Have just set up channel onYou-Tube for ChildrenofCraigynos. youtube.com/childrenofcraigynos Have got four video clips about the project on it. Does this blog support video? will try and embed a clip. If it works fine otherwise go to my daily blog: craig-y-nos.blogspot.com
Phew! the Brecon exhibition is up and running but it has been a roller-coaster of a week. It started with the airline loosing our luggage, followed by several hours late at night spent in Accident and Emergency because my husband's essential medication was in the suitcase. ( Yes , I know one should never put pills in a suitcase still we were only going from Edinburgh to Cardiff).
The gallery space in Brecon, part of their new library, turned out to be HUGE! two whole rooms. That was the good news. The bad news was a misunderstanding between the gallery and myself over what we could hang on the walls. Because all the work – 120 digital prints- were all mounted on fodex boards I expected to be able to put them straight on to the wall using either velcro or white tak. This was not permitted. Instead there was a rush to re-surface A1 boards from the last exhibition…just as well we had allowed a couple of days for all this.
Anyway, the exhibition opened on Friday morning with an introduction by Dr Carole Reeves Outreach Historian with The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London . She said this project is a "world first…because nobody has ever gathered together the collective memories of people who lived inside a TB sanatorium . certainly not children."
She added that it could not have been done without the internet where the computer literate children of the children who were in Craig-y-nos Castle have come forward with photographs and stories on email.
The Mayor of Brecon, Rosemary Evans, officially opened the exhibition.
Tomorrow I fly south to Cardiff to set up the exhibition in Brecon with Dr Carole Reeves from The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine.
She will be bringing archival boxes with her which will allow the exhibition to be properly boxed. We will also finish cataloguing it so that it becomes a fully fledged touring exhibition.
On Thursday Dr Reeves will visit the Powys Archives in Llandrindod Wells to arrange with them for the Craig-y-nos project, which has generated over 1,000 photographs along with other memorabilia to be placed with them.
Today I put a story on the blog – one of the first that deals with the "dark stuff" – how women in the 1940's were forced to have abortions . It is one woman
Well, those who have successfully negotiated Lottery funding know what a maze it is.
Earlier I got some funding from the Lottery Fund through the Sleeping Giant Foundation. That has now dried up.
So a new application has to go in and its a case of finding a suitable "umbrella organisation" to push it through since individuals cannot apply.
We are back to The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine.
Expect to hear tomorrow whether my pre-application to the Welsh Heritage Lottery Fund has been successful and I can go ahead with a full application.
Meanwhile preparations for the Brecon exhibition are well underway and all the Welsh translations of captions have been sent to Dr Reeves in London where she will prepare them for the next exhibition.
She will be bringing archive boxes with her to Brecon so that the exhibition can be properly packaged and ready to tour.
Heard today that Swansea museum are interested and have arranged to meet the curator when in Wales.
Have started to make video clips for the web of the "Children of Craig-y-nos" project. The aim is to create communities around each video.
Ann Shaw is an artist/writer based in Scotland working in new media. As a journalist she campaigned and wrote about many social and medical issues. She is a feminist and founder member of Falkirk Womens Aid, active in the trades union movement and former member of National Union of Journalists Equality Working Party, and founder member of Forth Valley Open Studios.
