The opportunity to capture cricket’s importance in the lives of ordinary people, and celebrate the grassroots game is the focus of an exciting new project between the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at the University of Glamorgan and MCC (Marylebone Cricket Club).
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Technology Strategy Board Knowledge Transfer Partnership Taking the Field will create a collection of digital media artefacts – short oral histories complemented with music, video and photographs - that reflect the importance of grassroots cricket to local communities in both the UK and Sri Lanka.
Cricket lover Emma Peplow is the Research Associate who will work on the project, which builds on the Centre’s work with Glamorgan Cricket Club. Working on the project over a two year period she will collect digital stories from local clubs that will be displayed by the MCC Museum both online and at Lord’s. These digital stories will be created using accessible technology with the support of the MCC Museum. The use of digital technology aims to enthuse and engage local communities to create innovative artefacts that will complement the MCC Museum’s existing collection.
These artefacts will document the past from the bottom up and give local clubs the opportunity to portray their history and its changing role in the community using their own voices, archives and ideas. By display in the MCC Museum local teams and the communities surrounding them will be given a worldwide, prestigious platform to document their history. In return, the MCC Museum will expand its collection to further cover both grassroots and international cricket, and use these artefacts to promote the game.
Taking the Field will focus on key themes describing cricket and its place in society; such as the effect of migration, decolonization, changing women’s roles and class on the local cricket clubs and their communities. As such, the project will act as a social history of the two countries and attempt to document the long links between them, from the colonial past to current, post-Tsunami reconstruction.
Professor Mike Wilson who is supervising the project commented, “The project itself will attempt to reflect the diverse nature of cricket in both the UK and Sri Lanka, as well as the character of cricket clubs and the communities they serve. It will chart the changes of both good and bad, experienced by clubs and communities over the past century.”
Due to the nature of both the content and the medium, the project intends to encourage further contributions from clubs not initially involved in the project through extensive promotion and training. This project aims to be self-sustaining and continue as a stage for clubs to tell their own stories; histories that will then be preserved in MCC’s archive.
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Notes to Editors
Media Contact: Jake Gilmore, AHRC Communications Manager; T: 0797 099 4586,
E: j.gilmore@ahrc.ac.uk
The University of Glamorgan is the second largest University in Wales with over 22,000 students studying a comprehensive range of programmes from the Creative Industries in its new state-of the-art Cardiff campus through to Aeronautical Engineering.
Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Each year the AHRC provides approximately £112 million from the Government to support research and postgraduate study in the arts and humanities, from languages and law, archaeology and English literature to design and creative and performing arts. In any one year, the AHRC makes approximately 700 research awards and around 1,350 postgraduate awards. Awards are made after a rigorous peer review process, to ensure that only applications of the highest quality are funded. The quality and range of research supported by this investment of public funds not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK.