Secrets of the past come to life thanks to £250,000 grant

The Newham-based Eastside Community Heritage has been awarded a £250,000 grant to put online its ground-breaking Hidden History Archive – a treasure trove of oral histories, photos, videos and memorabilia, provided by Londoners over the past 100 years.

Thanks to the funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the ECH project Secrets shared: Unlocking hidden history will also provide training to a range of communities and schools on how to search the archives, and use innovative tools to select contents to create their own displays.

As part of the project ECH has re-established their successful, accredited training centre which will enable trainees to gain qualifications to secure jobs in the heritage and cultural sector.

The project will also train volunteers in oral history research, as well as a range of associated cataloguing and digital skills including sound editing. A series of planned workshops will allow community groups and teachers to learn how to use the archive.

The aim is to enable people from different heritage backgrounds to feel represented and the contributions from their community acknowledged and valued and will enable local people to be able to relate and connect to their local history.

ECH holds over 4,000 oral histories, and around 40,000 photographs and video material, all preserved for public benefit within its Hidden-History archive. This archive also includes multiple collections covering people from diverse communities such as Bengali, Muslim and Jewish communities.

Judith Garfield MBE, Executive Director of Eastside Community Heritage said: “We are thrilled to have received this support and are confident the project will transform how people perceive and use digital archives, as well as how they connect to the local history of their area”.

For the National Lottery, Stuart McLeod, Director England - London & South, “We are delighted to support Eastside Community Heritage in recording the hidden stories of the people of London. This period covers many historic moments for the capital, from the blitz to the Olympics.” formance of the homes through a combination of increased energy efficiency and use of smart technologies.

“This project will be a great accomplishment for Newham,” said Councillor Shaban Mohammed, Cabinet Member for Housing, “it will set a benchmark for all our retrofitting programmes on our existing housing stock. I am looking forward to how we bring new green innovations forward and setting standards on energy efficiency. Our aim is for this project to establish our internal delivery model for retrofit to achieve our ambitious local target of net-zero by 2045”.

The retrofit of Hamara Ghar is part of the first phase of the Council’s wider ambition to improve housing, market facilities and the surrounding area in Green Street and Upton Park.