Creswell Crags is delighted to announce that we have become a Digital Partner of Local History Café, an initiative dedicated to celebrating local history and creating community connections as a way of helping prevent isolation and loneliness, especially amongst more vulnerable or at risk community members.
Local History Cafes are usually face-to-face heritage and wellbeing get-togethers at six partner museums and libraries around the East Midlands. They consist of heritage presentations on the local area, tea and cake, and time to connect with other community members. The programme was developed by social enterprise Crafting Relationships in 2016. Since their inception, cafes have had the pleasure of meeting almost 700 individuals.
Since April this year, Local History Café moved online to a closed Facebook group (Local History Cafe Online), broadening their area of interest to the whole of the Midlands. The group has featured weekly presentations by a wide variety of speakers on history and heritage topics alongside regular quizzes, mystery objects and sharing of memories and stories from group members, and which included a talk from Creswell Crags earlier in the year.
From the 30th November Local History Cafe are happy to welcome Creswell Crags as a Digital Partner. Katherine Brown, Director of Crafting Relationships said, “The Local History Cafe programme was designed to champion the work of all the fabulous individuals and organisations dedicated to history and heritage. They offer the hook that encourages local people to join us and from there we can increase wellbeing through building community relationships, creating opportunities for lifelong learning and supporting active ageing. In person cafes are still not possible, so we are very happy to build digital connections with organisations like Creswell Crags who care deeply about and miss their community and visitors during this time. We are very much looking forward to learning more about their work and welcoming them to our growing community.”
Rebecca Morris-Buck, Communications and Programmes Manager said, “Creswell Crags is very proud to join Local History Café as a Digital Partner and we very much look forward to being involved. We’ve admired Local History Café since its inception and it’s an honour to be asked. We are firm believers in the power of local museums and heritage organisations to be of benefit to their communities, as well as celebrating and preserving the past. We have so many stories to share, from the Ice Age, via a cave full of early modern Witch Marks, to the more recent context of Creswell as a mining community. In 2020, we’ve seen the power of digital networks to keep us all connected and – until we can all meet again – we are thrilled to be part of an online network that is all about making connections.”
