Pip Oldham Oral Historian

18/12/2025

Great to see several oral history projects included in the arrangement and description team's highlights of 2025. Thank you National Library of New Zealand for this work https://natlib.govt.nz/blog/posts/highlights-of-2025-from-the-librarys-arrangement-and-description-team?fbclid=IwY2xjawOxIGZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeQaLpsG5RyvxgFMDAqgtEJUEfQQAulRCH2Vh5n7vEGjm2p9OPCMCI1Rf4Ar8_aem_xxPVeFWPlSWd096rMotwVg

From documents of Māori protest to the Pākaitore oral history project and much more.

19/05/2025

I've shared Elizabeth Ward's lovely article UNPICKING THE STITCHES: LEARNING ABOUT WOMEN’S
LIVES FROM A SIGNATURE WALL HANGING with several friends interested in stitching and quilting, and they have shared in their networks. Everyone has enjoyed reading the background to this quilt thank you Liz Ward

The New Zealand Journal of Public History is delighted to share the publication of Elizabeth Ward's article "Unpicking the Stitches: Learning About Women’s Lives from a Signature Wall Hanging”.
Dr Ward uses this wonderful wall hanging, donated to Marlborough Museum in 2023, to explore themes including women’s craft and labour, and their contributions on the home front during the First and Second World Wars. The article sheds light on the lives and experiences of the women of Clarence Bridge in a deft blend of family history, women’s history and social history.
Read the full article athttps://phanza.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Elizabeth-Ward-Unpicking-the-Stitches.pdf

The wall hanging is now displayed at Flaxbourne Heritage Centre Te Whare Taonga o Waiharakeke.

24/04/2022

In his BBC series "The Museums that Make us" Neil McGregor has been asking museums to select one object that sums up the ways in which they are engaging with new problems and new communities. Sain Ffagan: Amgueddfa Werin Cymru - St Fagans National Museum of History chose its sound archive for the diversity of ways culture is represented through sound. The episode is a great illustration of why the life of every person matters: people are the carriers of culture. This is why is so valuable!

30/03/2022

Have just listened to this episode of This American Life - heart rending but so helpful look at death and dying

We ask the people who work at a hospice facility some personal questions about death and dying.

13/03/2022

A new series on the BBC from Neil McGregor - of history of the world in 101 objects fame - this time looking at the changing role of museums and why they are so vital. The podcast series The Museums that Make us is on BBC Sounds and episode 1 well worth a listen. This interview on History Extra gives some of the thinking including this:
"Every generation has different questions about the present, so that necessarily also means that they have to look differently at the past. In other words, we have always had to keep rethinking who we were and how we got to where we are now."
Oral history territory.

In his new BBC Radio 4 series, curator and broadcaster Neil MacGregor explores the changing role of Britain’s museums. He explains to Matt Elton why these venues are more vital now than ever

11/03/2022

Just spent a happy hour on my daily walk listening to episode 1 of the podcast series from the Keystrokes Per Minute Oral History project, voices from the Public Service Typing Pool - wonderful listening and now looking forward to the next episode. Keystrokes Per Minute Oral History project https://storycollective.nz/?fbclid=IwAR3jW2w6XwzaUapt2K3cN07M7oR4UaT-ggov09DaqKvXA8ZCQbFOa89swl0

Untold stories by unheard voices

22/02/2022

I was looking for something else and happened on this - a visual diary of 10 years made by taking a picture at precisely 12.34pm every day. Fantastic!

Samuel Ryde has tried to take a photograph every day at the same time for 10 years. Why?

06/02/2022

Fantastic innovation from Wick in the far north of Scotland - dialling up oral history recordings from an old style telephone handset -

An old-fashioned phone fitted with a Raspberry Pi is allowing local daycare centres and care homes to dial up hundreds of oral history recordings.

15/12/2021

I love the way graphic storytelling animates this interview with one of NZ's oldest people - superb

World wars, great depressions, global pandemics – she's lived through them all.

27/11/2021

Interested to see this new kit for remote phone interviewing. Thanks for this great review from Doug Boyd at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History

Zoom has just released the PodTrak P4 ($199), an impressive recorder with the built-in ability to easily conduct and record high quality telephone interviews. As more of our oral history projects include remote interviewing, most of the focus is on online web conferencing systems such as Zoom or The