Newlands Stories Project

Hello, my name is Jennifer Borrell. I am the worker for the Newlands Stories Project, which is based at Hidden Creek Neighbourhood House.

With the community, we are gathering people’s stories of their life in and around Newlands. Importantly, we are organizing ways for people to share these stories, so we can learn more about each other and the local area.

The Newlands Stories Project is funded by the Australian Government’s Community Heritage Project. The steering group includes representation from Council, Coburg Historical Society and Borderlands Cooperative.

We are very excited about the Project and we have had a great deal of interest from the community and other organisations. So many stories are ‘coming out of the woodwork’ and we can’t wait to get them all down. We have an enthusiastic team of community volunteers to write these up, starting from this week.

Some activities of the project are set in concrete (as part of the funding agreement) while we may follow up other ideas as we go. Definitely, we will set up a story-sharing website next year. We will also facilitate a mural about the interweaving stories of life in (and around) Newlands. Other ideas include: story workshops, quilt making, song writing, food sharing gatherings, a people’s heritage walk, radio stories, public readings and ‘campfire’ tales.

Although it is ‘early days’, we have organised a solid foundation for the project and we have started  ‘interviews’  to gather stories.

To write a history of the local area, I have also been collecting and reading local histories and I have visited the museum of the Coburg Historical Society, where I was shown around by the president. This is situated in a bluestone building on Bell Street near the Council offices.

A lot of effort has been put into publicising the project and liaising with key people and organisations, including local politicians and the media. An information session was conducted at the Neighbourhood House in early October, which was largely a ‘discussion session’ wherein a range of thoughtful ideas and reflections were shared. A ‘training session’ was also organised for community volunteer ‘interviewers’, including two students based at Borderlands Cooperative.

If you would like to share or write your story, interview people, film or photograph (or share old photos), tell us your ideas or become involved in some other way, please ring Jennifer on 9350 3437. This is very much a community grassroots project and we welcome your interest and involvement.