Angela Bailey - Project Co-ordinator

East Staffordshire Racial Equality Council’s has secured funding from Heritage Lottery fund for a new and exciting project which aims to collate and preserve the social history of mixed heritage communities in East Staffordshire, capturing the life experiences of people who were war time babies of parents who had inter-racial relationships which resulted in mixed heritage children.

• The project aims to capture and preserve the 1st and 2nd generation parents’ stories i.e. the difficulties they faced being a couple or single parent in post war Britain.
• Raise awareness, strengthen communities, improve relations and build community cohesion.
• The outcomes of the project will include a DVD and Resource Pack which will be distributed free of charge to youth and community groups, schools, Staffordshire County Council archives, libraries and the local mixed heritage community as a reference. A resource pack will be available to schools to support education establishment.

East Staffordshire Racial Equality Council is the umbrella organisation and its Director Amir Kabal OBE said, “We have had the pleasure of doing a similar project that recorded the stories of Asians and Caribbean people who moved to the UK in the 1950s and settled in Burton and East Staffordshire and we are looking forward to hearing the unique stories of people from the Mixed Heritage communities”

This new and exciting initiative is funded by the Heritage Lottery fund and supported by Staffordshire County Council and Molson Coors Brewery. The project is coordinated by Angela Bailey who said “Even though I have had many happy years at Intermix, the Mixed Heritage Oral History project will also give me immense joy collating people’s stories. I would welcome members of the community who have a story to tell to contact the office if they want to contribute or to find out more information”.

ESREC is working closely with Burton and South Derbyshire College which is supporting the project with the design and printing of the promotional posters. The college is also collaborating with ESREC and the Wired Project, based at the Brewhouse Arts Centre. Wired will be doing the filming with the college working on the animation. The interviewing will be done by Angela and support officer Hopeton Gordon.

For more information contact Angela on 01283 510456. Fax: 01283 740900
Email: angela.bailey@burtonoralhistory.co.uk