Oral History Society
Oral History Society
One day training course - Palliative Care in Oral History
Sheffield
8th March 2019
This course was run at the University of Sheffield Diamond Building and Michelle Winslow was the trainer for the day. Michelle has been working in this field since 2007 in Sheffield hospitals. It was a small number of participants for the day, 7 in total with varied backgrounds and reasons for coming on the course. I am particularly interested in approaches to conducting an oral history interview in a hospital setting and rising to the challenges of interviewing people with ill-health and the ethics around this.
We started the day by thinking about why oral history is offered in palliative care:
- helps preserve identity
- enhance holistic care
- benefits participant's family
- validates and values a person’s life story
- person and family centered
and what palliative care means:
- relief from pain
- affirms life
- support to help people live actively before death
- supports family
We then listened to an interview and reflected on elements of it. The interview had been with someone reflecting on their experience of being interviewed. We discussed the importance of giving people a chance to reflect on their experience and how it has impacted on them.
We explored the impact and benefits of this work for participants, their families and healthcare professional and looked at what people predominately talked about within their interviews and childhood, family and work all featured heavily. We then listened to an interview of a lady called Anne reflecting on her experience of having her life story recorded and discussed the importance of providing an opportunity to reflect.
We listened to another snippet of an interview of a lady called Maureen who was talking about her experience of working in a factory and explored how to go to greater depth in a interview by drawing on references made.
We discussed the challenges of interviews where people have rehearsed or scripted their memories and how you might overcome this through your questioning and prompting techniques.
We talked about the longevity of recordings now we have digital technology and Michelle brought this to life by playing a clip of Florence Nightingale on wax cylinder. This made me reflect on the opportunity oral history gives to have a person's voice and memories saved for posterity. 'Voice' is central to why we do oral history - in a person's voice you can hear emotion, dialect, silence, tone and how things are said as important as what is said - you cannot get these things in a written transcript.
We discussed understanding memory and the credibility of oral history and how all sources incorporate the tellers perspective in some way. However, selective memory allows us to be comfortable with our own narrative.
So how should an interview in palliative care be conducted? What is the interviewers role? In palliative care you may only have one chance or small windows of opportunity so it must be done quickly. Any oral history project in a hospital/hospice setting should be badged as a ‘history’ project and not a therapy. Initial contact should be made with healthcare professionals to provide them with information on what will be taking place. Concise information sheets for the setting and interviewee with consent agreement explained need to be provided. The interviewee may want a family member present which can have advantages (prompting,support) and disadvantages (correcting, interrupting, interviewee holding back).
We discussed some challenges:
- The setting of the interview may be difficult so the interviewer must be flexible and allow for interruptions. A ‘recording in progress’ sign on the door or bed may be helpful.
- Length of interview may need to be shorter than standard due to interviewee tiring.
- Ethical issues around informed consent. If a person has dementia you may need to consider capacity and whether this is an issue, family members and healthcare professionals may need to be consulted.
- If something disclosed in an interview is ‘likely to cause significant distress’ to a third party who is named or likely to be identified, due to GDPR it can be removed.
- Remaining neutral and minimal in the interview as a interviewer, not challenging held views or beliefs even if they are racist/sexist, deflecting questions aimed at you.
Michelle referenced two sources of information
Colin Hyde you tube videos on interview technique https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=jTCzxWt1RQk
Oral History Society for information on interviewing family members https://www.ohs.org.uk/information-for/family-historians/
Oral History Society
Annual Conference
Swansea University
4th-6th July 2019
Day One
The conference opened with Dr Arthur McIvor, University of Strathclyde ‘INDUSTRIAL WORK AND THE BODY: TOXIC LEGACIES, ILLNESS AND DISABILITY STORIES’ - workers stories relating to illness and disability caused by work, interesting point made on relationship between interviewee and interviewer and if empathy and common ground plays a role in an interview, also if coming from a perspective of knowing little or not knowing helps the interviewee go deeper to explain?
There were a choice of 4 panel sessions to attend and I went to WORK AND AFTER: NARRATIVES OF WORK, IDENTITY, AND SOCIETY’. The following presentations were given:
Sue Bradley Working with cattle and sheep: using a combination of archived and new oral history interviews to learn about changes in livestock keeping - using archived interviews as well as new materials to add to a collective.
Andy Clark Apprenticeships and life history trajectories: The Sigmund Pumps Wartime Apprenticeship Scheme - interviews with former apprentices from the 1930s/40s who made strirrup pumps in Gateshead and water pumps in the green goddess fire engines, interviews 4-7 hours long.
Toby Phips Lloyd Between eating and sleeping: alternative methods for capturing oral histories about work - not traditional recorded oral history interviews but a community engagement project where personal responses are recorded in answer to questions posed on past/present/future.
Alison Atkinson-Phillips Documenting the Fall: Swan Snappers as the Tyne’s memory keepers - small oral history project about Swan Hunter shipyard on the Tyne.
During lunch I looked around an exhibition by the University of Westminster project ‘Building Workers Stories’, it had an old bakelite telephone through which you could select and listen to soundbites as well as a series of panels with photographs and snippets of interviews.
After lunch another panel - MARITIME MINORITIES: CHANGING STATUS, CHANGING RESPECT:
Jo Stanley Re-visibilising maritime ‘minorities’: emerging issues in representing BAME seafarers’ oral history in UK public projects - www.theyemeniproject.org
Diane Kirby ‘It made me very angry’: sex, maritime labour and changing gendered attitudes - an Australian project focused on experiences of women seafarers - www.marineinsight.com/lifeatsea/
Bjørn Enes The ‘golden age’ in Norwegian seafaring: stories about its ending - mixture of one to one interviews, panel interviews with an audience of seafarers and their families in a public museum space.
