News 2005-6

Sex in the archives

Mass Observation Archive's director and archivist Dorothy Sheridan will be discussing Mass Observation's methods of recording intimate details of people's daily lives at a public lecture on historical attitudes towards sexuality at the Liverpool Medical Institution on 30 September.

Squatting and Mass Observation

Pennine Productions are producing a radio programme called 'Squatters' Paradise': about the largest mass-squat in British history in 1946, when over a thousand military camps and buildings were taken over by around 45,000 displaced people after the war. This movement came about because of the lack of new housing and the rationing of building materials: it posed a huge problem to the Labour government. Producer Mark Whitaker visited the archive in June and used some of Mass Observation's reports and observations from 1946.

'Squatters' Paradise' will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday 2 August at 11am. For more information, see the Pennine Productions website.

Mass Observation related publications

Gilles, Midge: Waiting for Hitler: Voices from Britain on the brink of invasion, Hodder and Stoughton, 2006.

Stephen Parker, Faith on the Home Front: Aspects of church life and popular religion in Birmingham 1939-1945, Peter Lang, 2005

Don't forget to let us know if you're publishing any Mass Observation related articles or books, or if you see references to Mass Observations on your travels (in exhibitions, in the local press etc) - we like to be kept up to date.

Adult learners' diaries at Bexhill Library

Bexhill Library are holding an open day with workshops and presentations from local organisations including Learndirect, Hastings and Bexhill colleges, Learning Link and the East Sussex County Council adult education team. A display will include selected diaries from a collection of 1000 Adult Learners' diaries from all over the UK, on loan from the Mass Observation Archive.

The diaries were first collected as part of a national project as part of Adult Learners' Week, and a selection was published in 1996: Through the Joy of Learning: diary of 1000 adult learners, NIACE (ed. Pam Coare and Alistair Thomson with a Foreword by Sue Townsend). The diaries were donated to the Mass Observation Archive and are available for consultation at the University of Sussex Library Special Collections department.

Special thanks

A few years ago some 1939 Mass-Observation directive replies on sex appeared on the open market. We were bitterly disappointed that we did not have the funds to buy them at the time. The papers once again appeared on the open market recently and we are extremely grateful to our generous donors who responded so swiftly to our appeal at the end of February and enabled us to purchase the papers and return them to where they rightfully belong.

It's wonderful news for us and for the Mass-Observers who wrote the directives. Many, many thanks again to Catherine Horwood, Theo Clarke, Bob Niblett and Ann Hopkins and one other donor.

Mass-Observation Archive Annual Report 2004-05

The 2004-5 Annual report is now available online.

Archives Hub: Collections of the month

As February is LGBT history month, the Archives Hub has highlighted collections that illuminate the histories of lesbian and gay communities in the UK. The MO inspired National Lesbian and Gay Survey is included. The complete collection is held at the University of Sussex Library.

Book of the year: Love and War in London

Mass-Observer Olivia Cockett's diary was edited by Robert Malcolmson last year. It was nominated as a book of the year by the London Review Bookshop.

An outstanding collection

Fantastic news - the Mass-Observation Archive has been awarded Designated status by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). Only 38 collections in libraries and archives across England have so far been recognised as having outstanding national and international importance under the Designation Scheme.

Editor and journalist Simon Garfield says the Mass-Observation Archive 'is a uniquely enriching collection of vast national importance, and one which requires as much recognition and promotion as possible' and Penny Summerfield, professor of history at the University of Manchester says the MOA 'is a national treasure well worthy of designated status.'

Dorothy Sheridan, director of the Mass-Observation Archive says 'We’re absolutely thrilled. This is tremendous for the collection, great for the Archive team, the trustees and all the people over the years who have contributed to this success - the original Mass-Observers, the M-O writers past and present, the people who have believed in Mass-Observation enough to help us financially, the University of Sussex of course since this has been our only home, our patron, Lord Briggs, the students and researchers who have used the Archive for research and for me professionally and personally since I have spent so much of my life promoting and exploiting this Archive'

For further details see www.mla.gov.uk/news

Humphrey Spender images online

Bolton Museum is making a large collection of Humphrey Spender's photographs taken in Bolton for the Mass-Observation survey in 1937 and 1938 available to view on-line. Along with the more familiar images that visitors to "Spender's Worktown" can see are many more that have rarely been seen in public before and some of these are being displayed for the first time.

