Photo by Jennifer Simpson, see 'Inheriting the Family'
Inheriting the Family is another proposal, following on from Family Histories and Family Photos, and it will start in 2024. It is at the early stages of planning right now, and will involve gathering and creatively interpreting those tales handed down in our families, from all aspects of daily life. See Jennifer Simpson’s example above, based on a photo of her mother cycling, using fabrics embroidered or worn by her mother. More news of this project will be circulated as it becomes available.
North Down and Ards Filmaking Group
North Down and Ards u3a, who have long-running links with North Down Museum, have deployed their own members' skills as well as local media providers to learn how to record and edit short films. Read their full informative article on the Sources blog.
High Street Project Ystrad Mynach courtesy Michael Benjamin
This started in September 2020 and has three tiers of activity: surveying local shopping streets, taking photos, and identifying a local idea or ideas to explore further.
As a participant you get to take charge of your own photos on the High Street website where you can upload photos and documents about your area. Local ideas that members are developing so far include tracing local changes since the 1960s, getting involved with local Neighbourhood Plans, gathering reminiscences of the shops of our childhood, art and sketching and making guided walks.
Find out how Hannah Lucas and the Barnsley group used their survey work as a springboard for enriching civic life and planning, leading to their local Archives winning a national award for community involvement.
High Street Project Kingston courtesy Bob Higgins
You can view the project website hosting your photographs, survey results and further projects. This will be around and available until 2032.
For more information and to be included on the mailing list, email
Stukeley Memoirs Project
Read Mandy Topp's report on historical research and digitisation in the East Midlands.
King's Lynn Town Trails
Ann Higgins led a group who created a series of local town trails, which were then shared with King's Lynn Tourist Information Centre See the Pub trail.
Sheffield Story-Catchers
Read about Samina Aslam and Martin Harvey's contribution to the “Story Catchers” project.
u3a-Coram Foundlings Project 2021-2022
This was a major project with the Coram Foundation, based on helping to transcribe and research the ‘petitions’ made by desperate mothers who were giving up their babies to be taken into the Coram Foundling Hospital.
Over 150 members took part, from all regions and nations of the UK, and were able to hone new digital skills alongside delving into ‘real’ history i.e. getting elbow deep in the detective work of correlating many archival sources to join the dots of a past life.
Our members became quite attached to ‘their’ research subjects and treated the exercise like Family History, with all its joys of discovery and frustrations of hitting dead-ends. We realised that many women may have adopted new identities and so have become untraceable in the historic record.
The 300-plus transcriptions and 50-plus research documents done by u3a members will make it quicker and easier for others to use the petition records as a starting point, be it to locate a person in the past or to look for social-historical patterns from population data.
Read more about the project on the Coram Story website.
u3a in the Time of Corona
In April 2020, Subject advisers Jo Livingston and Jennifer Simpson began gathering diary entries from u3a members around the UK. This ‘Diary Project’ resulted in a book, ‘u3a in the Time of Corona’, drawn from members’ contributions describing what turned out to be the first lockdown in 2020.
It includes efforts to get a supermarket delivery and how to manage without a haircut, as well as how our members filled all that spare time and tried to keep the u3a going. After the first print run sold out, a second printing has been completed and you can buy a diary for £10 from the brand centre.
Part 1 of the diary, 'u3a in the Time of Corona' is available to order in paperback from the u3a Brand centre (separate login required).
Part 2 of the diary was produced in 2021, and is available as a free download.
In October 2020, 47 U3A members from South West England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland started working towards a collective biography of 96 pensioners who retired from the Post Office in 1901, the first year that a full census is available for England, Scotland, and Ireland.
As well as leading, guiding and collating the research, the team from KCL also arranged a season of lunchtime talks for u3a members via Zoom covering pensions history, the history of pandemics in the Post Office, health in turn of the century Belfast, death certificate histories, and histories of health in South-West England. These talks were extremely well attended and greatly appreciated by u3a members.