What is a local history community?

History At Work has been exploring the idea of what a local history community is since 2006 when we worked on the State Library Victoria’s Memory Victoria Project.

Across Victoria and around the world people are passionate about their patch. They often join Friends groups, or volunteer with the local historical society or museum. They look after collections that include household, occupational, community, municipal and personal ephemera and objects that represent and interpret the lives of generations. They appreciate that the stories of their past can provide some context to life and living today.

Most of us are part of a place-based community and to have a sense of this place – a familiarity with and comfort within it – is to be more strongly connected and more securely part of it. Importantly, this applies to new-comers just as it does to old-timers.

In Victoria there are many history communities of sorts, more often focused on specialist areas like family history or maritime history and involving those who are ‘in the know’ so to speak.

In the realm of place-based or local history the participants - local residents or curious visitors to the locale - are often not ‘in the know’, despite the hard efforts of local historical societies over the last 50-70 years. These groups frequently work in near isolation or in silos, and are usually under- or even un-funded, which hampers opportunities to make the most of, and to share, their local history knowledge. This in turn hampers opportunities for everyone to nurture and benefit from a sense of place and a place-based community.

However, there are real aspirations for stronger local history networks and for the capacity within local government to support and nurture them. Local government is best placed to do this work, which also includes broad advocacy for local history and heritage, providing public opportunities for story-telling, education and interpretation, and recognising and exploring the difficult and ugly histories that have shaped their communities just as much as the good and proud histories have.

This work, when done well, consistently and thoughtfully, will create a knowledgeable local history community. You don’t have to be a historian or have to think about history to be part of a local history community. You just need to be familiar with your patch and appreciate how you, your neighbours, and your street- and landscapes came to be there, enabling you to reap the rewards of a strong sense of place, comfort and familiarity.

Local government knows that a sense of place and a place-based community is important and that it is as much their responsibility as anyone’s. Many LGA’s are taking increasingly bigger steps to include history and history-telling amongst their community responsibilities. We look forward to talking about some of these as a couple of our projects unfold.

http://www.localhistoryisawesome.co.uk [accessed 7 March 2019]