The pictures cover a diverse range from Bolton street scenes to people holidaying in Blackpool and offer a fascinating view of life in a pre-War industrial town. The site represents the first significant on-line display of a large body of Spender's photography.

Mass-Observation, Surrealism and the everyday: a one-day symposium

Manchester, Manchester Museum, 4 November 2005, 10:30-5pm

Bringing together speakers from different disciplines, this symposium will reconsider the innovations and legacies of Mass-Observation, focusing in particular on Mass-Observation’s relationship to Surrealism, its connections to notions of the everyday, and its influence on contemporary art. Speakers will include: Peter Gurney (History, University of Essex), Joanna Lowry (Kent Institute of Art and Design), Jeremy MacClancy (Anthropology, Oxford Brookes), Darren Newbury (Birmingham School of Art and Design), Ian Walker (Art History, University of Wales, Newport), and Turner-prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller.

A small display of Mass-Observation photographs from the collections of the Bolton Art Gallery and Museum will be on display at the Manchester Museum between October 22 and November 11.

For further information, please contact: Anna Dezeuze or Steven Gartside (anna.dezeuze@manchester.ac.uk ; s.gartside@mmu.ac.uk )

This event is FREE but you are advised to book a place by phoning the Manchester Museum on 0161 275 2648.

The event is a collaboration between the AHRC Research Centre for Studies of Surrealism and its Legacies, University of Manchester, and the ‘Location, Memory and the Visual’ Research Group, MIRIAD, Manchester Metropolitan University.

The Lost Decade season on BBC4

Two programmes based on material from the Mass-Observation Archive will be broadcast on BBC4 in October.

Our Hidden Lives

A dramatisation of Simon Garfield's edited collection of postwar Mass-Observation diaries, broadcast on 3 and 4 October. Starring Sarah Parish, Richard Briers, Ian McDiamid and Lesley Sharp

Little Kinsey

A documentary based on the 1949 Mass-Observation sex survey, to be shown on 5 October

Interviews on Woman's Hour including Rose Hacker and Hera Cook scheduled for Friday 30 Sept

Dorothy Sheridan will be speaking to Andrew Marr on Start the Week on Monday 3 Oct

Dorothy Sheridan will be speaking on TFM radio sometime after 6pm on Wed 6 Oct and also on Thur 7 Oct in the morning as part of their news features.

Sandra Koa Wing will appear on television on BBC South East Today on Wed 6 Oct. There will also be clips from the film and an interview with the director,
Steve Humphries.

Archives from the new British photography of the 70s: Euan Duff & Peter Mitchell

The recent history of British Photography is under–investigated. This joint project, developed by the Photography and the Archive Research Centre, University of the Arts, Photoworks and the University of Sussex, begins a process of rediscovery.

The exhibition examines three key archives of 1970's photography, ranging from Euan Duff¹s pioneering work in five parts, How We Are drawn from the Mass-Observation Archive, to Peter Mitchell's early colour documentary in Yorkshire, The New Reutation of the Viking IV Space Mission, and the uniquely preserved exhibition, The Other Britain, comprising photographs taken for the magazine New Society, including work by Martin Parr, Ian Berry and Homer Sykes.

The Mass-Observation Archive will be teaming up with Brighton Photo Biennial and the Gardner Arts Centre in an education project to tie in with the exhibition.

Celebration for Humphrey Spender 1910-2005

Humphrey Spender, who died last March at the age of 94, was the last of the original members of Mass-Observation. He joined the M-O team in 1937 and took over 800 photographs mostly in Bolton but also in Blackpool where most Boltonians at that time took their holidays. He is best known for his photography but he is also a painter and has designed some exquisite tapestries for public places. In 2000 the University of Sussex awarded him an honorary degree in recognition of his contribution to the Mass-Observation Archive.

