Tales of the unexpectedly saved
The June (No. 399) edition of When Saturday Comes featured the kind of rescue tale we love to hear.
Hartlepool fan Ed Parkinson had an aged football film canister in his possession for over 40 years and when he finally got to see what was on it (a struggle in itself) – it wasn’t he expected at all but a unique glimpse of his club in action that otherwise would have disappeared.
By kind permission of Ed and the editor of WSC here’s a link to a pdf of the article.
Webinars and Workshops
When we kicked off The Great Save blog in March 2020 as a way of bringing interested parties together we had no idea it was very likely to be via webinars and Zoom workshops. It may be less hand-on but it may be more accessible to many.
SPORTING HERITAGE
Sporting Heritage has monthly webinars and the next three coming up are:
Making the Most of Your Collections
Thursday 25 June, 11.00am – 12 noon
Do you want to do more with your collection but not sure where to start? A good catalogue is at the heart of all collection work. Join us for an introduction to simple cataloguing and how it can be used to start using, promoting and developing your collection in new ways. Tickets here.
Is Your Collection at Risk?
Thursday 23 July, 11.00am – 12 noon
There are many factors that can put collections at risk. Some of which we can plan for and others less so. Join us for an informative look a range of risk factors, including those caused by the latest COVID-19 pandemic, how you can mitigate against them and where to find help and support if you run into difficult times. Tickets here.
Practical Approaches to Oral History
Thursday 27 August, 11.00am – 12 noon
Tickets here.
UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
One of the pioneer organisations in our space is the University of Exeter who, working with Exeter City FC and the Supporters’ Trust, have made great steps in the preservation and use of heritage material.
For the benefit of interested supporters they will be running workshops, demonstrating what they have achieved and how they’ve gone about it. These were postponed from Spring 2020 but are now planned as online workshops from July-October 2020 and The Great Save is very likely to be featured on one of the sessions.
Maidstone: United in Football Exhibition film
John Bunyard writes:
Just before the ‘Maidstone: United in Football’ exhibition closed in January, I went to the town museum to meet a man from Stones TV, Maidstone United’s video channel. In front of his camera, I explained the aims of the exhibition, talked through the best exhibits, and regretted that there were as yet no plans for a permanent display. Then coronavirus arrived. I heard nothing more, so I assumed his project had been forgotten; but then, in May, a 22-minute documentary appeared on YouTube. Watching it, I couldn’t help thinking about the power of football stories, brought alive by exhibits, not only to entertain and enlighten but also to move people. I think it says plenty about why The Great Save campaign has tangible value to both individuals and society.
The book of the exhibition is available here.
Don’t forget press photography
Pete Hurn, a new TGS follower, writes:
This is a great idea and you are right about losing stuff when someone passes away. I was guilty of just allowing a collection of die-cast vehicle models to be slung out last year when an elderly relative died. I didn’t have the time or energy to deal with it.
Anyway, I specialise in football press photographs and have done so for 20 years. I have a still-growing customer base and a website with well over 8000 original press photos on sale. I read your list of what constitutes memorabilia on your front page and was horrified to see ‘press photographs’ omitted from your listing. That’s despite using a few old photographic images at various points through your site! Please can you add “press photographs” to your front page listing?
OK, Pete, apologies and will do. Pete’s own website is here.
A different kind of keeper – Watford Museum
At present, The Great Save’s fundamental goal is to encourage football supporters to set up formal heritage groups to preserve, curate, display and use memorabilia. In the last blog we featured Hatters Heritage (Luton) and this time (below) we look at 100 Years of Coconuts (Cambridge United) as examples of such groups.
But this type of group is not the only solution. Often it has to be – because there is no-one to step in. However the folks at Watford are lucky. They have a sympathetic and energetic local authority museum team who have been taking an active role in building partnerships over a decade to treasure the heritage of the club.
In these circumstances Great Saver Geoff Wicken believes there’s no real need to create a new heritage group because in effect they already have one. Here, museum curator Sarah Priestley tells the full story of the Watford Way and how it has been achieved.
Community Interest Company Corner
100 Years of Coconuts by Pat Morgan – Cambridge United
What’s the formal status of your heritage group and which groups are involved?
