Written by Katie Shepherd

As the RESP continue to add to their collection of oral history archival material, Ailsa and I were commissioned as fieldwork interns to conduct interviews with a community group based at the John Gray Centre in Haddington. Our internship project intended to record a series of interviews with the ambition of producing a publication based on the audio recordings content.

The last six months has been a whirlwind of interviews, writing, editing, and of course, lots of meetings over tea and coffee. As the internship draws to a close, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the goals we have surpassed since November 2024 and the processes involved in an oral ethnography project.

One of many meetings over coffee!

Ailsa and I developed a skeleton plan for the publication but were encouraged be flexible in our approach, so the interviewees felt able to discuss their own interests. With this guidance, we decided to theme the interviews around ‘working life’ – a broad topic that allowed participants to speak about their careers and industries, social lives in and out of work, alternative streams of income and even unpaid labour.

Having been prompted to consider possible outputs for the recording content, Ailsa and I decided on creating a publication similar to Jumpers for Goalposts – the publication created by the group in 2016 – in its structure but also to create some digital content to increase accessibility and awareness of the project. This hybrid approach has proved successful so far, as the publication gives the group members a tangible product of their interviews, and their relationships, but the digital products are engaging to a wider audience through social media, web pages and in person presentations.

Jumpers for Goalposts, the groups first publication (2017).

After an initial few weeks of planning in the office at the Centre for Research Collections, Ailsa and I’s first meeting with the group occurred at their Christmas party which involved a competitive quiz and plenty of refreshments. This informal introduction set the tone for what was to be an extremely fruitful series of interviews that are vernacular and informative, and at times emotional and poignant as memories left untouched for years are rekindled.

January involved a fieldwork training session from the EERC’s senior research fellow Mark Mulhern, prepping us for the following weeks of interviews. Between late January and early March Ailsa and I interviewed 12 group members – with some assistance from Caroline Milligan and Ruth Fyfe, who interviewed group members who reside in a local care home – mostly at the John Gray Centre in Haddington, although one or two took place on university grounds. Alternating roles as sound technician/active listener and interviewer, Ailsa and I efficiently curated over 14 hours of interview recordings.

Vikkie, Dick, Ailsa and Katie (left to right) looking at some photographs provided by Vikkie and Dick.

Much of March was absorbed by the task of reviewing interviews, taking notes and transcribing passages for potential use in the publication, and organising this information on a thematic basis. Inputting interview quotations and time stamps into a spreadsheet accelerated this process and although it was an – unexpectedly – intensive task, it deepened our understanding of the groups individual and collective histories and allowed us to more accurately represent their spoken testimonies in prose.

Pic of spreadsheet/planning (no GDPR breaches :D)

In due course, Ailsa and I began to write the main body of the publication by splitting the book into seven chapters: Careers and Industries, Politics, International Interactions, Sporting Life, Social Life and Festivities, Family, and Reflections on Change and Continuity. Entrusted by the group members to interpret their oral reflections into the written word was an honour, and a responsibility that I took seriously. I enjoy this part of the internship immensely; watching the group’s memories unfold and intertwine in the book as it was written was enthralling.

During this time, I led team liaisons with internal and external colleagues from RESP, East Lothian Council and an independent designer commissioned to create the publication. As the group had already been involved in the publication Jumpers for Goalposts, we wanted All in a Day’s Work to feel like another instalment in the same series, thus we worked with the same designer and used a similar design. Ailsa also got to work on creating a short film with snippets of the interviews to showcase some excerpts spoken by the group themselves – you can watch that here.

The editorial process was another rigorous stage; one that I undertook with enthusiasm powered by a desire to acquire copy-editing and proofreading skills. After completing a first draft, Caroline and Lesley reviewed the content and suggested edits on a hard copy. I then implemented the majority of these edits into the digital copy, further tweaking, correcting and re-writing as I went. Issues of style and consistency are inevitable in a co-authored book, and by compiling a style sheet with all discrepancies, I worked through this with Caroline to ensure the book read in a cohesive and accessible manner. The nature of oral ethnography requires a specific ‘editing voice’ to balance the readers comprehension while staying as close to the spoken word as possible.

