A new project is aiming to capture the history of rural communities around Lichfield.

Drop-in workshops for people with old family letters, postcards and photographs are being organised by the archives and heritage service at Staffordshire County Council.

Visitors will be able to have their documents scanned or photographed to become part of a publicly-accessible online archive via the Staffordshire Past Track website.

Gill Heath, cabinet member responsible for the county’s archives service at Staffordshire County Council, said:

“We’re a county steeped in history and we hope this pilot project will help tell us more about what life was like for our rural communities through the ages.

“We know that many families will have family photographs and old documents at home but they maybe unsure how interesting or useful they could be or what to do with them.

“That’s why we’re encouraging people to dig them out and bring them in so our team can document them and add them to the collections.

“Even someone’s old scrapbook or family snapshots could tell us a great deal about what life was like in our county all those years ago.” 

Gill Heath, Staffordshire County Council

The project comes after a bid to The National Archive’s Test Bed Fund. If successful could be rolled out nationally to help other archive services connect better with their rural communities.

Workshops will be held throughout 2020 and are expected to take place in areas including Abbots Bromley.

More details about the project are available here.

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