REMEMBER THE SEVENTIES?
Next year, the Halesworth area is set to go ever so slightly nuts about the 1970s.
Our Museum is celebrating the success of a Lottery bid which means that, for the next 12 months, it will be getting together with organization in the town and the villages around to look back at life as it was back then, when flares, platform heels, hot pants and droopy moustaches were the order of the day.
The Museum, along with ten others in Suffolk and Hertfordshire, will be able to use a share of a £247,000 grant secured by the Association for Suffolk Museums to fund research, exhibitions and events involving local community groups and individuals.
A team of volunteers will be delving into local newspapers, researching local photographs and talking to local people about life in the area forty years ago. They will also be organizing a series of events next year, featuring 70s food, fashions and music to recapture the mood of the time. The first will be in the upstairs gallery at Halesworth Library from 9-23 November (see the advertisement on this page).
At the heart of the Halesworth project is the huge collection of photographic negatives left to the Museum by local photographer Robbie Page. The Museum will be digitizing these and taking them out and about to spur people’s memories and build up an account of the times.
“We want the whole community to get involved in thinking back to the time of Abba, ‘The Good Life’ and the Silver Jubilee” says Project Co-ordinator, Vic Gray. We want to chart the changes in the area. This was the decade when the Swimming Pool, the Apollo Centre and Jubilee Court were opened in Halesworth and there was new housing going up all around. We want to do a serious piece of work, but we also want people to have some fun and get together to remember the taste and feel of the time.”
The Museum is hoping to recruit a group of volunteers from Halesworth and the surrounding villages to join the project team. Anyone interested – or anyone who was here in the ‘70s and would be happy to talk about those days – should ring Vic Gray on 01986 872437 or at office@halesworthmuseum.org.uk for a no-obligation chat about how they might be able to help.