Public History
“a novel way of presenting local history“ Frank Sharman, Wolverhampton History and Heritage Society discussing Ballads for Bomere Heath on Wolverhampton University website.
Dave’s work as a writer regularly involves working with local communities helping them to value their past, and record their histories in ways that are meaningful to themselves. A trained historian and a poet, Dave uses public history and poetry to create texts with and for communities which he describes as 21st Century Chronicles – a summing up of a place or area in fact, opinion and creative response (see Ballads for Bomere Heath in the ‘Community Writing’ section).
In April 2010 Warwickshire Libraries published Have Book Will Travel, a collection of anecdotes about reading collected by Dave during a ‘residency’ on a mobile library at the end of 2009.
During 2010 Dave will be working on a project to record recollections of institutional living in Walsall, focusing on the now demolished St Matthews’ and St Margaret’s hospitals. This is a Radio Wildfire project and initial sound files can be found at radiowildfire.com/projects.
Oral histories and community chronicles include:
Ballads for Bomere Heath (2006)
Brummies reCollected (2000)
Oldbury: the town of the four moons (1994)
Cardboard Crowns & Cast Iron Cookpots (1996) – Hill Top, West Bromwich
Wake Up, West Heath..! (1997) – Birmingham
The Shambles, the Quack and Glory-for-me (1991) – Blackheath & Rowley Regis
The’ was onny one an the’ wo’ be another (1990) – Kates Hill, Dudley