CWOTE has offered people living in rural areas the chance to discover and celebrate local history, and to reaffirm their sense of community and cultural identity. Participants have drawn information from local history archives and reference books, recorded oral histories and increased their understanding of the challenges rural communities have faced both in the past and today.

We have worked alongside local historians and other experts, as well as interested villagers who helped us to carry out the initial research and gain a clear picture of the villages as they once were. We have assisted research through the creation of a local history research guide offering advice on oral history methods and internet research and created a booklet entitled Exploring the History of your Community for the project. We also developed a module with the OCN, Researching Local History, which can now be used by others to offer OCN accreditation in this subject. We met with a number of interested people in each village, and held meetings with relevant committees. We have met some helpful and noteworthy people throughout.

Along with the preliminary research and information gathered during the community liaison/venue selection phase of the project, we have collected oral histories and daily journals from young people, and older members of the local community. We have also regularly checked the local press to uncover any contemporary issues we may have missed. As a result of this work we have learned of, and subsequently looked to assist, the recently established campaign for a new village shop in Witherslack.

We realised early on in the the project that we needed to give people a creative focus and an idea of the type of show we are looking to produce. It was agreed with participants that Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas (i.e. A Day in the Life of a Lakeland Village) would be an ideal starting point for the composition process. We have used research gathered to help young people focus the composition process and to source a number of traditional Westmorland songs and composers. We have also used environmental field recordings and music from around the world in order to help bring local sounds into the compositions and to learn from different cultures about their responses to comparable challenges. A number of workshop leaders are experienced song-writers in their own right, and we have benefited from the knowledge they have brought to the project. We have used improvisation as the primary composition tool, using methods such as grid-scoring and rhyming/song games to create original pieces

We have worked with village schools which draw - or drew - students from a wide catchment area. Children from Lowick and Satterthwaite now go to Penny Bridge School and young people who live in the Lyth Valley area regularly attend Crosthwaite Primary, Witherslack Youth Club, Levens Primary School or local secondary’s in Kendal, Grange, Milnthorpe and Ulverston.

Support for CWOTE has been sought through a broader range of schools, village halls, youth clubs and community groups than we originally anticipated. This has allowed us to forge links with children from a range of schools in the South Lakeland area. We currently run regular Bright Sparks workshops in Levens and Penny Bridge, and run MATCHBOX sessions in Witherslack. These have been welcomed by the local communities.

To listen to some of the Oral History recordings that have been conducted for CWOTE click here and scroll down to MusicLinks. After clicking on MusicLinks if you then click on Projects (in the menu to the left) you will find the interviews grouped according to the themes of our project. These cut off early due to software limitations. To hear the full recordings please contact MusicLinks through this site or call 01539 742626.