hearing the storytellers speak

The only people who can tell us the stories of Grantham House are the storykeepers who lived there – but they were moved out to the edge of Jericho when the building was closed down to be sold off. I found Pat, Win, Alice and Ann through their friends at the community centre, and went to meet them at their bingo afternoon one Friday. With a film-maker friend I recorded them chatting about the old days and telling their stories: Pat used to live in St Ebbes and remembered it before it was bulldozed (nearly the fate of Jericho itself); Win talked about working at the glove factory in Botley, and going to St Barnabas primary school; Alice remembered her garden at Grantham House, for which she won an Oxford in Bloom award; Ann talked about her children playing on the recreation fields by the river, and about Christmas at Grantham House.

We showed the film to people who came to the dialogue event at St Barnabas Church, and brought Pat, Win, Alice and Ann back into the community they had been relocated out of.