This element of the project involved the young people of North Smethwick, mainly existing service users participating in a training programme delivered by a representative from the Oral History Society and the Connecting Histories project based at Central Library, Birmingham. The young people attended a two-day session supervised by SBYF staff over the weekend period. This took place at the North Smethwick Resource Centre.

The young persons learnt about interview techniques, methods of constructing questions, how to conduct themselves as an interviewer, how to transcribe interviews and the different methods and devices which can be adopted to record the interview.

This was a very informative, fun and a very appealing session to young people where they were able to learn about different areas relating to oral histories. This also contributed to increasing the young people’s sense of ownership of the heritage project.

I thought this was going to be boring and only came because my friends were coming but I was surprised. It turned out to be really good and fun. I learnt some interesting things. The part I enjoyed the most was using the different recording equipment and role-playing with the group – that was really funny!

Afhaz – Service User