A further panel - COMMUNITIES/PLACE:
Doreen Leith Winds of Change: histories of farming, fishing and the energy industries in Caithness - Wick voices, Doon Ray nuclear plant affect on communities - www.wickheritage.org/voices
Garry Atterton Voice of the Past: A combination of spoken word, images and memories of The Great Western Cotton Factory from Barton Hill in Bristol - great community engagement project where stories, songs and music are composed to memories recorded in the 1980s on cassette tapes and now digitised.
Margaret Bennett ‘The end of the shift’– recording former industrial workers in Fife and Perthshire - local stories with people who worked in cotton bleaching mills, linoleum factory, coal mines and hydro dam.
William Burns Threads of memory: Paisley people’s poetry - widening access to oral history through creativity, creating poetry from interviews with people who worked at the Paisley factory.
A further panel - RECOVERING AND REMEMBERING:
Dave Govier Recovering the people’s past: the Manchester Studies Oral History Collection - archiving older oral history interviews on the subject of working in cotton mills, part of the national Unlocking Our Sound Heritage project.
John Gabriel Remembering lost trades of Islington 1936-94: exploring workplace identities and attachments - collaborative project with Age UK reminiscence group, interviewers were students and volunteers, London Metropolitan University analysing interviews.
Richard and Julia Goldsmith Migration of hop pickers to rural Herefordshire from the 1940s to now - participation and social engagement, digitising photo archive of Herefordshire people and rural life, 56 videoed interviews then made into a documentary using imagery, music and voices.
Eleanor O’Keeffe The Labour of Remembrance during the Centenary of the First World War – oral history and the stories of commemoration within military life - Historic Royal Palaces project.
Some really interesting and though provoking presentations, surprised by the clear divide between academic and community engagement projects. Lots of food for thought in terms of own practice as an interviewer and possible interpretation of materials.
In the evening we walked down to the The Warehouse Gallery at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea for a wine reception and dinner with after-dinner speaker Andrew Hignell speaking on “A History of Cricket in Swansea”. On the way one of the delegates who is based at the University of Swansea gave us a guided tour of the city.
Day Two
We began with a really inspirational plenary presentation from Beth Thomas, former Keeper of History and Archaeology for National Museum Wales. St Fagan’s began collecting oral histories in the 1950s as a way to preserve rural heritage, Welsh language and dialect, but what to record and preserve now? How do museums respond to loss? How do they manufacture heritage? Current thinking - creating with people and not for them = participatory museums. Communities have an equal contribution to make - part of the story - not just visitors to it. Using oral history to interpret collections. Example - WW1 testimony displayed with that of a modern day soldier. Museums often too focused on the end product and not the processes involved during the creation. Big Pit - using guides who are former miners and share personal memories of their time working there as part of their tour for visitors. Challenge in being objective museum educators as well as sharing their own memories. Beth really made us think how museums can change lives.
The first panel of the day was the one in which I was presenting! The theme was - WORK AND HERITAGE:
Jana Golombek Materialising memory – the industrial heritage of the Ruhr as a place for narrative engagement in the age of deindustrialisation? Example of museum project where oral histories are creatively displayed within the galleries.
Katarzyna Nogueira Forming the industrial past and the meanings of oral history - project on mining in the Ruhr with online interviews.
Abigail Kenvyn Voices from the Mint - 50th anniversary project with past and present employees
Lisa Kerley Island voices: capturing memories of life and work on the Isle of Wight.
My presentation focused on the work I have been involved in to develop an archive of ‘Island Voices’ for Carisbrooke Castle Museum. I outlined two Heritage Lottery Funded community oral history projects linked to the ‘green’ and the ‘blue’ of the Island - recording the oral testimony of people who have earned their living from the land and sea. The projects are a partnership between local landscape project Down to the Coast and Carisbrooke Castle Museum. I explored a number of aspects of undertaking museum based community oral history projects and played a variety of soundbites to illustrate challenges, surprises and emotional responses within interviewing. I also talked about the legacy of oral testimony through museum interpretation and something which I feel personally particularly passionate about – preserving the integrity of memory. Apart from a slight hiccup with the sound technology I felt the presentation went well and several people approached me to find out more about the projects afterwards.
After coffee I attended an open session: NATIONAL LIFE STORIES INTERACTIVE WORKSHOP -
Mary Stewart, Rob Perks, Charlie Morgan & Camille Johnston The changing work of oral history: a reflective workshop exploring the impact of technological developments on our own practice. It was oversubscribed so too many people made it difficult to be very participatory but there were interesting discussions on access, documentation, technology and future developments in oral history.
After lunch there was a plenary presentation by Tom Hansell- AFTER COAL: WELSH AND APPALACHIAN MINING COMMUNITIES - Tom explored how stories of working people can help make sense of change in society. How have communities regenerated themselves after coal? ‘Bucket outlaw’ ‘Electricity Fairy’ documentaries of East Kentucky. Thinking of life after coal in this area using what happened in Wales as an example. Brookside strike Harlan County (film), video exchange from USA to Wales.
I couldn’t stay for the final panel sessions but here are all the conference abstracts:
https://www.ohs.org.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/OHS_conf2019_abstracts_web.pdf
On the way home I started to reflect on the experience of the conference, on all the work going on in this field, home and abroad. Now to write an article for the next issue of the Oral History Society Journal....