Dundee is famous for Jute, Jam and Journalism. Now the city’s Verdant Works is launching a new project to keep jute workers’ memories alive and it needs the help of Dundonians aged 60 and over.
When Dundee pensioners Len and Hettie Jamieson saw an advert inviting people to share their memories of the city at an event in the Verdant Works last year, they jumped at the chance to get involved.
Along with nine others, they talked about their memories of old Dundee and the kind of lives they led as youngsters.
From playing with old style toys like yo-yos, kaleidoscopes and skipping ropes, to tales of long gone shops, tenement life and the characters they knew from the streets in which they grew up, what surprised them most was that many of the group’s memories from different parts of the city overlapped.
Now the couple are looking forward to supporting a new music and memory project called Memory Exchange: Weaving in and out, which is being launched at the Verdant Works on March 2.
Assisted by song writer Petra Vergunst and the museum’s Learning and Audiences Officer Anna Murray, participants will be given special access to original archive materials representing hundreds of years of Dundee’s history.
They will be encouraged to use these to follow threads of stories linking themes of community, identity and the world of work to collaboratively create a piece of music together.
The form and nature of the songs will be entirely up to the participants, but it is hoped that it will provide the inspiration to create a piece of music to be sung across community choirs in Dundee and to help to mark and explore the industrial history of the city.
The project will culminate in a free public performance on Saturday May 7, also featuring pupils from St Johns High School.
Len, 77, a Lochee-born retired butcher who has lived in Dundee all his life, told The Courier he hoped many of Dundee’s over-60s will get involved.
He said: “It’s very interesting to have these memories recorded and to talk about how things were and all the rest of it.”
Len describes his own school days as being “very happy” despite his family having “no money”.
A former pupil of Dens Road Primary, his father Martin worked with DC Thomson & Co Ltd for 51 years as a stereo-typist, working on the Sunday Post, Sporting Post and Weekly News. His mum Christine worked as a shop assistant at G.L Wilson’s, which stood at the corner of Murrygate and Commercial Street where the Disney store now stands.
Many of the reminiscences being collated by Verdant Works relate to the jute industry. The museum weaves the tale of jute with the life and works of old Dundee, from the incredible rise of the industry to its subsequent decline.
So it’s appropriate that some of Len’s most poignant reminiscences relate to his grandmother on his mum’s side who worked in the city’s jute mills as a child.
Len said: “When my grandmother was about 12, she went to work in the mills in the mornings and then went to school in the afternoons from 1pm until 4pm. There was no health and safety in those days, and she lost one-and-half fingers in the machinery during her time there. It’s quite remarkable when you think about it.”
Verdant Works’ Learning and Audiences Officer Anna Murray said the music and memory project recognised that Dundee’s local history is a long and tangled web of events and hidden gems. And recording the human side of that history was crucially important for future generations.
She said: “We’ve done a few reminiscences sessions in the past. These are normally informal drop-in sessions, encouraging people of a certain age to get out of the house and talk in a social setting.
“What we want to do with this new project is make something creative out of it instead. We want to concentrate on the workforce and their experiences of Dundee to help understand the history of the mills.
“It’s about the idea of a Dundee person growing up and the world of work around them.
“There will be three sessions and then a performance. It needs to be quite focused using memories to inspire words and lyrics.”
Anna said many of the participants will not have worked in the jute mills themselves. But they may have had relatives or knew people who did. The museum was working hard to keep memories alive.
She added: “Many young people in Dundee today have heard of Jute, Jam and Journalism. But they might not really know what jute was. We get a lot of primary school children coming into the museum now through the Curriculum for Excellence and older pupils learning about the science of jute making and technology. This kind of project greatly helps with their understanding.”
Memory Exchange: Weaving in and out runs from 3pm until 4.30pm on March 2 at Verdant Works. Subsequent sessions are from 2pm until 4pm on March 16 and April 2, with the performance from 2 until 3pm on May 2.
Contact Learning and Audiences Officer Anna for more information- 07341127417 e: verdantlearning@dundeeheritage.co.uk