About the project

One day in 2010, I went to visit my grandmother in hospital. She had pneumonia.

She started telling me stories from her youth and one in particular struck me deeply.

It was the story of her first encounter with an Aboriginal person.

She was so horrified to discover that her boss socialised with an Indigenous Australian and that she was expected to be hospitable when he came to lunch.

"You wouldn't let an 'Abo' sit at the table!" she recalled protesting to her boss.

She went on to tell me how she got to know him and treat him just like anyone else.

But it was that initial reaction that shone a light on the social attitudes of her day and I felt strongly that such honest recollections of bygone times needed to be preserved rather than tabooed.

That's what set me off on the path to the Memory Box Project.

Up until that point, I had never been interested in history. I was a journalist and my focus had always been squarely on what's happening now.

But that single anecdote was a powerful motivator and faced me in a different direction.

As a storyteller, the question has always been how could I best tell these stories to today's audience, which increasingly shows little interest in visiting a library or museum but devours readily available stories that come through cinemas, television, radio and the internet.

The Memory Box has been through many changes since the first concept (an e-book) to arrive at the form it is in now and it's not finished yet.

I hope to develop a custom program that will allow individuals and organisations to publish their own Memory Boxes.

Project creator Ursula Skjonnemand