Sutton Grapevine
Stories about Sutton-in-the-Isle, Cambridgeshire, UKArchive for Contributing Your Story
Farming to Tandoori
A day of talking to villagers and recording stories of life in Sutton; from ice skating on the Hundered foot Drain down at Sutton Gault to the day the Sutton Tandoori came to town, from milking the cows sat on a one legged stool to duck races, inland tides, kakaking on the river, homebaking and how four years of dedication and careful archaeology revealed an ancient burial urn. Many stories recorded and in the process of editing. Tomorrow morning we are off with the big map to join the Sutton Feast Committe for a ‘market stall’ session outside the One Stop Shop, hope to see you there.
Join Proboscis in Sutton, 3- 9 June
The Proboscis team will be in Sutton, going around town gathering and recording stories from 3rd – 9th of June. Please come and join us and add a story to the Grapevine at the venues below:
Thur 4th, Community Room, Sutton School 2-4 pm
Friday 5th, The Glebe 2-4 pm
Sat 6th, outside the One Stop Shop 9-11 am
Mon 8th, Community Room, 2-4.30 pm
Tuesday 9th, Community Room, 2-4.30 pm
You can also email us at stories@suttongrapevine.org to meet up at other times…
See you in Sutton!
Cards filling up at the Babylon Gallery
We started receiving stories about the Fens on the cards we left at the Babylon Gallery…Thank you for sharing!
Become part of the Grapevine and tell us a story
Tell us a story....
We’ve just finished our second postcard to keep people up to date with what’s happening with the project, ways they can see and listen to stories collected so far and the various ways you can upload or send your own story to become part of the Sutton-in-the-Isle grapevine. The image is a detail of the Sutton map after a recent session with people from the Triangle Club and their input into places and the stories relating to them.
Look out for the new postcard around Sutton from next week. We look forward to many new stories being added….
What remains?…
I’ve been editing stories which we’ve collected from Sutton, and remembered the conversation I’ve had with a good friend recently. We were talking about what stories, events and patterns of living are retold about certain places in the past, and so we wondered what would be told in the future about our days. My friend, who is a vegan thinks that people in the future will find the fact that we ate meat outrageous!
Our daily lives are being over documented in detail in various ways, and I wonder what will remain of all of this documentation…and how significant all of it is…in my city, Beirut, sometimes it feels that stories repeat themselves overtime! What do you think will be told of Sutton in 50 or more years?
scavenging the grapevine
A key part of this project is to investigate for ADeC how online media might be useful to rural communities as ‘virtual venues’ (in place of absent cultural spaces) to knit together different activities and help provide a ‘shareable’ sense of place and identity. Proboscis has been experimenting with various different processes and technologies around local storytelling, mapping and knowledge sharing for some time (see some of our older projects like Urban Tapestries and the various projects of Social Tapestries). Over the years we found that building and maintaining custom systems for such projects created too many barriers for new users and strains on resources to keep going, so a few years back we began to adopt an approach of ‘scavenging’ and knitting together tools, software and approaches that people already use or could easily adopt without having to learn a whole new way of sharing their stories.
Sutton Grapevine draws on this process as we’ve integrated storytelling and news sharing (by email and with the free WordPress blog); radio-like sound recordings (via the free podbean podcasting service, the free AudioBoo podcasting service and the low cost Gabcast telephone-to-MP3 podcasting service); photo sharing (via the Flickr group pool); social connections (via the Facebook Group); news feeds (via Twitter); and (once we locate or create some) video sharing (via YouTube etc). We will also be adding in some of our own inventions like StoryCubes and Diffusion eBooks to make tangible things that can be passed around, as well as the digital media.
Not all of the media we’ve integrated thus far might be the right ones, nor are they exclusive. The key is to find out what media people already use and to build that in too, wherever people want to share it. Please get in touch (stories@suttongrapevine.org) if you have anything to share or to suggest a service you use that we could add in.
Giles.
Sutton Grapevine at the Babylon Gallery
We stopped at the Babylon Gallery in Ely last Tuesday on our way to Sutton. We set up to start collecting visitors’ stories for Sutton Grapevine and the surrounding Fenlands. So if you are in Ely, pop into the Gallery, enjoy the artwork and share some of your Fenland memories with us. You can write or draw your stories and pin them down on the map, or record them, just ask one of the Gallery staff.
Sutton Grapevine postcard
The front of our Sutton Grapevine postcard
Look out for these Sutton Grapevine postcards around the village and at the Babylon Gallery in Ely. The postcard tells you how you can contribute your story to the project by telephone, email or post, and how you can listen to other people’s stories.
Or if you would like to meet us and prefer to tell your story in person then Orlagh and I will be back at the Glebe on Tuesday April 21st from 1pm to 4.30pm. We’d love you to pop along and talk to us. You’re more than welcome to bring old pictures or other objects with you too to give us an impression of your life in Sutton.
The back of our Sutton Grapevine postcard
If you want any more information then email me on stories@suttongrapevine.org.
Hope to see you in April!
Policy of moderation
Stories contributed via the telephone will not be moderated directly. These stories will automatically be live on the gabcast website (http://alturl.com/pff) and (probably) the Sutton Grapevine blog (www.suttongrapevine.org) and will also be available for download as MP3 files.
Complaints about stories containing inappropriate or offensive content should be sent to Proboscis who will then decide whether the post should be removed or not and whether to take further action. Complaints can be made by email to stories@suttongrapevine.org, by post to Proboscis, 4th Floor, Turnmill Street, London, EC1M 5QP or by telephone on 020 7490 0880.
Entire stories and recordings, or individual elements of stories and recordings may be combined with other stories or elements of stories to create an artwork illustrating the richness and variety of people’s experience in Sutton in the Isle which will be presented during Feast Week 2009.
All stories contributed will be considered to be in the public domain and free of copyright or ownership. This means that anyone will be able to use or edit the stories that are shared with Sutton Grapevine.
testing 1..2..3..
I’m trying to get an audio file directly into the Sutton Grapevine blog from gabcast.com. It’s not working to post it directly so I’m now trying to paste the code into a post and see if that works… here goes..
Gabcast! Sutton Grapevine #1 – ahoy! testing..
don’t bother listening to this
Hello!
This blog will be used while Proboscis are working on their project set in Sutton-in-the-Isle, Cambridgeshire, UK. At the moment we are still figuring out what this project will be exactly.. so we’ve made a start by getting to know something about Sutton and the people who live there. Recently Orlagh, Alice and I all made separate trips to the village during Feast Week 2008. We’ll post some pictures and write about our time there soon..
