Archivists call for help exploring West London’s aviation heritage
Archivists call for help exploring West London’s aviation heritage
There is still time to share your family’s history and help create lasting memories of the impact of Heathrow Airport in ongoing partnerships between UWL, the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) and community groups.
Staff and students are encouraged to take part in two oral history projects throughout 2022, sharing memories, stories and family history of the major site in West London as archivists work to capture the stories, sights and sounds of Heathrow Airport.
Working with the National Portrait Gallery, artists and community organisations, the People Powered project Heathrow: Our Local Airport archive project will create an engaging visual response to the airport and its impact.
Now well underway, outreach teams are working with filmmaker Narvir Singh and nearby schools to use poetry, portraits, and photography to create a film exploring 75 years of continued development at the landmark.
Alongside this, stories collected from residents and workers will become part of the Heathrow Archive, a collection of documents and artefacts all held by UWL.
The team is now calling on students, residents, and anyone who has worked on the site to share pictures, memories or family stories from the past.
For the second project, families of South Asian origin who moved to the region for work can contribute to the dedicated South Asian Heritage Oral History project to see how people have built their lives around the airport since it opened in 1946.
Speaking about the importance of the work, Andrew Preater, Director of Library Services at UWL, said:
The airport has been a major aviation hub here in West London for so long, serving as the central site where people have lived and worked and even had their first taste of life in the UK.
We want to capture all of this rich history through our partnerships, and hope to draw on the links with our students and staff so we can discover as much as possible to paint a vibrant picture of life on the site over the past 75 years.
No matter how small your memory, we would love to hear it and help record these moments in a lasting community archive.”
After being displayed at UWL, parts of the collections will move to the NPG once it reopens in 2023 following major refurbishment.
To find out more information, contact the UWL library team at library@uwl.ac.uk.