A Brief History of Nowthen

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The Now Then website was the product of a Heritage Lottery funded project that began in Dewsbury.

The West Yorkshire Archive Service worked with local schools and community groups to produce a website of interest about their local area. The site was hugely successful in involving the community and producing a useful website.The Now Then website has been expanded and developed in the anticipation that similar projects will be undertaken across West Yorkshire.

Alongside the Nowthen project, the West Yorkshire Archive Service developed the This Is Our History project that piloted in Bradford. This Is Our History worked with community groups from all over Bradford to help them record their memories and stories of the area and how it has changed. This project exceeded the original expectations and was extremely popular; groups appreciated the opportunity to recount their history. They were able to record for future generations what life used to be like.

In 2006 This Is Our History received additional funding from ASDA to continue its work and expand the areas that it is working in. The project has added community archives from Beeston and Dewsbury and is planning to work with more groups in the Leeds area. These community archives have been added to the Now Then website to make them more accessible. These archives contain valuable personal experiences and will benefit from being more widely available. The groups worked with represents the increasing diversity of West Yorkshire and with the community archives the service’s deposits are beginning to reflect this variety.

In 2007 HLF awared WYAS a grant to develop community arcvhies with the LGBT community as well as arcvhies about the St Patricks Day and Leeds West Indian Carnival.

The Now Then website is a dual purpose website to offer information about West Yorkshire. The site provides a useful combination of local history and personal experience that complement each other to give a fuller picture of West Yorkshire. The site offers articles and resources that are of interest to local and family historians, teachers, students, community groups and anyone interested in learning about West Yorkshire.