As well as finding out about the people who were buried and developing background and contextual material, w​e also wanted to explore creative ways of storytelling.
We held a creative non fiction writing workshop using the research as a starting point. One of the exercises was to write a letter from the point of view of the person you had researched. The below example is an imagined letter from John Mitchell to his friend James following John's marriage later in life
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Imagined letter written in creative writing workshop by Suzanne Copley
We also held two sound workshops where participants recorded sound effects, mixed samples and read out information about people's lives and deaths, for example from newspaper articles. These were then edited to produce three separate tracks that weaved in and out of each other to produce an atmospheric but narrative driven soundscape that was played at the exhibition launch.
You can hear a sample of the soundscape here (edited by Sophie Cooper):
Local artist Christal Tillett produced a number of ink drawings to illustrate some of the family trees. If you look closely at the family trees you will see representations of their occupations peeping out from behind a leaf or an apple. Below are some of the sketches she produced as she built up the trees.
Artist Alex Abel also produced some illustrations of grave stones for use on the website and physical exhibition.
We held two workshops where research participants made and decorated gravestones to represent the people they had researched. Many of the pages have an image at the bottom of these gravestones. These were displayed around Central Library and Archives.
