A Coventry City Councillor today invited community groups to help with a unique oral history project led by the council’s Leisure Services Department called ‘Coventry Lives’, which will record the words of hundreds of local people speaking about the City’s past, present and future.

Councillor Gillian Darby, Chair of the Arts and Culture Policy Team stressed that community groups who get involved will be trained as volunteer interviewers and researchers, and will help select people for interviews. She said:

"This project encourages local people to talk about their memories of life in Coventry in the past, their lives in the City today and their hopes for the future. We are keen that their involvement starts right from the beginning."

Groups of people, who volunteer to tape interviews, will help to create the biggest ever survey of life in Coventry. Councillor Darby said:

"We want to involve every age group, those who have lived in the City all their lives and those who have migrated here so that people in the future will get a comprehensive first hand account of the day to day life in Coventry at the turn of the millennium.

"The interviews will also be of immediate benefit to anyone who wants to know how things have changed here this Century. They will really bring the past to life as well as shedding new light on Coventry today."

Phil Bannister of the Starley Housing Co-operative, one of the groups who plan to link into the project, said:

"This is an exciting and worthwhile project, which complements the work that we are looking forward o working with the ‘Coventry Lives’ Team."