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Welcome to the latest edition of the British Association for Local History’s e-newsletter.
We hope you are keeping well and are keeping warm as we enter the winter season. We are continuing to coordinate lots of exciting things, including our programme of webinars and talks that restarted in September.
BALH encourages participation from all our members and we welcome all your ideas. If you have a local history story you would like to share – be it a blog post, talk, article or project – please do get in contact with us; in the first instance, look at our guidelines via the link below, for how to share your stories. For those wishing to become a BALH member, information about what BALH has to offer is available on our membership pages. We hope to hear from you soon!
Read more:
Ways to Get Involved in BALH's Work
Annual Dymond Lecture
This year’s Annual Dymond Lecture will take place on Thursday 8th December at 7pm. Our guest speaker for this year’s lecture is Professor Briony McDonagh from the University of Hull, and she will be presenting a talk entitled ‘Landscape, Environment and Learning Histories.’
Professor McDonagh will be talking about the UKRI-funded project ‘Risky Cities: Living with Water in an Uncertain Climate Future’ and will explore the histories of living with water and flood over the long durée, examining how inhabitants and Corporation of one flood-prone town managed water in order to survive and thrive in a risky yet resilient estuarine environment. In doing so, examine local stories and histories of an east coast town in the medieval and early modern period are brought to light, alongside a wider discussion of how local, landscape and environmental histories can help us learn for the future.
Admission is free for BALH members, and £5.00 for non-members.
Members of member societies benefit from a discounted rate of £3.50, using your society's discount code.
Jeremy Gibson
All at BALH are deeply saddened to hear the loss of Jeremy Gibson, an icon within the social, family and local history world. Many of us will have utilised his “Gibson Guides,” which were popular in the 1980s and 1990s, and these revealed the potential of a variety of sources. He had a passion for transcribing and publishing documents, particularly those useful to genealogists. In 2005, BALH awarded him a lifetime achievement award.
Read more:
Read our obituary for the late Jeremy Gibson
Ten-Minute Talks
Our latest Ten-Minute Talks are available to access on the BALH website, and they cover a range of topics. These include:
What is a One-Place Study? With Helen Shields
How to Get Started in a One-Place Study with Helen Shields.
A Glimpse of Local History: Halse and the Jubilee 2022 with Adrian Webb.
Read more:
See a full list of our Ten-Minute Talks
Do you have a local history topic you could create a Ten-Minute Talk for? We’d love to hear from you! Details on how you can get involved can be found at the link below.
Read more:
Promote your research through a Ten-Minute Talk
20s Streets Local History Competition
We are delighted to announce that we have partnered with the National Archives at Kew for an exciting new local history competition! The 20s Streets Local History Competition encourages individuals or groups to share the stories found within the 1921 Census using a range of innovative and insightful ways. Winners will receive some exciting prizes.
Read more:
Find out more, and enter the competition
From our Local History Blog
We’ve got lots of fascinating blogs on our website covering a range of topics and periods in history. These include:
Celebrating Hampshire Historians: A Southampton Perspective by Roger Ottiwell
Old Palace School Bombing Project by Paul Chiddick.
English Synagogues and Local Jewish Identities by Jessie Clark.
Information about the new Railway Work, Life and Death Project by Mike Ebester
We are always looking for new contributors to our blog, and welcome submissions particularly from different geographical regions, communities and backgrounds. If you would like to write a piece for us, please see the link below to check our guidelines. Once your piece is ready, you can submit it to socialmedia@balh.org.uk.
Read more:
Contributing to the BALH Blog
Digital Webinars and Events
We have lots of exciting digital webinars scheduled for the early part of 2023 that are designed to support your own local history research. You can keep an eye out for these, and book your place, by clicking here.
Upcoming events include:
Importance of Place in Family History
Wednesday 11th January
A talk by Else Churchill from the Society of Genealogists, where she will highlight the ways in which local and family histories can intersect.
Effective Social Media For Local History
Thursday 9th February
Back by popular demand.
Digital Strategy Coordinator Megan Kelleher talks through some ways in which you can ensure you engage with a broader audience. This will include how to find out the best times to post, different types of content you could share and how to create a consistent voice on social media.
Creating Engaging YouTube Videos For Local and Family History
Thursday 9th March
Ten-Minute Talks are a great and simple way of showcasing your research in a bite-sized format, and experienced filmmaker and Digital Content Coordinator Catherine Warr will show you just how easy it is to create your own.
The webinars last for approximately 1 hour and are free to BALH members. Non-members can join the sessions for £5 per session. Members of member societies benefit from a discounted rate of £3.50, using your society's discount code.
Local History Hour
We have had lots of exciting Local History Hours this year, and we look forward to Local History Hour returning in 2023! Remember, if you missed one of our Local History Hours please do not worry – we have overviews of the evenings on our blog.
Local History Hour and webinars, like the majority of our events, are free for BALH members, or £5 for non-members.
Would you like to be part of a Local History Hour and share your research? We’d love to hear from you! Email socialmedia@balh.org.uk to find out more about how you can get involved.
New Essay Prize
The London Topographical Society is funding a new prize in honour of the late Dr Ann Saunders. A prize of £1,000 will be offered annually for an original and unpublished research essay on the topography, development or buildings of London in any period.
Submissions should be made by 1st April 2023, and the essay must be no more than 8,000 words including endnotes. This should include an additional abstract summary of about 200 words.
Read more:
Find out more about the prize
Podcast
The Local History Matters podcast is back! In series two of our podcast, published over the summer, we went back to basics and talked through the different ways you can get started in and share your local history research. You can listen to all episodes of the podcast using the link below.
Would you like to be part of a Local History Matters podcast episode and share more about your research? We’d love to hear from you! Email socialmedia@balh.org.uk to find out more about how you can get involved.
Read more:
Local History Matters
Publications
Our latest publications should have now reached our members’ doors, and there are plenty of exciting articles to read about. In Local History News, our articles discuss a range of topics from getting local studies libraries tooled up for the future to celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of renowned Hampshire author Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901). Meanwhile, in The Local Historian the articles in our latest issue cover the breadth and depth of the British Isles, covering topics from Cornish male voice choirs between 1939 and 1945 to the Essex sessions of peace and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.
Members should receive their copies in the post; if you are interested in reading a digital copy so via the link below.
Read more:
The BALH publications
#PhotographyFriday
Are you interested in the BALH’s Local History Photographer of the Year competition, but want to practise with some photographs first? Why not join our new initiative, #PhotographyFriday. Each Friday, we will be sharing some of our favourite photographs of sites of local historical importance that we have visited. Tag us in your posts and use the hashtag #PhotographyFriday so we can share your posts.
Regional Conference
The BALH hosted their first ever regional conference in Taunton, Somerset on Saturday 22nd October 2022. The theme of the conference related to unexpected local history sources, and our speakers discussed a range of source types from Court of Wards and Liveries to local politics and taxation records.
If you’d like to learn more about the day, why not read a report about it from our Co-Vice Chair Jane Golding.
Read more:
A summary of the Taunton conference
Social Media
Are you or your organisation on social media? We’d love to hear from you! We would love to interact with more of our members through our social media channels, and help you to share upcoming events that you are hosting. Furthermore, if there are groups or individuals you think we should be following, please tell us.
Our social media is as follows:
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Twitter
YouTube
More material is being added to our website all the time, so check back regularly!
The BALH Digital Team
digitalteam@balh.org.uk
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