A sneak-preview of All in a Day’s Work!

At the time of writing (28^th of May 2025), All in a Day’s Work, the fruits of this rapid, fantastic internship, is due to be launched next week. The publication will first be presented to the Haddington Active Memories and Sporting Memories Groups at their meeting on the 3^rd of June, and then to staff at the Centre for Research Collections later that afternoon.

Watch official RESP channels for digital copies of the book and more!

The factory floor in Brunton’s wire mill, Musselburgh. Thanks to the John Gray Centre Archive for sharing this image with us. (ref. ic-af-229)

For this blog post, which marks the most recent upload of recordings onto the RESP Archive website, we are delighted to hear from Mark Mulhern, Senior Research Fellow with the EERC and lead for the RESP Spoken Word strand.

This latest batch of recordings to be added to the RESP Archive website is in some ways representative of how the RESP goes about including different voices in its collection. Within this batch, which includes 24 fieldwork interviews, we have recollections about:

• The mills in Musselburgh – Brunton’s, Stuart’s and Inveresk paper mill
• One man’s (David Elder) recollections of his early life, National Service and more
• Recollections for workers at a number of enterprises at Gateside Industrial Park, Haddington
• One woman’s (Sheila Murray) recollections of her life in Peebles and her connections to the textile mills in the town
• A recording made in 1973 of Mrs Blacklock on the occasion of her 100^th birthday

Friends Sheila Fraser and Kathryn McMillan shared their memories of working together in the Brunton’s wire mill offices (EL6/21)

Within this batch of recordings there is a variety in content and also in the way in which these recordings became part of the RESP:

• The Musselburgh Mills recordings came about as a result of new fieldwork conducted by myself, largely within Musselburgh Museum.
• David’s recording was made by an existing group within the John Gray Centre – the Active Memories Group.
• The interviews of those who worked at the various industrial enterprises at Gateside in Haddington were conducted by members of Haddington’s History Society as part of a project that they ran in partnership with the RESP.
• Sheila’s recording was made by my colleague Caroline Milligan. This interview came about as a result of Sheila having read and enjoyed our recently published book Border Mills: Lives of Peeblesshire Textile Workers
• The recording of Mrs Blacklock was donated to the RESP as a result of Mrs Blacklock’s grandson – her interviewer in 1973 – coming across our work in D&G and asking if we would be interested in adding his recording of his granny to the RESP Collection

As can be readily discerned, material comes to the RESP in a variety of ways. The common factor with this batch of recordings is that their inclusion came about as a result of the RESP being active within and receptive to the communities with which we work with. This is true of this batch of recordings and also reflects the wider ethos of the RESP in which we seek to enable communities to create, preserve and share their recollections.

Another salient point about this batch of recordings is the variety of content. These 24 recordings cover industrial employment, childhood, National Service, work in a number of mills across lowland Scotland and the recollections of a lady who was born in 1873. This diversity is also reflected across the wider RESP Collection.

David Dixon (EL6/24) shared memories of his working life and connections to Brunton’s wire mill.

This range is in and of itself of great importance to the RESP as we seek to provide a space to enable folk to talk about what is of interest to them. Such an approach almost inevitably leads to a collection with diverse content. That diversity of content is a reflection of what is of interest to people in different places. A collection of individuals speaking about what is of interest to them tells us what is of importance to them. In this way, the RESP is establishing a body of work that, for now and the future, tells us something about the commonalities and differences of lives lived in different places and at different times across Scotland. Key to enabling this is the open and receptive approach taken in conducting and managing the RESP.

The Tandberg Goats were moved to their current location in Haddington after Mitsubishi took over the Tandberg plant at Gateside.

This work continues!

Mark Mulhern

Nov 2024