By Rowan Wilkinson
LOVE YOUR STORIES
Naval commander, actress, nurse, Nigeria, paddleboard inventor, amateur boxer, life saver, Egypt, expelled from school, hockey player, local hero, Japan…
These are just a few of the professions, passions or places I associate with my grandparents. Each represents a snapshot of a bigger story which has played an intrinsic part in their colourful lives. Strangely, the more of these stories I hear, the more I realise I don’t know.
One of my grandfathers recently passed away, taking with him a multitude of stories about his life which sadly will now never be told. And he certainly had some stories. His were always wild and wonderful, and he would never fail to stun a room into bewildered awe—or occasional concern (!)—whenever we got together for family gatherings.
Events like this put into perspective how important it is to learn more about the lives of those closest to us while we still can. I’ve sometimes wondered, somewhat depressingly, whether I know more about the lives of certain celebrities or public figures than about the lives of some of my own relatives. Whilst we are constantly bombarded with such stories by the media, often the life stories of our own family, friends and, in particular, our ageing loved ones remain untold.
Passing on the life stories and learnings of those closest to us as a lasting legacy to family, friends and future generations should be a hugely important part of life. This, combined with a seemingly never-ending stream of my parents’ generation always saying how much they want to capture their parents’ life stories before it’s too late but never getting round to it, made me decide to try and do something about it and provide a service which professionally captures these stories. This formed the inspiration behind Love Your Stories.
We have assembled a crack team of award-winning radio journalists to give families and individuals the opportunity to document a loved one’s life stories with the same skill, compassion and professionalism that would be applied to the latest item on the national media agenda.
With years of experience making documentaries and producing high-profile radio shows for the BBC, and with eight major radio awards between them, the team conduct interviews and record personal stories before producing and editing them into broadcast-quality audio features; these are then hosted alongside photographs on a bespoke, interactive Legacy web page. You can check out an example by clicking on the following link and listening to a selection of stories from Martin Levey, who, after his Jewish grandparents had to leave Russia in the early 1900s because of the pogroms, grew up in the East End during the Blitz and made a life for himself in London: www.loveyourstories.com/martin-levey.
We chose to use audio as our main medium for capturing and presenting the stories for two main reasons. Firstly, the intrusion of video recording on an interviewee is much greater than recording with audio. Getting a video camera pointed at your face makes even the most confident of us retreat into our shells and forget how to speak, let alone how to tell a story. The broadcast-quality audio recorders we use are discreet, helping the interview feel like a relaxed conversation.
Secondly, we felt that illustrating the audio of a loved one’s voice with photos connected to the story they are telling is a compelling way to further bring the story to life—focusing on the content rather than a video of the interviewee telling these stories as an old man or woman.
As well as providing a private service for families and individuals, we strongly believe in trying to support the local community. Because the importance of memory is so central to Love Your Stories, we’ve pledged our support to dementia sufferers in the west London area. For every set of memories we document, Love Your Stories donates a memory aid product to a local dementia centre to help residents through daily life struggling with memory loss. Our memory aid donations include puzzles and games which stimulate memory, memorabilia packs, daily life aids, art books and music CDs, aiming to aid activity-based care in some of the brilliant centres which work in and around west London.
So, whatever you associate with an ageing loved one’s life—swimmer, priest, policeman, record breaker, miracle worker…—if you’ve been meaning to document some of their stories and want to create a legacy that you and your family and friends can treasure for generations to come, then visit the Love Your Stories website to find out more.
About the author:
Rowan Wilkinson is the founder of life story documentation service Love Your Stories. Originally from Cambridge, Rowan moved to London six years ago and worked in the music industry as an artist publicist before setting up and launching LYS earlier this year. He currently lives in Kensal Rise.
