Irish Heritage Group, 3 July

Sarah and I spent the evening of 3 July at the Irish Club, Digbeth High Street for a Birmingham Irish Heritage Group meeting and lecture. We were kindly invited along by Jim Ranahan with the support of Ann at the Irish Heritage Group.

Jim gave a really interesting talk entitled 'How do we want to be remembered? Community involvement with Birmingham museums', which stimulated a lot of discussion afterwards about representation of a collective heritage and community engagement. We were delighted that Jim used our project as an example of the ways in which the community could tell their own stories and gain wider representation in the archive.

Following Jim's lecture, we spoke to the group about our project. We received a warm welcome and enjoyed talking to several members of the community afterwards; they each had fascinating stories to share about life in Digbeth, past and present.

Sarah and me with Jim and Ann

It was an insightful evening and we are looking forward to interviewing Jim and two members of the group - who we met on the night - over the coming weeks.

Carly Hegenbarth, Project Manager