25/09/03 - Launch of 'Voices from the Archives' Book

On Friday 26thSeptember at the Theatre by the Lake in Keswick at 1pm Cumbria County Council launches a new book ‘Voices from the Archives’.  

‘Voices from the Archives’is an anthology of short stories inspired by documents in the care of Cumbria County Council’s Archive Service. The book is the culmination of a year long residency in which local writer Marian Veevers worked with Cumbria Archive Service to promote archives as a source for creative writing – a project funded by Cumbria County Council and Northern Arts. Marian worked with a number of local writers’ groups and classes and five writers have contributed stories for this anthology some of which will give short readings from their stories at the launch.

Cumbria County Council Chairman Joe Nicholson is looking forward to attending the launch.  He says

“I am delighted to have been asked to launch Voices from the Archives.  The year long residency set out to prove that Archives aren’t just an information service but also an imagination service.  It intended to attract people who hadn’t used archives before.  Above all, the residency aimed to challenge perceptions of the Archive Service and to promote it as a creative resource as well as a factual one.

Archives, very unfairly, are sometimes dismissed as being dry, dusty and difficult to use.  But the stories in ‘Voices from the Archives’ show just how stimulating, thought provoking and inspiring archives can be.  Archives provide glimpses into the daily lives, joys and hardships of real people in the past, people who have emotions that we can all relate to and understand.

Sometimes people think that archives only feature rich, powerful and important people.  But the stories in the anthology are inspired by the likes of Jonathan Johnston, aged 12 in 1841 and employed in Whitehaven colliery since he was 6 years old; or Ann Bertram, who in 1768 was a heavily pregnant, homeless woman with two small children who nobody wanted in their backyard.

This project has been a real success and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Marian Veevers, the Writer in Residence, Susan Tranter, then the County Council’s Literature Officer who came up with the original idea and worked hard to secure the funding.  Northern Arts who financed the residency from its Encore programme, with a contribution and Cumbria County and all the staff of the four Cumbria Record Offices who displayed plenty of imagination and creativity themselves in searching out archives suitable for the writers to use.  I’d also like to thank all the writers who wrote such interesting pieces for the book,  and all those people aged between 9 and 94 who attended Marian’s creative writing workshops.”

Marian Veevers, writer of the book says

“I soon discovered that the documents of Cumbria Record offices are full of potential for fiction and poetry. Legal records private letters, memoirs, diaries and newspaper articles all contain glimpses of characters and fragments of stories that would set any writer reaching for a pen”.

The anthology is available from the Cumbria Record Offices in Carlisle, Kendal, Barrow and Whitehaven for £3.50.