Warwickshire community history group wins national award

Our Warwickshire, which is run by Warwickshire County Council’s Heritage and Culture team, was named Community Archive and Heritage Group’s winner of Group of the Year.

The winners were announced at the Community Archive and Heritage Group (CAHG)’s conference in Huddersfield on June 19.

In previous years this award has been chosen by a panel from a range of submissions.

This year, in order to provide more publicity for more groups across the 12-month period, CAHG invited groups to self-submit to be ‘Group of the Month’.

The public was then invited to vote on which ‘Group of the Month’ groups should be awarded Group of the Year.

More than 250 votes were cast and Our Warwickshire won with 58 per cent of the vote.

Benjamin Earl from Our Warwickshire said: “We are thrilled to have received this award – it is really a testament to all the hard work that has gone into the project from our volunteers and also the support of the wider public in Warwickshire who have submitted images and stories as well as voting for us to win this award.”

About Our Warwickshire

The Our Warwickshire Community History website is both an online archive, hosting many images from the County Record Office and museum, along with images submitted by the Warwickshire community, but is also an online portal.

Visitors to the website can access lists of history groups across the county, as well as ongoing projects across various subjects.

Over the years projects have included working with social housing provider Orbit, to run intergenerational workshops, which saw sixth formers talk to retired residents about their lives.

Our Warwickshire has also helped preserve local history and stories that might otherwise be lost, both in stories that people might not think worth recording, as well as photograph submissions.

The site has gathered this material, made it accessible to others and, through that, has enabled people to look through what they have and contribute unseen views and histories to fill in the gaps.

For more information go to: h ttps://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/ or https://twitter.com/OurWarwickshire