On the evening of 1 July, the director of the Mass-Observation Archive, Dorothy Sheridan attended a celebration of his life at Chelmsford Cathedral near to where he used to live. The event was attended by a very wide range of people - not only artists, photographers and art historians but also local people and members of his family (Humphrey came from a large and complicated family - his brother was the poet Stephen Spender) and although the programme was mostly music and poetry, one Spender did speak about tantalising rifts in the family which were at last being healed. The celebration was organised by Rachel Spender, Humphrey’s wife. Rachel is now creating a special publicly accessible archive of Humphrey’s work at his studio in Maldon, Essex.

Latest publications

Catherine Horwood, Keeping up appearances: Fashion and class between the wars, Sutton Publishing, 2005

A. James Hammerton and Alistair Thomson, Ten Pound Poms: Australia's Invisible Migrants
Manchester University Press, 2005

Some of the material used in the book will be donated to the Mass-Observation Archive and made available for research. The University of Sussex Press and Communications office can be contacted for more information.

Insight - Invisible Boundaries

Exhibition by Peter Day, Thelma Hulbert Gallery - Honiton

Exeter-based photographer Peter Day picked a familiar subject for his project "Invisible Boundaries"; his own house. Over four years he took photos of spots in his house and took in how they changed over time and how they interacted with his day, all in an attempt to make the invisible visible.

"Most of my work is based around idea that everyday moment can be an epic moment photographically," said Peter.

The exhibition runs from 7th May - 11th June, 2005

Robert W Malcolmson (ed) Love and War in London: a Woman's Diary 1939-1942, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005 (ISBN 0889204586)

V-E Day memories revealed

The end of war in Europe on 8 May 1945 came amid confusion, rumour, rationing and a blaze of early summer sunshine, according to the diaries, observations and personal opinion to be found in the Mass-Observation Archive.

Tony Kushner, We Europeans?: Mass-Observation, 'Race' and British Identity in Twentieth-Century Britain, Ashgate, 2004

To buy the book from Ashgate click here.
To buy the book from Amazon click here.

New publication

Brad Beaven, Leisure, citizenship and working-class men in Britain, 1850–1945 (Manchester University Press, 2005)

Working-class culture has often been depicted by historians as an atomised and fragmented entity lacking any significant cultural contestation. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, including early Mass-Observation material, this book powerfully challenges these recent assumptions and places social class centre stage once more. More information about the book can be found on the Manchester University Press website.

What we really thought about our "greatest ever Briton"

Winston Churchill was recently voted the "greatest ever Briton" in a BBC poll. Mass-Observation material shows the public had very mixed feelings about Winston Churchill in the 1940s.

Dogs in War exhibition

Material from the Mass-Observation Archive was included in an exhibition, Dogs in War at the Kennel Club Art Gallery in London from 25 Jan to 15 April 2005.

Friends of the Archive Newsletter

Issue 14 March 2005 of the newsletter is out now.

Subscriptions to the Friends of the Archive scheme can also be made electronically.

2003-04 Annual report and appendix now available

For a printed copy, please send us an A4 SAE

Orange prize and Whitbread prize winner uses Mass-Observation

Orange Prize for Fiction and Whitbread Book of the Year winner Andrea Levy used the MOA for her novel, Small Island, Headline Review, 2004 (ISBN 075530750X)

News from the Mass-Observation Archive

Published in Intramuros 2004/5

Our Hidden Lives: Publishing Everyday Diaries

A research event hosted by the Centre for Life History Research, University of Sussex

Speakers included Emeritus Professor of History Bob Malcolmson, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Information Resources Development Coordinator Tom Roper and Writer and Journalist Simon Garfield.

Wednesday 17 November 2004, 2 - 5.30pm
Brighton & Sussex Medical School Lecture Theatre

All welcome. Free entry.
Refreshments available for purchase.

For further details email clhr@sussex.ac.uk

Mass-Observation on The Message

Dorothy Sheridan will be talking about Mass-Observation on The Message: Radio Four's weekly show presented by Jenni Murray, Friday 29 October at 4.30pm.
Tune in 92-95 FM & 198 LW.

Mass-Observation on BBC Woman's Hour

Dorothy Sheridan, director of the Mass-Observation Archive has been invited for interview on Woman's Hour on Monday 20th September 2004. Tune into BBC Radio Four from 10am.

