By Cal Chester, Community Development Support Worker.
As part of Brighton and Hove’ Older Peoples Festival, The Vallance Community Centre in Hove and TDC hosted a session on ‘Starting Out in Local and Family History Research’ on Wednesday 3rd October
Members of a number of regular groups at The Vallance were involved in preparing and putting on a highly successful and well attended event.
The cookery group prepared and served some delicious food, supported by TDC the Vallance Centre’s Friday IT group helped plan and create publicity for the event as well as giving technical support on the day. And the new memories group based at the Centre provided a fantastic display of fascinating archive films, posters, photographs and documents about Hove’s past. Visitors from near and far were welcome to the IT suite to explore their own personal histories using family history research software. Also available were laptops and tablets loaded with information on local history websites and links, and plenty of information was available for people to take away to develop their own research.
It was a great opportunity to learn, for people in the area to meet and there was a really lively and friendly atmosphere in the centre throughout the afternoon. Many guests were unaware that the centre was there or did not know about the diverse range of groups and activities available to them.
Regular members of groups at the centre also enjoyed the session, so much so that when asked if we should do it every year, one responded they should we host something similar every month!
Many thanks to all that supported and attended the event.