The Melbourne Letters
This Spring we launched “The Melbourne Letters.”
We can’t meet up at the moment so we invited Melbourne people to share your memories of past events and celebrations in the form of a letter (or email). Melbourne always puts on a great show when there is an excuse to celebrate so let’s all look back and share our memories of the great events and celebrations Melbourne has had in the past, from the Melbourne Carnival, Festival and Melbourne Wakes. National celebrations, the Centenary of the end of WW1, our Remembrance Sunday Parade and street parties for the Royal Jubilees and the highlights of the church calendar: Easter, Harvest and Christmas! These are all usually great opportunities to come together and meet old friends. Let us look back on our past celebrations and use these memories to imagine the future - how will we come together this year? What could we do to celebrate when we can? What will this mean to us?
We are working with Melanie Wheeler, Rebecca Goldsmith & Chris Wright to bring together quotes from some of your letters, “The Melbourne Letters” have been printed as booklets that will be shared with the community. You can download a copy of the booklet here and poster here. Rebecca Goldsmith has written a series of poems based on the Letters you can read the poems here.
Our sound artists Dr Chris Wright has been speaking to some of our letter writers. She has created recording based on memories of Melbourne Carnival , Melbourne Festival and other Celebrations you can listen to them by scanning the QR Code behind the titles with your phone camera.
We hope you enjoy the Melbourne Letters so far. If you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or any other materials you would be happy to lend to the team that could help to tell the stories of Melbourne celebrations, please get in touch.
As soon as we are all able to, the team would love to meet up, have a chat and record some of your memories in person.
This project is possible thanks to sponsorship from South Derbyshire District Council.
To find out more click to read OUR Melbourne Letter.
Follow The links from the 8 photographs below to see pictures and prose from the Melbourne Letters.
