[This post is about the Bromsgrove Digital Shoebox project – bds]
I’m thinking about the scope of media/content/stuff. It’s a balancing act, working out where to draw the lines – what should be included, what should be outside the remit of the project.
It doesn’t actually matter that these lines are arbitrary and flexible, but at this stage, when the main focus is on explaining what I’m doing, in order to help people decide whether to fund more work, it helps if it’s clear enough for them to quickly understand the basics. On the other hand, I don’t want to dictate this too tightly, too early, I want your input.
So what’s in?
- I’ve talked about photos, film and audio; scans of documents might be interesting if they’re not available elsewhere.
- I’ve set the timeframe to be the 1970s and by that I suppose I meant 1970-1979 inclusive. I’m not deeply attached to this, and I wouldn’t want to exclude interesting material from say 1981. I think it’s something that can become firmer when we really know what is out there.
- The media should have been produced in Bromsgrove or include people who lived in Bromsgrove at the time (let’s not exclude those pics of school trips to France!). If it’s in Bromsgrove, then the media might not include people, it might just be places, buildings, roads, railways etc. I think using the boundary of Bromsgrove District Council is appropriate.
- I’m also most interested in media made by “ordinary people” rather than press or TV coverage (if only to avoid rights conversations with a bureaucracy) but I wouldn’t want to exclude them altogether.
Any thoughts on other dimensions to the scope?
You can contribute to keep this project moving. Every donation helps, thanks :)