‘100 Years of Coconuts’ is the heritage arm of the Cambridge United Supporters’ Trust, Cambridge Fans United (CFU). It is formally constituted for financial purposes and operates separately from the trust, but is responsible to and reports to the trust board. The CFU trust board provides two nominees for the Coconuts management committee, which draws its other members from the CUFC supporter base.
Coconuts benefits from the encouragement and support of the football club and the supporters’ club, which is distinct from the supporters’ trust. It has been able to draw on the expertise, freely given, of local heritage industry professionals and organisations, including the Museum of Cambridge and Cambridge Museum of Technology.
How did you get started?
It started in 2012, the centenary year of Abbey/Cambridge United. A year-long, HLF-funded project saw a group of volunteers led by CFU chair Dave Matthew-Jones launching an online museum (100yearsofcoconuts.co.uk) showcasing aspects of the club’s history and objects associated with it, supporters’ stories and more. A start was made on the collection of oral history and the group staged an event commemorating the creation of the Cambridge Rules (1838-63), which informed the FA’s Laws of 1863. Cambridge is, as everyone should know, the birthplace of modern football. (There ought to be a competition between all the places that claim to be the birthplace of modern football. Ed.)
After that project ended, Coconuts set about expanding and improving, collecting stuff and applying for further Lottery support. The resulting HLF-funded project enabled the creation of a mini-museum located in the supporters’ club building (The Story of the U’s); collaboration with community, heritage and education organisations aimed at communicating the story; the inauguration of the Cambridge United Hall of Fame (cuhalloffame.org.uk) to celebrate the club’s great personalities; and the launch of ex-players’ association CUFPA.
How much stuff have you got?
An awful lot. It’s impossible to quantify – people haven’t been slow to donate (sometimes to sell) the contents of their lofts and garages. At one point the volume of stuff coming in was unmanageable: donors would insist on donating programme collections that duplicated those in the Coconuts collection. Over the years the group has amassed historic strips, medals, trophies, badges, scarves and other commercial merchandise, documents, correspondence, a pair of ladies’ knickers … the list is almost endless.
How do you store your stuff?
At first it was necessary to rent commercial storage space, which made fundraising imperative. Of late the collection has found a home in a disused tea bar at the Abbey – far from ideal in terms of conservation, storage and accessibility, but at least it’s free.
How do you make it available for public view?
There’s the mini-museum for a start. Objects from the collection have been used to create handling boxes for work with local schools, and temporary displays have been put on at the Museum of Cambridge. The website is used to showcase stuff digitally; a recent project has seen the scanning and publication of historic editions of the late, lamented, Cambridge Saturday night sports paper, the Light Blue, for example.
What’s the best / most unusual memorabilia find?
Perhaps a replica Jules Rimet Trophy from 1966 – copies were sent out to local football associations that year but no one knows how one ended up at the Abbey Stadium.
Or perhaps the National Playing Fields Association Challenge Cup trophy, which United won in 1967 – it was the first trophy claimed by manager Bill Leivers (in his first game in charge). The U’s beat Arsenal 2-0, since you ask.
What piece of advice would you offer people trying to set up a group like yours?
The best advice is to take advice – from heritage industry people, from football people, from other football collections, from sports heritage bodies, from academics, from supporters, from local people, from anyone. There’s a lot of learning to be done in sports heritage, which is a relatively new sphere of cultural activity.
Two other tips: catalogue, catalogue, catalogue; and get funding wherever you can.
Reaching for the heights
This isn’t quite on the nail for memorabilia but Roger is working with University of Reading on a project to discover the heights of professional footballers at different time points in the game’s history from 1870 to 1950. Handbooks and club histories at the ready!
A simplified and club-specific data entry spreadsheet has been created which will require a couple of hours work by club historians to complete – name, height and if possible, date of birth for about 100 players per club in total. The project was featured on the BBC website here but the original data entry form proved too cumbersome. If you do have the resource and time to help with this project please get in touch by email and we’ll send out the necessary.
The Great Save on Twitter, as well
Reluctantly moving with the times we have created a Twitter account here but we are absolutely just as happy to take feedback and new stories in the reply box on our home page here or via our Contact page here.
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