“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley”
Robert Burns (1759-1796) To a Mouse, On turning her up in her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785
The brief for the final project of my Masters in Multidisciplinary Innovation at Northumbria University was to set up an oral history project at the National Trust property Seaton Delaval Hall and one of the conclusions my group came to was how archiving oral histories was quiet tricky. One of our final outputs was therefore a brief for another project that would into the archiving of oral histories,1 this went on to become this PhD project. [what was the task of the brief]
Page from Multidisciplinary Innovation MA 2018-2019 Final Project Report – Seaton Delaval Hall (OHD_RPT_0010)
The original approach for this project is illustrated in a timeline made in 2021.2 It was very simple: a designer (me) was going to record oral histories and then use the recordings to design a system for making reuse easy. Seaton Delaval Hall was going to provide me with my oral history participants and be my testing grounds for my new system.
This did not go as planned for multiple reasons.
I was not completely confident that designing a ‘solution’ was going to solve the problem with oral history reuse. There is a suggestion of these insecurities in the presentation I did during my interview in early 2020.3 The AI summary of the presentation script shows I wished to “[explore] new approaches to archiving and accessing oral histories that go beyond traditional methods. Developing user-friendly and engaging interfaces for exploring and interacting with oral history collections” but also “[address] the challenges of maintaining and updating digital technologies over time.” I presented similar ideas over a year later at the start of my research period, only this time I emphasised how humans would have to fill the gaps of digital systems.4
Google Gemini Summary of OHD_PRS_0124 [generated 04 / 01 / 2025]
This presentation outlines the key challenges and opportunities within the proposed PhD research, focusing on the intersection of oral history, design, and heritage management at Seaton Delaval Hall.
Key Challenges:
Bridging Disciplinary Gaps: Communication and collaboration between oral historians, designers, and National Trust staff can be challenging due to differing perspectives, terminologies, and priorities. Overcoming communication barriers and fostering effective cross-disciplinary dialogue is crucial.
Defining and Achieving Project Goals: Determining the specific goals and objectives of the project and aligning them with the needs and expectations of all stakeholders. Managing expectations and navigating potential conflicts between different parties.
Addressing the "Deep Dark Secret" of Oral History: Finding innovative ways to ensure the long-term accessibility, usability, and relevance of archived oral history recordings.
Technological Limitations: Addressing the challenges of maintaining and updating digital technologies over time. Finding sustainable solutions that are not overly reliant on complex or rapidly evolving technologies.
Key Opportunities:
Developing Innovative Archival Practices: Exploring new approaches to archiving and accessing oral histories that go beyond traditional methods. Developing user-friendly and engaging interfaces for exploring and interacting with oral history collections.
Fostering Community Engagement: Engaging the local community in the oral history process and creating a sense of ownership over the collected materials.
Advancing Cross-disciplinary Research: Developing new methodologies and frameworks for collaborative research across disciplines, such as oral history, design, and heritage management.
Addressing the "Digital Divide": Ensuring that digital technologies are accessible and usable by all members of the community, regardless of their technological skills or socio-economic background.
The presentation emphasizes the importance of a collaborative and iterative approach, with ongoing reflection and adaptation throughout the research process. It highlights the need to embrace uncertainty and explore the unknown, while also acknowledging the potential challenges and limitations.
Google Gemini Summary of OHD_PRS_0125 [generated 04 / 01 / 2025]
Challenges:
Bridging the gap between oral history, design, and heritage management: Requires effective communication and collaboration across disciplines.Needs to address the diverse needs and perspectives of all stakeholders.
Developing a sustainable and user-friendly system: Ensuring long-term accessibility and usability of the system for both staff and the public. Addressing the challenges of maintaining and updating digital technologies over time.
Balancing human and digital approaches: Finding the right balance between human interaction and digital technologies in the archival process. Recognizing the limitations of both digital and physical archives.
Ethical considerations: Ensuring equitable access and addressing issues of power and representation in the collection and dissemination of oral histories.
Environmental sustainability: Considering the environmental impact of digital technologies and the potential risks associated with climate change.
Opportunities:
Fostering community engagement: Creating a more participatory approach to oral history collection that empowers the local community.
Developing innovative archival practices: Exploring new methods for archiving and accessing oral histories that go beyond traditional models.
Leveraging technology to enhance accessibility: Utilizing digital tools to make oral histories more accessible to a wider audience.
Developing a more sustainable and resilient archival system: Combining digital and physical approaches to ensure long-term preservation and access.
