The Keith Medley photographic archive, mainly a large collection of glass plate negatives depicting the people and local events in Liverpool and Merseyside from the 1960s to the 1980s, is held at Liverpool John Moores University Special Collections and Archives. Senior lecturer Ian Bradley from the Liverpool Screen School at LJMU secured a small Heritage Lottery grant to fund a community project using photographs of days out, fun fairs, beach scenes and holidays in the region. Working with local groups such as Age Concern, Ian is using the selected images to start discussions with elderly people about their family memories of days out. LJMU students have been trained in oral history techniques to help record the stories, and have helped participants create print and digital postcards from their own holiday photographs.
An exhibition at the Museum of Liverpool in autumn 2014 will show the work created and help publicise the existence of the Keith Medley Archive to a wider public. The project draws on, and will add to, the existing good practice in the sector using archival materials with elderly people and there are plans to build on this work in the future at LJMU.