Dorothy has also been asked to speak on BBC Radio Gloucestershire (27 Sept), Radio Merseyside (29 Sept), Radio Cornwall (30 Sept), Radio Lancashire (tbc) and Radio Guernsey (22 Oct). Do listen out!

M-O Project recruitment policy in place

For the coming months from 1 Sept the Mass-Observation Project will be recruiting volunteer male writers aged 16-44 from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, and the East and West of England.
Would you like to take part? Find out more

Reel Life: Saturdays in Film and Sound

Reel Life was initiated and funded as part of the British Library's "Reaching the Regions" initiative, in partnership with the South East Film and Video Archive and the Wessex Film and Sound Archive. Extracts from Mass-Observation Project responses to the Spring 2003 directive on Saturday afternoons and evenings were used alongside archive films.

The DVD is available in libraries.

A Day in the Life of Leeds exhibition

A day in the life of Leeds is set to be captured through an array of personal diaries. People across Leeds were asked to record their day on May 12 for a new social project at the city's Royal Armouries Museum. The diaries are being exhibited at the museum alongside extracts from 1937 Mass-Observation diaries.

The exhibition ran from July 5th to August 30th 2004.

Writing records of Mass-Observers

A funding bid is being developed to make information on writers for the current Mass-Observation Project to be made available electronically for researchers in order to facilitate analysis of directive responses. Some discussion has begun as to what sorts of information could be made available on the JISCmail discussion list. Comments and suggestions welcome.

Collection of the Month

The Mass-Observation Archive was featured as the Collection of the Month on the Archives Hub in February 2004. The Archives Hub provides an on-line single point of access to descriptions of archives held in UK universities and colleges and forms one part of the UK's National Archives Network.

Private Battles

Simon Garfield's trilogy of MO diary anthologies will be complete on 7 September as Private Battles: how the war almost defeated us is published by Ebury Press.

Latest MO related publications

Mark Bhatti,''When I'm in the garden I can create my own paradise': Homes and gardens in later life', Sociological Review, Volume 54, Issue 2, page 318-341, May 2006. Available online: www.blackwell-synergy.com/loi/sore

Michael Snape, God and the British Soldier: Religion and the British Army in the First and Second World Wars, Routledge 2005

Louise Purbrick, The Wedding Gift: Domestic life beyond consumption, Ashgate 2006 (uses post 1981 MO material)

We Are At War in paperback

Simon Garfield's second anthology of Mass-Observation diaries from 1939 and 1940 will be published in paperback by Ebury on March 1st.

Making History: Art and documentary in Britain exhibition, Tate Liverpool

A collection of original Mass-Observation publications will be on loan to Tate Liverpool and included in a special exhibition this spring, Making History: Art and Documentary in Britain from 1929 to Now.

The exhibition charts the development of documentary and features work by artists and practitioners including Mass-Observation photographer Humphrey Spender, whose images for Mass-Observation were compiled in Worktown People: Photographs from Northern England 1937-8 (ed. Jeremy Mulford, Falling Wall Press, 1982).

Exploring the potential: examining archived data at Mass-Observation and ESDS Qualidata

Thursday 19 January 2006
University of Sussex Library

A one-day workshop aims to provide insight and practical advice on exploring and using archived qualitative materials held at the Mass-Observation Archive and the UK Data Archive. It is jointly organised by ESDS Qualidata and the University of Sussex Library.

In the morning the archives' staff will present on the range of data available for research and how to access materials. A discussion on what users want from digital resources will follow, offering the opportunity for participant feedback. In the afternoon, speakers who have extensively used the archives for research will provide an overview of how they got started and issues they faced in confronting the materials.

Signs of our Times

We’ve collaborated with Brighton Photo Biennial, a leading festival of photography, Year 10 pupils from Falmer School and the Gardner Arts Centre on an education project. Having visited the Archive and having sessions with an artist, the pupils have created their own photographs and diary boxes to present observations of their lives. An exhibition of their work called Signs of our Times will run jointly at the University of Sussex Library and at the Gardner Arts Centre to coincide with the Archives from the New British Photography of the 1970s exhibition from 11 - 27 November.

