Events

What was life life like for your grandparents? What were their hobbies? What was going to school like for them? What did they eat? What did they wear?

Westport Tidy Town and Westport Community Garden plan to find out. They wish to replicate the Schools’ Collection concept which was done by pupils back in 1935 and which is now online at Dúchas.ie.

They will work with 5th and 6th years primary pupils in Westport to help them find out about their parents’ and grandparents’ lives. They will devise questions that the pupils can use for their grandparents and /or an older person. The questions don’t have to follow any strict order or format. If the older person has a good story about past times, so much the better. They hope to get a flavour of what times were like in the past in Westport.

The organisers will be visiting the classes and explaining the project to the teacher and pupils in April and May. They will also carry out role-plays and help pupils with recording. Some of the scripts will be recorded with either the pupil or grandparent reading their stories. To make it more genuine pupils will be asked to handwrite the script. It shouldn’t be corrected for spelling or grammar mistakes. It shouldn’t be longer than an A4 page, as the written pages will be scanned in order to produce a booklet.

The initiative will be launched in an open day in Westport Library on 10 June.