SHARING ALL OUR STORIES SCOTLAND

"We will provide high-quality research support for the All Our Stories (AOS) funded groups in Scotland. By drawing on expertise amongst University staff and a strong commitment to public engagement at the University of Aberdeen, we will implement a suite of activities tailored in different ways to the needs of Scottish AOS projects as a collective, groups of them that have related interests, and individual projects. In so doing we will provide support that is both broad and deep while keeping within our resource limits.

Two key principles will guide our endeavours. Firstly, we will organise our support collaboratively with AOS groups to ensure that it is meaningful for them and will help develop active and confident community heritage researchers. The programme will be an example of co-produced support for community heritage research; this process is already underway through preliminary contacts with the groups. Secondly, we will maintain a process of reflexive learning about our process of working with community groups. As well as influencing our work as we go along, this will provide the foundation for analysing the variety of approaches to community heritage research in Scotland for academic and non-technical publications. This in turn will help develop an agenda for further partnerships between us and community heritage groups. Our work will be structured in the following way:

Three activities will be open to all Scottish AOS projects.
- A series of three workshops will be held in Inverness, Glasgow and Edinburgh to introduce themes of community heritage research in archaeology, archival research, working with museums and oral history along with training on contact with schools and public engagement more widely.
- An online community learning hub will be developed by the University team to provide contact, networking and learning opportunities for the AOS projects that are widely dispersed through Scotland.
- A Scottish AOS conference at the end of the funded period will be hosted by the University to share and reflect upon the outcomes of research.

Six themes will provide the basis for enhanced support for small groups of projects and individual projects:
- Schools and young people: Participants in projects involving schools will explore how local community history can contribute to children's learning.
- Community learning: Community engagement techniques and strategies for dissemination of project findings will be explored. Projects will be encouraged to think about strategies for inclusion and empowerment amongst their communities.
- Archives and museums: This will provide general guidance on the use of archives and museums and advice on repositories and producing exhibitions.
- Music and sound: Advice and support will be offered to those involved in traditional music collection and field recording, and on composition and digital resource development.
- Place, memory and language: We will provide guidance on researching the heritage of place and landscape, including how to run community oral history projects, finding contributors, recording interviews, transcribing, archiving and ethical considerations.
- Evaluation: We will provide advice and support in the development of evaluation strategies which will help to identify how the exploration of local histories contributes to community learning. This will include researcher-led discussions about evaluation in the workshops and the online resource, detailed support for projects for whom this is especially relevant, and the identification of research questions for subsequent academic research.

The project will be managed by the PI with the support of Co-I's and University secretarial support. A project management board including non-project staff will monitor progress at regular intervals. Staff training will be implemented through an initial training needs analysis, with a particular focus on developing the skills of our Early Career Researchers."