Conducting cross-disciplinary research: Exploring new methodologies for collaborative research across disciplines, such as oral history, design, and heritage management.
The presentation emphasizes the importance of a human-centered approach, recognizing the limitations of technology and the crucial role of human interaction in the collection, preservation, and interpretation of oral histories. It also highlights the need for a dynamic and adaptable system that can evolve over time to meet the changing needs of the community and the challenges of the digital age.
[info on predecessors]
I felt a tension between a desire to make a product, something similar to my predecessors5 [check reference] and a desire to ensure whatever I designed would actually be realised. As the design theorist Cameron Tonkinwise writes, “a wide range of people must be convinced to lend their money and materials and components and time and skills to realizing a particular design.”6 A PhD is not long and I am but one person. This produced some uncertainty around the output, as illustrated by a mind map where I answered questions about my project and the reply I gave to “what might the answer look like?” was – “HA HA.”7
My doubts around creating a product and whether it might be adopted were confirmed by the designs I made and later abandoned.8 These designs varied from digital to analogue but in every instance I struggled to imagine how they would be integrated into the existing system of the Hall.
Susan Leigh Star experienced the difficulty of having a group adopt a particular design when she was developing a [something something] system for a biology lab. Even though she followed the basic principles of participatory design, the biologist did not use the system because Star and her team had not considered the infrastructure that existed around the system.9 If I look at the product designs I created, I had not considered where it would go, who would make them, who would monitor them, let alone the ethics and the paperwork making materials like oral history public.10
Mike Monterio’s Ruined by Design also fed into my fear of creating, as his discussions on the destruction caused by various parties in Silicon Valley made me worry about my own data mining which took the form of oral history.11 Monterio also refers to Erika Hall and Kio Stark’s book, Just enough research, which offers examples of failed designs, such as the Segway, being prime examples of people not doing enough research before they design.12 I was afraid that, as a singular person working on a topic for a mere four years, I would not be able to do enough research for people to feel confident enough to sacrifice their time, money and skills to help integrate my design into their existing systems.
Another reason I was unsure about designing a specific solution was because it is really hard to test an archive, as I wrote in this blog post, Testing Archives.13 The true test of an archive is whether it still exists decades into the future and I could not do that in the four years I had been given for this study. Secondly, my collaborative partners at Seaton Delaval Hall and the National Trust moved at a slower pace than my original timeline had accounted for and a workshop I ran during the Seaton Delaval Hall Community Research Day indicated there was a general adversity to radical change or experimentation.14 This was especially the case with the Hall as the Trust’s presence had not always been appreciated by the local community.
On Monday 11th April 2022 I attended and ran a workshop at the Seaton Delaval Hall Community Research Day. It was an exceptionally interesting affair and mostly certain did not go the way I imagined. If I had to sum it up I would describe it as engaging but impractical. To say that it got deep real quick would be an understatement but the to which it went was fascinating. It was also great to just bounce ideas off people. However it felt like whenever I attempt to move the conversation to getting to more practical solutions people rather stayed in philosophical and imaginary realm or they would just explain why it would not be possible to change that.
All this put me in a rather odd position where I felt I could not comprehensively test my solutions, or do enough research for a solution to be adequate enough for the staff and volunteers at Seaton Delaval Hall. However, this changed when I rediscovered Mierle Laderman Ukeles and her work as a maintenance artist via Charlie Morgan’s blog post,When the crisis fades, what gets left behind?.15 Mierle Laderman Ukeles is a feminist performance artist whose work is themed around maintenance and service work. She wrote a Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! out of frustration with the art world’s failure to engage with the routine labour of everyday life, including dismissing her role as a mother.16 [chk reference] In the manifesto Ukeles writes how the world is split into the ‘development system’ and the ‘maintenance system’. The maintenance system Ukeles considers as ‘the life instinct’ where the aim is to “preserve the new; sustain the change; protect progress” or to put it in more simple terms – keep things going. The development system – the creation of things – is ‘the death instinct’ focussed on “pure individual creation; the new; change; progress.”17 The maintenance system however holds a low status in society due to it being repetitive, boring, and endless or as Ukeles writes “maintenance is a drag.”18 The development system on the other hand is “excitement”! Ukeles summarises the dynamic between these two systems in the sentence – “after the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?”19
The sentiment of Ukeles’ work gave me a new way of framing my research topic, where instead of attempting to solve the issue of oral history reuse I would research what it takes to maintain access to oral histories to ensure reuse can occur in the first place. Thus, my focus switched from development to maintenance, and created a Manifesto for Maintenance Design 2021!.20 However, working out what maintenance is is not easy because for the most part, it is invisible or taken-for-granted.
