The Family Album

 

A community cohesion project with the residents of Contour Housing that collects photos from the families own photo albums along with their oral histories and life stories. The book combines them with archive maps from Bolton Museum to create a shared perspective and a shared history of the place that they live and the neighbours around them. 

 

Adrian Barber spent several months getting to know the residents and gaining their trust before collecting photos and interviews from them.

Each week the progress of the project would be updated on a blog, a Facebook page and on Flickr. 

 

Through conversations with the residents it was decided that  creative writing and DJ workshops should be started at a local community centre as a way for young people to engage with the project. Insyt Media were asked to deliver weekly sessions each Wednesday evening and after eight weeks the group had wrote, performed and recorded their own track on the theme "The Family Album".

All the young people and residents involved were invited to recieve their own copies of the book at a photo exhibition at the community centre where the young people also performed their track live. 

 

On a follow up session some months later the residents agreed that the project had been a great success, One of the residents, John  said "Before the project we just used to say 'Hello' and 'Morning" to each other, but after reading the book we were suprised that we shared a few things. Three of us had at one time worked at the same mill, but we didn't know that. The book gave us a talking point, a reason to start up a conversation and since then we've become quite good friends."

 

 

Take a look at the book on Blurb:

 

Read the blog here :

Take a look at the photos on Flickr:

Or take look at the development of the project on Facebook: