THE photographs in today’s feature are just a glimpse at a huge collection of historic images that will soon be made available to the public.

This exciting new initiative, called Worcester Life Stories, was launched by Worcester City Council and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust at the end of June thanks to an award of £79,400 by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

The two-year project will provide a whole host of workshops, exhibitions and activities and by the end of this year, the creation of an online platform called Know Your Place Worcester. Here, local people will be able to discover many thousands of historic photographs and maps, and share their own knowledge and stories of the city.

A second platform, itself called Worcester Life Stories will be developed alongside local people and enable users to create and download their own life books and movies, full of images and memories, as well as accessing history packs on a range of local themes.

Today’s photographs are taken from the Worcester City Historic Environment Record which holds a collection of around 35,000 photographs from the 1950s onwards.

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The images were taken by officers of the city council going about their day to day work, especially focusing on building conservation and public health. As a result they include a fabulous range of images right across the city, from the more familiar, like our historic High Street, all the way through to areas of the city that were bulldozed in the slum clearances of the 1960s.

They illustrate bustling street scenes and every day life, local people going about their business and occasionally stopping to pose for the camera. It is a fascinating, nostalgic window into the pre-digital age of the 20th century.

If you would like to find out more about the project, the first workshop on Know Your Place Worcester will take place online this Friday, July, 31, from 2.30pm-4pm.

Further information is available at worcesterlifestories.org.uk or on Facebook and Twitter. To book, contact project leaders Sheena Payne-Lunn and Dr Natasha Lord via worcesterlifestories@gmail.com