Reunions, Reminiscence and Reflections

During the past few months, the BSU archive team have been fortunate enough to be part of several Alumni Reunion events, organised by Ruth Russell from the Alumni office at the university.

Groups of former students are welcomed back to Newton Park, and enjoy refreshments and a chance to be together once more, in the beautiful surroundings of the main reception rooms of Main House. Later, there's the chance for a walk around the grounds, with a guide from the archive or alumni teams to talk about some of the new developments on campus. 

Sharing stories with the class of 1963-66

The women of 1963-66

The archive team always put on a display of materials, documents and images from the relevant era, and talk to the group about their memories and experiences of life at college in former times. If we're lucky, new donations are made to the collection by the people who come back. Alternatively, those who bring their photographs and documents for us to see can have them scanned on the spot, which was the case at the most recent events last week.

We can also make arrangements for people to come back for oral history interviews at another time, or take down the details of contacts for the future.

Each time one of these meetings occurs, we learn something new; yet another layer of history to add to our ever-growing archive collection. On Saturday we heard for the first time, about the protest and sit-in of 1976, when students occupied main house to demonstrate against the shortage of jobs in the teaching sector. Emulating the photographs taken back then, three former students climbed onto the window ledge outside main house in an echo of that long hot summer of  the mid-70s, when flares were at their most extreme, and seemingly everyone had loads of long hair...

Pictures of the past - images from 1975-76. The student sit-in is featured, top centre

Recreating the student sit-in. (Class of 1973-77)

Its a great privilege to be at these events, and share experiences of the past in a setting we all appreciate. The majority of people we've met so far were trained as teachers, and I feel there is something quite distinctive about them. They have developed in others a love of learning, kindled sparks in children and young people, and made themselves heard, one way or another, in decades of education. They are interesting, thoughtful, intelligent and appreciative of the education they received. Of course these are generalisations, but here in the archive we have had many chances to discuss the people we've met, and these are the conclusions we've come to.

We hope to be able to be an intrinsic part of these reunions for a long time to come, and to be there to hear and share many more stories. 

Lunch, a chat and a DVD of old photographs, with the class of 1973-77

(all new photographs taken by Kate James)