Watch the end-of-project film here.

Hidden Stories Hidden Voices was a project I ran on behalf of Writing East Midlands from July to December 2018.

The project’s aim was to spread the word about the Old Rectory Museum in Rectory Place, Loughborough and encourage more people to visit it.

To do that I ran creative activities with community groups at six different venues in the town, using tales from Loughborough’s past as a starting point for new pieces of work.

The project rounded off with an exhibition at the Old Rectory in October/November 2018 and a display at All Saint’s Parish Church’s Christmas tree festival in December.

With workshop participants, staff and volunteers from participating venues, and associated friends and family visiting the exhibition, the project resulted in a twenty-four percent increase to the museum’s visitor numbers for the year, with visitors across a broader spectrum of ages and social groupings than generally seen, seventy percent of whom had never visited the Old Rectory before.  An encouraging number of these have continued their interest in the Grade II listed building, both as visitors and through membership of the society which runs it.

Altogether, the project was a great success, for the Old Rectory Museum but also for me as a creative.  Sharing my own story of ‘being here’ with others did much to help me articulate my feelings towards the town I was born in and cement feelings of belonging to it which hadn’t been particularly strong before.

An anthology of the work created in the workshops will be available shortly – watch this space for news of publication!