11th November: Research feedback at HARC: Jackie Morris

For the November meetings, Rhys Griffiths, Senior Archivist at HARC had kindly agreed to give the morning group a talk about accessing the Archive and Records and the types of content held therein. I myself felt unconfident in how to go about this and was surprised and encouraged by the breadth of resources available to the public to explore here in rural Herefordshire!  Rhys drew us in with wonderful examples from the archive and practical tips to find the material.

We stopped at 11 a.m. to join the Remembrance commemorative service to the women of Rotherwas who had worked during both World Wars in dangerous conditions in the Munitions Factory close by. The memorial stone is outside HARC.

Afterwards group members shared their research so far of their chosen Common. It was a large group so tricky for me to ensure everyone who wanted to, had a chance to speak. A few of the group stayed to share lunch afterwards as they had booked archive research time for the afternoon. One researcher only attended the afternoon session so I shared the mornings tips from Rhys and photos of different approaches people are taking in relation to their common. One researcher, Viv,had brought along examples of images of old British Ribbon maps which seem a great way to capture a particular route. She had experimented with capturing her walk in a similar way on cotton spools.

Meg had walked many times on her common and represented each of these on the piece of linen which I had previously given out to those interested in possibly contributing to a shared artwork for next year’s Walking the Commons exhibition here at HARC.

Below are a range of other repsonses shared by the researchers so far to walking on their specific Herefordshire Common this Autumn. We discussed different approaches. One theme emerging today was place and memory, another was ritual and place with the researcher trying out artist/researcher Lucy Wright‘s newly invented Dusking tradition for the start of Winter, see https://tradfolk.co/art/writing/what-is-dusking/ for more details of the new tradition.

At the end of the two feedback and discussion sessions, I came across Viv and Tracy engrossed in the archive!

I look forward to hearing more about other’s research progress on their common as we move from Autumn to Winter. (I had to cancel the December meeting due to a family crisis, but we will meet again in January.)