Latest M-O related publications

Finnegan, Ruth (ed), Participating in the knowledge society: Researchers beyond the university walls, Palgrave 2005.

See Palgrave for a sample chapter

Hubble, Nick, Mass Observation and everyday life: Culture, history, theory, Palgrave 2005.

See Palgrave for a sample chapter

Simon Garfield edits more Mass-Observation diaries in We are at War

The second in Simon Garfield's edited trilogy of Mass-Observation diaries to be published by Ebury on 29 September.

Neville Gabie’s 10 September 2001… an archive within an archive special Event 6 October 2005

A special event hosted by the East Sussex Record Office in Lewes will take place on
Thursday 6 October 2005 at 18.30.

Through inspiring presentations speakers including Dorothy Sheridan, Director of the Mass-Observation Archive, and artist Neville Gabie will give an insight into archiving of memories and everyday life through diaries, ephemera and personal testimony; including some of the unusual materials hidden from view in the miles of archives at East Sussex Record Office that inspired Gabie's project. Booking advised on 01273 482343. (East Sussex Record Office, The Maltings, Castle Precincts, Lewes)

Re-using qualitative data

CRESC Methods workshop,
University of Manchester 28 Sept 2005
Sandra Koa Wing and Nick Hubble will be speaking about Mass-Observation related issues at this workshop .

Richard Fitter

Early Mass-Observer died 3 Sept 2005.

Obituaries can be found on The Independent and The Times online.

Women, WWII and Welders on Woman's Hour

On Saturday July 8th the long awaited memorial honouring the 7 million women who made such an important contribution to the second world war will be unveiled in Whitehall.

Conscription for women began in 1941 and by 1943 nine out of 10 single women aged between 20 and 30 were working in factories, on the land or in the armed forces. Next Friday BBC Woman’s Hour will celebrate those women with a special programme looking at the impact that World War II had on women’s lives. This week there are exerpts from the Woman’s Hour archive, hearing from some of the women who played their part in the war effort.

In Yorkshire two groups of women were taught to be welders by Violet Pearson the daughter of one of the big factory owners in the area. She was apparently a dynamic character and a number of her trainees wrote to her after they’d finished.

The letters ended up in the Mass-Observation Archive which is where Dr Margaretta Jolly found them. In her book Dear Laughing Motorbyke she used these accounts and interviewed some of the surviving members of the group to create a vivid picture of these women’s lives.

To listen to the radio item, click here.

MOA researcher Professor Penny Summerfield and others this Friday morning (8 July) for an item on women and the second world war.

Testimony Films and Mass-Observation's Little Kinsey

Award-winning British TV Company Testimony Films are making a documentary on a 1949 Mass-Observation survey on sexual behaviour and attitudes, 'Little Kinsey'. This is for a programme for BBC4 to be broadcast this autumn. Interviews with Mass-Observation Archive director Dorothy Sheridan and sex historian Hera Cook. More details to follow.

Mass-Observation in Madrid

Photographs taken by Mass-Observation photographer, Humphrey Spender, are being exhibited for the first time ever in continental Europe, as part of an international festival of visual arts in Madrid. This is the first time that Mass-Observation's photography has been shown in Europe outside the UK. The exhibition is being curated by University of Sussex art historian, Professor David Allan Mellor.

Its inaugural showing in mainland Europe is as part of PhotoEspaña, whose theme this year is Ciudad (The City). The Mass-Observation show and the other 25 exhibitions are characterised, say the organisers, “by the use of documentary languages and the proximity of artistic work to common experience”.

The exhibition runs until 17 July at the Conde Duque cultural centre in Madrid.
See www.phedigital.com

Mass-Observation Friends of the Archive Open Day 2005 and celebration of the publication of Tony Kushner's We Europeans.

Tony Kushner spoke about his latest publication. Guests looked at displays of material and had a chance to meet staff from the Archive.

Thursday 26 May from 2-5pm
at the Mass-Observation Archive
University of Sussex Library, Brighton, UK.

