Community History

Browse recordings in the Community History collection

Community history is represented in Brighton & Hove Museums’ holdings by an extensive oral history collection and community exhibitions programme.

The collection comprises over 400 recordings of interviews and personal testimonies made by a wide cross-section of the community. They capture the rich diversity of city life, expressing the views and experiences of street traders, pub landlords, war veterans, schoolchildren, craft makers, and ‘renegade’ subcultures.

The collection has been developed to complement many of the museums’ key holdings: including local history and archaeology, world art, film and media, costume and fashion, and contemporary craft. Much of the content is displayed within galleries at Brighton Museum and Hove Museum. Further material is also held in an archive at Brighton History Centre in Brighton Museum. As well as recently collected oral histories, the collection includes over 900 BBC Radio Brighton recordings from 1968 to 1983.

Galleries

Oral histories add experiential value to many of the items exhibited at Brighton Museum and Hove Museum. Accessed through sound posts, interactive displays and written quotations, they help provide a balanced view of Brighton & Hove’s recent history and add rich texture to exhibits.

Local History galleries – Brighton Museum

Oral histories play an important interpretive role in both of Brighton Museum's local history galleries. In Images of Brighton personal testimonies from groups such as GLAM (members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community) help challenge commonly held perceptions about the city. Exploring Brighton is enriched with audio and textual stories exploring the gallery's key themes: living, working, time to yourself and banding together.

World Art galleries – Brighton Museum

Brighton Museum's Body Gallery explores the way global cultures modify and interpret their bodies. A live recording from a local tattoo parlour documents one client’s personal journey of body transformation under the needle.

Fashion & Style gallery – Brighton Museum

To redress the historical imbalance within the costume collection, the interactive exhibit Renegade documents local subcultures from Mods and Rockers to Goths and punks, with access to oral histories, music, photographs and treasured items of clothing.

Film galleries – Hove Museum

A century of cinema is revealed in an interactive exhibit as part of these dedicated film galleries. Memories and testaments from filmgoers to projectionists accompany a wealth of ephemera relating to the early days of film-making and the first flourishing of cinema in the city.

Contemporary Craft galleries – Hove Museum

Audio sound posts provide commentaries and interviews with key makers as they discuss their works in relation to Inspiration, Alchemy and Making.

Brighton History Centre – Brighton Museum

Temporary exhibitions have included Masoret, a display celebrating local Jewish heritage and culture, and Brighton Boozers, which documented the changing face of the city's pubs and taverns.

Community History projects

Recent work has included:

Missing the Nile, which recorded the oral histories of the local Sudanese community, and
Twelve, which combined artefacts from the World Art collections with stories of migration from the local Chinese community

Community History has also hosted a regular programme of community exhibitions, whereby local groups are supported to produce their own displays within Brighton Museum. Old School a display celebrating 200 years of Middle Street School, encouraged pupils to record memories of past students about their early schooldays, and Unearthing our Past celebrated 100 years of Brighton and Hove Archaeological Society.