Fishing communities have experienced and continue to experience changes in terms of what they catch, how they fish, and the way members of the community are brought together through fishing-related traditions and practices. Ways of life have changed through the twentieth century and MemoryFish aims to preserve some of this history before the period passes out of living memory.
MemoryFish will visit the fishing communities in Falmouth, Newlyn and Newquay and invite people to share their historic photographs and films of their community online through cornishmemory.com. It is funded by the Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Fisheries Local Action Group (FLAG).
The term “historic” doesn’t always mean sepia-tinted photos of schooners either – it can be of important events or people right up to the 1990s.
The project will provide a mobile digitisation studio along with a trained team of volunteers. It will invite people to bring along their albums, boxes and envelopes of photos to be scanned, enabling each community to form a new digital collection documenting their way of life over the past century.
The copyright of the originals will remain with the contributors who will receive a master digital copy of the material.
The resulting community collections will be accessible online in perpetuity to a global audience through an online archive. Aspects of the collection will be incorporated into learning materials for Cornish schools through the Sense of Place online library.
The project will return to communities to exhibit the digitised materials at a Fish Festival (or equivalent).
If you live in Falmouth, Newlyn or Newquay, have some photos, film or recordings that you would like to contribute to the project, please contact us ad we will be in touch.
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