To make the invisible parts visible I practiced research through design working together with people at the organisations I did a placement with; a form of action research. Action research (AR) is a research ‘strategy’ merging together: research, action, and participation.21 AR seeks to be democratic, by being “a situated process” where the local people are not “passive recipients (subjects) of the research process” but “active participants” in the project.22 Within these placements I was told what to do, I had some autonomy but generally I was given tasks to fulfil.
Seaton Delaval Hall
My main task during my placement at Seaton Delaval Hall was to create an on-site Research Room filled with material that was important to the Hall but could not be entered into entire collection.23 [explain NT collections] I did not design the physical space of the room but did design the room’s systems, processes, and forms; learning a lot about copyright and data protection in the process. I also occasionally had to step in to do room guiding when there were not enough volunteers. I helped set up the tech for an exhibition [add to archive]. And throughout I was able to get a better look at the Trust’s inner workings, from their SharePoint to their collection policies.
Over the first three years of my research I recorded oral histories from various people associated with the hall. I did the entire process, even making my own copyright right to ensure the recordings could be donated to Northumberland Archives. I also edited some of the recordings into a sound walk to demonstrate how oral histories could be used on site and I ran a listening session to share my work more widely with the Hall’s community.
Archives at NCBS
The two main documents I produced for Archives at NCBS were a Take-down policy and a sensitivity policy. Since I had already done some ethics and legal work with Seaton Delaval Hall this seemed a natural follow up. In addition, I also help facilitate that year’s staff away day, created a poster for the exhibition week of NCBS, and gave advice of oral history access options.
I also observed the work environment of the Archives throughout my placements and created a graphic which summarised my findings.
The British Library
My work at the British Library consisted of two audits. Th first was an audit of National Trust material the had not yet been catalogued and the second was an audit of the copyright status of the recordings in the National Trust sound collection.
These placements and case study allowed me to work and produce outputs directly within the organisations whose task it is to main access to oral history recordings. This hands-on experience helped me to not only identify the maintenance tasks which are essential to sustaining access to oral histories but also understand what obstructs the workers from completing these tasks.
SCANS OF THANK YOU NOTES
Through my placements I design and researched while I was also doing maintenance work, emotional labour.
Google Gemini Summary of OHD_PRS_0301 [generated 02 / 01 / 2025]
Challenges of Designing in GLAM (National Trust):
"Swimming through treacle": You encountered significant bureaucratic hurdles and resistance to change within the National Trust.
Difficulties with traditional design processes: Iterative testing and prototyping were hindered by constraints within the GLAM environment, such as limited access to materials, restricted technology use, and a reluctance to commit to changes.
Focus on "sexy" solutions: Your initial focus on developing "sleek" software solutions proved impractical due to the realities of working within a GLAM institution.
Shifting Focus - Maintenance as a Core Principle:
Learning from past failures: Recognizing that previous attempts at making oral histories more reusable often failed due to a lack of consideration for long-term maintenance.
Inspiration from Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Her concept of "maintenance art" and the distinction between "death instinct" (development) and "life instinct" (maintenance) profoundly influenced your research.
Embracing action research: Working directly within GLAM institutions, taking on tasks and collaborating with stakeholders, provided invaluable insights into the challenges and realities of archival work.
Key Learnings:
The importance of understanding GLAM's core functions: Recognizing that GLAM institutions primarily collect and preserve materials, often with complex legal and ethical considerations.
Balancing change and stability: Finding a balance between innovation and the need for long-term sustainability in archival practices.
The value of a "framework" approach: Rather than dictating specific solutions, focusing on creating flexible frameworks that allow GLAM institutions to adapt to changing needs.
SO my process went from production to research and instead of making a single output I made smaller outputs that contribute to this portfolio which offers a domain of design or a general theory.
Davydd Greenwood, and Morten Levin, Introduction to Action Research 2nd Edition: Social Research for Social Change, (Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, 2007), p. 2.; Davydd Greenwood, and Morten Levin, Introduction to Action Research: Social Research for Social Change, (Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, 1998), p. 6. ↩︎
Davydd Greenwood, and Morten Levin, Introduction to Action Research 2nd Edition: Social Research for Social Change, (Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, 2007), p. 75.; Robert Sommer, and Berbara Baker Sommer, A Practical Guide to Behavioral Research : Tools and Techniques. 5th ed., (New York , Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 212. ↩︎
