Be part of an exciting project to explore Sherwood Forest's hidden memories

Nottingham based community theatre company Excavate are starting work on the creation of a series of audio walks that will tell a new story of the culture, identity and history of the Sherwood Forest area.

Working with Inspire and the Miner2Major Landscape Parntership scheme, and funded by Arts Council England and the Lottery Heritage Fund, the project will gather memories and stories from towns and villages, focussing on both hidden histories and contemporary experience to allow people to experience and understand the area in a new way. 

Over the summer the team will be visiting festivals, libraries and community venues in towns and villages across the area to gather people’s tales and knowledge, as well as offering them the chance to submit their own stories and insights through Sherwood Storycards and the Sherwood Voices website.  Once this material has been gathered the company will offer people the chance to help shape this into a series of seven recorded stories that will become part of newly created or already established walking routes over the autumn, ready to be launched next year.

The finished pieces will be written by Andy Barrett, whose many plays for BBC Radio, New Perspectives and the Nottingham Playhouse, have been based on local histories and who is looking forward to getting out and about over the coming months.  ‘Over the last year we’ve all embraced the local and have realised how important our neighbours and communities are.  This project is a chance to dig into the diversity of voice and experience that make up the places where we live, and to encourage people to explore their towns and villages anew through the power of story’.

The project is particularly interested in hearing from people who feel that their stories may not have been told, or that their understanding of the place where they live is different to that which is normally expressed.

The towns and villages that we are focussing on are Clipstone, Edwinstowe, Ollerton, Rainworth, Ravenshead, Newstead, Papplewick, Linby, Hucknall, Bestwood and Calverton.

If you would like to know more or are interested in helping to tell a new story about this area, or of sharing something about your town or village that people may not know, then please click here to visit the Sherwood Voices project page.