers interviewed current and former shop owners, their families and some customers. They spoke to local shops that were of interest to them and approached others that we wanted to target.
The starting point for the Corner Shops theatre production involved listening to the researchers’ interviews with past and present shopkeepers. These interviews revealed an extraordinary group of people with strength and determination to adapt, survive and to serve their local communities despite the ongoing predatory threat of the supermarket.
The interviews, spanning many decades of memories and including shopkeepers of varying ages and cultural backgrounds, revealed an overwhelming number of shared experiences: a way of life, long hours, the dependency on and support of family, the relationships with shoppers as ‘friends, not just customers’.
At the very heart of the world of the corner shop is a sense of community. These shops are a meeting point for a whole cross-section of society; they are focal points for the elderly and lonely; places of help and advice, as well as starting points for children to learn independence through their early trips to buy sweets. They are places of human interaction.
The next phases of the project involve working with our colleagues in the local authority archives and museum services.
Many photographs have been taken during the project, and many historic photographs and documents have been collated. These will contribute to the project archive alongside the oral history recordings and schools and theatre production materials. This archive will be made publicly accessible at Sandwell Community History and Archives Service in Smethwick who are running archival and research training for community members as part of the project. The volunteers will add to a gallery of images online showing the diversity of shops that were part of the research. This will be expanded with themed galleries as the project progresses. http://www.connectinghistories.org.uk/
Sandwell Museum Service is curating an audio-visual exhibition which will consist of photographs, audio extracts of interviews, sound from the theatre production and written commentary. The exhibition will tour the Black Country region, across the West Midlands and nationally, starting summer 2009.
For more information about the project contact Suzanne Carter, Outreach Manager on 0121 6256870 or Suzanne.carter@english-heritage.org.uk
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