The session will examine how co-production can be embedded throughout a project, from early planning and interviewee selection to delivery, interpretation and creative outputs. Participants will be invited to consider how collaborative approaches can shape decision-making, build trust, and engage artists in the project outputs.
An interactive discussion will explore the realities and challenges of creative oral history while maintaining positive relationships with communities, stakeholders, and passionate individuals.
Together, we will consider how to balance the expectations of organisations such as the National Lottery Heritage Fund, local councils, private companies, and community participants, while ensuring projects remain ethical, sustainable, and community-led.
The session will highlight the value of community knowledge alongside professional, artistic expertise and explore the role of oral history practitioners as facilitators, collaborators, and relationship-builders. We will also share insights on project timelines, budgets, funding applications, and long-term impact.
Participants will leave with practical ideas, reflective tools, and greater confidence in developing collaborative approaches within their own oral history practice. Hosted by Leona Fensome
Leona Fensome
Leona Fensome is the Creative Director and Cultural Historian of Inkslingers Media, a multi award-winning audio production company creating radio programmes, audio documentaries, and oral history collections from community heritage stories. Her work has won Gold at the Independent Podcast Awards, Bronze at the Audio Production Awards and Gold and Silver at the Community Radio Awards.
She is a third-year, practice-led PhD researcher with the School of Computing, Engineering and Creative Industries, at the University of Bedfordshire (UoB), exploring the development of British student radio.
Oral history-based series include: The Making of Black Britain, radio documentary and podcast; Tape Letters and Iron-to-Iron Bike Ride radio documentary; Oral historian for the Communicating Connections project; Oral historian for the A County Remembers project; a partnership project with Herts Archives and St Albans Museum, and Oral Historian for Luton Made: Vauxhall a partnership project with Luton Borough Council and Vauxhall.
https://inkslingersmedialimited.com
Tony Macaluso
Tony Macaluso is Director of Chapel FM Arts & Radio Centre in Leeds and previously worked as Director of the WFMT Radio Network in Chicago, producing arts radio programmes and documentaries for radio stations around the world and overseeing the creation of the Studs Terkel Radio Archive a collection of 5,000+ radio programmes made by the legendary oral historian and radio DJ from Chicago. He studied Journalism, Chinese and Theatre at university. He is a board member of the Charles Parker Archive, co-chair of the UK Oral History Society Creative Special Interest Group and is engaged with various other radio and oral history projects.
Rosa Schling
Rosa Schling is an oral historian. She has been running community history and heritage projects since 2008, and co-founded On the Record in 2012. She is currently a doctoral researcher at the Institute of Education, working on the history of childcare activism and trains people in oral history for the Oral History Society.
childcarehistory.org.uk
childcare-voices
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