"Welcome to Working Lives of the Thames Gateway, an exciting new project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund"
Background
Working Lives of the Thames Gateway is an exciting new project to record and celebrate the experiences of the communities which made east London an industrial heartland. Oral histories will be contributed by hundreds of former workers and an education programme will share their memories with younger generations and newer communities.
Working Lives is ambitious in its size and scope: it covers the manufacturing, transport, communications, energy, noxious, textiles and food & drink industries, and it spans Tower Hamlets, Newham, Barking & Dagenham, Havering, Greenwich and Bexley.
Working Lives is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and will run throughout 2008, 2009 and 2010. 
We believe that the achievements of the industrial communities of east London have not received the attention they deserve and that they now risk being lost forever as the area is redeveloped. Working Lives will address this by creating a permanent public archive of over 200 oral histories of former workers.
These recordings will be conducted to a professional standard and will explore in detail issues such as working conditions, labour/management relations, the company social scene, shopfloor camaraderie and industrial change as factories began to change, move away and close. A key way to recruit participants will be regular reminiscence sessions where former employees of a certain company are invited to share their memories in a relaxed group atmosphere.
Recording the memories of those who shaped the area is essential, but it is equally vital to ensure that these memories are brought alive as community history for today's east Londoners, many of whom were born, or moved to the area, after the factories began to close. Working Lives will therefore run regular workshops in schools, integrating local and oral history into the curriculum to ensure its ongoing relevance. Similarly we will run annual continuing professional development sessions for teachers. In addition we will be working with a range of community groups to create exhibitions, talks, DVDs and pamphlets.Working Lives will also seek to spread awareness of east London's rich industrial heritage through a number of conferences and witness seminars. These will aim to ensure that opinion-formers and decision-makers are fully aware that despite the fantastic opportunities for the future represented by the 2012 Olympics and the Thames Gateway, east London is not a blank canvas. Decisions about the future should be taken with an appreciation of the area's past and its industrial heritage.
Working Lives of the Thames Gateway is a partnership between Eastside Community Heritage, the London Boroughs of Tower Hamlets, Newham, Barking & Dagenham, Havering, Greenwich and Bexley, and the London Metropolitan Archives. A dedicated Officer Team will deliver the project on the ground. At the end of the project the full oral history archive will be stored at the University of East London.
The Heritage Lottery Fund approved a project planning grant for Working Lives in 2005, enabling the delivery of the successful pilot projects shown on this website. In autumn 2007 the Heritage Lottery Fund approved three years of funding for the project, enabling a Project Manager and Officer Team to be recruited in early 2008. A successful reminiscence session has already been held and the recording of oral histories is underway; the education and community programme will commence in summer 2008.
We want to hear from as many people as possible who worked in the east London industries and we want to work in partnership with as many schools and community groups as we can. For more information please download our leaflet or contact Anna Cant on 0208 553 4343 or anna@ech.org.uk
