On March 11th 2009 a book launch event was held in Leicester. Over 85 people attended. Speeches were followed by tea and Hamantaschen, a chance to look at displays and talk to contributors. Some photographs from the book launch:
Speakers for the evening: l-r Rabbi Pink (Leicester Hebrew Congregation), Ian Simons (Chair for the evening), Sara Crofts (Heritage Lottery), Mike Gibby (Leicester Progressive Congregation), Mel Read (Writing School Leicester), Rosalind Adam (Project Leader).
Putting names to faces of a cheder group from the 1950s.
Enjoying the speeches
Enjoying the book
A brief outline of the Jewish Voices memory project in Leicester, UK, 2008/9
My journey from the initial idea to the publication of the book was extremely interesting and enjoyable. I have listed out a brief timeline below but this does not include the humour, excitement and overwhelming enthusiasm from the contributors or those special moments that I experienced along the way. You can hear all about those in my talk. If you would like me to talk to your group about the project or if you would like to receive a complimentary copy of the book then please visit http://www.leicesterjewishvoices.co.uk/ or contact me. You can also read about the project on my blog posting called A Memory Project.
Project Timeline:
May 2008 Contributors for the project were recruited via email, telephone, leaflets, newspapers and word of mouth. The content and format of the forthcoming workshops was designed and written by myself and Miriam Halahmy, a London writer and workshop leader.
June to August 2008 We ran a series of writing workshops which, with the invaluable support of Miriam Halahmy, were a great success. I conducted one-to-one interviews and small discussion groups. Glen Tillyard, a professional photographer, helped contributors to scan and repair old photographs and took photographic records of the writing sessions.
September to October 2008 The final number of contributors was 70. This represented a fair cross-section of the Leicester Jewish population during the 1940s and 50s but the volume of writing received meant that the sorting and editing process was more time consuming than expected. It was worth the extra work because, from the masses of written contributions, I gradually saw a coherent account of life in the Leicester Jewish Community at that time emerge.
November 2008 to January 2009 The manuscript was sent out to volunteers for checking and after final editing it was submitted to Think plus Ink, a professional design company based in Leicester. At this point Glen Tillyard started to gather written material from Val Moore and myself to create the project website http://www.leicesterjewishvoices.co.uk/
February 2009 Two large and impressive display boards were designed and produced by RAL Displays for our touring display. A number of meetings were held with Think plus Ink to refine the proofs and gradually our 'book' emerged. It only remained to send it to the printers, a daunting 'no going back now' moment. The website was designed and built by Glen and sent round for general checking and proofing.
March 2009 The book arriving from the printers was a cause for great excitement. Our aim had always been for a professional look and that was what we now had. The plans leading up to the book launch were frantic but it was all worth the hard work as the book was accepted with overwhelming enthusiasm and warmth.
April 2009 Requests for copies of the book arrived on an almost daily basis. The touring display was up and running and the bulletin board of the project website was receiving lots of positive responses.
May 2009 and beyond The project has been more successful than I could ever have hoped for. It is now half way through 2010 and still we are getting requests for copies of the book. There will be one more update on the project website which I plan to do late in 2010 and then the project will be over... but hopefully not forgotten.
If you would like to hear a talk about the Jewish Voices memory project and/or receive a complimentary copy of the project book then please visit http://www.leicesterjewishvoices.co.uk/ or contact Rosalind Adam.
If you would like to know more about taking part in a memory writing project please read the information at workshop and support.
Rosalind Kathryn Adam
