Our Services

What we do:

1. Film & Digital Video
We focus on "end-to-end" filmmaking. This includes everything from pre-production covering project set up, story boarding and narrative development. For production we covering the technical skills of using the camera, lighting and sound capture. For post production we cover editing and everything needed to complete a film from grading to legal sign-offs. Genres we cover are documentaries and intergenerational story telling.

2. Oral History & Interviewing
We have a passion for oral history, capturing personal testimonies and ‘living history’. Our training covers soft skills including learning to ask open questions, active listening, and using body language to build rapport. Our workshops also cover developing themes to explore and questions to ask as well as how to ask them. Careful consideration of ethical questions are at the core of oral history and our training covers the importance of permission and informed consent as well as discussions of how editing can change the meaning of a person’s story and the importance of maintaining integrity. Our oral history training also covers audio, the use of professional equipment, setting up environments to ensure good clean sound.

3. Advisory
Helping to structure and develop an initial concept.

4. Co-Delivery
We don’t just provide training. We can working alongside your team to provide support and expertise to ensure that your project is successful.

5. Project Management
We can take the lead in the entire project, working closely with you to deliver a high quality project on budget and on time. We can work in a variety of ways but our focus is always on ensuring that participants are fully involved in the project.

Who We Work With

Volunteers:
Over the years we have worked with hundreds of people who have come and undertaken training with us and then become co-creators of our projects, fully integrated into the process. Often these are intergenerational teams of people who come together to explore a subject of interest to them such as Swiss at Sixty. On other projects young people from a particular community come together to explore an aspect of history important to them such as The Southall Youth Movement.

Schools:
We have worked with dozens of schools on oral history projects. We have found that children become even more fully engaged in exploring heritage when they are the ones operating the camera and sound and asking the questions. The older generation very much enjoy sharing their stories with young people in these wonderful projects which include an oral history of London’s Taxi Drivers, Bus Workers, and many more.

Colleges and Universities:
We have worked with various higher education institutions on projects of interest to those students. Their studies focus on an topic which means they are fully involved in the project. An example is the Tailored Stories project in which students from The London College of Fashion and Kensington and Chelsea College met and interviewed tailors on Savile Row. we worked with anthropology students from LSE on a project to explore the history of people living on the River Thames.

Museums:
We have worked with museums across London, working with the curatorial teams. Examples include our Postal Workers project on which we worked closely with the team at The Postal Museum, and the Dockers, Lightermen and Mudlarking projects on which we worked with the Museum of London, Docklands. We have also produced films and projects used by museums as part of their exhibitions such as the London Transport Museum.

Archives:
We have worked closely with local archives across London, both accessing their wonderful resources but also depositing full oral history interviews and ephemera with them. Close working relationships with archives include Camden, Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Wandsworth and Merton.

Community Groups and Housing Associations:
Our core focus is to work with community groups to co-create projects of importance for them, providing the skills and support to deliver projects. These include the African Women’s Group where we worked closely on an oral history project to record the experiences of people who have come to settle in West London from the Horn of Africa. On another project we worked with the Katherine Low Settlement in Battersea to explore their centenary. For Notting Hill Genesis we have run several wonderful ‘Desert island Discs’ style music projects.

Clients:
Our clients include community groups, housing associations, museums, archives, schools, universities as well as private companies.