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WANTED! Memories of Cinema-Going in Blackburn

A one-line appeal on Twitter has brought fantastic results for the Thwaites Empire Theatre who have recently started experimenting with electronic networking tools as part of their ongoing improvements to publicity and marketing. 

A request for 'Volunt"ears" with oral history reminiscence skills brought forward an immediate response from one of the area's most enthusiastic and experienced practitioners.  Darwen's Jayne Waring contacted the theatre manager, Harriet Roberts the next morning to offer her support to the Empire Archivists.  

Meet Jayne! 

Jayne Waring

"I first became interested in doing oral recordings when Darwen Local History Society decided to record peoples memories of living in a clearance area in Darwen (Redearth Triangle, Darwen the site of the new academy) The people were all in positions of losing there homes under the Gov Pathfinder Scheme, the homes were all linked to the heritage and mills of Darwen and its growth as a town, we wanted to record peoples memories of living in the district. This project is ongoing and we still have people to interview.
 
I have also interviewed Jim Atherton Dialect Poet, about his life living in Darwen and his contribution during WW2. It made a change interviewing Jim because everyone has heard and recorded his poetry and know of his fund raising efforts for Derian House but no one had actually asked about his life and what inspires him to write his poems, so that was very interesting, I did this as part of one of my modules for Uni along with the Football Museum Oral History Project with two other students.
 
I was also involved in the early stages of Accrington Stanley's 'The Club That Wouldn't Die' although only a small contribution from my point of view It was a historically interesting one given the clubs situation today.
 
I have completed training under the guidance of University tutor Stephen Caunce and Ken Howarth of the founders of Clitheroe Sound Archives . Ken Howarth was involved in 'The Valley of Stone' project in Rossendale so I was fortunate enough to be able to have some training whilst he was involved in this.
 
Any recordings I do either independently or involved in projects such as the Empire Theatre 2010 are always exciting as the history you are recording is 'living history', therefore has an emotive and more personal aspect to it. You are also stimulating and drawing out of your interviewees information that they would have perhaps never spoken about or forgotten and this is where the interviewing skills come in.  
As I will be interviewing people who worked as usherettes and those who worked behind the scenes as well it gives us living history's from all walks of life and Knowing you are possibly the first to interview a person about their time working in the Empire Theatre makes this project exciting and am looking forward to being part of the theatres future history as well.  " 

We are celebrating 100 years of cinema and theatre at the site in Ewood. As part of the centenary celebrations we are putting together a history of the venue based on the memories of local people. We are keen to talk to anybody who worked at the cinema or enjoyed visiting as patrons during the heydays of cinema in Blackburn. They would also like to talk to people who were involved in the restoration and renovation of the building during the 1970s, and the period when the building showed Asian films.

 

The Old Empire Cinema

We are also looking for opportunities to take a reminiscence team into a community setting, for example a residential scheme or a community venue. We are creating memory boxes to help prompt storytelling that can be used in outreach events like this.

CONTACT JAYNE WARING AND THE

EMPIRE ARCHIVISTS ON 01254 601 641

or by email waring.jayne@hotmail.com

Release Date: Friday 9 October 2009