Forest Voices at International Conference

The prestigious Oral History Society Conference saw delegates from around the world come together on the 9th and 10th July. Postponed from last year the event was, unsurprisingly, a 'virtual' one, with the advantage it was even easier for delegates from afar to present their research and join the conversations. Gathering pace in the 1960s oral history has become an important technique for historical research, but also as a tool for community consultation and community capacity building.  As was clear from the conference, there is now a large community of practitioners, both academic and otherwise, who are capturing peoples' memories, histories, stories and voices fro posterity. At the Conference on Friday delegates heard some of the wonderful Forest of Dean voices recorded over the past seven years by Voices from the Forest. This was part of a presentation was given by project Directors Dr Roger Deeks and Dr Jason Griffiths, their participation in the event funded by the University of Gloucestershire's School of Media.  In the opening panel, described as ‘excellent’ by one observer, Roger and Jason presented an account of how the project's findings 'mapped onto' the childhood experiences of Forest author Winifred Foley, and how this had changed in the post-War years. As evidence of this clips  of people interviewed as part of the Voices from the Forest were played. As part of the presentation they also team also disputed the representation of Foley as a naïve writer, demonstrating instead that she had developed and crafted her literary voice as an author over a much longer period than is commonly thought. Her biography, they argued, was as much a well developed example of her creative writing, and however reliable, was not pure memoir.