Our Hidden Lives in the charts

Fantastic news - Simon Garfield's Our Hidden Lives is at no 6 in the paperback non-fiction chart this week - 6418 copies have been sold in the UK. 17,500 have so far been sold overall.
5 May 2005

Our Hidden Lives and the Mass-Observation Archive

Simon Garfield and Dorothy Sheridan

In Our Hidden Lives, author Simon Garfield has interwoven the diaries of five people writing from 1945–48, ranging from a retired engineer in London to a gay antiques collector in Edinburgh, and has produced a wonderful portrait of this often overlooked period. He will talk about editing the diaries and will read extracts.

Dorothy Sheridan, director of the Mass Observation Archive, will talk about the writing done by the volunteer Mass-Observers as diarists in the early period 1937–67 and compare them with the contributors to the new M-O project which started in 1981 and continues to the present day. What motivates them, how do they write and how is their writing used?

Thursday 10 May, Kingston University.
Part of the Kingston Readers' Festival

The Elephant Vanishes study day
Sandra Koa Wing

A Study Day to be held at LCC. Speakers will include sonic and visual artists, writers, architects, anthropologists, geographers, talking about urban investigations. This study day will inform and initiate a proposal for a large scale project documenting the Elephant and Castle in transition.

Wednesday 27 April, London College of Communication

Mass-Observation article in the Guardian Weekend magazine

Charles Nevin, 'Just Looking' Saturday March 19, 2005

Response from Nick Hubble, Saturday March 26 2005

Early Mass-Observation photographer Humphrey Spender dies

Humphrey Spender, photographer for Picture Post and Mass-Observation in the 1930s, died aged 94 on Friday 11 March 2005. An obituary can be found on The Guardian website.

Latest M-O related publications

Helen Binding and Brian Pearce,
Exmoor Village: celebrating the enduring landscape of Exmoor and its people over fifty years
Devon Books, 2004 (ISBN 0861834860)

Tony Kushner, We Europeans?: Mass-Observation, 'Race' and British Identity in Twentieth-Century Britain (Studies in European Cultural Transmission), Ashgate, 2004 (ISBN 0754602060)

Juliet Gardiner, Wartime Britain 1939-1945, Headline, 2004 (ISBN 0755310268)

Irene & Alan Taylor (eds), The Secret Annexe: An anthology of war diarists, Canongate, 2004 (ISBN 1841954438)

Robert Malcolmson and Peter Searby (eds), Wartime Norfolk: The Diary of Rachel Dhonau 1941-1942, Norfolk Record Society 2004 (ISBN 0953829863)

Turner Prize winner Jeremy Deller mentions Mass-Observation!

Jeremy Deller was a postgraduate at the University of Sussex. He paid tribute to his professor, David Alan Mellor. Professor Mellor believes that the Mass-Obs archive is a valuable source of artistic inspiration, while Jeremy Deller said: "The Mass-Obs archive certainly involves a lot of the things that interest me, so you never know..." Watch this space!

Open Lecture: Writing your life, speaking your life: reflections on life history research today

Social and Critical Studies Subject Group Open Lecture

Saturday 4 December 2004 10am-1pm
With Dorothy Sheridan & Alistair Thomson

Life histories are everywhere: on television oral history documentaries, in newspaper profiles, in the proliferation of biographical publications, on world wide web 'blogs', in museum displays... In a pair of linked lectures two of the leading figures in the field of life history research explore two sides of this extraordinary phenomenon - life story writing and oral history - and consider the rich potential and problems for social and historical research using different types of life stories.

Dorothy Sheridan (Director of the internationally renowned Mass-Observation Archive and Head of Special Collections, University of Sussex Library) will focus on 'Writing Your Life: Reflections on Mass-Observation Today'. Al Thomson (Director of CCE and editor of 'The Oral History Reader' and the 'Oral History' journal) will focus on 'Speaking Your Life: Reflections on Oral History Today'.

This lecture is open to all and is held at the University of Sussex at Falmer. For further details or to enrol tel 01273 873744.

Fee - Full: £10, Student: £5, Concession: free

Centre for Life History Research Seminars, Autumn Term 2004

Tuesday 19th October
Dr Catherine Horwood, University of London
Keeping Up Appearances: Clothes, class and culture in the interwar years.

Tuesday 26th October
Krista Woodley, University of Sussex
One sherry and I'm anybody's: women and drink in Mass-Observation, 1989.

Simon Garfield's Our Hidden Lives

Award-winning writer Simon Garfield has skilfully woven the diaries of five Mass-Observers, confronting the uncertain years following the Second World War, into a wonderful and extraordinary tapestry.

Published by Ebury Press on 9th September 2004. Look out for extracts in the Sunday Telegraph and keep your eyes peeled for reviews!

Garfield, Simon: Our Hidden Lives: The everyday diaries of a forgotten Britain 1945-1948, Ebury Press, 2004.

Simon Garfield will be speaking about his book and diary writing as part of an event organised by the Centre for Life History Research at the University of Sussex. Further details to follow.

Nina Hibbin

Sad news: Nina Hibbin (nee Masel), Mass-Observation diarist in 1939, from
M-O's "East End Unit" died on 28 May 2004.

Recent Mass-Observation related Publications

Duncombe, Harrison, Allen, Mardsen (eds) The State of Affairs: Explorations in infidelity and commitment (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004). Two chapters are based on research on M-O Project material, one by Kaeren Harrison and the other by Graham Allen.

Kaeren Harrison and Derek McGhee, 'Reading and writing family secrets: reflections on
mass-observation', Auto/Biography, Vol. XI Nos 1&2, pp. 25-36, 2003.

Homan, J., 'Writing disaster: autobiography as a methodology in disasters research' in International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, Vol 21, No 2, Aug 2003, pp.51-80

National Lesbian and Gay survey

In the mid-1980s, gay writer and actor, Ken Barrow, invited gay men and lesbians to send him their life stories, written according to themes (growing up, coming out, health, attitude to various political and social events and so on). After Ken's death in 1993, the work was continued on a voluntary basis by teacher Kerry Sutton Spence and archivist Jerome Farrell. The project has now come to a close and the final installments of the project have now been delivered to the Archive.

An interview with Ken Barrow appears in
Sheridan, Street & Bloome, Writing Ourselves: Mass-Observation and literacy practices, (Hampton Press, 2000) (pp.156-163)

Two anthologies have come out of the project:

What a Lesbian Looks Like: Writings by lesbians on their lives and lifestyles (Routledge, 1992)
Proust, Cole Porter, Michelangelo, Marc Almond and Me: Writings by gay men on their lives and lifestyles (Routledge, 1993)

For more information about this collection, contact Special Collections (library.specialcoll@sussex.ac.uk).

What Did You Eat Today? Exhibition

An exhibition of texts, film, photographs and miscellaneous objects by writer Sandra Cross and filmmaker William English, with material from the Mass-Observation Archive. Results from the accompanying questionnaire will be stored in the M-O Archive.

The exhibition ran from 5-23 May 2004 at the University of Sussex Library.
Part of the Brighton Festival Fringe.

NEW Mass-Observation email discussion and announcement list

An electronic email discussion and announcement list has been established for anyone interested in anything Mass-Observation related.

To join up, simply click here and follow the instructions.

Remember you can change your subscription settings at any time after signing up.

If you have any queries about the list, contact massobs-request@jiscmail.ac.uk

Mass-Observation Project Development

As part of a five year development plan the Mass-Observation Archive has appointed a part-time Development Officer for two years from February 2004. Sandra Koa Wing has been employed to assist the Director in obtaining funds, recruiting volunteer writers for the national panel, supporting and promoting research and contributing to associated special projects. Contact her directly for any suggestions regarding the development of the Project. Email s.c.koa-wing@sussex.ac.uk

Humphrey Spender images online

Bolton Museums, Art Gallery & Aquarium has a searchable image archive that will eventually feature all of the 900 or so photographs that
Humphrey Spender took in Bolton for the Worktown project. There are 70 images available so far, the rest are to be uploaded in the coming months.

1930s Documentary Art Exhibition

Tate Britain, London

There is an exhibition of 1930s documentary art at Tate Britain, London, that includes material from the Archive and photographs by Humphrey Spender and Humphrey Jennings, paintings by Julian Trevelyan and William Coldstream.